Tabla de contenidos para December 2024 en Limelight

In 2022, the Los Angeles branch of Bonhams auction house sold nearly 500 lots of costumes, furniture, art, jewellery, figurines, books and memorabilia that had belonged to the late Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, the Las Vegas headliners whose first names were all you needed to know. Among the items was a strikingly attenuated sculpture of an elephant by Salvador Dalí that fetched US$15,300. Black suede Lederhosen worn by Siegfried went for US$1,402.50. In Las Vegas the following year, the couple’s Jungle Palace mansion was sold and permission given to demolish the grandiose house, which included a replica of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. The land was earmarked for an apartment complex of more than 300 units. A couple of months later, the last of the big cats owned by the…

Welcoming the audience to the opening headline concert on the 2024 BRAVO Cruise of the Performing Arts – a sparkling performance by Australian soprano Mirusia – conductor and genial host Guy Noble asks how many of the assembled passengers are BRAVO virgins. Around half raise their hands. Not so cruise-loving couple Phillip Black and Tom Hatfield, who are seated in the central front stalls. The pair have set sail on every BRAVO arts cruise bar one – they missed out in 2017 when José Carreras was the main act because they couldn’t make the dates. Once on board, not only do they queue early to ensure they sit in the same plum spot at all the headline concerts, they make a point of sharing a table at dinner so they…

2MBS Turns 50 Australia’s first stereo FM station celebrates its half-century this month. Celebrations include a commemorative broadcast, a new book and an open day. On 15 December at 12 noon, 2MBS Fine Music Sydney will air a special commemorative program – exactly 50 years to the hour since its first broadcast. Researched and presented by Jill Hickson, the commemorative broadcast will be a tribute to the founders of Australia’s first stereo FM station and will include music chosen by the movers and shakers she interviews. “It will include interviews with our founding Chairman, 96-year-old Dr Neil Runcie; the first station manager David James; foundation programmer, presenter and composer Vincent Plush; and Max Beynon – ‘Mr Livewire’ as I call him – who led the small group of enthusiastic engineers…

The Nobel Prize-winning economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman once said he thought “that there is a task for society to reduce misery, not to increase happiness.” What a wonderful and honest advertising pitch that would be for a classical music concert – “Buy a Queensland Symphony Orchestra Misery-Reduction subscription package today! (We can’t guarantee that you’ll be happier after the concert; you’ll just be slightly less miserable.)” I have been touring my new show Guy Noble’s Very Serious Guide to Classical Music, and inevitably you have to do a little video for Facebook, looking all breathless and excited as you hawk your wares. “It’s going to be GREAT! You will have SUCH FUN.” What I really want to say is, “I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be bored; how…

CLASSICAL MUSIC West Australian Symphony Orchestra: Brahms' Triumph West Australian Symphony Orchestra rounds out the year with Brahms’ Fourth and final Symphony, written in the Austrian Alps during the summers of 1884 and 1885. Its ever-evolving motifs were a further development of Brahms’ technique. Unsure of how it would be received, he wrote to the conductor Hans von Bülow, “I’m really afraid that it tastes like the climate here. The cherries don’t ripen in these parts; you wouldn’t eat them!” He needn’t have worried; it was received with rapturous applause at its premiere in Meiningen. Conducted by Asher Fisch, the program includes two other works by Brahms – the Academic Festival Overture and Berio’s arrangement of the Clarinet Sonata, played here by WASO Principal Clarinet Allan Meyer. Jansson J. Antmann…

It is one measure of the success of the children’s TV cartoon Bluey that I was recently reproached by some fellow parents at a two-year-old’s birthday party in suburban Connecticut in the US for not having watched the show with my kids. I grew up binge-watching The Simpsons. To this day, my friends and I still send each other the occasional Simpsons reference via text, and many quotes from the cartoon have entered the vernacular (“release the hounds!” anyone?). A fellow violinist parent at the party dropped in the fact that there were allusions to classical music in a number of Bluey episodes. Classical music? Cartoon? This combo, and the idea of some American friends immersing themselves in an Australian cartoon with their kids, gave me such FOMO that it…

ABC listening highlight Ensemble Q & William Barton -Musica Viva Australia 30 December at 1pm Didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton joins Queensland’s Ensemble Q to perform the world premiere of his new composition Journey to the Edge of the Horizon. The concert begins with Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, which reflect his Hungarian roots while hinting at the avant-garde vibe he’d become more famous for. Playing with precision and vitality, Ensemble Q’s winds – Alison Mitchell (flute), Huw Jones (oboe), Paul Dean (clarinet), David Mitchell (bassoon) and Peter Luff (horn) – capture the nuances of Ligeti’s complex rhythms and shifting moods. Trish Dean joins them for her husband Paul’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Quintet, of which she is the dedicatee. Her impassioned and lyrical playing seems to converse, disperse,…

Alex Raineri, the Artistic Director of Brisbane Music Festival, has established a significant footprint through his commitment to commissioning new work, with over 45 Australian pieces receiving premieres at the festival across seven seasons to date. Raineri’s ethos regarding commissions celebrates the beautiful diversity of the Australian cultural landscape. “As an artistic director, it is an exciting responsibility to interrogate how music can exist beyond the sphere of its own abstract merits and question how it can speak to contemporary culture more broadly,” he says. “Curation is a powerful medium in which our artform can comment impactfully on the world we inhabit and speak to a world in which we wish to live.” One of the 2024 BMF commissions is Aragonite, a new work for chamber ensemble by Perth-based percussionist/…

Newsworthy A round-up of our recent news reports Lyndon Terracini has unveiled his latest project, the inaugural Handa Opera at Millthorpe, which will be held over the Easter long weekend next April. The three-day program features a mix of concerts, recitals, in conversations and open rehearsals, all of which will be held at Millthorpe Hall in the historic heart of the NSW Central West town. Headlining the event are Armenian-Australian soprano Natalie Aroyan and Italian baritone Giorgio Caoduro. A former Artistic Director of Opera Australia, Terracini introduced Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour to the OA program in 2014. In 2025, OA will stage the musical Guys & Dolls on Sydney Harbour, running 21 March – 20 April. Clearly, Terracini has maintained a productive working relationship with arts benefactor Dr Haruhisa…

Our annual Recording of the Year Awards saw Limelight critics scrutinising a shortlist of 50 outstanding recordings reviewed during the past 12 months. This year, only one of the five categories had a runaway winner, and competition for the top prize was particularly fierce. In the end, it was a coup for independent labels, who came first in every genre. It was an especially notable year for Harmonia Mundi. The label, founded in 1958, won three awards, including two for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Gustavo Gimeno whose recording of Olivier Messiaen’s colourful Turangalîla-Symphonie carried off the coveted Recording of the Year. It was especially auspicious for the label as it marked its first major collaboration with a North American orchestra. The recording (Harmonia Mundi HMM905336) is also…

Arafura Music Collective is a group of professional Darwin-based chamber musicians founded in 1996. “It started with a group of friends who just loved playing music together and we gradually got ourselves organised,” says Artistic Director and flautist Claire Kilgariff. Despite its humble origins, Arafura Music Collective is now one of the beating hearts of both classical and art music in the Northern Territory, boasting a roster of around 25 members. “We’ve got strong beliefs that the place we’re in really shapes our practice as artists, and we want to explore that concept in our performances. What that means is we develop strong relationships with the First Nations people from our community, the Larrakia people,” says Kilgariff. The group’s annual season – three performances, named after the Gulumoerrgin (Larrakia) seasons…

Listeners to The Music Show on Radio National sometimes ask how I can like all music. I don’t, of course, but I’m interested in it all – I always have been. I was born in Liverpool in the UK into a working, lower-middle-class home. My dad had left school at 14, his own father having experienced unemployment interspersed with casual work on the docks. My maternal grandfather was a blacksmith, though in his later years chronically ill. Mum finished school and went to a teachers’ college, going on to teach primary school children for most of her life. I mention this, because it was not in any way a privileged upbringing, but there was always music. Mum had recordings of popular classics – Fingal’s Cave, In the Hall of the…