Category: Richard Tognetti

AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA. IBM Tour Four: RESONANCE. Masterpieces for String Orchestra. The Australian Chamber Orchestra in their program RESONANCES presented five Masterpieces for String Orchestra. The concert was extremely felicitous. Beginning with a world premiere, commissioned to celebrate Richard Tognetti’s 20th Anniversary as leader of the ACO, was Peter Sculthorpe’s Chaconne. “The music is influenced by Bach.” The music was extremely beautiful and wonderfully captured in its long floating sounds by the players. Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis was the next choice. Written“ in 1910 a perceptive critic noted something of the same quality, saying that…

AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA present TOUR THREE: GREAT ROMANTICS. In a concert at Angel place I heard a stripped back representation of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, a string sextet: Richard Tognetti, Helena Rathbone, Christopher Moore, Stephen King, Timo-Veikko Valve and Julian Thompson give a performance of Ian Munro’s commissioned piece BLACK IS THE NIGHT as part of the 20th Anniversary celebration of Richard Tognetti’s leadership of the ACO; Brahms’ String Sextet in G, Op.36 [Agathe] and Schoenberg’s TRANSFIGURED NIGHT. Brahms has not very much interested me. I nearly always imagine myself sitting in a scene either at a colonial concert at…

Australian Chamber Orchestra present TOUR TWO, INNER VOICES: BACH & SIBELIUS with Pekka Kuusisto, Guest Conductor. I had listened to the Music Show (Radio National) on the Saturday before the concert I attended. I thought Pekka Kuusisto sounded very quirky and interesting. This proved to be so. The two Bach pieces, Brandenburg Concerto No.3, BWV 1048 and the Violin Concerto No.2, BWV 1042, were both familiar and so very easy and comforting to hear. Perfectly delightful. The celebratory work for the 20th Anniversary of Richard Tognetti’s association with the Orchestra commissioned by the ACO from Andrew Ford, BRIGHT SHINERS, was…

AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: Tour One DAWN UPSHAW at Angel Place, Sydney. Attending music is a pleasure for my own spoilt self. It is outside my expertise but it is part of my diet in the Arts. So let me plagiarise from the program notes. “Dawn Upshaw is simply one of those performers that anyone serious about the state of music today must see. Combining intelligence, artistry and a seriously gorgeous voice, everything she sings turns to gold. The music she’s chosen spans the globe and crosses cultures: from folksong to the works of an Eastern European Jewish composer whose Argentine…

  This is not my skill area. However it is part of my Theatre going life and I just thought for those of you out there who do not go to concerts I should pass on my experience. Concert going for me was boring. I work in the Performing Arts and always felt that I needed visual distraction to keep me focused. I don’t know when, but several years ago, out of a cultural guilt I guess, I thought I should attempt to experience this Art Form. Something happened at one of these attempts and I became hooked. I am…