The Musical Musings of Artistic Director, Carl Vine
March 2010
On 3rd March the Borodin Quartet’s final concert of its national tour was greeted by a capacity crowd at the Adelaide Town Hall. Presented in association with the Adelaide Festival of the Arts in its fiftieth anniversary year, the group‘s performances of their heartland repertoire seem to have touched many of you deeply. A Melbourne subscriber commented:
I must, absolutely must, tell you how wonderful, fabulous, fantastic, exceptional the Borodin Quartet concert was. From the opening notes you could hear what a different, rich sound they produced. It was one of the best concerts I have ever attended in the course of a long life of concert going.
While we have been managing to enjoy the occasional joys of Australian summer between the storms, cyclones, floods and bushfires, our performers for the 2010 season have been making CDs, making the news and making wonderful music in the fiercest winter that the northern hemisphere has seen for many years.
The leader of The Harp Consort, Andrew Lawrence-King, has been performing with Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI as well as working quite a lot in St Petersburg – marked by a whole series of delayed flights (which of course won’t happen here!). Along with launching a new website (www.paullewispiano.com.uk), Paul Lewis gave a highly applauded four-hands piano concert at London’s Wigmore Hall with another wonderful pianist, Steven Osborne: ‘There’s something symbolic of friendship in the interplay of two pairs of hands on one instrument, and never more than in Schubert’s four-hand music… a marriage in which two musical personalities retain their individuality... the pair launched into a brilliant synthesis, with Osborne’ filigree tracery weaving delicate patterns above Lewis’s powerful bass.’ (The Independent)
The Gramophone Magazine featured the Pavel Haas Quartet on its cover in a recent issue, suggesting that it just might be ‘the most exciting string quartet in the world’ (against some fierce competition). In July and August the group gets to show us precisely how exciting it is, as well as mounting a splendid showcase of music from their Czech homeland.
The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, with its Director Stephen Layton, has just released a new recording on Hyperion Records, ‘Baltic Exchange’ (CDA67747) featuring works by contemporary Eastern European composers Praulinš, Einfelde, Sisask & Miškinis. Layton has personally brought most of these composers to the attention of the wider Western World, and we have the chance to hear some of these enchanting works sung by this young choir with a very special ‘passion and purity’, in their tour through August and September.
March also sees us partnering with the Australian String Quartet to present the first string quartet of our 2010 Featured Composer, Paul Stanhope, in that group’s first national tour for the year. The work was commissioned by Musica Viva ACT Committee member and season subscriber Julia Potter Hickman for Musica Viva in celebration of her husband Peter’s 60th birthday in 2009. We’re delighted that the ASQ is able to bring this work to audiences across Australia. Visit www.asq.com.au for performance details in your city.
And please tune into our Broadcast Partner, ABC Classic FM, for broadcasts of the 2009 Huntington Estate Music Festival every Tuesday and Thursday at 1.05pm through March.
CARL VINE
Artistic Director
Read
In Conversation with Carl Vine, 2010 The Silver Rose, BEHIND BALLET (online)
http://www.behindballet.com/in-converstation-with-carl-vine/#more-2374
"Set in Vienna in the early 1900s, Graeme Murphy’s The Silver Rose is a lavishly told story of romantic intrigue. Composer Carl Vine, a long-time collaborator of Murphy’s, revisited his personal orchestral collection to compile the score. The Silver Rose premiered in Munich in 2005 and next year Australian audiences will encounter the passionate work when The Australian Ballet performs it in four capital cities."