Welcome to Season 2024

A child looking through a kaleidoscope will turn the lens quickly, impatient for the transformation, greedy for the image that sits at the farthest point from the original. An adult will savour the subtlest shift, able to keep the two images in mind long enough to marvel at the refractions.  

I went into planning for 2024 thinking about such subtle refractions. What happens if we make our great love, chamber music, the focus as we turn ever so slightly the kaleidoscopic lens aimed at it?  

By pure chance, in sitting down to write this introduction I read a blog post from the American composer and songwriter Gabriel Kahane, whose national tour for us in August/September 2024, with the brilliant and charismatic violinist Pekka Kuusisto is a cherished component of our season. He was writing about a concert he curated some months back: ‘The basic conceit of the evening is to present a series of collages, mosaics, jump-cuts, and juxtapositions that occur within, as well as across, multiple works.’ Sometimes it’s thrilling to look at familiar works sideways, Gabriel seemed to be saying.  

So, choose your image or analogy; I’m happy with either kaleidoscope or mosaic. To bring the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge back to Australia is a privilege, but to have it perform great twentieth-century religious works alongside a commissioned work from Damian Barbeler and Judith Nangala Crispin, is an intimate way for the choir to engage with Australian history.  

Kirill Gerstein is an astonishing performer, and here undertakes a new work by Liza Lim in an already distinctive program. There’s similar bounty in the tour of Lina Tur Bonet, a Baroque violinist visiting Australia for the first time with her ensemble Musica Alchemica.  

The songs of William Bolcom have always been close to my heart, with their hints of Brecht and Bernstein; here they are assembled into a touching show by director Con Costi, performed by Anna Dowsley with Michael Curtain on piano.

The tour by Ensemble Q is an opportunity to hear the world’s oldest wind instrument alongside Australia’s best in a new commission from William Barton. And how great to include the young prize-winning Esmé Quartet, whose Mendelssohn you just have to hear. I look forward to seeing you in concert halls throughout the country! 

With special thanks to the MVA Director’s Circle and the Amadeus Society for their support of Musica Viva Australia’s 2024 Concert Season.