Music
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The Editor of Quadrant Music, Alexander Voltz, has won the symphonic section of the prestigious George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest.
September 3, 2024
3 mins
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Arnold Bax was not a lewd man, but he was forcefully sensual, a self-styled 'brazen romantic. Farewell, My Youth goes as far as to pine for the 'lovely, bewitching entanglement of sex!' This must have been, for its time, a radical expression. His music, with its many conditions of ecstasy, deserves to be heard widely
August 25, 2024
41 mins
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How ironic it is, then, that at the same time as this regressive yet commercial paganism, artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to, as metamodernists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker might be heard to say, catapult humanity towards a “futureless” future.
June 1, 2024
20 mins
The latest
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To Erik Satie’s freshness of outlook, Milhaud added a technique beyond Satie’s most sanguine hopes. Like any virtuoso, he relished surmounting near-impossible challenges, none greater than the cantata which he based on the 1961 encyclical Pacem in Terris. Confronted with bromidic Vatican prose that most other composers would view as utterly impervious to musical treatment—a sample from which reads: “A further consequence of man’s personal dignity is his right to engage in economic activities suited to his degree of responsibility”—Milhaud somehow turned such bureaucratic waffle into a dignified, periodically exalted score.
May 28, 2024
8 mins
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The period from 1900 until approximately 1950 in America has become known as the Golden Age of the Accordion. Marion Jacobson, in the 2007 article “Searching for Rockordion”, comments that “it was truly an era worthy not only of the name Golden Age of the Accordion, but Golden Age of Music making among middle-class American families”. During this time, the design of the stradella piano accordion reached maturity and the accordion rose to prominence as one of the foremost popular concert instruments of the day.
May 28, 2024
9 mins
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'I can hardly believe these MSO programme notes could be so ill-informed and so keen to whitewash an era of hideous tyranny and murder in the now-unlamented Soviet Union,' I complained some years ago. To my surprise, my gripe was taken to heart. I seriously doubt that would be the reaction today
May 24, 2024
12 mins
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Sight-reading is frequently viewed as a special talent which is divinely gifted to a select few. Dohnányi’s first emphasis is that this is not the case and that sight-reading is “a matter of mere practice and can be acquired by anyone who has musical sense”. Interestingly, he points out that better sight-readers are regularly to be found among amateur musicians who, in their desire for variety, play through many pieces for their own private enjoyment, as opposed to diligently spending hours polishing a program of fewer pieces in preparation for the concert hall. This can mean that an amateur, albeit less refined in their own playing, can have a broader knowledge of repertoire.
May 19, 2024
11 mins
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Treble clefs have no interest in racism or sexism. But today, even The Rite of Spring, were it submitted for a grant or commission awarded by panelists kept deliberately nameless, could face rejection for appropriating the culture of ancient Russian pagans. It would amount to nothing more than grist for grievance-studies academics
May 4, 2024
11 mins
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As a young listener I was awestruck by the symphony’s drama and power, as well as Schubert’s depiction of what seemed to be a violent but stunningly beautiful clash between the ineffable extremes of emotion, between pure light and abject darkness. 'Whenever I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain,' the composer said of his works' duality, 'and when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love'
April 14, 2024
13 mins
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The new national cultural policy, Revive: A Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place, seems to prioritise Australian arts infrastructure -- existing, large-scale national institutions and, of course, bureaucracies -- at the expense of independent artists and, even more so, of art itself
April 4, 2024
16 mins
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Programming requirements differ, whether a concert appears as part of a periodic series of mixed events, a thematic festival—such as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of the Beethoven symphonic cycle this November—or as a once-off gig, often paying homage to a particular composer, performer or style. And rare are the concert programmers who can resist the lure of anniversaries, whether they commemorate the births or deaths of famous artist personages or landmark works in Western music’s history, such as The Rite of Spring.
March 27, 2024
11 mins
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To quote Paul Keating, a man with whom I would not normally find common ground, 'The state of the arts in a country goes to the heart of what a nation is.' That Australia’s arts are so encumbered by questions of identity at the expense of quality and authenticity would suggest our nation is not at all in such a good way
March 14, 2024
11 mins