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Petrenko Conducts Elgar, Laing

Event

Petrenko Conducts Elgar, Laing

  • Date: Saturday, 16 July 2022, 2pm
  • Venue: Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne — 100 St Kilda Rd, Southbank, VIC
  • Tickets: Standard $59-$136 | Concession $54-$131 | Child $20 — Tickets can be purchased online

Event Details

Lauded Russian-British conductor Vasily Petrenko joins the MSO for this varied program inspired by English music and literature across the centuries. Early 20th century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed incidental music to Aristophanes’s ancient Greek Comedy The Wasps – an absurd story of an old man addicted to the law courts in a quirky satire of the Greek judicial system. Vaughan Williams’s overture evokes this zany humour, with buzzing insects and playful passages giving way to soaring pastoral melodies. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” is probably the most famous line from John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. It’s from this 1667 masterpiece that Australian composer Matthew Laing draws inspiration to depict the bassoon, performed by MSO Principal Bassoon Jack Schiller, as a poetic antihero of the orchestra: subjected to heaven; at peace in hell. Elgar’s Second Symphony is what the composer himself described as the height of artistic achievement: an ‘absolute’ work – that is, a piece not based on a story or theme, but composed for the sake of music itself. Through passages of wistfulness, gusto, spookiness, and soft beauty, Vasily Petrenko, Gramophone’s 2017 Artist of the Year, brings energy and critical accolades to Elgar’s self-described ‘passionate pilgrimage’ of the soul.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

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