Back in 2009 Musica Viva Australia asked me to take part in a music writing program called So you think you can write. They challenged audience members to write a review, and I had to give the entrants feedback and … Continue reading →

  The Sydney Conservatorium of Music Symphony Orchestra raised the roof of the Verbrugghen Hall last night at their first concert of the year, the Chancellor’s Concert. Under the baton of Maestro Eduardo Diazmunoz they performed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring … Continue reading →

Barry Kosky calls himself the extravagant minimalist. Love it. His approach is writ large on the main stage of the Adelaide Festival Centre in an exuberant production of Handel’s first oratorio, Saul. The staging is minimal — little more than a raked … Continue reading →

John Garran sent this to me as a comment but it’s too good a review to slip past as merely a comment. Especially as he has put into words pretty much exactly what I thought after the (same program) concert … Continue reading →

Louder. Faster. Higher: with superior instruments, highly-refined technique and an audience avid for pyrotechnics, nineteenth-century composers were liable to be sucked into an arms race of virtuosity when writing concertos. Brahms certainly did his best. Apparently Wieniawski thought it was unplayable. … Continue reading →

Here’s another feature in my occasional flashback series, from ten years ago, when the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs presented Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.  It was the perfect disguise. Discreetly homosexual, an animal-loving pacifist and, doubtless, on first name terms with the vicar, … Continue reading →

I got the Summer School blues on Wednesday, the day when you realise the week is going faster that seems possible. Then I got the Wall on Thursday, when you give in to the temptation to skip the second half … Continue reading →