Category: Sydney Symphony Orchestra

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents, DANCING WITH THE DEVIL, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody, in the Concert Hall, at the Sydney Opera House, 12 August – 14 & 15 August, 2015. This concert given by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO), conducted by James Gaffigan, had the title: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL. The first offer was the Ballet music from Act III of Verdi’s MACBETH (c.1864). The witches of the opera conjure the imagery of the Devil and the sound composed for the French version of the opera was for the dance around the cauldron of spells. Almost twenty years after the original premiere…

Photo by Ken Butti Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) with Credit Suisse Australia, present a Special Event: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE by Richard Wagner, in Concert, in the Concert Hall, at the Sydney Opera House. Saturday 20 June and Monday 22 June, 2015. So, on Friday I attended TRIASSIC PARQ and on Saturday I attended TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. It was an experiential journey from the ridiculous to the sublime, in a mere 24 hours. Variety is the spice of life, they tell me! A blissful, transformative night: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE by Richard Wagner in concert form, presented by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, led…

Sydney Symphony Orchestra present ENIGMA VARIATIONS and ZIMMERMAN PLAYS SIBELIUS, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House, December 3, 5, 6, 2014. Shamefully, I have not gone to any concert this year with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. But the Variations on an Original Theme, Op.36 [Enigma], by Edward Elgar (1899) has always been an amusing favourite, so off I went, further ‘bribed’ by the opportunity to hear Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 by Benjamin Britten (1941), and the Finnish Violinist, Frank Peter Zimmermann, play the Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.47 (1904), by Jean Sibelius. All conducted by…

Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents, JAZZ INSPIRATIONS: Thibaudet plays Gershwin in the Convert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. Wanting some music in my life, again, and reading publicity around the pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and enamoured with the composers Dmitri Shotsakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, and curious about the classic symphonic work of George Gershwin, who I know mostly as a popular song maker of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties of the last century – I went to this concert at the Sydney Opera House. I have a conscious appreciation of my being a kind of Russophile, (dangerously imperilled by present history –…

  Sydney Opera House presents 3: The Composers. ARVO PART: A Sacred Journey in the Concert Hall. Last year in early May, I attended The Composers program, STEVE REICH in Residence. A Celebration, curated by Yarmila Alfonzetti for the Sydney Opera House in the Concert Hall and had a very exciting and bliss filled experience. So, The Composers 3: ARVO PART, A Sacred Journey, raised some high expectations, as well, for a similar time. And, although the composer, unlike last year when Mr Reich was present and in charge, Mr Part was instead, represented by Tonu Kaljuste and The Estonian…