Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Psychosonata

Commissioned by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists

“I was always fascinated with the work of Francis Bacon, and my musical choices and interpretations gravitated to works that had a similar primeval anarchy, but within a highly rigorous discipline. The cover art of Ellis’s American Psycho I found very compelling as an allegory of the respectably dressed Ayn Rand corporate monster. In this sonata I had in mind something of the dark, thickly-layered use of colour of Frank Auerbach, especially his paintings of heads, where he tries to depict psychological intensity with a veritable catatonia of lines and colour.” M.K.Harvey

Inferno (after Dante) by Elliott Gyger (2013)

Inferno is an hour-long cycle for solo piano written for Michael Kieran Harvey. Powerful images from Dante’s vision of Hell provide programmatic starting-points for a series of pieces whose internal logic is nonetheless purely musical. The vocabulary imprisons powerfully expressive gestures within tightly controlled structures, creating Lisztean tableaux of virtuosity and damnation influenced by Messiaen, Carter, Ligeti, Birtwistle and other giants of the post-war avant-garde.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on (08) 9228 3711 or by email to info@tura.com.au

Featured Australian Works

Featured artists

• Performer Michael Kieran Harvey