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

Tribute to Tasmin Little

Tasmin Little
Photo: Paul Mitchell

Last week Tasmin Little, one of the UK's top violin soloists, announced that she has decided to 'hang up her concert gown' in 2020. Plenty to do, she says, but no more concerts. Here's the story from The Strad.

A flood of tributes has been pouring in and I'm adding to that. But I can't deny that here the news initially came as a shock. It so happens that Tasmin is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We're the same age and got to know each other when we were 17 - long before I had any notion I'd become a journalist. She is the first of our circle - possibly the first of any of my immediate 'peer group' - to hint at the word 'retire'. Not that she's said 'retire' as such - her website says that she will be 'ending her concert career' - but effectively this means retiring from the stage. It pulls one up short: whaddaya mean, 'retire'? We're only 17...aren't we? Heavens. Does time really go this fast?

Oh, yes. It does. And for any international classical soloist it goes faster still. A glance at a random selection of appropriate Twitter feeds will be enough to prove that musicians probably spend more time in airports than they do on the concert platform, that the matter of playing an instrument is highly physical, that the continual round of jet-lag, adrenaline and performance pressure demands great resilience in addition to evident talent.

I decided at the age of 23 to face the fact that I wasn't cut out for a piano career, and though I missed it at first, I've never doubted that stopping then was the right thing to do. Years on, I don't know how anyone does it at all.

I don't blame Tasmin one bit for wanting a change and I have the utmost respect for her decision, which can't have been easy. She is making the choice in a manner that is objective, in control and powered by self-knowledge. And I know she will excel at whatever she turns her hand to next - she has so much to give.

She is also in good company. My second-ever interviewee, when I was 21, was the great Italian violinist Gioconda de Vito. She was turning 80 and I went to talk to her for The Strad. She lived in Rickmansworth in a house surrounded by a beautiful garden full of birds and animals, and her husband translated for her since she had never learned to speak fluent English. She had retired in her fifties at the peak of her career. She played to the Pope. Then decided things couldn't get any better than that. She'd heard a late recital by the elderly Alfred Cortot, a car-crash full of wrong notes, and did not want to follow his example. So she stopped. I was intrigued: didn't she miss it? She didn't. At 21 I was incredulous. Several decades later, I understand it a lot better.

Tasmin has weathered everything magnificently, her zest for life and fun and music sparkling out of that Guadagnini, lighting up with joy and positivity every hall and every room she enters. She is one of the most extraordinarily consistent individuals I've been lucky enough to know: pure gold all the way through.

A lively interview from The Violin Channel


Tasmin and I met for the first time at a private recital by a mutual pianist friend at my (and the friend's) piano teacher's house. It was December 1983. I'd just done A levels, was having what was then called a 'year out' (the term 'gap yaar' was yet to be devised) and was learning to drive. Tasmin had reached the final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year the previous year; now she was fresh out of the Menuhin School, going to the Guildhall, and wanted driving lessons too. It turned out we lived near each other, so she called me the next day to ask for my driving teacher's number and to invite me round for supper.

I was enchanted by the Littles. Tasmin is from a gloriously theatrical family. Her father is the actor George Little, whose splendid performances I enjoyed very much - in particular the one-man show he wrote, Paradise Garden, about growing up during the war in Bradford, culminating with the revelation of local boy Frederick Delius's music on the radio... Charismatic, funny and warm, he was an irresistible presence and Tasmin learned much about public presentation from him, as well as how to turn pre-performance adrenaline to advantage. Jilly, her mother, is just as sunny, extrovert and full of good humour. They could scarcely have been more different from my own parents, who were quiet, academic and somewhat shy, tending to keep themselves to themselves, whether by accident or design.

Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending at the Proms in 1995, conducted by Andrew Davis



Living a longish tube ride from my school, I'd been friendly with a circle of girls from another part of the suburbs altogether and did too little socialising out of hours. But to find a friend down the road - well, that was a first. Even today, one of my favourite memories of Tasmin is the time, one afternoon not long after that, she invited me along to a masterclass at the Purcell Room in which she was playing to Michel Schwalbé, the leader of the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan. I was on the edge of my seat, soaking up all that was going on (he was quite a personality - that's another story). Afterwards we sloped off to unwind. We hopped on the Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly Circus, wandered through Chinatown and feasted royally on red bean buns. Afterwards we went back to my house, where my mum tried to give us a nice healthy supper, but could we eat? Er...

Over the years, friends sometimes vanish. New study environments, moves of house, demanding jobs, marriages, children and so forth, or simply growing apart - everything conspires against keeping in touch. But Tasmin never vanished. She went to study in Canada with Lorand Fenyves, but she always took the trouble to write letters. While I was away at university, she wrote letters (and anyway I wasn't too happy there and used to zip home whenever I could). If one has no kids (I haven't) it can be tricky keeping up with friends who do have them because often their other friends with children are prioritised, quite understandably so. That was never the case here. We followed each others' ups and downs over the years - and we both had plenty - even though life took us in very different directions. I basically sit at home with my husband and cats, writing. She travels the world with her violin, while also bringing up her two wonderful kids. I named the baby who arrives at the end of my first novel Rites of Spring after Tasmin's daughter.

Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata with Andrey Gugnin at the Sydney International Piano Competition. Andrey went on to win first prize.



I could fill this blog with memories of Tasmin. One that particularly stands out is the time I invited her to go busking at Waterloo as an experiment for The Independent, following Joshua Bell's example in Washington DC. That was an eye-opener for us both and sparked her idea to create the Naked Violin project - free access to a solo recording and plenty of information about it on the internet, which back then was groundbreaking, accompanied by a high quotient of outreach work in schools, shopping malls, oil rigs, homeless shelters and more.

Well before that, there was the time she played the Korngold Concerto in Manchester, about eight months pregnant. Later, Carnegie Hall with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic - Tom and I flew there to hear and cheer her and we all went for cocktails at the Rainbow Room. The Proms - lots of them, but especially the Ligeti Concerto with Rattle. I think that was the evening a mobile phone went off a few bars into The Rite of Spring and Rattle stopped and gave the audience a bit of a tirade about it. It's thanks to Tasmin that I got to know Roxanna Panufnik, Piers Lane and a whole galaxy of other marvellous people. And I'll always cherish the countless times we and our little group of friends who meet for lunch every few months have found ourselves falling off our chairs with laughter together, sometimes in rather nice restaurants, to everyone else's amusement.

Those memories will continue to build, but the sound of her playing, at least publicly, will soon have to rely on her recordings for preservation. Fortunately there are plenty of them, and the newest is coming out in February - recorded with the pianist John Lenehan, it's of music by fantastic composers who happen to have been women: Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth and Amy Beach (more info here from the Chandos website).

Here's a promotional video for it from Chandos: https://www.facebook.com/chandosrecords/videos/2495919247146924/?t=39

In the meantime, we still have a year and a half to enjoy the remaining concerts.

Brava bravissima, Tasmin - and more power to your elbow!

What makes a good duo?

Violinist Tasmin Little and pianist Piers Lane have been working together not just for years, but for decades. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Ahead of their delectable Wigmore Hall concert on Saturday 30 September, I asked Tasmin what the secret of a good duo might be... and a few other things...

Tasmin Little
Photo: bbc.co.uk

JD: Hi Tasmin - we're looking forward to your concert next weekend and that is quite a line-up of pieces: Bridge, Szymanowski, Bliss and Franck! How do you go about planning your programmes?

TL: When I plan a programme, I try to think about how an audience will feel when they sit down and what the first thing they would like to listen to might be! I always think it’s important to find a good mixture of works that are more immediately accessible and works which require more concentration and even emotional commitment for the audience. I think that audiences go to concerts to be moved, entertained and sometimes challenged - so, depending on where I’m playing and the kind of audience that the venue attracts, I’ll bear that in mind. I think it’s important to start with the opening piece and also think how to finish the evening. If there’s a very substantial work, I often put it just before the interval to allow the audience a breather afterwards (and me…).



JD: Why do you think British repertoire such as Bridge and Bliss is still relatively neglected? What appeals to you about their music?

TL: I think it’s simply that these works aren’t generally known to the wider public and so there’s less call for them - the Bridge, for instance, is an early work that has youthful vigour but is not perhaps representative of his mature style. And the Bliss sonata has only recently been reconstructed - so even I didn’t know it a couple of years ago! But this music is so engaging and I love the range of nuances that both composers demand;  it is also satisfying to bring a neglected work to life and then to have a good response from an audience who have enjoyed something new. 

JD: You and Piers have been playing together pretty much forever…what makes a good duo?

Piers Lane
photo: Keith Saunders

TL: It’s vital to have a good rapport and this is something that cannot be “learned” - it is either there or it isn’t! What develops through a long association is trust and a real understanding of how the other person thinks and feels. In this way, one can be very spontaneous on stage and know that you’re not going to take your partner by surprise! Piers and I have been playing together for 30 years now so we know each other really well - we even breathe together on stage… 

JD: What’s it like to perform at the Wigmore Hall? 

TL: The Wigmore Hall is such a glorious acoustic to perform in... the sound is so good that you can play as quietly as you like and know that every member of the audience will be able to hear you. So it’s an intimate hall but with a great deal of presence to it. I love walking on that stage and thinking of all the great musicians that have sung and played there over the years - it’s very inspiring. 

JD: Have you got any new recordings out?

TL: The most recent release is of both Szymanowski concerti and the Karłowicz concerto that I recorded with Ed Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I love the Szymanowskis - they are so different from each other, the first one slightly mystical and other-worldly, and the second one completely sensual and down to earth, even rustic! The Karłowicz provides a beautiful foil for both works as it is a much more traditional concerto which is very easy to listen to and enjoy… 

JD: Other highlights for you this season?

TL: I’m excited to be going to play in Dubai with Piers in November and I’ll be playing the Britten concerto in Portugal in December. Next year I have two super trips to Australia, where I’ll be playing in Sydney and Melbourne among other places, and I’m also off to play Mozart in Spain. In between times and nearer to home, I’ll be up and down the UK for concertos and recitals and am particularly looking forward to playing with the CBSO doing Bernstein’s Serenade for violin and orchestra.

Book here for Tasmin Little and Piers Lane's recital at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 30 September

Quick reminder: you can show your enthusiasm for JDCMB by contributing a voluntary subscription at the Year of Development page on GoFundMe...

Meanwhile in Westminster...

Meanwhile in Westminster, it's not all scandal: over in the Westminster Cathedral Hall, the splendid Chopin Society continues to hold piano recitals on Sunday afternoons, given by some of the world's leading artists. Next up is the adorable Piers Lane in an all-Chopin programme. It's his only London recital for the remainder of this season - he is a very busy person and has a massive commitment in his native Australia, where he is now head of the Sydney International Piano Competition. On Sunday he'll be playing the Society's beautiful new Hamburg Steinway Model B grand, for which the gala we both attended about 18 months ago raised funds (see pic).

Here's a taster of what goes on when you choose a new Steinway in Hamburg: Piers went there six years ago to select another instrument, and was filmed...

Here are full details for the concert on Sunday:

Sunday 17^th April 2016 at 4.30pm (16:30)

Westminster Cathedral Hall

Ambrosden Ave SW1P 1QW

(nearest tube: Victoria)

A piano recital by

PIERS LANE

who will play an all-Chopin programme as follows:

Impromptu No. 1 in A flat major Op. 29

Fantasie in F minor Op. 49

Etude in E major Op. 10 No. 3 “Tristesse”

Ballade No. 3 in A flat major Op. 47

Polonaise in F sharp minor Op.44

Scherzo No. 4 in E major Op. 54

Nocturnes Op. 62: No. 1 in B major and No. 2 in E major

Mazurka Op. 17 No. 4;

Barcarolle Op. 60

Tickets: £14 (standard), £12 (seniors over 60), £8 (students)*

Book online via this link: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/354575

*students tickets only available on the door. Student reservations: 020 8960 4027.

Stay for tea and meet the pianist

Tea tickets: £7, £5 (students), £4 (Youth Members)

Tea tickets available on the door on the day

Travel directions to the venue on our website: http://www.chopin-society.org.uk/venues.htm

Pianist lands a dream job

Piers Lane. Photo: (c) Keith Saunders

And the dream job lands a great guy. The Australian pianist Piers Lane has been announced as the new artistic director of the Sydney International Piano Competition. 

It's a fine and respected event in one of the contest world's most gorgeous cities, inaugurated in 1977 by its founder Claire Dan, founder of the Cladan Cultural Exchange Institute. The finals take place in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House.

Lane won the prize for Best Australian Pianist at its inaugural competition and was on the jury in 2004; besides being an ever-popular presence on the concert platform he is artistic director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville and has spearheaded in London the annual Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery.

He is a sought-after adjudicator, a tireless treasure-trove raider in the rare repertoire department, and a recording artist whose discs for Hyperion are a constant delight. He's also a thoroughly lovely bloke and a man of integrity. The world of music competitions needs such people.

Maybe Leeds has missed a trick by letting him slip through the net to the other side of the world.

Update - here's an interview Piers gave to the ABC re his appointment.

Ten things for your best-ever night out's Chopin Liszt

A high old time was had by one and all last night at the Chopin Society's Christmas fundraiser - a gala recital, dinner and ball at London's historic Guildhall, amply attended by the great and good of the UK, Poland and the piano world.

For such an evening, you will need for your Chopin Liszt:

1. An atmospheric, beautiful and historically significant venue such as this one:

2. A tireless, dedicated organiser such as the Chopin Society's Lady Rose Cholmondeley who can muster a guest list of princesses, dignitaries, the Polish ambassador, great pianists and more.

3. At the back of your cupboard, a ball dress that you bought in Vienna about seven years ago and have never had occasion to don; plus the good fortune to find that it still fits you; and a bunch of Facebookers all saying WEAR IT!

4. A generous-spirited colleague who'll suggest you join her at the office to get changed there and share a taxi to the venue so that you don't have to risk ripping said ball dress on the rush hour trains en route. Thank you, Claire Jackson, editor of International Piano Magazine. (Pic: me in black, Claire in purple.)

5. A gifted young pianist - the multiple-prizewinning Mateusz Borowiak - who steams in, cool as the proverbial cucumber, to play Bach-Busoni, the Liszt Mephisto Waltz and, of course, Chopin. Mateusz is Polish-British; his parents are both music teachers, he has a music degree from Cambridge, and has been studying in Katowice with Andrzej Jasinski. Incidentally, Chopin's last public concert took place at the Guildhall in 1848, less than a year before his untimely death. Stepping into his shoes is no small order.

6. A sumptuous dinner and the excellent company of friends and colleagues old and new; a wonderful chance to catch up with pianistic luminaries, the likes of Angela Hewitt (in a beautiful furry wrap) and Piers Lane, the latter in fine fettle on the dance floor. Plus, of course, the good-humoured spirit that can enjoy hearing the Poles and the British roundly mucking up the pronunciations of one another's surnames, while getting along excellently in this celebration of longstanding Polish-British friendship - and manifold anniversaries, not least 10 years of Poland being an EU member.

7. A terrific band that can deliver everything from the 1870s to Abba and Diana Ross.

8. A mysterious stroke of fate. After all, what are the chances of wearing that Viennese ball dress only to find that at dinner you are sitting next to an actual Viennese man, moreover one who learned to dance in the great ballrooms of his home city, white gloves and all? Please take a bow, Ulrich Gerhartz, the legendary chief technician of Steinways, who I'm glad to say whirled me off my feet all the way from 'The Blue Danube' to 'Dancing Queen'.

9. A good cause. The aim of these high jinks is to raise money towards buying the society a new piano for its excellent series of recitals, most of which take place at Westminster Cathedral Hall. Recent performers have included Abbey Simon, Yevgeny Sudbin, Benjamin Grosvenor and many more (including me and Viv in 'Alicia's Gift' a few months back). Until now they have used a beautiful, warm-toned instrument that once belonged to the Polish virtuoso Witold Malcuzynski, but as you can imagine, it is getting on in years. With an auction of artworks and holidays, led by Philip Moulds, a "silent auction" and a raffle, one suspects that the new piano will no longer be such a distant prospect.

10. Getting home in the wee hours with ears ringing, head spinning and a slightly bloodied toe.

A good honours day for musos

It's a bumper year for classical music and opera in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for the Diamond Jubilee. As if perhaps someone suddenly realised there were all these amazing people who deserved honours and hadn't yet got them, so they're having a little catch-up? Arise, Sir David McVicar, just for starters. 

Violinist Tasmin Little has been awarded an OBE (and about time too!). ENO's own lightning conductor, Ed Gardner, also gets one; so does pianist Joanna MacGregor. Harry Christophers, conductor of The Sixteen and more, is given a CBE, as are composer and broadcaster Michael Berkeley and TV choir supremo Gareth Malone. Andrew Jowett, chief exec of Symphony Hall, Birmingham, receives the OBE just in time for that fabulous venue's 21st birthday and one also goes to Elaine Padmore, formerly director of opera at the ROH. Nor has ballet been left out: OBEs for Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, founders of BalletBoyz. Conductor and composer Douglas Coombes is given an MBE; so is Katie Tearle, formerly head of education at Glyndebourne and now on board as opera and ballet specialist at Peters Edition; and Ernest Tomlinson, that usually undersung composer of "light music". Meanwhile, down under, pianist Piers Lane has received an AO - Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia. 

As it's not easy for classical musicians to be noticed and honoured in this day and age, etc etc, they all deserve a big cheer! BRAVI, FOLKS!

A Music World Fair

Here's that bit of news I promised...

My play A Walk Through the End of Time is to be performed in this year's International Wimbledon Music Festival, starring Penelope Wilton and Henry Goodman. [with all the normal 'subject to availability' clauses.] It will be at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-on-Thames, Sunday 18 November, at 2.30pm. The following night, 19 November, at St John's, Spencer Hill, Wimbledon, the Nash Ensemble will perform the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time. Alongside the play in the afternoon, there will be a talk by Anita Lasker Wallfisch about her experiences in the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra.

This year's IWMF is 'A Music World Fair' - a tremendously international job, lighting up South West London with performances by the Kopelman String Quartet, Alina Ibragimova, Nicholas Daniel and Sam West, Christine Brewer, Zuill Bailey, Cristina Ortiz, Mark Padmore and many more. Three special highlights are Patricia Routledge and Piers Lane in Admission: One Shilling, a music-and-words theatrical recall of the National Gallery wartime concerts of Dame Myra Hess; a newly co-commissioned work by Benjamin Wallfisch entitled Chopin's Waterloo; and pianist Mikhail Rudy in a new interpretation of Petrushka with the Little Angel Marionette Company and the piano as the ultimate puppet.

The site goes live later today and you can find all the details here.

Around St Martin's Lane...

Before I hand you over to today's Independent for my piece about Fiona Shaw and The Marriage of Figaro, I have to tell you a little about last night.

I went along to Myra Hess Day at the National Gallery, where the Menuhin School Orchestra, Piers Lane, Andrew Tortise, The Fibonacci Sequence and Tasmin Little gave a strong, varied programme in tribute to Dame Myra Hess, in front of the Gainsboroughs and Goyas. A huge plaudit to Piers and Tasmin for playing Howard Ferguson's superb, gutsy and inspired Violin Sonata, which was written just after the war - before that, apparently, he'd been too busy organising the gallery concerts to compose anything much, and this was a sure statement of intent.

But first, Tasmin played the Bach Double with a student from the Menuhin School as her partner soloist. Louisa-Rose Staples is 11, but looks 9, and is blessed with real composure and aplomb. From the first note it was clear that she was utterly secure with the task in hand - you knew at once that she couldn't put a finger wrong. She played like a complete pro: musical, responsive, accurate... And of course, this is where Tasmin herself started. Louisa-Rose, like Tasmin, became a pupil at the Menuhin School when she was 8. An auspicious evening, perhaps.

Round the corner from the National Gallery sits ENO, and tonight its new Figaro opens, directed by the one and only Fiona Shaw. I interviewed her, Paul Daniel, Iain Paterson (Figaro) and the youthful American soprano Devon Guthrie (Susanna) about what they're doing with it. Read it all here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/figaro-a-marriage-made-in-heaven-2365484.html

FRANZ LISZT: SINS OF THE FATHER

Very happy to announce that TOMORROW, in AUSTRALIA, my latest 'stage work' will take the platform for the first time at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, Far North Queensland. Entitled Franz Liszt: Sins of the Father, it's a grand-scale piece bringing together as many of the resident musicians as humanly possible, and commissioned for the Liszt Bicentenary Year by the doughty Piers Lane, pianist and artistic director of the festival. The show kicks off at the Townsville Civic Theatre at 4pm.

The popular Australian radio presenter Damien Beaumont is Franz Liszt, narrating the strange history of how his sometime friend Wagner stole his limelight, his music and his daughter Cosima - and how, perhaps, the scandal of the latter was his own fault. There is humour, pathos, poetry (from Obermann), love and some reflection on the bonds that bind families so close, however bizarre that family may be.


It's very exciting that Lisa Gasteen, the great Australian Wagnerian soprano, is making a rare return to the concert platform to perform Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and Liszt's 'O lieb', accompanied by Piers (pictured right) himself. The performance opens with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, and along the way there are solo spots for violinists Jack Liebeck in Paganini's Variations on God Save the King and Philippe Graffin in Liszt's Romance Oubliee and Bartok's Romanian Dances; pianist Danny Driver, who'll play Liszt's transcription of Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde; and cellist Louise Hopkins, who plays the cello version of La lugubre gondola and joins Philippe and Danny in the trio version of Vallee d'Obermann. And finally there's the Hungarian Rhapsody No.2...played by the Contiguglia Brothers piano duo, the American pianists who were among the last pupils of Dame Myra Hess.

I just wish I was there. But the performance will be broadcast the next day on ABC Radio and I'm informed that it should be possible to access it by internet, though I haven't quite worked out the time difference issues... UPDATE: An Australian tweet-friend has sent me this link which should hopefully do the trick: http://www.abc.net.au/classic/audio/#again

Do please feel free to drop me or Piers's agent a line if you are a venue that would like to book the show for Wagner Year, 2013.


UPDATE: Limelight Magazine has an interview with Damien today in which he (pictured left) talks quite extensively about Sins of the Father and what he loves about Liszt.
Taster:

Beaumont says a complicated triangle of musical passions, love and betrayal lies at the heart of the show, which takes as its subject not only Liszt but also that other Romantic titan, Richard Wagner. “We explore the story of Liszt, his daughter Cosima and her eventual marriage to Wagner. It’s an extraordinary tale of these two men connected by women, and connected by music."

The suave Hungarian and the imperious German were longtime friends, the wealthy concert pianist often helping Wagner financially. But the relationship turned sour. “The whole story is predicated on what Wagner stole from Liszt, right from his daughter to a musical phrase that Wagner turned into a five-hour opera.”