Three New Ballets to Open the Australian Ballet’s 50th Anniversary in Sydney

Dance

Barnumbirr the Morning Star, 1987 natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark 178.0 h x 125.0 w cm Purchased 1987 © Jack Wunuwun. Licensed by Viscopy http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?View=LRG&IRN=68102&View=LRG

Three New Ballets to Open the Australian Ballet’s 50th Anniversary in Sydney

April 15, 2012Andrew Miller

With the Evening Star just about to set, hanging a little above a Harbour Bridge pylon, and, by the second interval, a waning gibbous moon rising through a back-lit bank of cloud, so the Sydney season of the Australian Ballet opens, with three new short ballets. They cover a broad range, like three points of a very large triangle, showing some of the versatility of the company. The Narrative of Nothing as the name implies is an abstract ballet, mostly. The Australian Ballet along with the BBC and the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra, has commissioned from Australian composer Brett Dean "Fire Music", a new score specially for this ballet, and the music and lighting contribute almost as major a part as the dancing.

Osmo Vänskä and Alisa Weilerstein Collaborate with the Sydney Symphony — Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Beethoven

December 13, 2011Andrew Miller

Inviting guest musicians Osmo Vänskä and Alisa Weilerstein to the Sydney Symphony makes an artistic match the muses approved of, not to mention the heavens. They only came for three performances in Sydney, and how they found time to rehearse this dense program thoroughly is a mystery to me, though a shared musical spirit and understanding seemed to be on their side in this performance. It was a rare conjunction of various uncontrollable elements. The program too is very interesting. The Sydney Symphony has found a 'new' Tchaikovsky piece, apparently never having played Voyevoda before, and has not played the Prokofiev sinfonia concertante for 40 years. Beethoven is always interesting (at the very least), but here we have a unique interpreter of his symphonies in Vänskä, who seemed even to find in Beethoven hitherto unheard connections to Prokofiev.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet Piano Recital: Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner and Debussy

March 14, 2011Andrew Miller

When speaking of modern music, it may be the complexity of rhythm or harmony of the piece in question, a lack of memorable melodies or it may be a simplicity in the rules implicitly underlying the piece, which only makes the freeness of the music seem complex to the listener's higher faculties when they try to analyze it. Just as a thing can be understood intuitively or felt strongly to be so which the thinking, rational part of the mind finds impossible to prove, or can only justify after much difficulty. Some point to Debussy's L'après midi d'un faune as the first usher of 20th Century music.