April, May and June 2024 Concert Program

Concert Program

We’re trying something different with our program notes in 2024. Concerts that feature as part of our Exquisite Classical Experiences offering will be available in regular print editions, and available for digital viewing on our website at melbournerecital.com.au/programs

EXQUISITE CLASSICAL EXPERIENCES PARTNER

The Langham Melbourne

If you are attending multiple events featured in this program, we kindly ask that you consider the environment and re-use your program during your next visit.

Melbourne Recital Centre acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work, live, perform and learn. We pay our respects to people of the Kulin nation, their Elders past and present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Jakob Lindberg

– The Lute in Europe c. 1600

Friday 5 April

Primrose Potter Salon

Program

Robert Ballard (c.1575-after 1650)

Entrée de luth

Branles de village (Village Dances)

Simone Molinaro (c.1565-1615)

Fantasia XI

Ballo detto il Conte Orlando

Fantasia I

Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (c.1580-1651)

Toccata Arpeggiata

Courante

Daniel Bacheler (1572-1619)

Prelude

La jeune fillette

Courante

Anonymous

Five Scottish Tunes

John Dowland (c.1563-1626)

Prelude

Pavan

Galliard

Fantasia

Duration:

approx. 1 hour, no interval

About the Artist

Jakob Lindberg lute

Jakob Lindberg was born in Djursholm in Sweden and developed his first passionate interest in music through The Beatles. He started to play the guitar and soon became interested in the classical repertoire. From the age of fourteen he studied with Jörgen Rörby who also gave him his first tuition on the lute. After reading music at Stockholm University, he went to London to study at the Royal College of Music, where he further developed his knowledge of the lute repertoire under the guidance of Diana Poulton and decided towards the end of his studies to concentrate on renaissance and baroque music; he is now one of the most prolific performers in this field.

Jakob has made numerous recordings for BIS, many of which are pioneering in that they present a wide range of music on CD for the first time. He has brought Scottish lute music to public attention, demonstrated the beauty of the Italian repertoire for chitarrone and recorded chamber music by Vivaldi, Haydn and Boccherini on period instruments. He is the first lutenist to have recorded the complete solo lute music by John Dowland and his 1992 recording of Bach’s music for solo lute is considered to be one of the most important readings of these works. Some of the most recently released are: Italian Virtuosi of the Chitarrone, Jacobean Lute Music, Nocturnal (including a recording on the lute of Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal Op. 70), Jan Antonin Losy – note d’oro, and Bach on the Rauwolf Lute.

An active continuo player on the theorbo and arch lute, Jakob has worked with many well-known English ensembles including The English Concert, Taverner Choir, The Purcell Quartet, Monteverdi Choir, Chiaroscuro, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The Academy of Ancient Music. He is also in demand as an accompanist and has given many recitals with Emma Kirkby. He assisted Andrew Parrott in the musical direction of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas given by The Royal Swedish Opera at Drottningholm Court Theatre in 1995, and also directed from the chitarrone the much-acclaimed performances of Jacopo Peri’s Euridice given there in 1997.

It is particularly through his live solo performances that he has become known as one of the finest lutenists in the world today, with concerts all over the globe from Tokyo and Beijing in the East to San Francisco and Mexico City in the West.

In addition to his busy life as a performer, Jakob Lindberg teaches at the Royal College of Music in London where he succeeded Diana Poulton as professor of lute in 1979.

About the Music

Welcome to a world of music at once playful and meditative, elegant and boisterous, melancholy and exuberant – a world which captivated Europe’s royal courts in the decades around the turn of the 17th century. Welcome to the golden age of lute music.

How the lute gradually reached this period of glory is a complex story. We owe the instrument’s development in Europe in part to the Muslim conquest of Spain in the eighth century, which brought the oud, the lute’s middle eastern sibling, from the Arab world; and to North-South trading routes which saw not only the exchange of raw materials but a flowering interchange of musical ideas.

Some of the earliest surviving books of lute tablature were published in Italy, in the early 16th century. The following decades saw a flowering of lute music which helped spread this Italian influence across the continent, for Italy’s lutenists were also often employed at foreign courts. And this was not a time when the roles of composer and performer were demarcated; over time – and with the ongoing development of the instrument – the pieces by these extraordinary musicians became more complex, coming to require the kind of supple improvisatory skills that we now associate with jazz.

France is where your journey begins in this concert, with the music of Robert Ballard – or more precisely Robert Ballard II, for his father ran a prominent firm of music publishers. Robert the younger wrote prolifically and was, at one time, music tutor to the young Louis XIII. His Entrée de luth has a graceful melancholy that sounds uncannily as if Eric Satie’s Gymnopédies has been composed 300 years early, while Ballard’s four short Village Dances, published in 1614, evoke the sound of the hurdy-gurdy or bagpipe, thanks in part to the haunting drone bass.

One of the places where lute music flourished with special vigour was Venice, a centre of music publishing and lutemaking. This is where Simone Molinaro’s Intavolatura di liuto libro primo first appeared in print. If the Ballo detto il Conte Orlando sounds familiar to you, that could be because it was re-imagined in the early 20th century by Respighi, as one of his Ancient Airs and Dances.

Where 16th century lute books were often published with the amateur market in mind, Kapsberger created his lute music for more rarefied circles, and after he moved to Rome in 1605, he became associated with some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential families. He created one of the pieces you hear tonight for the lute’s larger, and younger, sibling the chitarrone: the Toccata Arpeggiata is a miracle of textural invention and harmonic suspense which, at first hearing, sounds as if it might have been written by Bach. Incidentally, although Kapsberger is so important a figure in the history of the instrument, and his Libro primo d’intavolatura di lauto is so seminal a collection, we know nothing of his date and place of birth, or his early life.

As the music moves to the British Isles, the first musician you’ll meet is Daniel Bacheler. By his time, the lute had well and truly taken hold in English royal circles. Elizabeth I played the lute, and in the 1590s had five lutenists at court, as did her successor, James I. Bacheler – one of these ‘by appointment’ musicians – created music of exceptional sophistication, suggesting a performance style which combined dexterity, wit and daring. His extensive variations on the popular ballad La jeune fillette show how deeply he could explore the lute’s sonorities, from the delicate to the boisterous. He also uses the instrument’s lower register to great expressive effect.

So much music has been lost down the centuries, that the richness of the surviving lute repertoire from this ‘golden age’ might be thought a miracle. Nevertheless, many of these pieces survive only in manuscript, in hand-written lute books which do not always name a composer. The Five Scottish Tunes, for example, are given simple and charming settings, by someone whose name is now lost to the mists of time.

In addition to being the composer of some of the most exquisitely melancholy songs ever created (Flow my tears, Now o now I needs must part), John Dowland was, as Jakob Lindberg has written, ‘the greatest composer for the lute in England’. He aimed for, but failed to secure, an appointment to the court of Elizabeth I and, after working in France, Germany, Italy and Denmark, eventually became one of James I’s lutenists. His music combines tunefulness, invention, graceful and often poignant harmonies, all allied to what lutenist Robert Spencer once called a ‘seriousness of intent’. Dowland must also have been a performer of great skill and sensitivity, even by the standards of this golden age for the lute.

©Phillip Sametz

2024

Tuesday 20 August 6pm & 8pm

Primrose Potter Salon

Step into a world of transcendent musicality with Trio Gaspard, one of the most sought-after piano trios of their generation, and witness what critics have described as ‘richly coloured, honest, and full of joy’ (Ensemble Magazine).

Satu Vänskä & Konstantin Shamray

Friday 28 June 6pm & 8pm

Primrose Potter Salon

In this evening of mesmerising melodies, Principal Violin of the Australian Chamber Orchestra Satu Vänskä and modern piano maestro Konstantin Shamray unite for an exploration of the enchanting landscapes of Finland and beyond.

JACK Quartet

Wednesday 10 April

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Program

About the Quartet

7PM: STRING CREATURES

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)

String Quartet 1931

i. Rubato assai

ii. Leggiero

iii. Andante

iv. Allegro possibile

Elliott Carter (1908-2012)

String Quartet No.1

i. Fantasia. Maestoso - Allegro scorrevole

ii. Allegro scorrevole - Adagio

iii. Variations

Liza Lim

String Creatures AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

i. Cat’s Cradle (three diagrams of grief)

ii. Untethered

iii. A nest is woven from the inside out

Liza Lim’s String Creatures is co-commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, Miller Theatre at Columbia University and Melbourne Recital Centre for the JACK Quartet

Duration:

approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes, including interval

9:30PM: UP LATE

Vicente Hansen Atria new string quartet

Johnny Macmillan

Songs from the Seventh Floor

Christopher Otto

Miserere, after Nathaniel Giles

Caleb Burhans

Contritus

Austin Wulliman

Hoquetus David, after Guillaume De Mechaut

Gabriella Smith

Carrot Revolution

Duration:

approx. 75 minutes, no interval

JACK Quartet

Christopher Otto violin

Austin Wulliman violin

John Richards viola

Jay Campbell cello

Undeniably our generation’s ‘leading new-music foursome,’ the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet’s ‘stylistic range, precision and passion have made the group one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles’ (The New York Times). Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK was founded in 2005 and operates as a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music, synchronised in its mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening. Through intimate, longstanding relationships with many of today’s most creative voices, the quartet has a prolific commissioning and recording catalog, has been nominated for three GRAMMY Awards, and is the 2024 recipient of Chamber Music America’s Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

The JACK Quartet makes its home in New York City, where it is the Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music at The New School and provides mentorship to Mannes’s Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet. They also teach each summer at New Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont for young performers and composers. JACK has long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall and spring, as well as with the Lucerne Festival Academy, of which the four members are all alumni.

POST-CONCERT TALK

Following the 7pm performance, Liza Lim will join Melbourne Recital Centre’s Director of Programming, Marshall McGuire, for a 20-minute discussion about the Australian Premiere of her new Melbourne Recital Centre commissioned work String Creatures and more.

About the Music

7PM: STRING CREATURES

Although the breadth of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s legacy has come to be better understood in the USA in recent years, to Australian audiences she is still an essentially mysterious figure. Seeing her name in this program might suggest that she worked exclusively as a composer; her musical life was far more varied than that term suggests.

Crawford was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, and used it to travel to Berlin and Paris in 1930 where she planned to write a symphony. But the symphony refused to be written, and, as she put it, ‘insisted on becoming a string quartet.’ This is the work you hear in this performance.

In Europe, Crawford met Berg and Bartok but rejected neo-classicism and showed no interest in studying with Schoenberg. During this trip she declared: ‘To work alone: I am convinced this is what I should do, to discover what I really want.’ In the 1920s, her first compositions found a champion in Henry Cowell, who arranged for her to study composition with Charles Seeger in New York. Already married with three children when their association began, Seeger divorced his first wife and, in 1932, he and Crawford married. They had four children together and, after moving to Washington D.C. in 1935, Crawford’s musical world changed profoundly. Now working at the Archive of American Folk Song, she subsequently became best known for her work as editor and advocate for traditional American music, and for her classroom teaching. She returned to composition in the late 1940s before succumbing to cancer at the age of 52.

Cowell called Crawford ‘a completely natural dissonant composer’, and it’s the dissonant counterpoint that makes the work so far-reaching in its influence; later composers, Elliot Carter among them, acknowledged this quartet as a significant influence on their work. Each movement has its own distinct narrative arc and emotional identity. Perhaps the third movement is her most famous piece, its diaphanous simultaneity suggesting Debussy and Ives, but filtered through a unique, disciplined voice which can turn dissonance into a powerful expressive device.

You can hear Crawford’s ‘counterpoint of dynamics’ (Charles Seeger’s description) anticipating some of the innovations in Carter’s String Quartet No.1 (1951), a landmark in his long composing life. From the time of his Cello Sonata of 1948, Carter’s musical language began to become bolder, particularly in his ability to create simultaneous but contrasting musical events, and seemingly seamless changes in tempo and metre. With this Quartet, however, he took these concepts several steps further.

A disciple of Charles Ives, whom he’d met as teenager, Carter drew on the older composer’s ideas about musical simultaneity to create this epic, densely argued work.

Another source of inspiration was Jean Cocteau’s 1932 film

The Blood of the Poet, in which, as Carter put it, ‘the entire dream-like action is framed by an interrupted slow-motion shot of a tall brick chimney in an empty lot being dynamited.’

In one sense, Carter parallels this idea by starting the quartet with a solo passage for cello, and concluding it with the violin taking up the passage where the cello left it. But on another level Carter takes his cue from Cocteau’s ability to play with perceptions of time. The work is in four continuous movements, but there are two short pauses within movements: one in the middle of the Allegro scorrevole, another just after the Variations have begun.

About her new work, Liza Lim writes:

Instead of a ‘string quartet’ (a numerical designation), I use the term ‘string creatures’ to describe my work and the JACK Quartet as a hybrid organism, as a multiplicity of bodies and minds and desires.

There’s something magical about string. Rather than an inert substance, strings have an animacy that offers a generative language for thinking about relations in the world: binding and unbinding, entanglement, knots, frictions, tensions. Lines, threads and fibres can take textilic form as net, mesh, weave, nest. A string retains every twist and turn that it encounters and so is an ideal form for thinking about memory, storytelling, magic—forms of time and of seduction. As soon as you pick up a piece of string, you want to fiddle with it, turn it into a cat’s cradle and join your story with someone else’s.

The work begins with three short diagrams of grief: Gestures like fingernails ripping into skin, repeated cries of lamentation, and laboured breathing are patterned into music. The second part, Untethered, plays with these elements, expanding and contracting them in time, questioning the fixity of things whilst weaving a shifting fabric of glittering sound. The final part, A nest is woven from the inside out, looks for kinship between the way a bird creates a home by moulding fibres around its body and a music that organically emerges out of rubbing, brushing and sweeping actions made by musicians on and with their instruments.

The JACK Quartet gave the world premiere of String Creatures on 14 August 2022 as part of the Lucerne Festival.

Notes on the Seeger and Carter works © Phillip Sametz 2024

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Jane Austen’s Music

Saturday 4 May

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545

I. Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

March from Le nozze di Figaro, K.492

Carl Davis (1936-2023)

Opening Music from Pride and Prejudice

Patrick Doyle

‘My Father’s Favourite’ from Sense and Sensibility

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Bagatelle No.25 in A minor ‘Für Elise’ WoO 59

Patrick Doyle

‘Willoughby’ from Sense and Sensibility

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Hornpipe from ‘Water Music’ HWV 349

Anon.

Grimstock

Trad.

Mrs Huston’s Strathspey

Nathaniel Gow (1763-1831)

Mrs Rutherford of Egerton

Henry Purcell (c.1659-1695)

Abdelazer, Z.570

ii. Rondeau

iii. Air (D major)

iv. Air (G major)

v. Minuet

vi. Air (G minor)

vii. Hornpipe ‘Hole in the Wall’

viii. Jig

Henry Purcell (c.1659-1695)

Chaconne from ‘The Fairy Queen’ Z. 629

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (c.1659-1695)

Piano Concerto No.21 in C K 467

i. Allegro maestoso

ii. Andante

iii. Allegro vivace assai

Artists

Rachael Beesley music director

Aura Go piano

Lizzy Bennet’s Band

First Violin

Rachael Beesley

Marlane Bennie

Jaso Sasaki

Second Violin

Kathryn Taylor

Philippa West

Ben Castle

Viola

Gabby Halloran

Merewyn Bramble

Cello

Josephine Vains

Zoe Wallace

Double Bass

Kylie Davies

Flute

Lily Bryant

Oboe

Rachel Bullen

Clarinet

Lloyd Van’t Hoff

Bassoon

Matthew Kneale

Horn

Sharon Hatton

POST-CONCERT TALK

Following this exquisite performance, Rachael Beesley and Aura Go join Melbourne Recital Centre’s Director of Programming, Marshall McGuire, in the ground floor foyer for a 20-minute discussion about the music. Take a seat and enjoy this perfect conclusion to your musical experience.

About the Music

‘Without music,’ Mrs Elton declared in Emma, ‘life would be a blank to me.’

Though it was said by one of her characters, in Jane Austen’s own life the sentiment rang true. Music was an integral part of Austen’s own character, and featured heavily in the tales of her heroines. In the time of Jane Austen, music was in endless supply, the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn composed prolifically. Herself an accomplished pianist, Austen is believed to have played every day. When it came time for her work to make the leap from page to screen, Austen’s era of music came with it. Whether it’s relaxed pianoforte in a private salon or a lively dance at the Netherfield Ball, classical music framed Austen’s world for film and TV, and still today provides us with a live connection to it.

Every generation of Austen fans (self-penned Janeites or Janiacs) has their favourite iteration of the classic novels. But one that seems to transcend time is the 1995 BBC series of Pride and Prejudice. There’s Jennifer Ehle’s career-defining turn as Elizabeth Bennet, and let’s not get started on Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy and that lake scene. It’s Carl Davis’ now iconic opening theme which welcomes us to Longbourn at the start of every episode. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was lifted straight from the back catalogue of one of the great Classical composers, with its whimsical up-tempo piano and elegant strings. Davis used Beethoven’s Septet in E flat as inspiration, a work that was popular during Austen’s lifetime. The piece reflects on many of the characters’ personalities; some charming, some a little devious, then airily noble before returning to its delightful main theme again.

Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro premiered in Vienna in 1786, when 11-year-old Jane and her sister were at school in Reading, Berkshire. This comic opera about the goings on between wily servants and their philandering employer in a noble household is considered one of the greatest operas of all time, and its themes fit well within the stable of Austen hallmarks. In the BBC series, Lizzy actually sings an aria from this opera, though in English, not in the original Italian (Voi Che Sapete), at Pemberley while Mr Darcy fondly watches on. The March in Act III occurs as the household readies for the wedding and the characters perform a stately dance.

Mozart was a famously active composer, his Piano Concerto No.21 in C debuted only one year prior to Figaro, Wolfgang himself played at the premiere. This piece is sometimes known as the Elvira Madigan Concerto, due to the 1967 film’s use of the second movement. The movie has long been forgotten, but the concerto remains ever popular among virtuosic pianists. It is demanding of the soloist, requiring delicate playfulness and pinpoint articulation, plus nuanced collaboration with the orchestral players around them.

The piece opens with the same lively atmosphere as Figaro, with little fanfares floating out from the wind section. The second movement is famous for a reason, a memorable melody starts softly and sweetly, gathering apace until we arrive at the final movement, full of high-spirited fun.

The Piano Concerto No.21 in C is an example of a work Austen would have heard during her lifetime. Mozart was popular for many reasons, one due to many of his pieces being able to be played in domestic settings. The sort of thing you might imagine Mary Bennet or Anne Elliott attempting at home.

Jane Austen is one of the most adapted authors of all time. Littered across the years, genres and languages, there’s at least five screen adaptions of Sense and Sensibility ’s, six Emma’s and more than eight Pride and Prejudices, including Bridget Jones’s Diary. English composer Rachel Portman was the first woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Original Score, for Emma (the Gwyneth Paltrow one) in 1996. Indeed, this very program is directed by a woman, Rachael Beesley and features a female soloist, Aura Go – Jane herself would have been proud!

Another piece with innumerable appearances throughout pop culture is Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’. Composed in 1810, it wasn’t published until 1867, long after both Austen’s (1817) and Beethoven’s deaths (1827). Scholars have argued over who the Elise in Beethoven’s life was. The written dedication was to one Therese Malfatti, though others believe Elise might have been a soprano named Elisabeth who sung in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. We might not know who she is, but the work itself is an utterly unforgettable, bite-sized showpiece for piano.

If you’re a well-versed Janiac, (and you’re here so you probably are) you know the importance of a ball. Where matches are made or scandalously ruined: country dances, cotillions and quadrilles were a pillar of societal life. One could only converse with a man outside of one’s family’s circle if only one could dance, so two left feet were hardly an option. As Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice, ‘To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love’. Composer Henry Purcell’s time predates Austen, though the ‘Chaconne’ from his opera The Fairy Queen, has the same feeling of a Regency dance.

Jane Austen’s commentary and contemplations on the world around her have stood the test of time. This music gives us the chance to reflect on her astute observations, her skewering of polite society and her ever-present appreciation of staying true to oneself.

©Bridget Davies 2024

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Joshua Bell and Academy of St Martin in the Fields perform to a sold-out Elisabeth Murdoch Hall in October 2023.

Yeol Eum Son

Tuesday 4 June

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Program

Georges Bizet (1838-1975)

Variations chromatiques de concert  (Chromatic Variations)

Carl Czerny (1791-1857)

Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op.33

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Transcendental Études, S.139 ix. Ricordanza (Andantino) - 1852

Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)

Variations on a Theme of Steibelt, Op.1 - 1828

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Piano Sonata No.29 in B-flat ‘Hammerklavier’, Op.106

Duration:

2 hours and 15 minutes, including interval

About the Artists

Yeol Eum Son piano Poetic elegance, an innate feeling for expressive nuance and the power to project bold, dramatic contrasts are among the arresting attributes of Yeol Eum Son’s pianism. Her refined artistry rises from breathtaking technical control and a profound empathy for the emotional temper of the works within her strikingly wide repertoire. She is driven above all by her natural curiosity to explore a multitude of musical genres and styles and the desire to reveal what she describes as the “pure essence” of everything she performs. Yeol Eum refuses to impose limits on her artistic freedom and remains determined to explore new artistic territory. Her choice of repertoire, which spans everything from the works of Bach and Mozart to those of Shchedrin and Kapustin, is guided chiefly by the quality and depth of the music.

Yeol Eum attracted international attention when she secured second prize and the Best Chamber Music Performance at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition. She underlined her position among the most gifted artists of her generation at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition, where she won the Silver Medal and received the coveted competition’s prizes for Best Chamber Concerto Performance and Best Performance of the Commissioned Work.

Over the past decade Yeol Eum has achieved global acclaim not least for her interpretations of Mozart’s piano concertos. In 2016 she joined the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner in what proved to be the conductor’s final recording, setting down a radiant interpretation of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 for Onyx Classics. She made her London debut at Cadogan Hall with the same work and orchestra in 2018 and enchanted the audience at the Royal Albert Hall the following year with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.15 for her debut at the BBC Proms. The YouTube video of her performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 at the International Tchaikovsky Competition has been viewed almost 23 million times, thought to be a record figure for any live Mozart work on the platform.

POST-CONCERT TALK

Following this exquisite performance, Yeol Eum Son joins Melbourne Recital Centre’s Director of Programming, Marshall McGuire, in the ground floor foyer for a 20-minute discussion about her artistry, career, and more. Take a seat and enjoy this perfect conclusion to your musical experience.

About the Music

This program may end with Beethoven, but as is so often true, it really all begins with Beethoven. Everyone else follows with some kind of transcendent variation. The pieces of this program are from a particularly plentiful period in music-making, a time when seemingly everyone in the arts was someone. Famous composers and musicians knew and inspired one another, weaving a fascinating link in the creation of their collective art. Beethoven taught Carl Czerny, who taught Franz Liszt, who was friends with Charles-Valentin Alkan, and Georges Bizet, whose Variations are inspired by a set of Beethoven’s own.

Following this thread all the way back, we find ourselves atop the pinnacle of Beethoven’s piano composition. Where most pianists fear to tread, the Hammerklavier is a masterpiece which stands as one of the most demanding works in the entire classical piano repertoire. While it’s universally respected, it’s not exactly widely loved. No one ever lists Hammerklavier as their favourite piano sonata. Its reputation as being near unplayable is derived from a few factors.

The 1818 work calls for furious athleticism on the part of the player, partially because of the tempo. For centuries, this in and of itself has been a topic of furious debate. The Hammerklavier is the only one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas where he wrote down a metronome mark. If the great man himself only ever bothered to write it in once, we should pay attention to it, right? Well attention certainly, but no one has settled on an immovable answer.

The tempo is written as minim (half note) = 138. In an 1840 biography written by a friend of Beethoven’s, Anton Schindler, he wrote, ‘the minim increases it to so fearful a prestissimo as Beethoven could never have intended’ and suggested a speed, such that would appease the composer’s intentions, to minim = 116. Beethoven’s star pupil Carl Czerny, known to be the first interpreter of the composer’s later piano works, puts the speed at the original 138. However, the great German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow wrote that Czerny’s tempo, ‘so little agrees with the ponderous energy of the theme’ and that if it was to be played on a modern piano, it would have a ‘bewildering and blurring effect’. He made his own suggestion of minim = 112.

It was Franz Liszt who gave the first documented performance of the Hammerklavier, in Paris in 1836. Hector Berlioz was in the audience and gave a fervent review. ‘Liszt has explained the work in such a way that if the composer himself and returned from the grave, joy and pride would have swept over him. No note was left out.’

In modern times, one theory is that Beethoven’s metronome was simply broken. The pianist András Schiff gleefully dispelled this myth in the 2000s, when he declared to a London audience that upon recently visiting the Musikverein in Vienna, he held the great master’s metronome in his hands. ‘I swear to God, it works!’ He exclaimed.

It seems no one can settle on a speed. Data released by a German institute in 2021 compared the recordings of 45 pianists over almost 100 years and found none of them reached Beethoven’s 138.

The Hammerklavier is a colossus in more ways than one. It set the precedent for the length of piano sonatas – most performances take about 45 minutes – and the last movement is an entire fugue in itself. It might not be described as pretty, but it is powerful and grand, with one of the most heartfelt Adagios you’ll ever hear.

A 21-year-old Carl Czerny debuted Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in Vienna in 1812. At the time, Czerny had a successful career as a pedagogue and found himself composing at night after he finished his lessons. Not that he felt very confident about his early compositions. In an 1825 letter to Beethoven he said that he felt his music was insignificant and he desired to do greater things. Czerny would eventually compose approximately 180 works with the title, Variations, his Op.33 is also known as La Ricordanza

Liszt composed his own Ricordanza, a lyrical, sentimental piece that comes from his Transcendental Études, published in 1852. The set of 12 studies was dedicated to his beloved teacher, Czerny. The Transcendental Études are a revision of an earlier set - Liszt originally planned to compose 24 etudes in all major and minor keys, but only finished half of them. Ricordanza is the ninth piece in the series.

Charles-Valentin Alkan was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatoire aged six. His Variations, using a theme from L’Orage, (The Storm) by Daniel Steibelt, date from 1828, when Alkan was just 14. By the 1830s, Alkan was one of the most revered pianists in Paris, he was admired by both Liszt and Chopin, with whom he was a devoted friend.

Like Alkan, Liszt and Czerny; Georges Bizet too was a prodigal child pianist, and had the same teacher at the Conservatoire as Alkan. His sight-reading ability was widely lauded. At a dinner party in 1861, Liszt was stunned as Bizet dazzlingly played one of his most difficult pieces, having never seen it before. His Variations chromatiques de concert, composed in 1868, would be his last works for piano and his only variations. They are thought to have been inspired by Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor, a work Bizet is known to have played and admired.

©Bridget Davies 2024

Thank you to our generous donors

MUSIC CIRCLE

Thank you to the donors who support the depth and vibrancy of the Centre’s musical program and play a crucial role in ensuring we can continue to present a broad range of the greatest musicians and ensembles from Australia and around the globe.

Salon Program Benefactor

Lady Primrose Potter ac

$30,000+

Robert Peck am, Yvonne von Hartel am, Rachel Peck & Marten Peck of peckvonhartel architects (Signature Event Circle Benefactors)

Joy Selby Smith

$20,000+

Konfir Kabo & Monica Lim

The Peggy & Leslie Cranbourne Foundation

Cathy Simpson & John Simpson am (Signature Event Circle)

$10,000+

Anonymous (1)

John & Lorraine Bates

Esther & Brian Benjamin

Warwick & Paulette Bisley

Jim Cousins ao & Libby Cousins am (Signature Event Circle)

Craig & Bernadette Drummond

Barbara Hutchinson in memory of her late husband Darvell M Hutchinson

Jane Kunstler

Andrew Wheeler am & Jan Wheeler (Signature Event Circle)

Igor Zambelli (Signature Event Circle)

$7,500+

Alex King (Signature Event Circle)**

$5,000+

Arnold & Mary Bram

John Castles am & Thelma Castles oam

The Hon Susan Crennan ao kc & Michael Crennan kc

Mary Draper am

Linda Herd

Kathryn Greiner ao

Diana Lempriere

Maria McCarthy

Tom Smyth**

Janet Thomson

Vivian Wang

Lyn Williams AM

Youth Music Foundation of Australia Inc (Signature Event Circle)

$2,500+

Donald Abell

Bill Burdett am & Sandra Burdett

Alastair Campbell & Sue Campbell

Kerin Carr

Assoc Prof Jody Evans

Colin Golvan am kc & Dr Deborah Golvan**

Ballandry (Peter Griffin Family) Fund

Catherine Heggen

Dr Alastair Jackson am

Paul Jasper

Ann Lahore

Simon Le Plastrier*

Shelley & Euan Murdoch

Emeritus Professor

Margaret Plant

Christopher Menz & Peter Rose

Sirius Foundation

Maria Sola

Jenny Tatchell

Dr Victor Wayne & Dr Karen Wayne oam

$1,000+

Anonymous (4)

Clare Acherson

Robert Baker

Liz & Charles Baré

Michael Bennett & Kate Stockwin^

Kaye Birks in the memory of David

Helen Brack

Jannie Brown

Maggie Cash

The Hon Alex Chernov ac kc & Elizabeth Chernov

Kaye Cleary

Christine & Michael Clough

John & Chris Collingwood

Brian Crisp

The Hon Mary Delahunty

The Hon Justice Julie Dodds-Streeton**

Brigitte Treutenaere & Paul Donnelly

Lord Francis Ebury & the Late Lady Suzanne Ebury

Kathryn Fagg ao & Kevin Altermatt

Margaret Farren-Price & Prof Ronald FarrenPrice am

Andrew Firestone

Mark Freeman

Kingsley Gee

Ann Gordon

Gras Foundation Trust

The Hon David L Harper am**

Lyndsey & Peter Hawkins

Alistair Hay & Dr Jennifer Miller

Robert Heathcote**

Peter Heffey

Dr Robert Hetzel

Doug Hooley

Jenny & Peter Hordern

John Howie am & Dr Linsey Howie*

Prof Andrea Hull ao

In memory of the Late Harry Johnson

Norah Breekveldt & Andrew Katona*

Angela Kayser

Assoc Prof Sebastian King^

MacKenzie Gobbo Foundation

Maryanne B Loughnan kc**

In memory of John Price

The Mard Foundation

Janet McDonald

Banjo McLachlan & Paul Mahony

Mercer Family Foundation

Maria Mercurio

Dennis & Fairlie Nassau

Stephen Newton ao

Dr Paul Nisselle am

Greg Noonan

Susan Pelka & Richard Caven

Christopher Reed

Ralph & Ruth Renard

Resonance FundMichael Cowen & Sharon Nathani

Eda Ritchie am

Clara Rubera

Anne Runhardt & Glenn Reindel

Viorica Samson

Terry & Margaret Sawyer

Jacqueline Schwarz

Greg Shalit & Miriam Faine

Dr Vaughan Speck

Iain Stewart

Helen Symon kc & Ian Lulham

John Taberner & Grant Lang

Susan Thacore

Michael Troy

The Ullmer Family Foundation

Jennifer Whitehead

$500+

Anonymous (5)

Lesley Alway

Jenny Anderson

Heather Carmody & Anthony Baird

Maureen Barden

Catherine Belcher

Dr David Bernshaw & Caroline Isakow

The Hon Justice

David Byrne kc

Dr Geoffrey Clarke

Emilia Cross

Bruce Dudon

Martin Duffy & Patrick Kennedy

Jean Dunn

Chris Egan

Susan Fallaw

Dr Jane Gilmour oam & Terry Brian*

Janine Gleeson

George Golvan kc & Naomi Golvan

Liz Grainger

Helen Herman

The Hon Hartley

Hansen am kc & Rosalind Hansen**

Rosemary & David Houseman

Assoc Prof James Hurley

Joan Janka

Dr George Janko

Dr Garry Joslin

Irene Kearsey & Michael Ridley

Sean King

Daniel Kirkham

Angela & Richard Kirsner

Dr Anne Lierse am

Helen Lovass

Barbara Manovel

Jennifer K Marshall

Jane Morris

Tim Orton and Barbara Dennis

Bruce Parncutt ao

Helen Perlen

Erskine Rodan oam & Christine Rodan

Kerryn Pratchett

Jim Short

Simon Strickland

Bernard Sweeney

Charles Tegner

Robin Usher & Mandy Meade

Helen Vorrath

Tony Way

ACCESS TO MUSIC AND LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL

Thank you to the donors who support learning and access programs which share the music by bringing high quality music and learning opportunities to people from all walks of life.

$100,000+

Prof Dimity Reed am

$30,000+

Hansen Little Foundation

$20,000+

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty am

$10,000+

The Calvert-Jones Foundation

Canny Quine Foundation

Gailey Lazarus Foundation

The Hon Justice Michelle

Gordon ac & The Hon

Kenneth M Hayne ac kc**

The Sentinel Foundation

$5,000+

D & X Williamson Family Charitable Fund

The Jack & Hedy Brent Foundation

$2,500+

Anne Burgi & Kerin Carr

Kathy Deutsch & Dr George Deutsch oam

$1,000+

Anonymous (2)

Keith & Debby Badger

Debbie Brady

Maria Hansen

Doug Hooley

Dr Barry Jones ac & Rachel Faggetter

Prof John Langford am & Julie Langford

Ann Miller

The Hon Ralph Willis ao & Carol Willis

$500+

Anonymous (1)

Kevin Byrne

Elise Callander

Jack & Vivien Fajgenbaum

Nina Friedman & Jarrad Pyke

June K Marks

Miriam McDonald

Lorraine Moir

Andrew & Georgina Porter

Dr Ronald Rosanove & Elizabeth Rosanove

NURTURING ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT

Thank you to the donors who support our enriching artist development programs to help create a wide range of opportunities for local musicians to ensure a vibrant musical future for the Centre, Victoria and beyond.

Betty Amsden Kids and Family Program Benefactor

The late Betty Amsden ao dsj

Young Artist Development Benefactor

The Peggy and Leslie Cranbourne Foundation

Merlyn Myer Music Commission

The Aranday Foundation

The Yulgilbar Foundation

$30,000+

Margaret S Ross am & Dr Ian C Ross

$10,000+

Warwick & Paulette Bisley

George & Laila Embelton

Julie Kantor ao

The Vizard Foundation

$5,000+

Anonymous (1)

Dr Mary-Jane Gething ao

Rosemary O’Connor*

$2,500+

Jo Fisher & Peter Grayson

Peter J Stirling & Kimberley Kane**

$1,000+

Peter J Armstrong*

Zoe Brinsden*

Timothy Goodwin**

In memory of the Late

Harry Johnson

Martine Letts

Dr Richard Mills am

Anne Runhardt & Glenn Reindel

Christine Sather*

$500+

Leslie Thiess

A LASTING LEGACY

Thank you to this extraordinary group of donors for supporting the future of Melbourne Recital Centre both now and for generations to come.

Inaugural Patrons

Jim Cousins ao & Libby Cousins am

Anonymous (4)

Jenny Anderson

John & Lorraine Bates

The Late Betty Amsden ao dsj

Barbara Blackman ao

Jennifer Brukner oam

The Estate of Kenneth Bullen

Jen Butler

Emilia Cross

The Estate of Beverley Shelton & Martin Schönthal

Kingsley Gee & Zhen Fu Guan

Charles Taylor Hardman

Jenny & Peter Hordern

Dr Garry Joslin

Jane Kunstler

Janette McLellan

Rosemary O’Connor

Elizabeth O’Keeffe

Penny Rawlins

Prof Dimity Reed am

Vivienne Ritchie am

Christopher Menz & Peter Rose

Sandy Shaw

Mary Vallentine ao

TAKE YOUR SEAT

Thank you to the donors who have dedicated an Elisabeth Murdoch Hall seat in the last twelve months.

Michael Bennett

Bill Burdett am & Sandra Burdett

Anne Burgi

Kerin Carr

Andrew & Theresa Dyer

Colin Golvan am kc & Dr Deborah Golvan

Kate Irving

Jane Keech

Reg & Norma Keech

Ian & June Marks

Christina McLeish

Michael Muntisov

Susan Riebl

* Ensemble Giovane

** Legal Friends

^ Medical Friends

List of patrons as at 6 March 2024

Music Circle

You are invited to become part of the Music Circle by making an annual, tax-deductible, gift of $1,000 or more. By donating to Melbourne Recital Centre, you will be joining a community of fellow music-lovers who are passionate about chamber music in Melbourne. Your annual Music Circle donation will bring great music to life in our city by supporting opportunities for talented local artists to build flourishing careers, as well as providing a platform for the greatest musicians from around the world to move, excite, and delight local audiences.

In appreciation of the crucial role that you will play in filling Melbourne Recital Centre with great music, you will enjoy special invitations throughout the year to gather after concerts and meet the wonderful international and local artists whose performances they make possible. Your gift will be recognised on our website, in our Annual Report, and in concert programs.

Donate to the Music Circle today and play your part in bringing live music to life at Melbourne Recital Centre.

Donate here

To learn more, visit melbournerecital.com.au/support or contact Sylvie Huigen, Development Manager on (03) 9207 2648 or sylvie.huigen@melbournerecital.com.au

Our Supporters

Founding Patron

The Late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch ac dbe

Life Members

Lin Bender am

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ao

Jim Cousins ao

Kathryn Fagg ao

Margaret Farren-Price & Ronald Farren-Price am

Richard Gubbins

Founding Benefactors

The Kantor Family

The Calvert-Jones Family

Lyn Williams am

Helen Macpherson Smith Trust

Robert Salzer Foundation

The Hugh Williamson Foundation

Board Directors

Professor Andrea Hull ao, Chair

Paul Donnelly, Deputy Chair

Andrew Apostola

The Hon Mary Delahunty

Melbourne Recital Centre Management

Chief Executive Officer

Sandra Willis

Director of Programming

Marshall McGuire

Principal Government Partner

Director of Corporate Services

Sarah MacPherson

Head of Marketing and Visitor Experience

Latoyah Forsyth

Program Partners

Penny Hutchinson

Julie Kantor ao

Stephen McIntyre am

Richard Mills ao

Lady Primrose Potter ac

Jordi Savall

Mary Vallentine ao

Assoc Prof Jody Evans

Liz Grainger

Monica Lim

Peter McMullin am

Head of Operations

Jasja van Andel

Head of Development

Alistaire Bowler

Supporting Partners

Foundations

Coming Up at Melbourne Recital Centre

16 APR

Mostly Mozart – Glass Harmonica

MATINEE PERFORMANCE

11 MAY

Olivia Chindamo & Matthews Sheens

SELLING FAST

20 MAY

MATINEE PERFORMANCE

Mostly Mozart – Glories of the Clarinet

14 JUN

Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah

28 JUN

Satu Vänskä & Konstantin Shamray

SELLING FAST

23 APR

Quartz

17 MAY

Nat Bartsch Quartet – Busy/Quiet

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

24 MAY

The Boite – The Music Between

15 JUN

Melbourne Guitar Quartet – Trigram

5 JUL

ELISION + Ngulmiya

24 APR Lior

– A Preview of the Blue Parade

18 MAY Charles Maimarosia

30 MAY

Genevieve Lacey & Marshall McGuire – Wishing Songs

18 JUN

SARAY Iluminado – Bruised River

8 JUL

Xavier de Maistre + Affinity Quartet

To explore our full list of what’s on at the Centre, visit melbournerecital.com.au

SELLING FAST