Once again it's time for the most difficult assignment of the year: selecting five favourite works from the rich musical offerings heard in Canberra this year. And I am going to have to bend the rules again and nominate five categories.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Joint first place in the soloist category is shared by violinist Ray Chen who performed with Timothy Young in Llewellyn Hall, as part of the Musica Viva series; and Kevin Burke, traditional Irish fiddle player who gave a remarkable unaccompanied concert at the Abbey. Chen is at the beginning of his career, Burke is a veteran who made his name as a young musician at the forefront of the Irish Traditional Music revival in the 1970s. Chen won the audience with the combination of youth, technical excellence and acute sensitivity that make his performances remarkable and Burke entranced his listeners with his pure melodic drive and subtle variations.
Three orchestral performances remain uppermost in my mind: The CSO's concert –Mahler which visibly roused the entire audience with the energy of this composer's mighty First Symphony; Tognetti's Beethoven performed by the ACO in which the Coriolan Overture burst in a wave of exuberance into the auditorium and the Canberra Youth Orchestra's impressive rendering of Larry Sitsky's Concerto for Orchestra based on an amalgamation of Sitsky's musical ideas with Bach and Busoni, under the baton of Rowan Harvey-Martin. This concert was part of the 80th birthday celebrations for this exceptional Australian composer and appropriately demonstrated Sitsky's lifelong dedication to working with young and emerging musicians.
Canberra Choral Society's Alexander Balus was a majestic event featuring stellar performances by each soloist and sublime instrumental playing by the ensemble. And in the solo vocal realm, Christina Wilson's duet from Madame Butterfly with Inessa Galante at the Voices in the Forest concert reminded us of the world-class quality of our own Canberra mezzo-soprano.
In the Chamber music category, it is impossible to find finer musicians than the Borodin Quartet who held the audience spellbound with their interpretation of Dimitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor. Bernt Lysell, violin; Erik Wahlgren, cello; Bengt Forsberg, piano and Craig Hill, clarinet performed Messian's Quartet for the End of Time in one of the great performances of the Canberra International Music Festival in the Fitters Workshop in May.
To finish with, I would nominate this year's International Music Festival as a musical highlight in the cultural life of our city and acknowledge that Chis Latham's term as director has helped to build the festival into an event that we cannot do without.
