Classical Music in Perth 

Every year, WAAPA's top classical musicians vie for a glittering series of performance prizes and scholarships. Tonight, the recipients dazzle you with their award-winning virtuosity.

Music Director: Tim White
Performed by: 2021 Music Prizewinners

Bookings open:
7th Sep - Friends
14th Sep - Public

It's the Symphonic Wind Orchestra in top musical form and crazy costumes as they play Johan de Meij’s modern classic Symphony No 1: Lord of the Rings, and a selection of seasonal favourites. Plus this year, for the first time ever, the winning composition from the SWE Overture Competition will be performed. Join in for a fabulous night of music, dress up in costume and win some prizes! Music Director: Phillip Everall, Performed by: Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Bookings open: 7th Sep - Friends, 14th Sep - Public

This concert celebrates the return to WAAPA, following restoration, of a grand piano made by the English firm Broadwood & Sons in 1824 for the flautist in Haydn's London orchestra, Andrew Ashe. The program concludes with Carl Czerny's monumental arrangement for piano four hands of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

 

Bookings open

7th Sep - Friends
14th Sep - Public

Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska has rocketed to prominence in recent years, with her brilliant talent hailed worldwide. For her WASO debut, she conducts Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, a work of unbridled orchestral ecstasy inspired by swans in flight and infused with lustrous images of the expansive Finnish landscape. Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs are also deeply emotional and poetic, filled with intimacy, intensity, and imagination. When performed by one of Australia’s finest singers, Sara Macliver, these sublime pieces will touch your soul.

Sergei PROKOFIEV Symphony No.1 Classical

Osvaldo GOLIJOV Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra

Jean SIBELIUS Symphony No.5

Dalia Stasevska conductor Sara Macliver soprano

In the winter of 1838-9 Frédéric Chopin – along with his lover, the brilliant and pioneering writer George Sand – hunkered down in a former monastery in Majorca, determined to complete the set of 24 Preludes he had picked away at since 1836. 

The story of the primitive local instrument on which Chopin completed this great monument of the Romantic piano literature is key to this unique collaboration between director Richard Pyros, a yet to be announced actor, and pianist Aura Go – a Musica Viva FutureMaker, equipped with an astonishing palette and imagination. Drawing on an inspiring cast of real-life characters set amongst a complete performance of the Preludes, these three artists trace the rich history and ultimate fate of the Majorcan piano, in a dramatic mix of words and music, adapted from Paul Kildea’s book Chopin’s Piano. Their performance underlines the sheer originality of the Preludes, the enduring power of Chopin, and the changing nature of his music over time.

Artists:

AURA GO PIANO
TBC ACTOR
RICHARD PYROS DIRECTOR AND CO-ADAPTOR

PROGRAM –

CHOPIN 24 Preludes, Op. 28  (1835-39)

Join conductor Guy Noble, the WASO Chorus and special guests as we whip up a spectacular musical feast, complete with a cavalcade of classical hits and patriotic anthems. As always the concert comes to an unmissable end with the traditional ‘Last Night of the Proms’ sing-a-long including Jerusalem and Rule, Britannia.

Henry WOOD Fantasy on British Sea Songs arr.

Malcolm SARGENT Rule,

Britannia Hubert PARRY Jerusalem

Edward ELGAR Pomp and Circumstance No.1

Guy Noble conductor WASO Chorus

Each day that Vivaldi walked the streets of traversed the canals of Venice, a key port and global trade centre, it brought him into contact with a flurry of sounds, smells, languages and thought that were like no other in Europe. From the Otomman Empire and the vast depths of Arabic intellectual and cultural life, through to North Africa and what would become India, Venice was a community where design, food religion and the arts didn't just mingle, they absorbed and integrated. Vivaldi's much-loved bastion of western music, The Four Seasons, could only have emerged from the melting pot.

Commencing with welcome to country from Menang Noongar Elder Aunty Eliza Woods and Breaksea original 'Horizon' together with the children of the Mount Barker Community College Choir, Breaksea presents its double bill Caretaker of Lost Selves & View from the Magpie's Nest. View from the Magpie's Nest ~ an immersive movement piece choreographed by Emily O'Brien with beautiful narration by Naomi Lake performed by "Let's Shine" a performing group for people living with a disability. Caretaker of Lost Selves ~ a magical multi-arts experience where true stories weave a mysterious tapestry. A play with musical interludes, movement and projected visual art promises a feast for the eyes and the soul! With newly composed music performed live from Breaksea's Jonathan Brain featuring a huge and talented cast including Soprano Pia Adriana Harris, Tim Dunn, Rachael Colmer, Rita Cobussen & Great Southern community participants. Come and experience the power of Breaksea music, theatre and storytelling directed by Artistic Director Matt Reuben James Ward.

If Haydn was acclaimed as ‘the father of the symphony’, it is surely his most illustrious student, Beethoven, who thrust the symphony into the popular consciousness. The famous opening four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth launches an epic symphonic journey from tension to exuberant triumph. Schumann composed his Konzertstuck in 1849, one of the most blazingly creative and happy years of his life, and a sense of joyous euphoria infuses this super virtuosic showpiece.Joseph HAYDN Symphony No.96 The Miracle

Robert SCHUMANN Konzertstuck for Four Horns and Orchestra

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Symphony No.5

Asher Fisch conductor

David Evans horn

Julia Brooke horn

Robert Gladstones horn

Francesco Lo Surdo horn

Presented by Tura New Music & WA Museum Boola Bardip Primordial is a unique merging of science and sound – a visceral listening experience that re-enacts the shifting of tectonic plates to form the Flinders Ranges. It's a journey through time to the first sign of life on earth with the appearance of the Ediacara fossils. The sonic world of PRIMORDIAL reflects the immense landscape of the Ediacara Fossil field on the edge of the Australian desert. Composer Constantine Koukias imagines the sound of shifting tectonic plates through manipulated piano preparations and electronics to create cascading waves of sound. The piano as we know it is reinvented, its resonance reflecting a haunting, fragile sound world. Gabriella Smart pounds and caresses the piano, cajoling beautiful and extraordinary prepared sounds that are symbiotic with Koukias' electronic score. ""Koukias' sharp and at times fragile music miraculously re?ected this vast landscape on the edge of the Australian desert" — Thomas Tamvakos, Archive of Greek Composers [2020] Piano: Gabriella Smart Music: Constantine Koukias (AUS/NETH) Tape Sound Design: Mischa Duncan te Pas Lighting Design: Jason James Event image: Ben D Woods

We begin with Mozart’s much-loved Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. Together WASO Assistant Concertmaster Semra Lee-Smith and Principal Viola Daniel Schmitt will reveal this magical work’s beauty, poetry and brilliance.Bruckner said that his first symphony came to him in a dream, played by an angel. A breathtaking memorial to his idol, Richard Wagner, the Seventh is an emotional odyssey that scales triumphant peaks and plummets to dark valleys of sorrow. In the hands of maestro Johannes Fritzsch, this symphony will astonish you with its richness and raw power.

Beginning with the evocative overture, the work progresses through three parts similar to an opera, the Nativity, Crucifixion and Redemption. Exquisite arias such as I Know That My Redeemer Liveth and Rejoice! are contrasted with majestic arias of enduring splendour such as The Trumpet Shall Sound and Thus Saith the Lord. Acclaimed WA soloists will bring these movements to life with outstanding virtuosity and musicianship. The real genius of this work, however, is revealed in the great and exhilarating choruses sung to perfection by the Perth Symphonic Chorus. The sombre and hushed beauty of choruses like Since By Man Came Death are juxtaposed with the grandeur and impact of the climactic moments in the Hallelujah chorus and the final extended and thrilling Amen chorus. Without doubt one of the greatest oratorios ever written, the magnificence of Handel’s inspired writing is always uplifting and is a unique and wonderful gift for the Christmas Season 2021.

Conductor: Dr Margaret Pride OAM

Violin: Paul Wright

Perth Symphonic Chorus

Perth Baroque Orchestra

Presented by Tura New Music & WA Museum Boola Bardip A slow listening experience... Come and go as you wish. Described by Alex Ross of the New Yorker as "vast and all-consuming", Inner Cities celebrates the great cities Alvin Curran has inhabited over a 20-year period. During the performance you're free to wander, absorbing the different architectural and acoustic perspectives of the Museum's space. People have been known to meditate, bring their yoga mat, or sit or lie down – you control your engagement with the artistic experience. Expectation of the formal tradition of concert-going is suspended, with a five-hour celebration of space, light, meditation, and transcendence of time beyond our normal conception. To be performed in a yet to be be revealed location within the walls of the new WA Museum Boola Bardip, you will be able to take time to listen and take in the buildings architecture. Saturday 22 January, 10am to 3pm WA Museum Boola Bardip, Perth Cultural Centre No registration required

Rites, rituals & revolutions. Uniting movement and music in an empowering collaboration, and the first of its kind, the WA Youth Orchestra led by Benjamin Northey joins forces with celebrated Perth Choreographer Scott Elstermann in a symbiotic exploration of movement and sonority. A choreographed dance troupe will bring to life Stravinsky’s masterwork the The Rite of Spring and accomplished Western Australian composer Rebecca Erin Smith’s Foreigner or Foreigner. The concert will also feature Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha Overture, Op.30

The winner of the BBC Young Musician award in 2016, and now one of the brightest stars in classical music, the brilliant cellist is also one of seven siblings, all instrumentalists, who have been described by Simon Cowell as the world’s most talented family.

On this, the first Australian tour by Sheku and the Kanneh-Masons, he will be joined by his sister Isata, now one of Britain’s leading young pianists, in a performance of greatly loved sonatas for cello and piano, and by the entire family in a programme of works by Chopin, Mozart, Saint Saëns, Fauré, Elgar and other popular composers.

The Kanneh-Masons are Isata, 23 (piano), Braimah, 21 (violin), Sheku, 20 (cello), Konya, 18 (piano and violin), Jeneba, 16 (piano and cello), Aminita, 13 (violin and piano), and Mariatu, 9 (cello and piano).