Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Stephen Adams  

August on ABC Classic FM features the last of broadcasts from this year’s Totally Huge New Music Festival and a number of other broadcast premieres of new Australian works, plus exclusive preview of new ABC Classics TSO series recordings of Richard Meale works and an all-Australian concert from Topology on New Music Up Late. Windows into Australian musical heritage come from the first four episodes of the feature series Australian Connections, plus some Australian classics programming in Weekday Afternoons. And online, the New Music Up Late website (http://www.abc.net.au/classic/newmusic) now offers on-demand streaming of four previous programs, giving extra opportunities to late night highlights at a time that suits you.

In Performance

Wednesday 1 August 8.00pm

Sydney Symphony Pieter Wispelwey (cello), Jeffrey Tate (conductor). Direct broadcast from the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. Incl. Andrew Ford - Headlong*

Wednesday 8 August 8.00pm

Totally Huge New Music Festival (Art Gallery of Western Australia): WASO New Music Ensemble, Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Brett Dean (conductor). Incl. Andrew Ford - Scenes from Breugel**, Brett Dean - Wolf-Lieder**, van der Aa - Here (in circles)& Here (to be found)**

Wednesday 15 August 8.00pm

Totally Huge New Music Festival (Art Gallery of Western Australia): The Song Company, William Barton (didjeridu), Claire Edwardes (percussion), Iain Grandage (cello), Mel Robinson (cello & voice). Incl. William Barton - Welcome; Iain Grandage - Night Camp; Martin Wesley-Smith - Who Stopped the Rain; My Snail; Freddie the Fish; Heather Frog; Dominik Karski - Beginnings to no end; Melanie Robinson - Rain; & William Barton – Fusion*

Friday 17 August 8.30pm

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Nikolai Demidenko (piano), Arvo Volmer (conductor). Direct broadcast from the Adelaide Town Hall, Incl. Richard Meale - Scenes from Mer de Glace

Monday 20 August 7.05pm

Musica Viva Australia, Kungsbacka Trio. Direct broadcast from the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. Incl. Paul Stanhope - Piano Trio*

Monday 27 August 8.00pm

From The Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne. Australia Pro Arte Orchestra, TinAlley String Quartet; Jacqueline Porter (soprano), Cameron Hill (violin), Benjamin Northey (conductor). Incl. Calvin Bowman - I would sing a little while

Friday 31 August 7.30pm

The Queensland Orchestra, John Chen (piano), David Stanhope (conductor). Direct broadcast from the ABC Ferry Road Music Centre, West End, Brisbane. Incl. Roger Smalley - Piano Concerto No 2; David Stanhope - Le Grand Canon Romantique

New Music Up Late (with Julian Day)

Saturday 18 August 10.30pm

Off The Record - Richard Meale at 75
Richard Meale has been one of the key figures in Australian new music for the past 40 years. Tonight he joins us in the studio to talk about his music and influences. We’ll be spinning discs from the gritty, 1960s orchestral works such as Homage to Garcia Lorca, through to his recent classic, Three Miro Pieces, and an exclusive preview of a new version of Lumen.

Saturday 25 August 10.30pm

Topology: What Now?
Brisbane-based ensemble Topology give us their slant on a post-minimal Australian music scene. The program continues the ensemble’s interest in mixing live music with pre-recorded voices in Robert Davidson’s live settings of e.e.cummings reading his own poetry and the ensemble’s live realisation of If, a radio piece by Sherre Delys.

Weekend Breakfast

Saturday 25 August 6.00am

The hour from 6.00am is Australian made, featuring at 6.30 Marshall McGuire playing Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s Harp Sonata. For this work, PG-H was honoured by the American Harp Society, which gave her an award for ‘the greatest contribution to harp music’. (ABC Classics 476 5951)

Your requests

Saturday 18 August 10.05am

With Marian Arnold. Incl. Eric Gross - Dušekiana; Miriam Hyde - Nocturne; Minkus arr John Lanchbery - Don Quixote: Act 3. To request your favourite classical masterpiece, email Marian at: request@classic.abc.net.au

Weekend Life

Saturday 11 August 12.05pm

Australia Ensemble, Incl. Andrew Ford - Oma kodu*. Recorded this year in the Sir John Clancy Auditorium, University of NSW

Sunday Feature

Sunday 5 August 2.00pm

Australian Connections #1 Produced and presented by Tim Dehn
A repeat of a series of seven programs ranging from 1788 to the present day, in which Tim Dehn begins his own personal exploration of some of the music performed in Australia, much of which was also created here, together with the stories of those who heard it.

Sunday 12 August 2.00pm

Australian Connections #2 Produced and presented by Tim Dehn
The middle of the nineteenth century is the setting for the second in this series of seven programs in which Tim Dehn explores music heard and largely composed in Australia and links it to people and events here at the time.

Sunday 19 August 2.00pm

Australian Connections #3 Produced and presented by Tim Dehn
From the excitement of the 1888 Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne to a death in the trenches of the Somme in 1916, today's program considers boom, bust and Federation. It links these events to music by two composers of the time: English-born George Marshall-Hall who settled in Australia and became a friend of the Heidelberg School of artists and Australian-born Frederick Septimus Kelly, who settled in England, became a friend of the social elite and served at Gallipoli. The program features the first recording of Kelly's unfinished piano sonata - left incomplete when he returned to the trenches in 1916.

Sunday 26 August 2.00pm

Australian Connections #2 Produced and presented by Tim Dehn
Today's program introduces music by Percy Grainger, Roy Agnew, Fritz Hart and, unexpectedly, Henry Handel Richardson, whilst exploring the early days of wireless broadcasting, the beginnings of ABC orchestras around the country, memories of a Perth childhood during the depression of the thirties and the difficulties faced by Nancy Bird in the 1920s as she determined to follow her dream of flying.

Sunday Live

Sunday Live this month comes direct from the ABC Ferry Road Music Centre, West End, Brisbane. Concert-goers in Brisbane are welcome. Please be seated by 2.50pm as the performance begins promptly at 3pm. Entry is free.

Sunday 5 August 3.00pm

Southern Cross Soloists, Incl. Richard Mills arr Power - Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: excerpts

Sunday 12 August 3.00pm

Griffith Trio, Incl. Ross Edwards - Piano Trio

Sunday 19 August 3.00pm

Marilyn Meier-Kapavale, piano, Incl. Percy Grainger -Shepherd’s Hey & Country Gardens

Weekday Afternoons

This month, Julia Howard selects several programs of Australian classics on disc:

Friday 3 August 4.05pm

Incl. Alfred Hill - The Lost Hunter ; Nigel Westlake - Songs from the Forest ; Ross Edwards - White Ghost Dancing

Thursday 9 August 4.05pm

Incl. Carl Vine - Red Blues ; Colin Bright - Red Earth ; Peter Sculthorpe - Earth Cry; Nigel Westlake - Antarctica Suite

Tuesday 14 August 4.05pm

Incl. Arthur Benjamin - Arabesque (The Muted Pavane) & Romantic Phantasy

Thursday 16 August 4.05pm

Incl. Peter Sculthorpe - Nourlangie; Nigel Westlake - Kalabash

Tuesday 21 August 4.05pm

Incl. Miriam Hyde - Magpies at Sunrise ; Nigel Westlake - Piano Trio ; Carl Vine - Symphony No 5 (Percussion)

Tuesday 21 August 4.05pm

Incl. Philip Bracanin - Guitar Concerto

Friday 31 August 4.05pm

Incl. Graeme Koehne - To his servant Bach, God grants a final glimpse, the morning star ; Peggy Glanville-Hicks - Harp Sonata ; Eugene Goossens - Concertino for Strings, Op 47