Page 5 - Fitter Workshop News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 performers were, Kristian Winther, violin; Anna da Silva Chen, violin; Roland Peelman, pianos; Aust...

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 in popularity in Argentina. In the early 20th century, Astor Piazzolla, who earned his living playi...

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 concert, much less its music, would have a connection to the musical traditions and culture of Vienna,...

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 psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote “The Interpretation of Dreams”. The work looks to an experience in the c...

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 cut cruelly short a couple of months shy of his 32nd birthday, he had written more than 600 songs, and...