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The White Hat Guide to Classical Music in Brisbane & Queensland
Below is a listing of classical music concerts and performances in Brisbane and Queensland.
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Puccini's Tosca
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John Copley’s critically acclaimed production of
Puccini's
Tosca
returns to the Lyric Theatre. A stellar cast has been
assembled for this revival.
- Floria Tosca - Cheryl Barker
- Mario Cavaradossi - Julian Gavin
- Baron Scarpia - Douglas McNicol
- Sacristan - John Bolton Wood
- Spoletta - Virgilio Marino Cesare
- Angelotti - Andrew Collis
- Sciarrone - David Hibbard
- Gaoler - Guy Booth
- Conductor - Nicholas Braithwaite
- Director - John Copley
- Set Designer - Allan Lees
- Costume Designer - Michael Stennett
- Lighting Designer - Donn Byrnes
Sung in Italian with projected English translations. Running time: approximately two hours and 40 minutes
including two 20-minute intervals. There is no vocal amplification used in this production.
7.30pm on 15, 20, 22 and 25 October/6.30pm on
27 October/1.30pm on 29 October 2011 |
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QPAC Lyric Theatre
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Enquiries: (07) 3735 3030 |
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Brisbane Moonlight Cinema - Don Giovanni
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Watch a movie in the night air in the outdoor setting of
New Farm Park at
Brisbane Powerhouse. Enter
the cinema via Lamington Street or Brunswick Street. Tickets from $16/$14/$12 plus booking fee. Full details and bookings at
Moonlight Cinema.
Gates open at 6pm and screenings start at approximately 7pm. Food and drink
available together with a full bar on site. (Please note: Moonlight Brisbane is
a non-BYO alcohol venue). Tonight's movie is
Don Giovanni |
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Chopin & Mendelssohn's Octet
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The Australian Chamber Orchestra with Richard Tognetti (Artistic Director and Lead Violin)
and Polina Leschenko (piano). The orchestras three wonderful
heritage violins – a Stradivari, a Guarneri and a Guadagnini - will display
their wares in the Paganini caprices. Chopin's
first piano concerto is a much
loved work full of romantic lyricism and although Górecki is best known for his haunting and heartfelt Symphony of
Sorrowful Songs, his Piano Concerto bristles with driving rhythms and energy.
The concert ends with one of the glories of chamber music - Mendelssohn's
Octet. In White
Hat's experience ACO's performance of this work is the equal of any performance
you are likely to hear anywhere else in the world.
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Australian String Quartet - Towards Light
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The Australian String Quartet have new personnel for 2012 and White Hat feels
it is appropriate that for their first concert the new ensemble should emerge
out of the dreamtime with Peter Scunthorpe's Jabiru Dreaming (String Quartet
No.11). Dvořák as at his tuneful best in his String Quartet No.10 then
the concert finishes with one of the great 20th century chamber works -
Shostakovich's Piano Quintet. This work captures Shostakovich in one of his rare
moments of relaxation and seeming contentment. We have rated this concert at 4
hats on potential and, who knows, after this new ensemble has been heard for the
first time this may become 5 hats.
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Australian Chamber Orchestra & The Hilliard Ensemble
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 The
Australian Chamber Orchestra (Helena Rathbone Lead Violin) with The Hilliard
Ensemble. White Hat refards The Hilliard Ensemble to be one of the finest male
vocal ensembles in the world. Their attention to tuning and chording in Medieval
and Renaissance music gives it a 'ring' not heard in ensembles who stick to
compromise of the equal temperament of the keyboard. This attention to ensemble
tuning also pays dividends in contemporary music. This promises to be a special
concert.
- Elgar
Serenade for strings
- Sheryngham Ah, gentle Jesu
- Raskatov Obikhod
(Australian Premiere)
- Pärt Most Holy Mother of God
- Gregorian Chant Veni Creator
Spiritus
- Anon (French Medieval) Veni Creator Spiritus
- Edwards Veni Creator
Spiritus
- Arensky Variations on a theme by Tchaikovsky
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Tafelmusik - The Galileo Project Music of the Spheres
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Canadian ensemble Tafelmusik will take you on an epic space odyssey, performing
period music before stunning images from the Hubble deep
space telescope. Combining music, photography and story-telling, The Galileo
Project brings to life the brilliant minds of the early astronomers and the
music that inspired them, as a large-scale, ever-changing backdrop of stars and
planets unfolds.
The publicity states "Using the best of
Bach,
Handel,
Monteverdi and
Vivaldi, come
and hear the tunes that were probably stuck in Galileo’s head when he discovered
the moons of Jupiter." Now you are probably thinking, like White Hat how
could tunes of composers who hadn't been born yet be stuck in his head. However
we are sure that this program has been meticulously researched so all will be
revealed. The program will also feature works by Lully,
Purcell,
Rameau,
Telemann & Michelangelo Galilei
brother of the astronomer). From the reputation of the group and the reviews of
this concert, White Hat suggests you go out of your way to attend.
[For those wanting a little background
to the history of the concept that over the centuries was known as The Music
of the Spheres, White Hat suggests that you consult the
program notes of Music of the Spheres
- given by Ars Nova of Melbourne. This concert is unrelated to the one above
but was also based on the relationship composers, mathematicians and scientists
long saw between music, mathematics and the heavenly bodies.] |
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Wednesday 14th March 2012 |
QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane
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Enquiries & bookings: 1800 688 482 |
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Australian String Quartet - Legacy
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The Australian
String Quartet's second concert in their 2011 combines early Beethoven, late
Brahms and the Australian composer Brett Dean who will also be playing viola.
White Hat suggests that the richness of texture provided by the additional viola
should make this a particularly satisfying concert.
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Beethoven
String Quartet in D, Op 18 No 3
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Brett Dean Epitaphs for Viola and String Quartet
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Brahms
String Quintet in G, Op 111 (with Brett Dean, viola)
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Danielle de Niese with the Australian Chamber Orchestra
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Danielle de Niese (soprano)
has long been on White Hat's list of
Significant Melbourne People.
She was born in Melbourne and won Young Talent Time aged 9,
then moved to Los Angeles, won an Emmy and made her debut with the LA Opera aged
15. She has blossomed into one of the hottest properties in opera, enrapturing
audiences in roles like Cleopatra, Euridice and Susanna at Glyndebourne, the
Metropolitan Opera and on screen.
To celebrate her professional debut in her home country, De Niese sings a
specially commissioned Australian work, which also marks the centenary of
Australia’s Nobel laureate
Patrick White. The fireworks of
Mozart's
Exsultate jubilatee
is contrasted Schubert's haunting song, Death and the Maiden.
The
Australian Chamber Orchestra (Richard Tognetti Artistic Director and Lead
Violin) will then perform Schubert's masterly quartet (arranged for string
orchestra) which uses that same song as an inspiration.
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Takács Quartet
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White Hat expects that this may well be on of the standout chamber music
concerts of the year in Australia. Debussy's delicate and atmospheric string
quartet together with Janáček's passionate first quartet both played by the
ensemble most acknowledge to be one of the finest string quartets in the world.
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Trout Quintet & Quartet for the End of Time
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A rare treat. Two of what White Hat regards as the finest works in the chamber
music repetoire presented in the one concert. The Schubert
Trout Quintet is full of sunshine
and youthful optimism while Messiaen's
Quartet for the
End of Time is, in White Hat's opinion, one of the great works of the
20th century. A prisoner of war, Messiaen wrote the Quartet for the End of Time for the
musicians he found in the camp, premiering it to an audience of inmates and
guards. “Never” he said, "was I listened to with such rapt attention and
comprehension."
Australian
Chamber Orchestra Principals are joined by clarinettist Paul Dean and
dynamic young pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar, making his Australian debut.The
performers are Helena Rathbone (violin), Christopher Moore (viola), Timo-Veikko
Valve (cello), Maxime Bibeau (double bass), Paul Dean (clarinet) and Saleem
Abboud Ashkar (piano).
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Amarcord
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 White
Hat suggests that if you love unaccompanied singing you take several weeks off
work and visit "a cappella" - the annual international festival of
unaccompanied vocal music in Leipzig - where you will hear great a cappella
ensembles from around the world. If you don't have that time or cash to spare, a
much cheaper but highly satisfying option is to head along to this concert
performed by the ensemble who initiated the festival and who are recognised as
one of the finest male vocal ensembles in the world.
Tales of Love and Murder. Renaissance madrigals by Encina,
des Prez,
Lassus,
Gesualdo and others, and
part-songs by Saint-Saëns,
Schubert,
Mendelssohn,
Poulenc, and folk songs from
around the world. |
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Beethoven 9 - Ode to Joy
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The Australian
Chamber Orchestra with Richard Tognetti (Artistic Director
and Lead Violin), Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (Graham Ross
Director), Lucy Crowe (soprano), Fiona Campbell (mezzo soprano),
Allan Clayton (tenor) Matthew Brook (bass)
White Hat has long believed that many modern performance of Beethoven
symphonies by large symphony orchestras lack the vitality and drive of a
performance by a first rate chamber orchestra - supplemented where necessary -
of the proportions that Beethoven was writing for For those who share this view
we suggest you look no further. Critics called the ACO's recent Beethoven
concert in London “the finest concert of the summer” and spoke of
“thrilling playing”, “vibrant drive” and “total involvement”,
concluding, “this compact chamber orchestra matches anything Europe can offer
in energy, precision and interpretative rigour.”
Joined by one of the finest British choirs this concert promises to be
something special where every note Beethoven wrote can be heard rather than lost
in a sea of overblown orchestral 'atmosphere'.
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Kuss Quartet & Naoko Smizu
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The Kuss Quartet is a regular at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls and Shimizu was
the first female Principal Viola of the Berlin Philharmonic so this concert
promises to deliver string quintet playing of the highest level.
- Gordon Kerry String Quintet (2012)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
String Quartet no 21 in D major, KV575
- György Kurtag Officium Breve in Memoriam Andreae Szervánszky,
op 28
- Johannes Brahms
String Quintet no 2 in G major, op 111
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Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madžar
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Beethoven's Kreutzer
Sonata is justifiably well-known and loved as one of the great works of
the violin sonata repertoire. However White Hat believes that
Debussy's Violin
Sonata, the last work he completed and the last that he performed in
public, is yet to be afforded the status it deserves by the public. This fine
pair of instrumentalists are sure to do them both justice.
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Russian Visions
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 The
Australian Chamber Orchestra with
Richard Tognetti (Artistic Director and Lead Violin),
Steven Osborne
(piano) and David
Elton (trumpet).
Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir is one of his sunniest and most exuberant works
and Shostakovich's first piano concerto is full of pyrotechnics for the pianist
and accompanying trumpet. What is sometimes less recognised is that this work
calls for first rate string playing from the orchestra. For that reason, White
Hat suggests you take the opportunity to get along and hear it with one of the
best string ensembles in Australia - or any other country for that matter.
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Click on the chosen venue link to the right of the map. Use the controls to zoom in or out on the map or change to satellite view.
Forthcoming EventsThese events are ones which have run in the past and we expect to run in the future. As yet we do not have confirmed details, dates and contact details. | | These events are ones which have run in the past and we expect to run in the future. As yet we do not have confirmed details, dates and contact details. |
| Page last updated: | 12 January, 2012 | | URL:
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White
Hat suggests that lovers of the oboe should head out of their way for this
concert. Diana Doherty is an Australian oboist who has won international
acclaim. In this concert she joins with the fine St Lawrence String Quartet
to perform Mozart's F major oboe quartet which is tuneful and refined - you
would expect nothing less of Mozart and later performs Australian composer
Matthew Hindson's Rush with its driving rhythms borrowing strongly from
rock and pop music. Mozart's quartet is flanked by string quartets from fellow
Viennese, Haydn and Beethoven.
