Canberra International Music Festival 2 – 12 May 2019
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CANBERRA INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL 2 – 12 MAY 2019 re/discover BACH FESTIVAL CALENDAR English Baroque with Circa 7.30 pm Thursday May 2 Llewellyn Hall 10 1 A World of Bach 7.30 pm Friday May 3 Fitters’ Workshop 15 2 Winther's Bach I 11 am Saturday May 4 Fitters’ Workshop 21 3 Shall We Dance? 2.30 pm Saturday May 4 Fitters’ Workshop 25 4 Winther's Bach Ii 5 pm Saturday May 4 Fitters’ Workshop 27 5 Latin Romance 8.30 pm Saturday May 4 Fitters’ Workshop 29 6 Bach's Orbit 11 am Sunday May 5 Fitters’ Workshop 31 National Gallery of Australia 7 Bach In the Central Desert 2.30 pm Sunday May 5 35 Gandel Hall 8 The Three Bs 6.30 pm Sunday May 5 Fitters’ Workshop 39 St. John's Anglican Church, Bach for Breakfast #1 8.30 am Monday May 6 43 Reid Australian National 9 Magic Garden 11.30 am Monday May 6 47 Botanic Garden Piano Masterclass 3 pm Monday May 6 ANU School of Music 49 10 St John Passion 6.30 pm Monday May 6 Fitters’ Workshop 51 National Arboretum Bach for Breakfast #2 8.30 am Tuesday May 7 53 Margaret Whitlam Pavilion 11 Up Close at Gorman 11 am Tuesday May 7 Gorman House 55 Quartet Masterclass 3 pm Tuesday May 7 Ainslie Arts Centre 58 12 Slava's Piano 6.30 pm Tuesday May 7 Fitters’ Workshop 59 Bach for Breakfast #3 8.30 am Wednesday May 8 Embassy of Finland 63 Mount Stromlo 13 Bach on the Mountain 11.30 am Wednesday May 8 65 Visitors' Centre 14 Brexit Blues 6.30 pm Wednesday May 8 Fitters’ Workshop 69 Bach for Breakfast #4 8.30 am Thursday May 9 Beaver Galleries, Deakin 73 8.45 am - Taste of the Country Thursday May 9 Annual Festival Trip 75 4.30 pm 15 Brodsky Quartet 7.30 pm Thursday May 9 Fitters’ Workshop 77 Canberra Girls' Grammar Bach for Breakfast #5 8.30 am Friday May 10 81 School Chapel Canberra Girls' Grammar 16 Bach the Teacher 11 am Friday May 10 83 School Chapel 17 THE CHILDREN'S BACH by Helen Garner 7.30 pm Friday May 10 Fitters’ Workshop 89 National Library Bach for Breakfast #6 8.30 am Saturday May 11 93 of Australia 18 Prelude and Fugue 11 am Saturday May 11 Fitters’ Workshop 95 19 Bach In Africa 2.30 pm Saturday May 11 Fitters’ Workshop 99 20 Goldberg Variations / Variations 5 pm Saturday May 11 Fitters’ Workshop 101 Smiths Alternative, Jazz Up Late 10 pm Saturday May 11 105 Alinga St 21 Bach for All 11 am Sunday May 12 Fitters’ Workshop 107 National Gallery of Australia 22 Augmented Piano: Solo for Duet 2.30 pm Sunday May 12 109 James O. Fairfax Theatre 23 Testament 6.30 pm Sunday May 12 Fitters’ Workshop 113 Welcome from Message from ACT Chief Minister Honorary Festival Patrons, Andrew Barr MLA Major General the Hon. Michael Jeffery and Mrs Marlena Jeffery Welcome to the 2019 Canberra International As the patrons of the Canberra International Music Festival – the 25th since its foundation in Music Festival, Marlena and I are immensely 1994. proud to see the Festival mark its 25th year as one of the foremost events of this city’s lively Over the last quarter-century the Festival cultural life. has established itself as a significant event in Australia’s cultural scene. Amid the vibrant Originally conceived as a small chamber music colours of the Canberra autumn it has brought festival to provide performance opportunities together musicians and music-lovers not just for the city’s music students, it has developed from this city but from across the country and over 25 years into an annual 10-day celebration beyond, to share their passion for our musical of local, interstate and international musical heritage and our musical future. talent, regularly supported by local residents Director Roland Peelman’s 2019 program and increasingly by interstate visitors. focuses on the great J.S. Bach, giving us an opportunity to welcome to Canberra the ladies With Roland Peelman at the helm as Artistic th of the Ntaria (Hermannsburg) community who Director, now in his 5 year in this role, we can sing Bach’s chorales in their own language – look forward to a program firmly rooted in Arrarnta. the mind of one of the greatest composers of Western music, J.S. Bach. Excitingly, the The program highlights a number of Australian composers, both established and up-and- program will also range widely over current coming, and devotes a day to exploring an developments in Australian music, from the important and often undervalued role – that of traditions of our oldest cultures to the next the music teacher. generation of young composers. It draws artists from Britain, France, Germany, Above all, it will be a people’s Festival, during Canada, the US, Chile and Colombia, Russia, and which the audience will get to know many of Africa, to entertain us and to inspire us with new these outstanding musicians. Our younger perspectives on the music we know and love. players will also benefit through invaluable We congratulate the Festival organisers on all opportunities to work with and learn from they have achieved over the last twenty-five established Australian and international years, and look forward to what is to come. performers. I welcome our interstate and international We warmly congratulate the Festival organisers visitors to the 2019 Canberra International Music and supporters on having achieved this Festival and hope they enjoy their time here in praiseworthy milestone. Long may it continue! this wonderful city. Michael and Marlena Jeffery Andrew Barr MLA ACT Chief Minister Photo: Anthony Browell Bach as a universal figure in music. Bach as an anti-fashion icon. Bach as a master of counterpoint and a potent symbol for today’s multiplicity of voices. Two years ago the idea emerged to make Bach the centre-piece of the 25th Festival, and those are the words that sprang to mind. After delving into Bach’s solo works, Cantatas, Passions, Concerti, as well as the monumental statements such as Clavier-Ubung (four books, with the Goldberg Variations at the end), the Well-tempered Clavier (48 Preludes and Fugues, no less), the Art of Fugue (19 substantial fugues) and the Musical Offering, the same thoughts prevail. We may marvel at the mathematics, we may revel in the virtuosity, we may bathe in the sheer bliss of Bach’s bouncing rhythms and harmonies, we could even loose ourselves in the warrens of his counterpoint, but the fact that his music has found a pathway around the world and now means so many things to so many people remains the greatest source of joy and optimism. We have tried to find something of Bach’s essence in this festival, not by doing everything (not even Leipzig’s yearly Bach-Fest can do that), but by finding things that take us inside the special waves of this man's musical brain, the freedom that made him an improviser, the rigour that guided him as a teacher, the mystery and magic that allowed him to be a performer and creator. What he left behind has given us all something to think or talk about, and I hope that this festival will do precisely that. The artists assembled this year will be happy to give you a helping hand. Roland The position of Artistic Director is supported by ANNA & BOB PROSSER The dance of God ike Dickens, Bach goes with Christmas; Christoph the cousin who had the most talent, Lwithout his music, something would be and he taught the young Johann Sebastian missing. But there is a difference between the organ. Johann Sebastian himself would be the nineteenth-century novelist and the married twice, fathering twenty children, half eighteenth-century composer. From The of whom survived into adulthood. All of them Pickwick Papers to The Mystery of Edwin seem to have been musical, though we don’t Drood, Christmas for Dickens was an occasion know much about the daughters, and three of for sentimentality. Bach is never sentimental. his sons themselves became distinguished composers. Quite the dynasty. When we listen to the opening of the Christmas Oratorio we hear joy, certainly, and of course Eisenach had solid Lutheran associations. it’s Christian joy, the trumpets and drums and Martin Luther’s mother had been born in trilling flutes heralding and celebrating the the town and Luther himself spent some of birth of Jesus. But we also hear the physical his childhood there, returning in 1521 with a and intellectual joy of musical invention, and price on his head to take up residence in the for Bach all these things went hand in glove. Wartburg Castle, where, under the protection No one created more musical joy than Bach, of Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, he not even his contemporary and compatriot, translated the New Testament into German. Handel. By the same token, no one handled We should count ourselves lucky the Bach its opposite, grief, so sublimely, and no one family was Lutheran. Had Johann Sebastian offered better consolation. In Bach, we find a been born a Calvinist we might never have composer perfectly balancing the mind and heard of him. the body. In contrast to Calvin’s musical strictures, It is not universally true, but great artists tend Luther considered music an essential part of to be prolific, unstoppable, and Bach’s output Protestant worship and, in itself, something is huge. To call Deutsche Grammophon’s Bach like a moral good.