Tabla de contenidos para October 2024 en Limelight

Shamistha de Soysa Shamistha de Soysa is a choral singer, pianist and writer. A retired medic, she runs the website SoundsLikeSydney, established and runs DocsVox NSW Doctors Choir, volunteered at Fine Music FM, and sang with Sydney Philharmonia Symphony Chorus for 12 years. Clive Paget Clive Paget is a former Limelight Editor, now Editor-at-Large, and a tour leader for Limelight Arts Travel. Based in London after three years in New York, he writes for The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, Musical America and Opera News. Before moving to Australia, he directed and developed new musical theatre for London's National Theatre. Steve Dow Steve Dow is the 2020 Walkley Arts Journalism Award recipient for his essay, profile and reportage portfolio. The Melbourne-born, Sydney-based arts writer's work also appears in The Saturday…

Bonnier Echo, PB, 288pp, $34.99, ISBN: 9781760689391 No Autographs, Please! is a deeply personal, refreshingly frank and entertaining autobiography by soprano Katherine Wiles, a full-time member of the Opera Australia Chorus since 2007. Wiles’ chorus career spans an astonishing collection of over 60 operas and hundreds of performances, as well as understudying major roles, recordings and solo engagements in concert. Fans of Opera Australia will recognise Wiles from some of her solo roles, which include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Valencienne in The Merry Widow. The lives of the chorus, these essential members of any opera company, are rarely if ever chronicled. What Wiles achieves extremely well is a reveal of the life and work of this ensemble – the men and women with a tremendous capacity to learn…

RADIO *All times local A Woman's Work Upon hearing a Mel Bonis composition, Saint-Saëns reputedly pronounced, “I never imagined a woman could write such music.” Listen here to her impressive 1904 Flute Sonata, a post-Romantic work that exudes poetry and light. 1 October, 10am, 3MBS, 3MBS.org.au To the Barricades! This program of music from revolutionary times includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica, with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Kirill Kondrashin and music by Haydn, Prokofiev and Mozart. 4 October, 8pm, 2MBS Fine Music Sydney, 2mbsfinemusicsydney.com Sunday Night Concert A stirring program of orchestral music including Holst's Japanese Suite (commissioned for a performance at the London Coliseum by Japanese dancer Michio Ito) with the BBC Concert Orchestra…

When Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii began taking lessons at the age of four, he had already been improvising on his toy piano for two years, much to his mother's surprise. “At first, I would accompany my mother as she sang [to me], but it just so happened that once in a while I would improvise a tune to a story that she had made up; for example, A little bird is singing. I think it was a kind of game where I would make up a tune based on that image and play it,” he says. At the age of seven, Tsujii came under the tutelage of classical pianist, scholar and educator Masahiro Kawakami. “Tsujii had just started first grade at elementary school, and when I met him for the…

In 1934, England celebrated the 75th birthday of Ethel Smyth, a composer who for half a century had coaxed, cajoled and harangued conductors and concert promoters to ensure her music got some kind of a hearing. Across three months, London audiences and listeners to the fledgling BBC had the chance to hear a selection of works, a handful of which had tentatively entered the repertoire. The Smyth-fest culminated in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting her Mass in D. Dame Ethel – the first female composer to receive a damehood (DBE) – was invited to sit in the Royal Box next to Queen Mary. By then, she was almost completely deaf, likely curtailing any pleasure she might have taken in the music, but she…

It's hard to believe that the Wharf Revue, that venerable institution of political satire, has been running since 2000. It seems like a mere 25 years since Drew Forsythe, Phillip Scott and I (with the sterling initial help of Linda Nagle) first put on a show. The late-night experiment was performed on the set of another play at the Wharf Theatre to a small – well, ‘crowd’ is not the right word – shall we say ‘gathering’ of satire devotees. Little did we think that the sequels would largely consume our creative lives for the next quarter of a century. It almost didn't begin at all, as the board of the Sydney Theatre Company was reluctant to greenlight the project, fearing it would lose money. Ha! Thankfully, the company's then…

Our Recording of the Month features Don Quixote, a colourful yet neglected ballet score from Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard (Chandos CHAN20268). Born in 1896, Gerhard was taught to express his Catalan roots by Felipe Pedrell (who also taught Granados and Falla), and by Schoenberg, who turned him into a Modernist. Relocating to England to escape the Spanish Civil War, he became a leading avant-garde composer, but all the music recorded here is from his highly approachable middle period. Gerhard's Cervantes-themed ballet premiered at Sadler's Wells in 1950, with Robert Helpmann in the title role. “Don Quixote is a masterpiece; one of the best ballet scores of the 20th century,” writes Phillip Scott in a five-star rave. “The character, drama and authentic Catalan flavour of Gerhard's music make the more popular…

When Gillian Wills was studying classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London, her professor was angered by her interpretation of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17, The Tempest. Decades later, she vividly remembers the incident. “He yelled at me. I stood up to leave and had almost reached the door when he picked up a piano stool and threw it at me. I thought, ‘One day, I'll put that in a book.’ That might have been my starting point,” she tells Limelight. Wills is referring to her decision to start writing her novel Big Music, which centres on Beatrice, nicknamed Beat, and the challenges she faces when she is appointed Dean of Turalong Music School. “Fine-tuning this institution is like playing a cracked violin with broken strings. She's…

Augustin Hadelich performs Mendelssohn – Sydney Symphony Orchestra 17 October at 1pm Each conductor has a choice to make when it comes to Bruckner's Eighth. To go with the longer 1887 original, warts and all, or plump for the shorter, more richly upholstered, popular 1890 revision? Sydney Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Simone Young is firmly in the 1887 camp, and that is the version she presents in this concert, which welcomes back American-German violinist Augustin Hadelich for a memorable performance of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. His reading of Mendelssohn's irresistible concerto is near perfect. The honeyed tone of his 1744 Guarneri del Gesù “Leduc, ex-Szeryng” instrument is ideal for the gentle, Romantic opening statement. As it builds into the dramatic double-stopped flourishes, Hadelich's accuracy and poetic intensity show why he…

Bittersweet Symphony is a commission from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, which is a great orchestra and one I've had a long history with. A lot of the players are ex-students of mine from my years [teaching] at the Elder Conservatorium, so it's a particularly meaningful group of people for me to write for. It's a borrowed title, I have to confess. In a number of my pieces, I like to make the connection with popular culture, and there was a hit song by an English group called The Verve in the early 90s titled Bitter Sweet Symphony. While I make no musical reference to that piece, the idea of bitterness and sweetness in one piece really appealed to me. I had just read a book by Susan Cain called Bittersweet…

You have played regularly with the Australian World Orchestra. What is the attraction? It has been my honour and privilege to perform with the AWO since 2013. There are so very many things which attract me, but I think the big three are firstly, the chance to perform with my colleagues from all over the world. It is a very special experience to feel connected to all these incredible Australian musicians with whom you've had such a long history. The second is the conductors we are given the chance to perform under. They are literally the best in the world. And thirdly, the repertoire is always so satisfying. You are Concertmaster this year. Is this your first time for AWO? I have been Concertmaster before, on AWO's last tour to…

I grew up on a sheep farm in Buangor, near Ararat in Western Victoria, so I had that classic Australian childhood running around on a farm. When I was 12, the family moved to Canberra. I come from a musical family. My mother and her sisters used to sing around the piano and my grandmother was a pianist. My mother's eldest sister, my aunt Mary, was a very fine pianist who played by ear. She ran a dance band during the Second World War in Queenscliff when the men went to war. I started playing the piano when I was six or seven and continued studying music at high school. While there, I started to get involved in theatre restaurants, and began working professionally when I was 15. After I…