Oboist Celia Craig, clarinettist Dean Newcomb, bassoonist Mark Gaydon, and pianist Michael Ierace will be familiar names and faces to Adelaide audiences. Most are either past or current members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and all are treasured figures in the city’s musical life. What a pleasure it will be to see them perform together in a special one-off concert for Musica Viva, each bringing to the stage an extraordinary musicianship honed as soloists, chamber players, and orchestral linchpins.
Watch them weave magic with a thoroughly Gallic program of works, a highlight of which is Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano. A rarely heard piece bursting with a sense of youthful verve, the Trio bears a melodic inventiveness characteristic of Poulenc’s output. Such a sparkling work more than meets its match in Françaix’s Divertissement. As the name suggests, it offers up a joyful escape from everyday life, something that the composer himself must have hungered for given he was living in Nazi-occupied France at time of writing.
Celia Craig will step into the spotlight for Saint-Saëns’ Oboe Sonata, a spare, evocative work that captures the composer at the height of his powers, while Michael Ierace will perform two works by Satie – Gnossienne No 3 and Sonatine bureaucratique, the latter a full-blown parody of a work by Muzio Clementi, which depicts a day in the life of a civil servant. Other works to look forward to include Poulenc’s quirky Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon, Pierné’s Bucolique variée, and Germaine Tailleferre’s Sonate Champêtre, a light-hearted work inspired by a summer holiday.
View the concert guide here.
