Perth Festival Chamber Music Weekend

When Michael Goldschlager was a child he would wait till his parents had gone out and then play Bach’s B minor Mass on his dad’s stereo as loudly as possible. The cellist will share his life-long love of Bach at the PIAF Chamber Music Weekend with a performance of Bach’s complete Suites for Solo Cello.

Goldschlager is one of the world-class performers featured across the weekend festival which will be held in and around Winthrop Hall from 26-28 February. The line-up is resoundingly home-grown including local artists Sally Boud, Joseph Nolan, Sara Macliver, Ensemble Vagabond and from interstate the Tinalley String Quartet, Benaud Trio and pianist Jayson Gillham.

Goldschlager will perform all six Suites on Friday night in a monumental free outdoor concert lasting six hours.

“The suites are not often performed live in their entirety,” Goldschlager admits. “They are physically and technically very demanding. Not all players can do it, especially the last two suites which are technically vicious.”

The New York-born cellist has been based in Perth for 30 years and has played principal cello with most ensembles around Australia including the Macquarie Trio, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the WA and Sydney Symphony Orchestras and most recently the Australian World Orchestra's 2015 tour of India with Zubin Mehta.

His reputation as a Bach expert is such that ABC Classics/Universal sought him out to record the Suites. Goldschlager first played a Prelude from the Suites when he was 7 years old and as a professional performed them over 1000 times on stage in the Broadway play The Elephant Man. Despite his familiarity with the music Goldschlager dedicated a year to studying and practicing before recording them in 2011. Below is an interview Goldschlager gave with Peter Holland about the process of recording the Suites.

The seminal Suites (1717-23) are six collections of Baroque dances infused with Bach’s mathematical precision and deep soulfulness. They include movements such as the joyful D major Gigue popular as a wedding recessional and the introspective C minor Sarabande famously played by Rostropovich at the fall of the Berlin Wall and Yo-Yo Ma to mark the anniversary of the Twin Towers.

onboard with Greenpeace

Goldschlager has performed them for audiences as diverse as crew from the Greenpeace Sea Shepherd ship and residents of a drug rehabilitation community and he believes it is music that appeals to everyone.

“Everyone loves Bach. His music is a translation of common feelings that are beyond words. My job is to convey the spirit this amazing individual left the world. This is the gift I can give: a careful, accurate and personal depiction of that greatness.”

The performance will take place between 7pm and midnight outside Winthrop Hall with the audience on couches and picnic rugs under the stars. Goldschlager will amplify his cello so it will be an immersive experience for listeners, like his first experience listening to Bach as child.

“I will be pushing to make the sound big,” he declares. “Let’s not be bashful, let’s make it big, a deep bass you can really feel!”

Chris van Tuinen

The festival’s classical music program manager Chris van Tuinen anticipates the free outdoor performance will help demystify and honour the Cello Suites.

“People will wander outside at 11pm after the organ recital finishes and it will be a warm Perth night and they will be able to enjoy a glass of wine and listen to a world class performance of Bach.”

Another marathon concert in a similar vein will be a performance of Satie’s Vexations in its entirety, starting 6pm Saturday night and concluding midday on Sunday. The Vexations is a short piano piece which the composer specifies should be repeated 840 times. The piece will be played by a team of keyboard students from UWA and WAAPA in a performance which is expected to take at least 14 hours.

The demystification of chamber music continues with a free keyboard masterclass by Jayson Gillham on Saturday and a unique Haydn Lottery where audiences are privy to the inner workings of a string quartet in rehearsal mode. The Melbourne-based Tinalley quartet will rehearse a Haydn quartet they have previously never played and audiences will witness the construction of the work from the ground up, complete with the disputes and dynamism that are part of creating chamber music.

Tinalley String Quartet

Saturday will also include Widor’s Organ Symphony No 5 performed by Widor expert Joseph Nolan, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, string quartets by Haydn and Ravel, wind music by Ligeti and Barber performed by Ensemble Vagabond and a piano recital by Jayson Gillham with repertoire by Beethoven, Bartok and Liszt.

Sunday is set aside for Schubertiade with six performances dedicated to the works of one of the great romantics. Schubert's famous Trout Quintet will be heard alongside the Arpeggione Sonata, the Octet and the string quartet Death and the Maiden. English baritone James Newby, winner of the Schubert award at the 2015 Wigmore Song Competition, will perform Schubert’s song cycle Die Schone Mullerin.

Newby is the only international artist performing in the Chamber Music Weekend. Van Tuinen says without hesitation it is because “Perth’s home-grown talent is some of the best in the world.”

The Chamber Music Weekend runs February 26-28th.
To to view the entire program and to purchase tickets to the Chamber Music Weekend go here.

This article copyright The West Australian 2015.

Perth Fringe World Festival top picks

Perth Fringe World Festival promises another fun cheeky season this year. The festival runs January 22nd to February 21st and I'm looking forward to some balmy summer nights out in Northbridge and elsewhere.

One of my best concerts of 2015 came from the Fringe (In the Shadow of Venus) so I have high expectations. Here are my top picks below:

JAZZ
Jan 31st, Feb 11-13 A Summer's Night in Paris - a cabaret show by Catherine Summers and a 5 piece jazz band featuring on all things French.
Jan 28-30 An Evening in Paris with Sassafras - a gypsy jazz band presents their version of Paris

CHORAL
Feb 16-21st    The Spooky Men of the West - this 15-strong male a capella choir promise a unique vocal display of pointless grandeur, magnificent manhomerie and poignant pathos.I'm intriuged!

INSTRUMENTAL
Feb 4-7th Tubular Bells for Two - two guys running around the stage playing 27 instruments in a momentous feat of musicality and showmanship.

CABARET
Feb 9th Cathedral Candlelight Cabaret Perth's gothic St George's Cathedral is turned into a candlelit cabaret cave for one night only.
Jan 27-31st Herstory Imogen Kelly, notoriously known as Australia's Queen of Burlesque, takes her audience on a time travel ride paying a visit to the judged and damned women of history's pages.

FAMILY FRIENDLY
Fringeworld Mermaids - every evening the mermaids take a swim in the giant fish tank in the Northbridge Pleasure Gardens
Arrr is for Adventure - piratical circus tricks for all the family at various locations around Perth, during the weekends.
Feb 14th Chinese New Year Fair Day  Over 100 stalls take over the streets of Northbridge providing entertainment and excitement for the whole family.

For the entire festival program go here. There is literally hundreds of shows to choose from so enjoy your festival and I'll see you out on the street!

Celebrity Soft Spot Lachlan Skipworth

Lachlan Skipworth is one of Perth's most unassuming musicians. His friendly modesty is so easy to be around I often forget he is one of Australia's busiest and most successful young composers. He is the 2016 composer-in-residence at the WA Symphony Orchestra and I thought profiling this local legend would be a great way to kick of the 2016 Celebrity Soft Spot series.

What music gets your heart racing?

I am quite a fan of fast and energetic music, even if it’s not immediately apparent from my compositions which are often slow. This includes, for example, Bartok string quartets, Steve Reich’s minimalism, Taiko drumming, the twisted genre of “math-rock” and many things in between. I’m a self proclaimed “closet-percussionist”. I must also say, WASO’s cycle of Brahms Symphonies was a pretty exhilarating journey last year.

What calms you down?

Most music calms me down, and I believe music is a language of its own which takes us away from the everyday. I also find a unique state of quiet concentration in playing shakuhachi honkyoku, the ancient solo pieces composed anonymously by the komuso monks.

You have a soft spot for the shakuhachi and the clarinet. What is the appeal of these very different instruments?

I actually don’t think they are so far apart. Obviously the sound is produced differently, but there are a few key similarities including the vertically style of playing and the sparing use of vibrato in the school of shakuhachi I learned. For me, the main appeal lies in the inherent melancholy in the tone of each, especially the chalumeau register of the clarinet and the breathy sound of the shakuhachi. I love the rich warm tone of the clarinet and its almost limitless technical capacity, while the shakuhachi draws me in due to its almost ghostly tone colours and subtle ornamental inflections of pitch and dynamics.

After a successful clarinet degree at UWA what led you into composition?

I seriously considered composition as my undergraduate major, however I’m very glad to have spent several years with the clarinet and its repertoire. Towards the end of that degree I composed my first serious compositions, however this was again hurriedly put aside as I travelled to Japan to learn shakuhachi for 3 years. Only my return to Australia did I pursue composition as my main focus.


Congratulations on being announced as WASO’s Composer in Residence for 2016! What a coup! What will be your involvement with the orchestra over the next few years?

Thanks, I’m really excited about this. I always looked up to the previous composers-in-residence: Roger Smalley, Iain Grandage and James Ledger, and to be the next in line is a true honour. I will write some works for the 2017 concert series, and will also assist on some exciting projects with EChO (the Education Chamber Orchestra) and collaborations with contemporary musicians.

How will you go working in the same organisation as your wife, WASO violinist Akiko Myazawa?!

We’ll probably pretend we don’t know each other - we’ll both be really nervous!

2015 was an epic year for you – Ashley William Smith’s premiere of your Clarinet Concerto was awarded Performance of the Year at the 2015 Art Music Awards. What is it like to hear your name called at such a prestigious award ceremony?

Skipworth and William Smith receiving the Art Music Award

 That was a real honour, but I admit to harbouring a healthy amount of hope. Anyone who witnessed Ashley’s performance will know he really pulled something special out for the occasion, and his vivid performance is still strong in my memory.

In October Dark Nebulae was selected as the Australian work performed at the ISCM festival in Ljubljana. And one of your compositions was toured nationally by the Song Company as part of their Michael Leunig - inspired concert. Which Leunig poem did you choose to work from and how did you go about creating the music?

I find the impact of Leunig’s work is often augmented by it being very succinct, so I chose to work on a very short prayer of his which is only four lines long. Before this appears in the piece however, I intertwined two Latin texts in a sombre and almost bleak harmonic language to create an atmosphere from which Leunig's prayer appears as a light of hope.

Your composing career is getting off to a cracking start. Is it just me or is it moving really fast for you?

It is beginning to move rather quickly! Despite this, I feel I’m only just finding my “rhythm”, as in a stable but consistent writing habit through which I can get a lot done (though this unfortunately doesn’t avoid the usual artistic crises and deadline woes!). It’s also a pleasure to work increasingly with high-calibre musicians and ensembles, although one down-side is that I’ve had to start saying “no” to some projects I’d really like to do. I’m currently split over a decision to reduce my clarinet teaching load, because I find it really rewarding to share the art of music with the younger generation. Of course my students are all great talents (and personalities), so it will be a hard choice.

 Riley Lee performs Skipworth's Light Rain with the Sydney Camerata

How important was the Australia Council Early Career Residency in 2013? Do you have concerns that these kinds of awards are currently being axed due to lack of funding?

The Clarinet Concerto grew out of the Early Career Residency and the success of that project has led directly to this composer-in-residence appointment, so it was indeed very important. The cuts to the Australia Council have been very disappointing on numerous levels; the arts world is such a fragile and interconnected eco-system that these major changes threaten to be catastrophic, especially at the grass-roots level. It is only through the health of the small-to-medium organisations that I was afforded the opportunity to hone my skills and be prepared for the bigger opportunities I’m now seeing. If we want our major arts organisations to be vibrantly celebrating great Australian work, we need a level of health and ongoing security throughout all levels of the arts sector.

How did you meet one of my favourite Australian composers Anne Boyd?

I was an admirer of Anne’s music and decided to contact her before I moved to Sydney to commence my Masters. She turned out to be the ideal teacher for me and despite recently submitting my Ph.D., I will most definitely continue to seek her advice. She has a very good knack of pointing me in the right direction during the composition of a piece, even if that right direction was occasionally (but rightly) to simply start again!

Do you have any other composers/mentors you are inspired by?

Another composer who has had a big impact on me is Jörg Widmann, with whom I studied for 2 semesters in Freiburg, Germany. I travelled there to “face up” to the European avant-garde, and it was a healthy clash of ideologies from which I took away a more fearless approach, a broader musical palette, and a greater appreciation of our link back to the lineage of great classical composers. 

Do you have a soft spot for anything else in life or is it all about the music?

It is all about the music but yes, I do have additional (un)healthy obsessions for cricket, Japanese comedy and ice-cream.

A huge thank you to Lachlan Skipworth for making the time for Celebrity Soft Spot. For information on the WASO residency go to www.waso.com.au/about/composer_in_residence
To keep abreast of performances of Skipworth's music go to his website.