Down under, but not out: the Australian Festival of Chamber Music is coming soon to a computer near you

The Australian Festival of Chamber Music gets into gear...

Photo: Andrew Rankin

The pandemic is reaching the point at which we almost don’t dare to plan ahead at all, for fear of hopes being dashed yet again. If you are the director of an international festival, though, you can’t really afford to think like that. You have to hope and plan for the best, while also being prepared for the worst, doing all you can to anticipate likely troubles and short-circuit them before they happen. The Australian Festival of Chamber Music is a case in point.

I’d hoped to go last year, but of course that proved impossible, and the initial rescheduling for this year bit the dust when the organisation reluctantly but necessarily took the step of revising the schedule to use only those artists already in Australia, rather than importing the large contingent of “internationals” as originally planned. This weekend – starting tomorrow, Friday - they’re holding a three-day online festival to showcase a few of those internationals and bring their devoted audience some delicious musical offerings, even if not quite on Orpheus Island yet.

Kathy Stott at Orpheus Island in 2018
Photo: JD

The festival’s artistic director for the past few years has been the British pianist Kathryn Stott, and the Covid-19 reshuffles have chiefly landed in her inbox. She was to be handing over to the incoming new director, violinist Jack Liebeck this year, but when her last festival had to be postponed, Jack gallantly offered to defer taking up his appointment too, allowing her to go out in style.

“It was really generous-spirited of him,” Kathy says, “and I’m very grateful.” Whether she can be there herself, though, is still in question: the borders of Australian states have been closed very quickly at various times during the pandemic and with international travel all but impossible, Kathy has had essentially to write herself out of the programming to be on the safe side.

Cheryl Barker
Photo: Keith Saunders

Keeping the musical schedule as planned as far as humanly possible, she has reassigned the pieces she would have played to other pianists, drafted in the presenter Russell Torrance from ABC to conduct the morning musical chats with festival artists that are a regular and extremely popular part of the proceedings, and as hosts for the evening concerts, Australia’s operatic “golden couple”, Cheryl Barker and Peter Coleman-Wright, will be on location (I’m delighted that Cheryl will also take over my script for the Immortal Beloved concert, though am of course sick as the proverbial parrot about not being there in person). An unexpected bonus that’s arisen from the state of international travel is that Piers Lane, who was artistic director for 16 years before Kathy, is spending most of this year in Australia and will be returning to AFCM for the first time since standing down from the post.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Kathy declares, “it is still Beethoven’s anniversary year, it is still the Goldner String Quartet’s 25th anniversary and although I’ve had to pull out the odd piece here and there, the festival is still its whopping, ginormous self!”

It was certainly whopping and ginormous when I went in 2018. Glittering seas, palm trees, Australian wine under the stars, the best seafood ever and a wonderfully convivial atmosphere among the large team of performers, to say nothing of the audience and the devoted festival Friends who come to absolutely everything – it was the festival of a lifetime. “That was a wonderful year for building new friendships and musical relationships,” Kathy says, pointing to several new associations among her colleagues with invitations to Norway, new commissions for some of the composers from various performers and plenty more to look forward to when “all this” is finally over.

The online Festival Overture from 16 to 18 April brings music from morning til night, as is always the case at the main AFCM, and features three special recitals from musicians based in London, where they are being streamed from the Voces8 Centre: Jack Liebeck and Katya Apekisheva, Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton, and husband and wife duo Alexander Sitkovetsky and Wu Qian. These events can be accessed via the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall’s site, which is partnering with AFCM for the occasion (you’ll need to buy tickets). Morning and lunchtime concerts feature artists who will be appearing at the festival in August, plus a special performance by Kathy herself. Meanwhile you can feast on South Pacific travels from the comfort of your own home through the Destination Dreams videos of the landscapes around Townsville, Far North Queensland and the surrounding islands. Find the full schedule here.

I’ll be writing more about AFCM in the run-up to the 2021 festival, so do stay tuned, and keep your fingers firmly crossed that everything can go ahead as intended when we finally reach August.

Booking for AFCM2021 is now OPEN and you can find this, along with full details of the programme, here: https://www.afcm.com.au

Possums! It's time for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music

Wish you were here? So do I.

Hello, Possums! I have some good festival trips this summer, but they will have to be seriously incredible in order to match this time last year, when we headed off to Australia for one of the best chamber music festivals in the world. You might have followed my posts here, as I was being a sort of reporter-in-residence for them, and I've been trying to keep up with the eclectic, exploratory, delicious goings-on ever since. As it's hardly stopped raining in London this summer, Townsville in winter is an altogether brighter prospect. If you're going - lucky you!

Here's a taste of what you can expect when the action kicks off at the end of this week.



Artistic director Kathryn Stott has assembled a tremendous line-up of colleagues, ranging from fellow pianists like Charles Owen and Timothy Young to harpist Ruth Wall (interviewed here the other week), Chinese pipa player Wu Man and the amazing Roberto Carrillo-Garcia who plays the double bass, the classical guitar AND the viola da gamba. The doughty Goldner String Quartet rubs shoulders with fellow Australians of Arcadia Winds, the Ensemble Liaison and several splendid actors; musicians from America, Moldova, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and the Czech Republic are all due to swan in to Townsville; as for the repertoire, you'd be hard pressed to find a programme quite as international as this anywhere else.

Kathy Stott in Townsville

And what other festival would both begin and end with the music of Eric Coates? Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean begins the opening night festivities with his Bird Songs at Eventide and the concert continues, in true AFCM fashion, with as many artists as possible throwing their hat into the performance ring in music by Graham Fitkin, Bright Sheng, Françaix and Fauré. Over the course of the festival the repertoire ranges from the 13th century to the present day, notably with world premieres of works by the composer-in-residence, Connor D'Netto from Brisbane. 'Baroque around the Clock' crams 400 years into one big evening. Some startling multi-piano arrangements are likely to give Kathy, Charles, Tim and Aura Go a run for their money and the final evening extravaganza closes with a special arrangement by Roderick Williams of Coates's 'Sleepy Lagoon' for all the festival artists to join in.

Concert on Orpheus Island last year

Events take place from morning til night, most days opening with Kathy Stott's Concert Conversations in which she interviews a group of musicians, each of whom then performs too. There will be chances to hear masterclasses with young people from the festival's Winterschool, which is directed again by the inspirational Pavel Fischer; an amazing day out on Orpheus Island with a special outdoor concert on the beach (last year we saw whales at dusk on the way back); Kathy choosing her Magnetic Island Discs in a special "day off" on the closest tropical island to Townsville; and there are late-night concerts in the bar...

You can find the entire programme here. And now, after combing through it all, I'm green with envy. (Actually I'm on my way to Italy - more of which very soon...).

One woman, three harps and a very long journey

The Australian Festival of Chamber Music kicks off again in a few weeks' time and though I am sick as the proverbial parrot at not going (I was there a year ago for Being Mrs Bach) I'm only too happy to thump the drum for this marvellous, sunny, eclectic jamboree complete with tropical skies, ice cream galore and even humpback whales to watch.

Several performers besides the artistic director, Kathy Stott, are travelling over from the UK and one of them is the extraordinary harpist Ruth Wall, who's setting out from Land's End with two of her three harps and meeting another one there. I had a super chat with her yesterday... First, here she is with partner Graham Fitkin, as FITKINWALL:

From her home near Land’s End in Cornwall, Ruth Wall has a longer journey even than most others to Townsville, Far North Queensland. But then, she is used to long spans, musical as well as physical. Her repertoire ranges from the 13^thcentury to the cutting edge of present-day new works. Her partner is the composer Graham Fitkin and the pair collaborate as the duo FitkinWall. She’s toured with Goldfrapp, been involved with sound installations and theatrical productions - not least the aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor - and she makes musical arrangements and transcriptions of her own. And she composes. 

This multifaceted career began with her training in Scotland: “I grew up in the Highlands and I had a great harp teacher who was from the classical sphere - but there’s a great folk tradition up there and she taught me a lot of traditional music, so I had a mixture of both,” Wall says. 

“In my twenties I was introduced to early harps by a friend in Scotland who makes them, so I started getting interested in the Renaissance bray harp. I just heard it and thought I’ve got toplay this instrument.” What’s so special about it? “It's like a sitar but with knobs on: a big, huge range and a really big, buzzy sound. 

“The same friend, Bill Taylor, introduced me to the Gaelic wire-strung harp as well and that was love at first hearing. I was excited by those two instruments, even though I knew it would take more than a decade to learn them properly.” 

She’s not exaggerating: “Especially the wire-strung harp - it’s as different as you can get from playing a concert harp. It’s almost as different as playing the tuba! You need to have nails; you’re in literally the opposite hand position from the concert harp; the string intervals are tiny; it’s strung with metal; and you have to stop every note as well as play them. So it’s a very complex little instrument – but very beautiful.”

Transporting them from Penzance to Townsville is no laughing matter. “Kathy [Stott] and her team have organised for my bray harp and wire-strung harp to be picked up, so they’re going to be out of my hands from next Monday,” says Wall, “and I won’t see them again until 22 July, so it’s a long gap and I’ve never had that before. As for the concert harp, they’re renting one for me in Australia so that’s another new thing: to play really virtuosic music on a harp I’ve not played before. I’m trying not to worry about it because there’s nothing I can do about it! 

“The two that are being flown out get held hostage in Brisbane for a week. I’ll have to detune them and then tune them up gradually after I arrive. It’s always a little bit heart-in-mouth when there’s a long journey. Even if you fly with them and carry them yourself, it can be difficult - I’ve had a hole in the harp before now. Hopefully everything will be good and nothing will happen…”

Wall is taking part in no fewer than 12 festival events, playing a range of music that would make most other musicians sweat at the very thought. “You’ll hear some very “harpy” French repertoire, including Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro and Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp - those are the biggest pieces for the concert harp. Then I’m playing with Wu Man, the Pipa player: more like a folk piece in style, based on traditional Chinese music. I’ve made an arrangement of that and have been transcribing it in detail, which takes a long time, but is great fun. 

“Then I’m working with Lotte Betts-Dean, the singer, on an Irish piece called 'My Lagan Love' and a Dowland song, ‘Flow my Tears’, which I've arranged. On the Bray harp I’ll be playing some early music from the 13^thcentury by Machaut, and on the wire-strung harp quite a long piece that I wrote myself, Pibroch Patterns based on classical bagpipe music from the Highlands.” Bagpipes? There are some similarities in sounds and techniques, Wall: says: “The bagpipes have a long drone which is similar in sound to the wire-strung harp’s one. As for the music, it’s difficult to know for sure because not a lot of traditional Highland music was written down - it’s an aural tradition. But there are little bits which one can catch that are connected with music of that time.”

The festival will be keeping Wall extremely busy, but she is thrilled to be collaborating with so many different musicians, most of them for the first time. “I just love working with other people,” she says. “The harp can be a lonely instrument, unless you play in orchestra, which I don’t. I’m looking forward to playing with all these musicians - Lotte and Wu Man and the Goldner String Quartet and more!” 

She knows the climate may prove a tad challenging for the instruments: “Harps really don’t like changes in temperature, humidity, etc - and in particular the wire-strung harp goes out of tune wildly and is very difficult to restring if anything goes wrong, so I just have to hope and pray that nothing happens! But I know what to expect. It’s going to be challenging. There won’t be a lot of free time and I’m going to be doing a lot of tuning.”

Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic chance to evangelise for an instrument that is as ubiquitous in imagery as it is rare in practice, and as beautiful as it is challenging to play. I used to have a yen to learn the harp myself, but my parents weren’t having any, I remark. “You should learn!” Wall enthuses. “It’s never too late…”

If JDCMB changes its name someday to “Harping On” - well, you’ll know what happened. 

Meanwhile, you can find Ruth's line-up of AFCM performances here.

Photos via ruthwall.co.uk

Festival of Sunshine

One of my highlights of 2018 was my trip to the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, Far North Queensland. The pianist Kathryn Stott was in her first year as artistic director and we all had a ball: an absolute bonanza of music, companionship, sunshine, palm trees, whale-watching and seriously amazing seafood. But a few months later, parts of Townsville were devastated by floods. As AFCM gears up again towards the 2019 festival, I spoke to Kathy about what happened and how AFCM can help to make Townsville shine again.

How are things in Townsville after the floods? 

The floods were terrible. On the surface now you don’t see much sign of it - on the Strand the lovely palm trees are still there and everything looks OK, but someone told me that more than 2000 homes have been condemned. There were several deaths, and I know of some people who were ill with a “flood disease”. And one person said they weren’t frightened of floods, but of being eaten by a crocodile. It’s important that people know it’s been serious, because once it is no longer in the news it’s quickly forgotten, but some people have really been struggling. 

The festival brings about AUS$8m into the economy and my dream now for the festival is that we will put Townsville on the map again for positive reasons. There’s a hashtag, #TownsvilleShines - you often see it on social media: it needs to shine again. People have really been through the mill. Among our volunteers everybody had a story or knew someone who had lost everything… I’ve never before been so close to people who’ve been involved in a disaster like that, and you just want to bring some positive news. What better way than music, and bringing people to Townsville to support it?

 

Kathryn Stott on the Strand at Townsville

Now that you’ve got your feet under the AFCM, desk, what have you learned, how do you feel about last year and how do you want to build on last year’s festival? 

The AFCM takes up more than half my life. I was totally thrilled with last year’s - I couldn’t have hoped for it to go any better. There’s some trepidation coming into a scenario like that, especially with someone like Piers Lane as my predecessor, who’d been there for so long. People get used to things and it’s an extremely loyal audience - so if you throw in any curveballs, you never quite know how they’re going to come off. 

What thrilled me was that after two days I was relaxed, I knew it was going well and audience members started coming up to me to say they were enjoying themselves. But actually the support of the musicians I had was amazing. They all knew that it was my first festival and it was important to get it right. And the way they bonded together was beyond belief. It’s nice now to see some of them working together, having met there for the first time: some new musical relationships have been established. 

I learned that I don’t want to play as much as I did. I probably will still end up playing too much, but I did learn my lesson! Nothing went wrong, but I was exhausted by the end. And you realise what has to happen to make this festival work - I was staggered to see how many hours the volunteers put in, and to understand what people are giving up in order for us to do what we do. Of course there are always lessons to be learned, but all in all I was super-happy with it.

What do you have in store for your audience this year?

It’s a wonderful spread of pieces from the 13^thcentury to the present day, and it’s fairly full-on! There are some really unusual flavours, which is what I enjoy most - I don’t want it to be what you can hear everywhere else. One person came up to me and said: ‘Thank you for programming some music we just never hear’! 

We are trying to bring over artists who are extraordinarily versatile and bring something special to the festival’s big table. For instance, the 13^th-century reference involves our harpist, Ruth Wall. We’ve borrowed a concert harp for her - we found one in Townsville, incredibly the same make that she uses - but I also wanted her to play some small harps: a bray harp and a lever wire-strung harp and we’re flying them over; she’ll be able to do extra things in the festival because they’re easy to move around. She’ll play music from the 13^thcentury to a piece by Graham Fitkin, who’s her partner, for harp and quartet, with the Goldner String Quartet. And you might find her playing Goldfrapp or some trendy band… 

Then we have Roberto Carillo-Garcia: he’s principal double bass in the Halle but also plays the gamba and the guitar, so he will definitely be the most overworked person in the festival! He’s coming over with his wife Rachael Clegg, who’s a fantastic oboist. There’s Wu Man, the amazing Pipa player, who is bringing an amazing piece by Tan Dun, among much else. The violinist Liza Ferschtman is coming from Holland - usually she’s busy running her own Delft Festival in July and August, but fortunately this year she’s taken a sabbatical. From London we have the pianist Charles Owen, who I think will have a good time here, and we have a number of Australian artists including Arcadia Winds and both the Goldner and the Australian String Quartets and the brilliant young Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean has taken on a very wide range of different repertoire. That’s just to name a few! (Full list of artists here.)

 Are you having a festival “theme”?

Themes are tricky because you can get boxed in quite easily; it’s difficult to sustain a theme over 30 events and suit everybody. Still, I’ve come up with the theme of ‘Origins’ - which means lots of different things in this context. Some things are obvious, such as nationalistic music like Janácek and Smetana, Dvorák Slavonic Dances, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies and so on. Themes and variations are next, since the theme is the origin of the variations. Then there’s music that’s been transcribed; and quite a few pieces with fascinating stories behind them. A colleague suggested the Vierne Piano Quintet: his son, Jacques, was executed at 17 after things went badly wrong in World War I, and he wrote this as a result. 

There’s also a mini theme of piano trios, including a few blockbusters - Tchaikovsky’s trio written in response to Nikolai Rubinstein’s death, and Rachmaninov’s in response to Tchaikovsky’s death. Alongside these are some mini-trios, with a twist: Tori de Clare is a thriller writer and she’s created a story to link several of these - Schubert, Sibelius, etc - in real time; so we’ll start at 9.30 at night, someone will narrate the story, it will be interspersed with the music and should finish exactly on 10.30 - so hopefully no one will break a string or want to retune… 

All in all, there’s an interesting mix of artists who know each other and some who don’t, some who are making their festival debuts and some who’ve never been to Australia before. You can never predict exactly how it will turn out, but I’m happy with the way it looks. I’ve listened to every piece and I think I’ve got the right combination of people playing the right works. You can’t do much more than that! 

Last year I loved the Winterschool and the family events - more of these, I hope?

The family concerts might look predictable at first glance, with Poulenc’s Babar the Elephant, which I totally adore, and Stravinsky’s Firebird, which Ashley Wass and Matthew Trusler have arranged. But both will involve extensive community activities, so we’ll have interactive visuals and we’ve got people building sets, local dance schools are involved, and there are some little actors. It’s nice to build up this side of the activities, otherwise it’s just piano and narrator - I want more going on! The Winterschool is going from strength to strength and the fantastic Pavel Fischer is in charge once more.

Who’s this year’s composer in residence?

In the past they’ve been well-established, names everyone knows in Australia and further afield. But last year the percussionist Claire Edwards brought a piece by a young composer called Connor D’Netto, who came to London to do his Masters. I went to meet him – and I thought let’s have a change and invite a young, emerging composer. He had to have enough material, though - so we’ve got him a commission to write a quartet for the Goldners. I’ve just been working on a piece called Tracesfor cello and piano, which is difficult but I’m really enjoying it, and there’s a piece for viola and electronics; about five pieces through which we will hear how his style is moving and developing. Purely by chance he’s from Brisbane, so people in Townsville are thrilled that he’s a Queensland boy.

I see you’ve broadened out the baroque evening?

We’re having two baroque concerts. The first is Baroque around the Clock, in which a Dowland song rubs shoulders with Thomas Adès’s Darkness Visible which is based on it, and a piece by Ligeti in is amongst everything: it’s a real mixture of eras, but all based on baroque themes. Then the evening features Vivaldi concertos with ensembles made from the Goldner and Australian String Quartets. We’ve got a harpsichord this year and Roberto on his gamba, so that all worked out, and there’s some Monteverdi - and for Bach fans, the Italian Concerto.

You’ve recently been in Australia, promoting this year’s festival. How did it go? 

It was a whirlwind! This was my first-ever publicity tour, and I did 11 flights, six cities and one interview after another. No concerts, though, because I’m on my concert sabbatical. I played five minutes here and there with someone else, but that’s literally all since the end of August. That’s why my social media posts recently have all been about my spaniel, Archie. 

Last but by no means least, how have you enjoyed your sabbatical?

It’s been really good, because usually the need to practise is something that hangs over me all the time. So for a few months I didn’t touch the piano. I closed the lid and thought “if I want it, it’s there…” - but actually I’ve been quite happy. I started slowly again after Christmas, and now there’ll be a build-up...

Booking for the 2019 Australian Festival of Chamber Music is now OPEN and full details are here.

AFCM#6: Being Anna Magdalena

It’s done! The premiere of Being Mrs Bach was yesterday at 5pm and it simply flew by. It’s almost impossible to sum it up...but the great reward, when you’ve dreamed up a project and you can see it in your mind’s eye, and then months later that image actually becomes reality and does what you want it to do - that’s a good feeling.

Mrs Bach backstage. #townsville #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #beingmrsbach

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Aug 1, 2018 at 3:05pm PDT

The original commission for Being Mrs Bach came through last summer from Kathy Stott and Tom and I took off to Leipzig to experience Bach’s environment as far as humanly possible. The trip made a big difference to the story, because there is information at the Thomaskirche, the Bach Museum and the city museum in the Town Hall that provides colour and authenticity that would not have been available to me from the comfort of my bookshelves. Anna Magdalena’s tragedy was that she gave her whole life to Bach and her family, only to find, first, that she could no longer sing - women were not allowed to sing in public in Leipzig - and then, after JSB’s death, she and her youngest daughter were left reliant on charity as, for some reason, the other children gave her little support. In 1894, when Bach’s body was exhumed so that scientists could measure his skull, hers was left behind. By the time he was reburied in pride of place in the Thomaskirche in 1950, anything that remained of Anna Magdalena had probably been blasted to pieces by allied bombing.

How to choose the right pieces from Bach’s gigantic output to include in the show was, to put it mildly, mind-boggling - especially with such an eclectic roster of astounding musicians available to take part. But as soon as Kathy let me know who my singers could be, things began to fall into place. The chance to persuade Roddy Williams to sing ‘Mache Dich’ from the St Matthew Passion to finish the show seemed almost too good to be true, and he kindly agreed to sing ‘Hat man nicht mit seinen Kinder’ from the Coffee Cantata as well. The glorious soprano Siobhan Stagg sang ‘Bist du bei mir’ - such a favourite of mine that we had it at our wedding. (You may have seen Roddy and Siobhan as Papageno and Pamina in The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House last year....).

Mrs Bach with her Sebastian and Magdalena... Roddy Williams, me and Siobhan Stagg celebrating post-concert tonight! #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #townsville #beingmrsbach

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Aug 1, 2018 at 5:05am PDT

The Goldner Quartet are in residence - who better to tackle the legendary Unfinished Fugue of The Art of Fugue? The effect is devastating: this magnificent complexity unfurling in phase after phase suddenly peters out into silence with a few final notes on the viola. Daniel de Borah contributed not only two splendid solos - the chunky, good-natured E flat Prelude and Fugue from Book 2 of the 48 and the ubiquitous Minuet in G, beautifully embellished on its repeat - but also accompanied Siobhan and joined the Winterschool’s very accomplished student quartet and bassist Kees Boersma in the ensemble for ‘Mache Dich’. Guy Johnston played the first movement of the C major Cello Suite, just as Anna Magdalena remembers how she made fair copies, put in all the bowings and used to imagine that one day someone might find those pages in her handwriting and wonder if she wrote them herself... ;).

Funnily enough, the single most complicated part of the process was setting up the stage. We wanted everyone there all the way through for ease of running - we only had an hour - and it can be hard to tell in advance what will fit and what won’t. Solutions were found, lighting was planned, and everyone made valuable contributions to the placements and the flow.

And to judge from the audience reaction, I think it went pretty well.

It’ll be a wrench to say goodbye to Anna Magdalena and return her dress to the costume store, but I hope she may simply be awaiting a resurrection of her own, should any more concert halls or festivals fancy meeting her.

Onwards...and today I am giving the Winterschool a lecture about eight - or nine - wonderful composers across the ages who happen(ed) to be female.

AFCM#5: Of trumpets, sheng and whales

Concert on #orpheusisland with Julian Bliss and JP Jofre - a spot of Libertango... #afcm #townsville #australianfestivalofchambermusic #afcm18

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 31, 2018 at 2:50pm PDT

Pity the group of youngsters in their little motor-boat and sea-kayaks who turned up for a nice, private swim on the deserted beaches of Orpheus Island. Just as they were getting their towels out, in pulled a Sealink seacat and disgorged about 200 festival-goers and a bunch of musicians carrying some very peculiar contraptions, which they proceeded to unpack and play.

Two trumpets, a clarinet with golden keys, a rose-gold flute, a pearl-inlaid bandoneon and an extraordinary Chinese sheng took up residence for about an hour, surrounded by ecstatic music-lovers who stood, sat, lay, or knelt at their feet, or went into the water and stayed there to enjoy the performances from the cool comfort of lapping crystal-clear shallows. Tine Thing Helseth and her new husband Sebastian opened proceedings, walking out of the waves and up onto the sand as they played a Norwegian wedding march (they got married in May and are just back from honeymoon). Wu Tong performed on a Chinese flute sitting on a high rock, a la Pan, and later mesmerised us all with his Sheng playing - an amazing, colourful piece we assumed must be a sophisticated new composition of his own. Later he told us he was improvising. Pru Davis played Debussy’s Syrinx, Julian Bliss an unaccompanied contemporary virtuoso piece that sounded like Messiaen (but wasn’t), and JP Jofre, after some solos, joined him to finish with Piazzolla’s Libertango.

The sun lowered towards the waters on the horizon, Katya went swimming, Lars fell asleep and Anna Magdalena Bach deeply regretted leaving her swimsuit behind, but had a good paddle nonetheless. Artistic director Kathy, meanwhile, had the look of a pianist who’d landed the best job on the planet, and I rather think she has.

Artistic director Kathryn Stott is clearly finding life in this job deeply stressful... #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #townsville

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 31, 2018 at 2:53pm PDT

I had a fascinating chat with Wu Tong on the boat: he showed me how the Sheng works. I may have described it as a kind of “bagpipe”, but it really isn’t. It’s a mouth organ. Literally. It’s a collection of pipes, in a round cluster, played by blowing with fingering as appropriate - a sort of mix of accordion, clarinet and church organ rolled into one astounding instrument about the size of a trumpet. It is immensely sophisticated and the lack of anything entirely similar in western music is rather striking - though Wu Tong tells me it may have had a bearing on the development of the organ in Europe, far predating its invention. Sample it and him here: https://youtu.be/mybsLx7RyIo.

On the return journey the excursion turned into a sunset cruise, albeit a slightly choppy one, and we took a detour to look for whales. The light dimmed, the planets brightened above, we could see the Milky Way from the upper deck, as well as Venus and Mars (which is closer to the Earth than at any time for ?xx years), and the starlight dappled the bouncing waves...until just as the last of the day was fading, a jet of water blew into the air nearby, a stampede to starboard nearly capsized us and a baby humpback whale and its mummy were there, ready to put on a display for us since they knew full well we couldn’t infringe their copyright by filming in the night. They danced under the surface, with smooth, dark backs curving above now and then, and let fly with joyous blowhole fountains, hopefully egged on by the oohs and ahhs aboard.

Concert hall! #orpheusisland #townsville #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 31, 2018 at 2:59pm PDT

I don’t know whose bright idea it was to create a music festival in such a place, but frankly...I’d like to send them some chocolate.

Loads more photos on Instagram (my account is jessica.duchen). And now I am off to make final preparations for Being Mrs Bach, which is at 5pm TODAY at the Townsville Civic Theatre. Til later...

AFCM#4: Barefoot in the Festival?

#AFCM18 #concertconversations #townsville #australianfestivalofchambermusic Barefoot in the music festival! Tine Thing Helseth, Prudence Davis and Alexander Sitkovetsky while being grilled by Kathy Stott

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 29, 2018 at 9:58pm PDT

I’ve spent a happy morning today at Kathy Stott’s Concert Conversations. These events take place every day during the festival, in the Casino of the plushly gorgeous Ville Resort overlooking the sea and Magnetic Island - and they’re jam-packed solid with music-lovers. First Kathy interviews a group of festival artists for about 45 mins. Then they each perform something.

I’m always intrigued to hear musicians interview other musicians because you can bet your bottom dollar it won’t resemble an interview by a journalist. Sure enough, Kathy and today’s group covered a startling range of topics. We had piano chat with Daniel de Borah and Timothy Young, some touching honesty about pressures and schedules from Tine Thing Helseth, who didn’t have a holiday for 10 years; tales from the orchestral front-line with flautist Prudence Davis (first flute of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 1980); and the price of top violins today from Alexander Sitkovetsky, who is trying to raise $5m to buy the heavenly Strad he is playing at present. But above all, we had...footwear?

Or lack of it. Tine is one of an increasing number of young women musicians who prefer to play bare-footed. Seeing some of the heights of heels others wear on stage has often left me fearing for their ankles, feet, instruments and general security and if a rebellion is taking place, it’s not before time. I mean, come on, men don’t wear them, so why should we have to? (I gave up attempting high heels about 10 years ago and nowadays if I ever do wear them, I can hardly walk, and I like to be able to walk...) Pianist Alice Sara Ott has played barefoot for years, so has violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Tine explained she simply feels more comfortable that way. But today we learned that the phenonemon is spreading to men, and it’s the digital shift that’s driving it.

Piano chat at #concertconversations: Kathy Stott talks to Daniel de Borah and Timothy Young about competitions, travel schedules and...footwear! #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #townsville

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 29, 2018 at 10:02pm PDT

Timothy Young appeared on stage not barefoot, but in some unusual shoes - unusual for a musician, that is. You’d be more likely to see them in a yoga studio. They’re the soft-soled, wrap-around, close-with-velcro (I think) type, and he explained that he wears them because he now performs from an iPad instead of paper sheet music and finds it easier to treat the necessary bluetooth pedal sensitively if he can feel it underfoot, which normal concert shoes don’t always allow. 

When it was time for Kathy and Daniel to offer their morning performance - Fauré’s Dolly Suite for duet - Kathy admitted she would today be making her iPad debut. And Daniel, as the ‘secondo’ player in charge of page-turning, walked on stage...barefoot. 

My jury is still out regarding Mrs Bach’s footwear for Wednesday. Whatever she has will be hidden by her long skirts in any case... hmm...

In the meantime, I’ve reviewed the two opening nights’ concerts for Limelight Magazine, which you can read here: https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/features/australian-festival-of-chamber-music-opening-weekend-round-up

And we had Moreton Bay Bugs in garlic butter for lunch...

Moreton Bay bugs with garlic butter... 😃👍🙃 #AFCM18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #townsville

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 29, 2018 at 9:56pm PDT

AFCM#3: Working. Seriously: working....

Roderick Williams rehearsed for #BeingMrsBach with pianist Daniel de Borah, bassist Kees Boersma and the lovely young Stanley Street Quartet. #AFCM18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #Townsville

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 28, 2018 at 11:41pm PDT

The pic above is from our first rehearsal today for Being Mrs Bach here in Townsville. I’m wielding my script at the side, offscreen, while some of our siezable team of musicians rehearse in the studio - pictured, baritone Roderick Williams, pianist Daniel de Borah, the young Stanley Street Quartet, who are studying at the festival Winterschool, and bassist Kees Boersma, getting to grips together with ‘Mache dich’ from the St Matthew Passion and ‘Hat man nicht mit seinen Kinder...’ from the Coffee Cantata.

The wonderful soprano Siobhan Stagg - who does actually look like Anna Magdalena - will be channelling our heroine’s spirit into ‘Bist du bei mir’, Daniel is playing the Minuet in G and the E flat Prelude and Fugue from Book 2, and somewhere in the room the Goldner Quartet were preparing to play the unfinished contrapunctus from The Art of Fugue. Completing the line-up, Guy Johnston will offer a movement from one of the cello suites.

I can hardly believe I’m working with this team of musicians. They’re simply the best in the world...and somehow I have to match up. Gulp.

The first two evening concerts have brought us some astounding performances - last night’s included Roddy and Daniel in the Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel and a roof-raising Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence with an all-star international line-up, to say nothing of a supremely talented young Australian violinist, Grace Clifford (she’s 20), playing Julian Yu’s Passacaglia after Biber so splendidly that I suspect a magnificent future for her.

I can, seriously, think of worse places to attend a music festival. #AFCM18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #townsville #classicalmusic

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 28, 2018 at 11:51pm PDT

Relaxed festival-goers who don’t need to rehearse, practise or write about things can enjoy musical events from morning til night most days at AFCM. In the mornings, Kathy Stott presents Concert Conversations, interviewing her artists, with  performances by them to follow, a Winterschool lunchtime masterclass, a 5pm Sunset Series (in which Being Mrs Bach is included) and then more events in the evening. Tonight people are off to a Supper Club where they will be entertained with jazz, tango and Gershwin while munching. Some of us, though, are grabbing the opportunity to conquer the jet-lag, or try to, and cook ourselves some local fish.

The jet-lag is quite something. Jokes are zipping around the festival about how everyone is ‘drugged’ - on melatonin. I don’t know how we’d manage without it...but I made the mistake of taking a second one at about 3.30am and then slept through to 9.30am, when I had to write and file some copy by 10am. Tom kindly made the coffee while I jumped to it...

To be fair, it wasn’t only jet-lag. We’re having too much fun. After the concerts you go out, bump into people, eat gluten-free linguine with seafood or veggie burgers, sample the local produce (I have a none-too-secret passion for Ozzie wines) and before you know what’s happened, it’s midnight. Music festivals were ever thus, but this one is more than usually friendly - and exceptionally well set up by its devoted teams of volunteers, patrons and management, so everyone seems free to be in a singularly good mood. Long may that continue.

More pics at my Instagram account (jessica.duchen) and another update will follow tomorrow. For the time being, the Chadonnay beckons and the pan is waiting for me to pop in the barramundi...

AFCM #2: Home from home...

There’s that moment when after a 24-hour journey you peer out of the plane window at the country you’re about to visit and you see...Australian sunlight. I haven’t been here for 15 years and had managed to forget its unique nature. The quality of it is like opals, brilliant and translucent and full of gold, ochre and purple. You have to screw up your eyes against it, or rush for sunglasses. Strong, pure and irresistible, as if shot in technicolour, it makes you wonder if the Land of Oz was so named for a good reason. Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more...

We’ve made it to Townsville, in the dry tropics of Queensland, and now it’s the morning after the night before...and that was the night after the day after the journey before. We left London with two big suitcases on Tuesday night, spent a pleasant few hours in Hong Kong airport and arrived in Sydney on Thursday morning...with one big suitcase. Sole free day in Sydney was supposed to be spent happily reuniting at leisure with my aunt, whom I hadn’t seen for 15 years, but this turned into a hasty and frazzled coffee in between frantic calls to the airport where we’d shunted from office to office for about three hours upon arrival. The case arrived 24 hours after we did and has joined us here. At least it wasn’t the one that contained my Anna Magdalena costume.

View from our window this morning! #townsville #queensland #afcm #classicalmusic #australia 

A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 27, 2018 at 4:49pm PDT

All in all, I can think of worse places to hold a chamber music festival. We’re staying - along with all the festival artists - in an apartment hotel near the marina; the sun is pouring into our new home-from-home across the cluster of lilttle boats  this morning, the Strand beside the sea awaits exploration, as do its gelatarias, there’s a massive seafood bar across the road and yesterday’s opening concert was a heap of musical joys.

It was full of fresh, startling ideas, juxtapositions and collaborations, with Tine Thing Helseth and Katya Apekisheva shining amid an all-star line-up for the Saint-Saens Septet, eight cellists plus wonderful Siobhan Stagg in the Villa Lobossome amazing new timbres from marimba, sheng and bandoneon in world premieres by JP Jofre and Paul Stanhope, and a completely barnstorming performance of the Chausson Concert by Kathy Stott, Alexander Sitkovetsky and the Goldner String Quartet. The big concerts take place in the Townsville Civic Theatre, a sizeable modern hall from which last night’s concert went out live on the radio - splendidly hosted by Mairi Nicolson, whose interviews with the musicians while the stage set-up changed were fun, interesting and sympathetic.

Backstage, of course, it’s hard not to think “YIKES, I have to do the Bach show HERE?”, given the impressive scale of the whole thing - but with a chance to catch up with old friends like Kathy, Katya and Guy Johnston and to meet new ones over artist drinks-and-eats post-concert, the nerves quickly dispel. For performers in festivals like this, the treat is exactly that: to work with colleagues you’re meeting for the first time, forge new connections, spark ideas into being, and while away the post-concert wind-down over Australian beer or wine in which jet-lag becomes but a memory and lost suitcases all part of life’s rich pattern. I’ve now met many of my Bach show colleagues, Roddy Williams, Siobhan Stagg, Pavel Fischer, Kees Boersma and the Goldner String Quartet, among others. And out front in the audience, one can’t help noticing the way that people are running into one another as festival regulars over years and years, catching up in (where else) the queue for the ladies’ loos (“How are you? We met four years ago right here!”) and, better still, over ice-cream in front of the theatre, under the full moon.

A last thought for the morning: this is winter. It’s 28 degrees and there is simply no sunlight in the world quite like this. It’s going to be one amazing week.

Update: I think I’ve worked out how to bring the photos in from Instagram, but please visit my instagram account to see some more.

#AFCM1: All set, sort of...

It's tomorrow! We are off to Australia for a week in Townsville as part of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. And in the meantime I can report that you get some very interesting looks when trogging up to Vauxhall station in the heat of the sun, carrying a huge plastic bag emblazoned with NATIONAL THEATRE COSTUME AND PROPS HIRE.

Tucked away in a south London warehouse/college/arts pad a few minutes from the Oval cricket ground, there's a facility that, if you like dressing up or giving theatrical performances of any type, is better than Aladdin and his Genie ever dreamed of. London's Royal National Theatre here keeps row upon tempting row of costumes - covering all eras from echt-Shakespeare to 1920s flapperville to 1980s glam rock - and they hire them out for a suitable fee. Silken gowns, embroidered waistcoats, feathered and bejewelled headdresses, era-appropriate strings of pearls, underskirts of any colour, petticoats galore, and the sort of under-contraptions you're very lucky not to need to wear under your dress in this day and age. Walk in and you might even see an ass's head lurking on a shelf, ready for the next Midsummer Night request.

You phone them up, book in and have a good browse, with a chance to try on your most suitable targets, complete with accessories of any type from royal crown to bum pads. I can't say I ever expected to need bum pads, but bum pads I've now got, because they go under 18th-century dresses to create that sumptuous shape... A happy afternoon a few weeks ago led me to the perfect outfit for Anna Magdalena Bach to take to Australia: a dark overdress with a subtle pattern and a black underskirt. Nothing fancy, I promise. Just...18th century.

I did try to research what Anna Magdalena looked like. There aren't many pictures of her. There is, however, this:

Ouch. Owowowowowch.

As you may remember, Kathryn Stott, the new AFCM artistic director, has commissioned me to write and perform a new show with words and music about Anna Magdalena Bach. Being Mrs Bach will receive its world premiere on 1 August, 5pm, with musicians including Roderick Williams (baritone), Siobhan Stagg (soprano), Guy Johnston (cello), Daniel de Borah (piano), the Goldner String Quartet, Pavel Fischer (violin), Kees Boersma (double bass) and Winterschool Strings. Anna Magdalena, when she appears, is an impoverished widow, looking back over her life with Johann Sebastian, with all the associated agonies and ecstasies... And I've never worn a costume before. I hope I can still get into it on Wednesday week. In case you were wondering: Lucy Worsley I'm not. (Nor am I the blonde bombshell pictured above.)

The next day I'm giving a lecture about women composers for the festival's Winterschool and then joining Kathy and some of the musicians for the morning Meet the Artists chat on 3 August before heading, no doubt with reluctance, back to the airport. In the meantime I will be writing about the festival a fair bit, and have promised to do a daily blogpost while there, so please check back after Friday for my festival diary and PICS.



You wouldn't believe what it takes to get ready for a thing like this, unless you're especially prone to taking part in festivals on the other side of the world. First there's the preparation of the show. In October, I went to Leipzig to see the Bach family's own territory at first hand - it made all the difference, too. Then the writing and whittling down, choosing the music, fitting it all together, making sure it's the right length. That's the easy bit. Then the paperwork: visas, documents, passports, emails and more emails. (Can you believe we're going to have to do all this for Europe as well soon, when currently we don't? Those Brexiters are out of their tiny minds.) There's booking the travel, deciding where and when to stop (straight to Sydney on the way out, to see my aunt, then to Townsville the next morning; and Hong Kong on the way home...). The costume. The house-and-cat-sitter. Finishing everything that needs finishing before going. Remembering everything that needs to go in the suitcase. Panicking.

And above all, panicking about the jet-lag. Most of the festival artists - to judge from Kathy's Facebook pics - are already in Townsville and acclimatising. I'm still in sweltering in London and won't arrive until Friday. I'm not sure this was the greatest plan, but it's too late now...

Anyway, if all goes smoothly we shall be there in time for the big opening night on Friday evening, in which  no fewer than 24 festival artists will perform works by Saint-Saëns, Villa-Lobos, Paul Stanhope (world premiere of a new piece for marimba), Wu Tong performing another world premiere on the sheng, Leopoldo Federico, JP Jofre (world premiere of new piece for marimba, sheng and bandoneon), and one of my great all-time favourite pieces, the Chausson Concert, with Kathy on the piano, Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin) and the Goldner String Quartet. That would be enough to turn me upside-down on its own.

For the rest of the programme, please see here.