8 October 2009
Australian music at the Melbourne Festival
Image: Vladimir Jurowski (Update 27 October - review links added.)
The Melbourne International Arts Festival (9-24 October 2009) kicks off this Friday with a varied music program including several premieres of Australian works. The largest of these in scale is Brenton Broadstock's Tyranny of Distance for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The work will be premiered in the MSO concert on 17 October, with Julian Yu's version of Modest Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in the first half of the program.
No less than seven smaller Australian premieres are featured as part of the 'Seven Last Words of Jesus Christ on the Cross' concert series. The three concerts are structured around music by James MacMillan, Joseph Haydn and Sofia Gubaidulina, and in the 14 October concert, Haydn's music is interpolated by short new works by William Barton, Brett Dean, Andrew Ford, James Ledger, Georges Lentz and Anthony Pateras. The concerts are presented in cooperation with the National Academy of Music and the Victorian Opera.
One of the most anticipated foreign acts at this year's festival is the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. The LPO will play two concerts (10 & 11 October), and the first of these will include Graeme Koehne's work Powerhouse, together with Ravel's Piano Concerto (with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist) and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.
The music program of the festival also includes a concert by the Australian String Quartet (with Brett Dean's Eclipse), Calvin Bowman's Bach marathon and the Black Arm Band's Dirtsong, as well as other Australian and international performances and installations.
Further links
'MIAF: Seven Last Words of Jesus Christ on the Cross' -
Mark Viggiani's review on Resonate
'MIAF: Broadstock's Tyranny of Difference' -
Mark Viggiani's review on Resonate
Melbourne
International Arts Festival (www.melbournefestival.com.au)
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