Tabla de contenidos para November 2025 en Limelight

A conductor, one might imagine, must surely be the elite product of an intensive musical education. And yet the skillset for this linchpin of the orchestra is far from easily defined, while practitioners can sometimes be the least specifically trained people in the room. The Sydney Conservatorium of Music wants to change that. Their secret weapon? Benjamin Northey, who this month steps up as their first ever Professor of Conducting. But can conductors be taught or are they simply born? And what exactly makes a thoroughly modern maestro? “I've always associated conducting with the sharing of knowledge; that would be my earliest understanding of the role,” Northey offers as part of a late-night Zoom from his hotel room in New Zealand where he's leading concerts as Chief Conductor of the…

Regalo Press, PB, 320pp, $55 or $28.99 eBook, ISBN 9798888456620, eBook 9798888456637 Nancy Shear's memoir I Knew a Man Who Knew Brahms is a veritable three-part fugue, blending as it does personal memoir with portraits of two larger-than-life musicians who couldn't be more different from each other: conductor Leopold Stokowski and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The result is not just a different perspective on the world of orchestral music, but an example of how art can shape identity while providing sanctuary from life's woes. Indeed, that latter aspect of the book provides the emotional underpinning for everything. Shear explores music as “a profound conduit for human emotion, connection, and personal growth” as she chronicles her own evolution from starstruck teenager to mature artist and writer while acknowledging it required her to…

CLASSICAL MUSIC Penrith Con: Chopin: A Stranger in Paris Following a recital in Adelaide on 26 October, French-British pianist Emmanuel Despax joins the Richard Bonynge Ensemble to explore themes of exile, memory and identity. From Chopin's shimmering Berceuse to the Sonata No. 2 and a rare chamber arrangement of his Piano Concerto No. 1, this is the portrait of a composer caught between worlds – Polish at heart yet embedded within the Parisian elite. Despax promises to capture the composer's Slavic soul, Italian operatic lyricism and Bach-inspired counterpoint. Jansson J. Antmann 30 October, The Joan, Penrith, thejoan.com.au Emanuel Synagogue Foundation: Custodians of the Sky Premiering in Paris, this new meditative work explores land, tradition and the cosmos, drawing on field recordings from Australian stargazing sites, texts by Indigenous astronomer Bill…

Opera Australia, Australia's largest performing arts company, has once again proved to be the wellspring of an internal drama of, dare one say, operatic proportions, generating ripples far beyond those lapping Bennelong Point and its venerable opera house. There are good reasons for this. As much as former Chief Executive Officer Fiona Allan claimed that “Opera Australia is bigger than any one person … it is a collective” when she launched OA's 2025 season, the organisation's recent lack of stability at senior management level has undoubtedly had a debilitating impact on internal morale as well as its public standing. Allan left the company in January 2025 after three years as CEO, six months after Artistic Director Jo Davies, who departed abruptly in August 2024, just 18 months into her contract.…

Fruits of Summer When Raphaël Pichon recalls his earliest summers, they are filled with the voices of the Maîtrise des Petits Chanteurs de Versailles. As a young chorister, he recalls spending “entire months each summer, travelling all over the world and doing concerts. Step by step, I accompanied the rehearsals and sometimes even conducted a few the choirmaster was not able to do.” Years later, during the pandemic of 2020, another summer would leave its mark. Setting off on his bicycle along the right bank of the Garonne, Pichon went in search of a venue for his latest venture, the festival Pulsations. “I spent five weeks on my bicycle in Bordeaux just exploring each centimetre of these industrial spaces,” he tells Limelight. Finally, he stumbled across an abandoned train factory.…

Kit Spencer is redefining boundaries. The 28-year-old writer, performance artist and musician has spent the day cultivating a plot of land, and regeneration is on his mind. “I'm working on re-establishing the biodiversity of an area of bushland, extending the community out to the bush,” he says. “Whether it is communities, individuals or the environment, understanding each other and forging alliances is becoming increasingly important. Extending that to my own life, opening myself up to the ‘livingness’ of the land that I'm on, the other things that are alive around me and connecting common goals through alliances and coalitions are what drive me.” Living on Wangal land in Sydney, Spencer fulfils his need to connect with people and nature through his “hands-in-the-dirt” day job as a horticulturist. A graduate of…

Like the Coen Brothers’ 1996 neo-noir Fargo, director Brian Kirk's Dead of Winter transports us to the icy landscapes of America's northern Midwest for a brisk and bloody, female-centred thriller. British star Emma Thompson is Barb – in her late sixties, recently widowed and still living in the home she and her husband shared. We meet her as she prepares for an ice-fishing trip to the frozen lake they visited on their first date. She still carries a photo taken at the time and her husband's old fishing tackle box. There's a weather system barrelling in, and things can turn dangerous in these parts pretty quickly. But Barb, who has lived here all her life, has seen it all and drives into the coming storm regardless. Momentarily blindsided by a…

RADIO *All times local Saturday Matinee Begin the month with an exploration of Mendelssohn's gift for storytelling and lyrical expression, from the fairy-tale delicacy of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the youthful brilliance of the Violin Concerto in D minor and the grand spiritual sweep of the Hymn of Praise. 1 November, 2:30pm, 2MBS Fine Music, 2mbsfinemusicsydney.com Shakespeare Sings The plays of Shakespeare have long been mined for material by librettists and composers, as you'll hear in their adaptations of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. 6 November, 8pm, 4MBS Classic FM, 4mbs.com.au Inspired Solitude Sometimes isolation helps composers find new approaches. Think of Haydn in out-of-the-way Hungary and his string quartets. Centuries earlier, in remote parts of France, Guillaume Bouzignac composed motets…

In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven penned a searingly intimate letter to an unnamed woman he called his “Immortal Beloved”. Never sent and discovered only after his death, the letter has fuelled centuries of speculation and longing. Was she Antonie Brentano, the married confidante? Or Josephine Brunsvik, whose surviving correspondence with Beethoven reveals a love both profound and forbidden? The mystery remains unsolved, yet the emotional truth of the letter – its aching vulnerability, its defiance of social constraint, its yearning – continues to resonate. My new work Forever Ours draws its emotional and conceptual core from the enigmatic letters Beethoven wrote to his “Immortal Beloved”, not to answer the question of identity, but to inhabit the emotional terrain of a love that could not be spoken aloud – yet refused…

When I decided to become a flautist, I had never seen a flute before. I heard Jean-Pierre Rampal playing Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto over my parents’ loudspeakers when I was seven and somehow knew it was my calling. Each flute player has an individual sound because of the way we use the spaces in our face and mouth to create it, along with the speed and temperature of the air flow. Now that I'm older, I realise it wasn't the flute; it was the sound of Rampal himself – the joie de vivre, the luminosity, his playfulness, his openness – that had such an impact on me that I've been chasing that crisp fresh sound ever since. I grew up riding horses on a farm in southern New South…

When did you come up with the idea of a musical about Phar Lap, and did you always envisage having the horses played by tap-dancing actors? During COVID, everyone went slightly mad, but my madness manifested in a musical about a horse. I spent hours trying to work out why this thoroughbred was as famous in Australia as Ned Kelly or Cathy Freeman. What I discovered was a truly theatrical story that was crying out to be turned into a musical, and it HAD to be told straight from the horse's mouth. And to truly get inside our equine hero's head, an actor playing an all-singing, all-dancing Phar Lap was the only option. What is electro-swing, and why did you feel this was the right musical style? Imagine taking a…

Growing up, music was part of daily life. My father played trombone, my mother sang in a choir and played piano, and all three of my siblings were musical. At primary school, I sang and played the recorder. Then, at age eight, I moved to the German Tenor Horn. I was still too small for the tuba, which fascinated me with its deep, resonant low notes and the rhythmic pulse it gives an orchestra. It anchors everything. We lived in Mellrichstadt, a small Bavarian town of about 3,500 people. My parents would take me to local festivals, and I'd sit for hours watching the brass bands and wind orchestras – every village had one. It was an early education in the power of live music and ensemble playing. I finally…

Newsworthy A round-up of our recent news reports In welcome news, Simone Young has extended her contract as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a further three years, until the end of 2029. Her tenure, which began in 2022, has been marked by ambitious programming and artistic excellence, with recent seasons featuring large-scale symphonic works, world premieres by Australian composers and collaborations with leading international soloists. “It is a joy to lead this remarkable orchestra,” said Young. “The artistry, passion and ambition of the Sydney Symphony musicians inspires me every day, and I am excited to continue our journey together.” Meanwhile, Young has been awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Sydney, recognising her global impact as one of the world's leading conductors. Young received…

Jakub Hrůša's inaugural production as Music Director of London's Royal Ballet and Opera should have come across as a seamless changing of the guard, but there was little about the premiere of Oliver Mears’ chilling new staging of Puccini's Tosca that suggested business as usual. Weeks of negative headlines plus a significant and vociferous demonstration outside the house were a sign that Anna Netrebko was in town. Days before opening, the Ukrainian Ambassador had gone public with a searing indictment of Covent Garden's decision to employ a singer tainted by past associations with Putin's extraterritorial ambitions. So, was it all worth it in the end? Well, yes and no. At 53, Netrebko's voice has darkened with the middle and lower registers sounding clotted at times, matronly even. The top, however,…