Category: ACO

  Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) present Tour Six: VIENNESE SERENADE with Benjamin Schmid in the Concert Hall, the  Sydney Opera House. Benjamin Schmid acting as Guest Director & Lead Violinist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra presented a delightful concert, mostly focused on the Viennese influence on the music experience. What is nearly always joyful about the guest artists that the ACO invite to work with them, is the calibre and musical love that these artists bring to their work. What was most affecting for me was to see this relatively, modest looking artist appear with the orchestra, (firstly in a…

Australian Chamber Orchestra. Tour Five. SCHUBERT STRING QUINTET. At the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. The Australian Chamber Orchestra is represented by four of its artists: Richard Tognetti (Violin), Satu Vanska (Violn), Christopher Moore(Viola), Timo-Veikko Valve (Cello) with a guest, Finnish cellist Jan-Erik Gustafsson. A true chamber music concert, then. Intimate grouping of players and attuned sensibilities of a period soiree, between the players and the audience. This concert was a sensitive and delicately refined execution of music by Bach, Stravinsky, Webern and Schubert. The first half of the concert was an intriguing presentation of excerpts from Bach”s THE…

  AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA present Tour Three GLITTERING FROST at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. More music. This time a concert given by the Australian Chamber Orchestra featuring Martin Frost, a clarinettist. I write this simply as an amateur to music practice (see post: Mahler 9; Another World). This is a concert that I really encourage all theatre goers to see – for although it is a Music event, the theatre of Mr Frost, as an inspired artist, is as exciting to see as it is to hear the music. You get it all in one wonderfully inspired “package”.…

Australian Chamber Orchestra present: Tour One – TEDDY TAHU RHODES at the Sydney Opera House. Songs with and without words. The Mahler Adagietto (from Symphony No.5.) (1902), familiar to those of us who remember the Visconti film DEATH IN VENICE was our first offering in this concert. It is a beautiful and melancholic experience. Whether it was written as a wordless love declaration by Gustav Mahler to his future wife, or is related more to the sombre setting of a Ruckert poem, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden recommend” (1901): I have lost touch with the world where I once wasted…

The Australian Chamber Orchestra presents Tour Five, BAREFOOT FIDDLER at Angel Place Recital Hall, Sydney. ‘The Barefoot Fiddler’, is an alias for Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the Guest Director with The Australian Chamber Orchestra and Lead Violin for this program. The hallmarks of Ms Kopatchinskaja’s musical interests are evident simply in the variety of choice of her Directorship for this concert. From a transcription for a string ensemble of Heinreich Schutz’s last work (1671), “German Magnificat, SWV494” to an Australian première of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian’s Violin Concerto No.2, “Four Serious Songs” (2006); Sandor Veress’ “Four Transylvanian Dances” (1944/49); Australian Elena Kats-Chernin’s…

    AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA present BACH AND BEYOND at Angel Place, Sydney. The concert featured the Orchestra with guest artists ; Sara Macliver, Soprano; Fiona Campbell, Mezzo Soprano; Andrew Staples, Tenor and Matthew Brook, Bass. The first half of the concert featured : Dimitri Shostakovich –Elegy and Polka. J.S. Bach – Missa Brevis in G minor BWV235. Arvo Part – Summa. Arnold Schoenberg – Litany from String Quartet No.2. The pieces were not played consecutively as listed, but rather the six parts of the Bach Mass were interleaved with the other works. Each piece was counterpointed in an unusual…