Melbourne Recital Centre Hall

NOËL! NOËL!

The popular concert series touches on the religious but is firmly grounded in the spiritual in an uplifting program of familiar fare, including O Come All Ye Faithful and Stille Nacht, as well as surprising musical riches for the festive season. Inclusiveness and connection are at the heart of this concert series, with the music radiating a sense of excitement and beauty. You’ll smile, you’ll laugh, and you’ll go home with great memories.

For over 20 years Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s end-of-year celebration has become an Australian tradition, delivering a welcoming and joyous experience that brings people together.

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POET OF THE VIOLIN

Vivacious. Fierce. Expressive. These are just some of the words used to describe Leila Schayegh, one of the world’s most acclaimed Baroque violinists. Making her long-awaited Australian debut, the Swiss-Iranian musician takes to the stage as Guest Director to lead the Brandenburg through a brightly textured program of Baroque masterworks from JS Bach, Leclair and Zelenka.

Celebrated throughout Europe for her expressive interpretations of classical and contemporary repertoire, Leila has carved a singular career. She performs on an instrument made in Cremona in 1675 by legendary luthier and founder of Casa Guarneri, Andrea Guarneri. In a simple twist of fate, the exceptionally promising, then seven-year-old violin student, saw the course of her musical life forever changed when she was offered the chance to become the custodian of the rare instrument.

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THE LOVER

Théotime Langlois de Swarte, a rising star and an intrepid Baroque violinist mentored by William Christie Les Arts Florissants, makes his Australian debut in a sensual, beautiful and ultimately explosive pasticcio curated by Théotime and Paul Dyer. Baroque harps, violins, lutes and theorbos take a starring role in the haunting first act. The second half brings a breathtaking climax of virtuosity with Théotime and the stunning Brandenburg strings. The swoon-factor repertoire is drawn in part from Théotime’s acclaimed recording The Mad Lover, replete with ornate and refined sonatas mixed with ebullient suites and operatic flourishes. The musical soundscape from around 1700 is presented in contemporary theatrical settings on stage. Seductive, electric with feeling, resonant.

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OTTOMAN BAROQUE

Beautiful, graceful, peaceful – the Whirling Dervishes of the Sufi Mevlevi Order from Konya, Turkey join the Brandenburg onstage. The lights dim and the mystic ceremony begins. The sounds of the Ottoman instruments, rare, pure and ravishing, the choral sounds of the Brandenburg Choir chanting the poems of Jalaluddin Rumi, the exotic mystic poet whose combination of richness and bold adaptations of music poetry form the key to his popularity today.

Ottoman Baroque will be mesmerising and spine-tingling. This unique concert experience spurs from a meeting of minds between Serhat Sarpel, Hakan Talu and Paul Dyer in Istanbul, where together they devised a program following the path of an ancient16thcentury Ottoman manuscript by Albert Bobowski (Ali Ufki).

In a rare appearance in Australia, the concert will reach a climax with the Whirling Dervishes spinning gracefully into a trance as they purify their heart to commune with the divine in this unique Sufi ceremony.

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POSTCARDS FROM ITALY

Join ACO as they travel to Italy, a destination rich with art, music and life that has cultivated and inspired generations of composers and musicians.

Bach’s popular Italian Concerto reveals his lasting fascination with the country’s musical innovations, while the great Tuscan cello virtuoso and composer Luigi Boccherini embodies its elegance and grace.

Tchaikovsky wrote his only string sextet, the Souvenir de Florence, during a summer visit to the country. Infused with sunlight and warmth, it basks in the pleasure of being alive.

Here in the present day, another Italian cellist and composer, Giovanni Sollima, invokes a dazzling, infectious energy with his Viaggio in Italia, a musical embodiment of the great luminaries in Italian art, music and literature.

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MOZART SYMPHONIES

Mozart’s Paris Symphony was such an instant success that its first audience was in rapturous applause before the opening movement had even ended. The ceremonial Haffner and mercurial Linz are further testament to the miraculous scope of Mozart’s genius.

Joining the ACO for this unmissable spectacle are wind and brass players hand-picked by Richard Tognetti from the world’s finest period-instrument orchestras, and string players from the Australian National Academy of Music.

This is ACO heartland, with the Orchestra at its joyous and energising best.

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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE & BEYOND

We go to the movies to explore the innovations that shaped a generation of trailblazing composers and their unique sound worlds for the screen. Joining the ACO is electronic artist Will Gregory, co-founder and member of internationally revered English electronic music duo Goldfrapp, and an ensemble of Moog Synthesisers.

Pioneers Wendy Carlos and Delia Derbyshire opened the floodgates in the 1960s. Carlos interpreted Bach for the electronic age with Switched-On Bach while Delia Derbyshire gave Australian composer Ron Grainer’s theme for Doctor Who its indelible sci-fi sound.

A Clockwork Orange is as much Carlos’s film as Stanley Kubrick’s. Its blend of original composition with synthesised treatments of classical music was audacious and wildly influential. Taking their cue from the innovations of Carlos and Derbyshire, while looking back to Hollywood’s golden age, sits the music of Vangelis, John Williams and Hans Zimmer – some of the most affecting and iconic in cinema.

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OF PEOPLE & SONG

For as long as there have been people, there has been song. Song is at the heart of rich musical traditions that bind people together, and attest to the spirit of time and place.

Eliding ideas of East and West, high and low, past and present, the music of renowned singer-songwriter Lior embodies a unique sensibility that feels urgent and relevant. For the creation of a major new song cycle for the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Lior again pairs with regular collaborator Ade Vincent, an adventurous composer who works across classical, folk, electronic, pop, and the space between.

Embracing Lior’s vision, Sophie Rowell has chosen iconic music by Grieg, da Falla, and Rebecca Clarke, echoing musical traditions across centuries.

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MOZART & BEETHOVEN CONCERTOS

In 1787, a 17-year-old Beethoven made the journey from Bonn to Vienna—further than Melbourne to Sydney.

Did he meet the 30-year-old Mozart, in the few weeks they were in the same city?

Was there a metaphorical handing over of the baton of Classical music?

Escape with us to this bright, elegant moment, as we perform Mozart’s final piano concerto and Beethoven’s first-written (but second-numbered) concerto, written just a few years apart.

Praised by The New York Times for his “power and extraordinary range of colors”, Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen is recognised as one of the leading living exponents of Mozart & Beethoven.

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THE ART OF THE SYMPHONY

From the ancient Greek for ‘sounded harmoniously’, the words ‘sinfonia’ and ‘symphony’ have been used for centuries.

Leonora Duarte, a Flemish composer who died before Bach was born, used it to describe her haunting works for viol ensemble. Johann Stamitz was a visionary, writing some of the first works that are recognisably modern symphonies. Haydn wrote over 100 symphonies building on Stamitz’s innovations.

Fast-forward to Britten’s youthfully delightful Simple Symphony, and finally to our commission of Australian composer Caerwen Martin, whose music reflecting on the sinfonias of Duarte brings us full circle.

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THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD

The two great gardens of English music, separated by two centuries, are the theme of this concert experience co-curated by Sophie Rowell and the incomparable Genevieve Lacey.

The beautiful, intricate music of Elizabethan & Stuart England is an escape to a world far from our own. In this first flowering of English music, composer William Byrd sowed the seeds with his round, “The Beginning of the World”, and the sublime artistry of Purcell burst forth. When Elgar, Walton and others began to plant the second great garden in more recent times, the earlier golden age was never far from their minds.

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This program started with an invitation to the fascinating French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras – a human vessel of his instrument’s soulful beauty, and a musician known for his sense of artistic adventure. He leapt at the chance to work with one of Australia’s musical treasures: Satsuki Odamura, a grand master of the koto – a plucked Japanese zither – resident in Sydney for more than 30 years. They welcomed one of Adelaide’s young stars, cellist James Morley, into the mix – a trio of passionate musicians inspired by the love of their instruments and an endless delighted curiosity for finding new sounds to play.

Such a gorgeous palette of colours and textures is inspiration for Australian composer Jakub Jankowski, who will create a brand-new trio for them, nestled amongst solo suites by Bach and Britten, traditional and modern works for koto, and a gleeful duo from Offenbach.

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The conductor Jeffrey Tate once described the string quartet as ‘the most perfect expression of human behaviour’. Composers from Haydn to Adès have revelled in this most intimate and virtuosic of musical forms, awed by the sight of four musicians moving across a tightrope at speed.

The four young musicians that make up the Vision String Quartet add one extra element to this dextrous feat: they perform everything from memory. Repertory that might be familiar – Bartók’s astonishing Quartet No.4, say, or Dvořák’s Quartet No.13 – is utterly transformed.

This prizewinning Berlin-based quartet – praised as ‘amazingly vivacious, vivid and electrifying … completely fearless’ by Der Tagesspiegel – has gathered fans aplenty across Europe since forming in 2012, and here makes its thrilling Australian debut.

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Not one new discovery, but two! Hiding in plain sight in the great halls of Europe, violinist Noa Wildschut and pianist Elisabeth Brauss make one of the most exciting musical partnerships heard in years, and Musica Viva Australia is thrilled to present their first Australian concerts.

Violin and piano is a classic combination, capable of both great intimacy and intensity – no wonder audiences and composers have loved it so much over the last two centuries (and counting). Melbourne’s May Lyon throws her hat in the ring with a new work for the duo, adding a fresh voice to this grand repertoire. Noa and Elisabeth’s musicality lights up the stage the way a meteor can spark through the night – a magical experience to be treasured forever.

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