Australian Chamber Orchestra

Adelaide Town Hall

Tuesday March 17

Immediately after the end of the Adelaide Festival is a notoriously bad time to attract audiences to concerts. Concert exhaustion sets in and people stay home to watch The Great British Bake Off or something equally edifying.

The odd timing of concerts in the 2026 Adelaide Festival probably benefited the Australian Chamber Orchestra in this first post-Festival event. Music lovers, who were exhausted after an intense first week, had time to recover in the sparse second week – unless they maxed out at the Fringe– and were probably ready for another concert. In that first week we had the marvellous Ensemble Pygmalion; the ACO followed up with its own mostly Baroque program. Pygmalion are specialists in the music of that era; the ACO can play anything, most often brilliantly, but historical performance practice is less of a concern. But that is a minor consideration; this very well-planned concert was played with all the passion and vigour that has made the ACO a national treasure.

The ACO’s programs are consistently interesting, and full of surprise juxtapositions. They don’t always work, but they are always thought-provoking. In amongst Vivaldi, Tartini et al were works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Paul Stanhope, and the nearly forgotten Mieczsław Weinberg. The latter’s Aria Op.9 was a poignant work notable for its gently expressive melody and subtle harmonies. Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No.2 is very different, making use of string sounds that are often harsh, contained in a structure that seems disjointed but is assembled skilfully into a coherent musical form. Paul Stanhope’s Giving Ground found a bridge between the present and the past by using the ground bass of the Follies of Spain (Les Folies d’Espagne, La Follia), one of the most popular themes in music history. After commencing in similar territory to Gubaidulina, with bouncing cello bows, the score gravitated towards the Baroque; it was clever way to draw the disparate parts of the program together.

Of major interest was the appearance of Ilya Gringolts as director and violin soloist. He was playing a violin by Guarneri del Gesù from 1743, with gut strings. The sound was powerful but scratchy, which is evidently exactly what Gringolts wanted. Each half of the program started with Gringolts unaccompanied; in the first half he played a concerto by Vivaldi and the infamous “Devil’s Trill” Sonata by Tartini. His mastery of the instrument and the music were deeply impressive, virtuosic but not gratuitously showy. After Interval, Gringolts was joined by Satu Vänskä, in double concertos by Vivaldi and Francesco Geminiani (variations on La Follia.) Sometimes they were complementing one another, but quite often they were in (intentional) competition. Instead of “duelling banjos” it was “duelling violins”. Watch Deliverance (the movie from 1972) if you don’t know what I’m talking about. They embraced the competitive mood whole-heartedly with delightful and occasional humorous results.

UKARIA

Sunday March 8 and 15

What defines a good festival music program? At the foundation of the Adelaide Festival in 1960, music was central to its purpose; understandable given that Professor John Bishop, then director of the Elder Conservatorium, was one of the Festival’s prime instigators. A major objective was bringing international artists to the provincial backwater that we live in – live performances that Adelaide audiences would never otherwise have the opportunity to hear, enriching our cultural life and perhaps inspiring us to achieve more ourselves. Admirable though this idea was, it was insufficient: Festival directors came to understand the need to curate the music program, and create underlying themes or connections running through it. A random series of concerts, however good, is not what festivals should be about. Finding the right balance between conventional programming that will satisfy most audiences, and provocative, unfamiliar music that will divide audiences: there is no formula for achieving this, and different directors will naturally tend to stray more to one side or the other. Adelaide music audiences are known, with some justification, for being conservative in their tastes – except at Festival time, when it appears they are prepared to give anything a go. The Adelaide Festival has its carnivalesque side, upending conventional audience habits, with the director playing the role of the King of Mirth. This shake-up is probably the Festival’s greatest contribution to our cultural life.

The most provocative part of this year’s music program was something that, on the surface, appeared to be quite conventional. Concerts of Beethoven are not expected to be controversial, but three concerts of piano sonatas played by Olli Mustonen aroused some extreme reactions, from passionate admiration all the way to outright anger. The anger of course was at the way it was played, not at Beethoven’s music, but Beethoven would, I think, have been pleased that his music can still stir up strong emotions in audiences two centuries later, whatever the reason. For composers, any reaction, even anger, is preferable to indifference.

Two other programs at UKARIA were not much different to the concerts we are very fortunate to have at UKARIA throughout the year. The Alma Moodie Quartet managed to link their program to the preceding weekend’s Beethoven sonata marathon by programming Olli Mustonen’s Toccata. The audience showed immense enthusiasm for it afterwards; apparently Mustonen is easier to admire as a composer than as a pianist. The quartet was joined for this rollicking perpetuum mobile by pianist Konstantin Shamray and double bassist Robert Nairn. The shortest work on the program, and a highlight, was Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet, a masterpiece of musical economy, in striking contrast to the expansive excess of Max Reger’s demanding String Quartet No.5. No one expects Brahms to be economical, but in contrast to Reger, it can at least be said that his Piano Quartet No.3 is no longer than it needs to be. Bartók’s marvellous Quartet No.3 was another highlight, played with tremendous energy and conviction. Placing Stravinsky (8 minutes) and Bartók (15 minutes) on the same program as two romantic heavyweights (totalling around 70 minutes) was possibly an intentional provocation. It certainly made me think. The Alma Moodie Quartet is young and has undergone a recent change in personnel; this concert was impressive, and with more experience and more time working together, they have the potential to become an outstanding quartet.

A week later Konstantin Shamray was back at UKARIA accompanying violinist Sergei Krylov. This was a very enjoyable, old-fashioned virtuoso program: Ravel’s Violin Sonata and Tzigane, Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and César Franck’s Violin Sonata. Krylov’s violin was a superb Stradivarius on loan from a Japanese foundation. The rich, dark tone of this instrument has to be heard to be believed, and Krylov knows how to get the best out of it. I haven’t heard such a powerful sound emerge from a violin since Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recital in Tokyo a few years ago. Krylov, playing from memory throughout, found the perfect partner in Konstantin Shamray, a pianist who can match him in depth of tone and virtuosity, able to keep up with him at the challenging tempi that Krylov sometimes set. I can’t remember ever hearing the second movement of Franck’s Sonata played so fast. A couple of encores by Fritz Kreisler, played with several thick layers of scrumptious schmalz, kept the comfortable, familiar ambience going to the end. The audience left thoroughly contented, humming Schön Rosmarin, and probably not regretting the absence of Lachenmann or Ligeti from the program (both of which would be difficult to hum.)

(Disclaimer: Konstantin Shamray is a former colleague of mine at the Elder Conservatorium; Robert Nairn is a current colleague.)

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered

Adelaide Town Hall

March 12

I once accused a well-known director of producing a “Reader’s Digest condensed opera” by slicing chunks out of Glück. John Adams’ sprawling and occasionally enigmatic El Niño lost about an hour in this compressed version, which premiered in 2018 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters in New York; it was the brainchild of soprano Julia Bullock. I wouldn’t accuse it of straying into Reader’s Digest territory: although some of the most memorable parts of Adams’ music have been jettisoned, this retelling of the Christmas story still retains a lot of its impact.

The libretto is a mash-up of found texts from the New Testament, the Apocrypha, Latin American poets and other sources, put together by Peter Sellars. Most of us are familiar with the Biblical version; it’s the other texts that give a different, ‘reconsidered’ emphasis to the story. The Magnificat and the arrival of the Three Wise Men were high points, but there isn’t a lot of rejoicing. The Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight to Egypt loom large. It doesn’t take much imagination to recognise contemporary parallels to these events. The escape from Herod’s reign of terror by the Holy Family is a classic refugee story. The slaughter of innocent people, including children, is something that never seems to go away, when and wherever there is conflict. Sometimes it’s deliberate, other times it is called ‘collateral damage.’ Two millennia have gone past and the human race still hasn’t learned a thing. It’s not something to rejoice about.

El Niño in its original form was a hybrid opera-oratorio. A staging of it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2024 was lavish, spectacular, and hugely expensive no doubt. Creating a concert version for a chamber-sized orchestra (members of the Adelaide Symphony), four soloists and a chamber choir (Adelaide Chamber Singers) is a practical and economical way of bringing this daunting, fascinating work to a wider audience. There is some clunkiness to its narrative, told in English and Spanish, with an awkward mixture of narration and singing, but its message is potent.

We were fortunate to have Julia Bullock as Mary, who sang the same role (shared with J’Nai Bridges) in the 2024 Met production. The other soloists were impressive: mezzo-soprano Margaret Plummer, baritone David Greco, and countertenor Austin Haynes. The redoubtable Adelaide Chamber Singers handled their rather difficult, rhythmically challenging part very well. As fine as the singing was, my ears were often drawn to the orchestra. Adams’ score in this version has lost some of its grandeur but none of its interest. It’s like the ‘music of the spheres’, an intricate mechanism, an astrolabe that mimics the movement of the planets and stars revolving in the heavens. The Three Wise Men – astrologers all - would have loved it. Christian Reif, who was on the podium to conduct, also did the arranging.

Orfeo

Ensemble Pygmalion

Adelaide Town Hall

March 6

When I first saw Orfeo in the Festival program, my immediate thought was Monteverdi. But instead of the maestro of Mantua, whose Orfeo is one of the most important works in the history of opera, the composer was the little-known Luigi Rossi. Monteverdi was a musical revolutionary, scathingly attacked by some critics in his lifetime, which is the fate of most musical revolutionaries. (One must question the musical judgment and intelligence of critics.)

Rossi was not a revolutionary, but he was unwittingly responsible for causing a revolution, just not a musical one. The immense cost of producing Orfeo, which at its premiere lasted six hours and employed two hundred people on the scenery alone, was practically the last straw for the people of France, who were already fed up with the wanton expenditure of the French court and the putative power behind the throne, Cardinal Mazarin, who had commissioned Rossi. Shortly after the premiere the insurrection known as the Fronde broke out. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Rossi for this, but his dream of writing more extravagant operas for the French court was dashed, and he never wrote another one. Is this a lesson for governments who spend too much money on opera productions?

Orfeo was cut down to just under three hours, omitting the politically motivated Prologue and Epilogue. It was a concert staging, leaving the audience to imagine what the hugely expensive premiere must have been like. Instead of being overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle of a lavish production, we were able to focus on the music.

Under the direction of the immensely talented Raphaël Pichon, Orfeo was completely absorbing from beginning to end. If you attended one of Ensemble Pygmalion’s earlier concerts in the Festival you expected something special. This performance exceeded all expectations. Pichon maintained a level of intensity and momentum that must have been exhausting for the performers, but it wasn’t evident.

As Orpheus, Xenia Puskarz Thomas, taking the role sung at the premiere by castrato Atto Melani (who combined the careers of singer, diplomat and spy), captured the tragic innocence of the character, a dreamer who was too caught up in his own music to grasp the reality of the drama that was unfolding. As Eurydice, beautifully portrayed by Julie Roset, was dying she called repeatedly for him, but he was very slow to arrive; he was probably strumming on his lyre somewhere. The frustrated would-be lover of Eurydice, Aristaeus (also a castrato role), emerged in this telling of the myth as a central figure. His bitterness, tragic in its own way, elicited a performance of exceptional power from Blandine de Sansal, almost overshadowing the two principals.

There was no weak point in the casting: Alex Rosen as marvellously resonant Pluto, Camille Chopin as a cunning and manipulative Venus, Samual Boden as an hilarious Momo (like Shakespeare, Rossi and his librettist believed in comic relief even in the darkest tragedies) and all the rest of the cast, could not be faulted. Add to this the fine chorus and orchestra and you have a magnificent evening of music and drama. It was no doubt expensive to bring Ensemble Pygmalion to the Festival, but it was a good investment; it’s unlikely that a revolution will ensue.

Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine

Her Majesty’s Theatre

March 4

Although Perle Noire is listed in the Festival program as an opera, it might be more accurately described as a theatrically staged song cycle. The staging is far removed from a lavish opera production; it could be performed from the back of a truck. (I would like to see more operas on the back of trucks – it’s egalitarian, unpretentious and portable.) A lot of money is wasted creating hugely expensive operatic spectacles. Peter Brook staged The Magic Flute with twenty bamboo poles and a trolley to hold props, and it was marvellous. You can spend millions on a new production of Verdi and have just another ho-hum opera production. (Don’t get me wrong, Verdi is great.) Peter Sellars is the director here, and he makes the most of very little.

The Joséphine in question is Joséphine Baker, darling of Paris in the Jazz Age, whose extraordinary life reads like a novel. Julia Bullock is Baker; I mean she really is Baker, she inhabits her character so completely and convincingly. It really is an exceptional performance in every respect. The emotional impact is considerable, as Baker/Bullock meditates on race, sexuality and the many struggles in her life.

The music is the work of Tyshawn Sorey and is essentially a re-composition of six of Baker’s songs, which are sung in French. Sorey himself played piano and drums (he’s an excellent performer on both) in this performance with International Contemporary Ensemble, based in New York, an exceptional group of musicians thoroughly at home with Sorey’s mix of notated music and improvisation (or spontaneous composition, if you prefer). The original songs are fragmented, twisted, reworked, sometimes retaining a lot of their original Jazz Age character, other times drifting into the world of experimental music with non-traditional (or ‘extended’) techniques – Sorey has a liking for hitting and strumming the piano strings – abandoning tonality, and creating unconventional instrumental textures. Eclectic seems too shallow a term to encompass what Sorey has done. He wrote Perle Noire for his PhD, and you can read his thesis on the Columbia University website if you’re interested to learn more about his unique approach to music and this work in particular. Perle Noire received some negative critical reception at its premiere, which Sorey answers in this thesis, but since then it has been widely acclaimed and performed.

Was Perle Noire too long? I heard some people express this view. There’s no simple answer. Is Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung too long? Or Morton Feldman’s six-hour String Quartet No.2? It was long, but possibly just as long as it needed to be.

Anthony Marwood

Elder Hall

March 2, 3,4

Compared to the 2025 Adelaide Festival program, which had ten concerts in Elder Hall, this year’s program seems thin, with only four. Furthermore, in 2025 there was a weekend of brilliantly curated concerts at UKARIA, as there had been for a number of previous Festivals. (It was always on the same long weekend as WOMADelaide, which was problematic for me. But I may be the only person who wanted to go to both.) There are excellent concerts this year at UKARIA, but they are fewer and more sporadic.

The impression given is that this year’s music program has been cobbled together. There are certainly great things in the program, much of it squeezed into a hectic first week, which is not the best way to arrange things, unless you want to exhaust your audience.

The three lunchtime concerts in Elder Hall all featured the eminent violinist Anthony Marwood. Looking at the program in advance, the most intriguing item was the collaboration of Marwood with pianist Olli Mustonen. Given the individuality of Mustonen’s pianism, one couldn’t help wondering how this would work out. They arrived at an ingenious solution: Mustonen played solo (Prokofiev’s Music for Children), followed by Marwood, also solo, playing Prokofiev’s Sonata in D major. Then they played together in Shostakovich’s Sonata Op.134. It was a safe strategy: rehearsal time was cut down, and whatever differences in their approach proved to be eminently reconcilable, even complementary. This performance went for the jugular, violent, anxious, ironic, plumbing the depths of Shostakovich’s melancholia.

Marwood’s other two concerts each had something distinctive. The Tuesday program featured wind instruments, beginning with an impressive performance, by brass players from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, of Henri Tomasi’s Fanfares liturgiques, (to be precise, three out of four movements). No violin in this one – it wouldn’t stand a chance against massed brass instruments and percussion. The Good Friday March was especially powerful. It was followed by a lively performance of Beethoven’s engaging Septet for strings. On Monday Marwood played Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, which was clearly the drawcard for a near capacity audience. Accompanied by the strings of the ASO, it was truly lovely performance. An arrangement for string orchestra of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.2 was the other item. I’m not sure how the composer would feel about this, as it does significantly change the texture of the music, making it feel less personal. It was most successful in the second movement, an Adagio entitled Recitative and Romance. Marwood had the lion’s share of the recitatives which he played with gloomy intensity.

Tyshawn Sorey, piano

Her Majesty’s Theatre

Monday March 2

“That’s not jazz, man!” Whenever an artist steps outside the widely accepted understanding of what ‘jazz’ is (for example, Ornette Coleman), there will be some musicians and listeners who have difficulty accepting it. This isn’t unique to jazz; ‘classical’ composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Schaeffer, and John Cage were (and still are by some people) relegated to an even more extreme category: “That’s not music!” (Classical music devotees generally don’t refer to one another as “man”.) You have to wonder whether categories like ‘jazz’ and ‘classical’ have any relevance at all today.

Tyshawn Sorey comes out of the jazz ‘tradition’, evidenced by the impressive list of important artists he has worked with or been mentored by. Did he swing? No. Did he play through the chord changes of jazz standards, or follow any familiar harmonic structures? No. He improvised at the piano for an hour in a style that is definitely his own, although you can trace part of the genealogy of his music to artists who have diverged from the mainstream of jazz, such as Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Wadada Leo Smith and others. Surprisingly, another audible point of reference, outside of jazz entirely, is Morton Feldman, the master of slow, very soft music. (It’s the centenary of Feldman’s birth this year.)

Sorey’s playing is thoughtful and visionary. His meditative approach to improvisation suggests a deep commitment to the pursuit of truth through music. I was reminded of Anthony Braxton’s reply to the question “what is music about?” He said: “It’s about the highest thing you can think of.” Sorey is on a quest for that thing, whatever it is, and improvisation is a way to find it. How did I reach this conclusion? Like the rest of the festival, there is little or no help in the festival program booklet, online or in concert programs, which largely do not exist. Though I deplore the lack of information, an upside is that you have to reach your own conclusions about what you are listening to. My understanding of his intention was reached following the arc of his improvisation through its various phases, from its quiet beginning deep in the bass, a place he ultimately returned to. Whatever he played, whether thunderous clusters or delicate filigree, conveyed a sense of searching for something, something elusive, that keeps slipping away, is always out of reach; being instrumental music, that something is presented in sound, abstract and undefinable. Maybe, as Braxton said, it is the highest thing Tyshawn Sorey, or we, can think of.

Was he playing ‘jazz’? The question is practically meaningless. Was it music? Most definitely.

Olli Mustonen, piano

UKARIA

Saturday February 28, 11.00am and 2.30

Convergent evolution is the theory that over the course of time differences tend to disappear and sameness gradually prevails. In the age that we live in this tendency is amplified by the global reach of the internet, with its immense power to shape our lives and our desires. Even the somewhat rarefied world of classical music is not immune to the entropic progress of selective pressures from the professional environment. (Please note that I will avoid all reference here – anywhere - to something called the ‘music industry.’) What is at risk is individuality and originality. But all is not lost; every now and then a true original comes along, someone who pursues their own vision and is prepared to weather the storm that might follow. Better a storm than indifference.

Olli Mustonen is an original. His way of playing the piano is his own and he’s not going to change. Perhaps the closest comparison in recent history is Glenn Gould; further back one might cite Ferruccio Busoni. Broadly, his approach to the piano is notable for using a detached finger staccato in passages where most pianists would choose legato, minimal use of the sustaining pedal, and sometimes attacking a note or a chord with a violence that many people – including pianists - might find offensive. But prettiness, niceness, pleasantness – these are not the highest values that music should aspire to.

He uses agogic accentuation – the deliberate delay or lengthening of notes – in unusual ways that leave the listener waiting for a note for anything from a fraction of a second to what seems like an eternity. He sometimes chooses extremely fast tempi, from which the music does not always benefit. He isn’t perfect; he hits double notes or wrong notes from time to time, and some notes can’t be heard at all, possibly because he hasn’t quite got the measure of the piano (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt there.) But “to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” I’d rather listen to Mustonen’s wrong notes than most pianists’ right ones. Why? Because whatever he does is always interesting and done with absolute conviction and passion. It is no coincidence that he is also a composer; he approaches the music as a composer would. The ideas are what is important and to project those ideas vividly is the essence of performance for. him; there is no technique for its own sake.

Mustonen took on a mighty task in his three concerts of sonatas by Beethoven. Two of these, which I attended, were in one day: a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding undertaking and a reminder that to be a concert artist at this level you need the stamina of an Olympic athlete, the intellect of a theoretical physicist, the digital dexterity of a brain surgeon, and the emotional control of an Oscar-winning actor. Honestly, it is one of the most difficult things a human can do, though too few people truly appreciate it. And fortunately, it’s something that AI is still far away from being able to reproduce. In any case, watching Mustonen play is as engrossing as listening to him. His engagement with the music is embodiment in action at its most vivid and compelling.

A blow-by-blow account of each of these sonatas would be lengthy. Here are a few things that stood out. The slow movement of Op.2, No.2 (A major) the texture of a string quartet, with cello pizzicato underlying the broad sweep of the melody which, for the first five bars uses only three different notes (six of them are F#). Mustonen balanced the various parts throughout the movement beautifully, often highlighting details that might escape a less insightful performer. The slow movement of Op.10 No.3 (D major) was given a more orchestral sound, grander in scale and equally compelling. The infrequently performed Op.79 (G major) is full of humour of a somewhat heavy-handed Germanic kind; Mustonen revelled in the oompah band weightiness. The lyrical and witty Op.78 is an absolute gem in two movements (Beethoven once said it was his favourite); Mustonen’s performance perfectly realised the grace and good humour of it. The Appassionata was as impassioned as it could be, a stupendous performance: a tempestuous first movement, a brief respite in the second, and a category 5 hurricane in the third. Mustonen looked exhausted at the end; just watching and listening, I was exhausted too – along with everyone else in the room.

You can hear Olli Mustonen on the usual internet sites, but if you weren’t there to hear and see him in person you will have missed out on much that is unique about him.

Warning: if you are a young pianist with aspirations, do not copy Olli! Appreciate his originality and then find your own.

Bach: Good Night World

Ensemble Pygmalion

Adelaide Town Hall, February 27

If you learned computer programming in your past, the first program you wrote probably printed out the message “Hello, World!” The perky, upbeat tone of the greeting reflected the general spirit of optimism about technology that prevailed then. Now the mood has changed; anxiety about an AI-dominated future is widespread. Will we soon be saying “Goodnight, World”?

Anxiety about the future is nothing new. It started when we first realised we were mortal. In this thoughtfully curated concert by the Paris-based Ensemble Pygmalion, under the direction of conductor Raphaël Pichon, the anxiety of the 17^th and 18^th centuries came to the fore in music by Johann Sebastian Bach and other members of the Bach family, and their contemporaries. There was much to be anxious about, with Europe almost continuously at war, poverty and disease rife, and life expectancy low. It’s not surprising that people sought comfort in religion, as many still do, and Lutheran pietism in particular placed great emphasis on the suffering of Christ. Bach was a devout Lutheran, and we can gain some insight into his religious convictions from the texts he chose to set in motets, cantatas and other works. A common theme presents the Crucifixion as a model that inspires us to endure earthly suffering in order to be rewarded in eternity.

On the surface the program appeared to foreshadow a gloomy couple of hours, but the reality was different. The program commenced with Adam Drese’s Nun ist alles überwunden (Now it’s all over) – a bleak start – but as soon as soprano Julie Roset began to sing, we knew that we were about to experience something very special. The purity of her voice and her marvellous control were all the balm needed to assuage our anxiety about the program and anything else. She was just one of the excellent soloists in this performance; tenor Laurence Kilsby and alto Blandine de Sansal were other standouts.

A canon by another little-known composer, Daniel Speer, was spatialised by distributing the choir in groups around the Town Hall, an exhilarating effect even though the text (“Ah, how miserable is our life here on earth”) was hardly cheerful. Also represented on the program were Dietrich Buxtehude, who was greatly admired by J S Bach, and the prolific but practically forgotten composers Philipp Erlebach and Melchior Franck. An outlier thematically was a lovely song by Hans Leo Hassler, Ach weh des Leiden (Oh, what sorrow!), about earthly love and the pain of parting. But what is earthly love if not the mirror of divine love?

J S Bach contributed two works: the uplifting Lobet den Herrn (Praise the Lord), and the justly famous Jesu, meine Freude (Jesus, my Joy), superbly performed.

Johann Christoph Bach, an older cousin of Sebastian, had two fine pieces in the program, but it was Welt, gute Nacht (World, Good Night) performed as an encore, with some of the choir in the dress circle, that revealed what a fine composer this member of the Bach family was – ‘profound’ according to his more famous cousin. The choir was superb, able to control dynamics exquisitely, melting away to silence at the ends of phrases with magical effect. It was a beautiful, breathtaking way to say good night.

The concert was performed nearly without a break; even when the audience clapped, the applause was uninvited, and nobody took a bow. At the very end the Town Hall broke into thunderous applause with woo-hoos and bravos, and bows were taken, multiple times. It was thoroughly deserved, but in a way odd, considering the program; a case of an uncomfortable meeting between the secular world of the concert hall and the devout religious world from which the music originated. It is a common enough occurrence but perhaps worth thinking about occasionally. I say this as someone who was scolded by conductor Karl Böhm for clapping at the end of Mozart’s Requiem in Salzburg. I may write the full story sometime…

I hope my friends will be pleased that I haven’t become a recluse myself. Instead, I have started this Substack to write about the musical world, especially in Adelaide, with a degree of detachment and objectivity. An outlet for such writing existed once, before newspapers decided that reviews and writing about the arts generally was no longer worth the trivial amount of money that they were investing in it. Now, where it exists at all, it is mostly found online.

If you are interested in reading my thoughts on musical life in Adelaide - and sometimes elsewhere - you will find them here.

I am joining in this Substack venture with Tim Lloyd (theatre), John Neylon (visual arts) and Deborah Bogle (literature) - the Four Critics.

Stephen Whittington

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