Page 3 - Fitter Workshop News Today

Amber Evans conducts the ensemble. Photo: Peter Hislop Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 19, “Mozart Recomposed”. At the Fitters’ Workshop, Saturday, May 8. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY HIGH jinx violins and Mozart’s requiem recomposed by the Australian composer Gordon Hamilton were on the bill for this concert of musical invention. But it was much more than that. In the Fitters’ Workshop for the Canberra International Music Festival concert 19, “Mozart Recomposed”, the...

Canberra International Music Festival, Concert 17, “Waltz to Tango”, at the Fitters’ Workshop, May 7. Reviewed by LEN POWER THE waltz of 18th century Vienna and the “nuevo tango” of Argentina seem at first glance to be worlds apart.  The waltz was popular in Europe but social unrest in the 19th century resulted in emigration to the Americas. With a melting pot of musical influences, imported and local, new musical genres arose. By the end of the 19th century, the tango was gaining...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 15, “Ahimsa: Meditations on Gandhi”, The Fitters’ Workshop, May 6. Reviewed by CLINTON WHITE. “AHIMSA” in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist tradition, is “respect for all living things and avoidance of violence towards others”. Such was Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra of non-violent protest. But, with the festival’s theme of “The Idea of Vienna”, it’s not immediately clear how even the title of the composition performed in this co...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 14, “Night and Dreams”, Fitters’ Workshop, May 5. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA. IF you thought music festival director Roland Peelman was drawing a long bow when he included Arnold Schönberg and HK Gruber in his “Idea of Vienna” themed festival, think again. For not only was Schönberg’s youthful, dream-ridden opus “Transfigured Night” premiered in his home city of Vienna, but it was written in 1889, the same year that Vienna psychiatr...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 12, “Schubert Sublime II”, The Fitters’ Workshop, May 4. Reviewed by CLINTON WHITE. IT is easy to imagine a gathering of friends, dressed in their finery, at a so-called “Schubertiade” – a soiree – in a tastefully furnished salon, with Schubert and his musician colleagues playing his latest compositions. And there were plenty to choose from, for he wrote lots of music that would be perfect for the occasion. Despite his life being cu...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 10, “Greatest Mozart II”, Fitters’ Workshop, May 3. Reviewed by IAN McLEAN. AS interesting as it is to hear, and to be challenged by, new music from our living composers, it’s also delightful to just enjoy the music of the master composers. In this case – Mozart! As a bonus, what an extra delight to hear that music played by wonderfully gifted musicians. That was the situation for Concert 10 of the Canberra International Music Festival ...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 8, “Do I Matter?”  At the Fitters’ Workshop, May 2. Reviewed by IAN McLEAN. “DO I Matter?” is one of a two part chamber music work in the “Hidden Thoughts” series by Australian composer Katy Abbot, the senior lecturer in composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. “Hidden Thoughts” came about following an online survey where more than 200 women submitted answers to questions, such as: “Do you have hidden thoughts a...

Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 5, “Greatest Mozart I”, Fitters’ Workshop, May 1. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA A CELEBRATION of Mozart at his most cheerful greeted patrons of the Canberra International Music Festival in “Greatest Mozart I”, the first of two such concerts in the festival linked to the festival theme, “The Idea of Vienna”. To be sure, one of the three works played wasn’t actually Mozart, but there was method in the programming of this concert, in which ...

The Partridge String Quartet. Photo: Peter Hislop Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 3, “Schubert Sublime I”, The Partridge String Quartet. At Fitters’ Workshop, Kingston, May 1. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY. “WITH happiness” best describes how the audience reacted to having the Canberra International Music Festival back after the 2020 covid shutdown and hearing the Partridge String Quartet perform a seminal work of Franz Schubert. The Partridge String Quartet, which takes it...