Join us for a concert in 2022

As a teenager, newly in love with classical music, I’d spend a tiny portion of my milkrun wages each month on a copy of 24 Hours (later Limelight), underlining each piece I wanted to hear, planning my weeks around these broadcasts. Later, with more money (though earned with less physical exertion), I’d do the same with other people’s season launches, writing in a diary the live performances I couldn’t possibly miss. Of course, these two behavioural patterns are connected; the child, after all, is father to the man.

And now it’s my own seasons I happily anticipate. Any concert season tells a story, and the one Musica Viva Australia tells in 2022 is simple, if boldly told: it is a tale of creativity during adversity; of partnerships that span the country and the world; of resilience, communal experience and the sheer, astonishing joy of live performance.

I can’t remember if Bach’s Goldberg Variations was one of the works I diligently underlined in 24 Hours, though I do remember buying Glenn Gould’s 1981 recording not so long after it was released, thereafter quickly falling under its considerable spell. Bringing Andrea Lam and Paul Grabowsky together for this Goldberg project – in which they will both hold up a mirror to their respective musical worlds – will shine a bright light on this work for the ages.

The same applies to the collaboration between Kristian Winther and the Signum Saxophone Quartet – a cracking, hip ensemble from Cologne – in Weill’s masterpiece, his Violin Concerto of 1924. Add to the mix some of Signum’s signature works – from Bach to Broadway – and the program could not be more enticing.

Is Schubert’s Winterreise a greater monument than Bach’s Goldberg Variations? I’ll ask what you think once you see the incomparable English tenor Allan Clayton perform the cycle with pianist Kate Golla, against the backdrop of Fred Williams’s own winter’s journey through Australia’s physical and emotional landscape – all in a magical staging by Lindy Hume.

We round out this season with the phenomenal artistry of a line-up of Australian and international musicians: Karin Schaupp and the Flinders Quartet; Julia Fredersdorff and her Van Diemen’s Band; the brilliant young Z.E.N. Trio; mandolinist Avi Avital and cellist/composer Giovanni Sollima; and a series of Australian soloists populating our Sydney and Melbourne morning concerts.

Come do your part, for music is meaningless without our beloved audiences. Join us – along with the many donors and partners who tirelessly and generously make our work possible – for a season of innovation and wonder.

Paul Kildea, Artistic Director

With special thanks to the Amadeus Society for its support of Musica Viva Australia’s 2022 Concert Season.