Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

The piano works of Australian composer Raymond Hanson are relatively unknown today. Largely self-taught, Hanson influenced an entire generation, mentoring composers such as Richard Meale, Nigel Butterley and Larry Sitsky, yet his name is rarely mentioned in Australian music literature. When it does appear, the focus tends to be on his obscurity, for which the most recurrent explanation is that his compositions fell between two stylistic periods. Hanson is persistently represented as initially too radical for the pre-1960s conservatives, and later too conservative for the 1960s modernists.

This radical-conservative binary theory has been repeated so often that it has come to encapsulate Hanson’s historical position and the widespread historical understanding of his work. It has effectively shut down dialogue about Hanson, implying that his music was a static entity that failed to align with the artistic expectations of the times. In fact, Hanson’s music evolved and matured, and was enthusiastically received and admired at many junctures of his career. My research into his piano works throws down the gauntlet at this theory, shedding new light on an old legend.

Australian/Sierra-Leonean pianist Tonya Lemoh holds performance degrees from conservatoriums in Australia, the US and Denmark, and completed her PhD (“The Piano Works of Raymond Hanson – Discovery, exploration and reflection”) at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music. She was a lecturer on the piano faculty of the University of Copenhagen for ten years. An award-winning recording artist, Lemoh has performed extensively in the US and Europe and recorded for ABC Radio, Danish National Radio and Danish television.

Room 4026

Zoom url: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85724827030?pwd=eVAwVWc4R1lXdXo2NXhNS0htZVlyZz09

PASSWORD: 502560

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Featured artists

• Music of Raymond Hanson