The Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Townsville, Queensland. Photograph via Australian Festival of Chamber Music.
This year has packed a mighty piano punch with a team of amazing players. Andrey Gugnin’s concert on 1 August in the Ray Golding Sunset Series was edge-of-the-seat stuff. Brave too, as Gugnin, who recently won the Sydney International Piano Competition, flew into Townsville from Switzerland on the day of his recital. He cut a slight figure on stage but his extraordinary gift stunned the audience.
Tasmin Little and Gugnin’s Kreutzer Sonata by Beethoven was exhilarating with both players displaying astonishing skill. Yet it was in Medtner’s Piano Sonata Romantica Gugnin’s ferocious talent burned the brightest; the composer’s long meandering lines were exquisitely shaped and controlled.
Balkirev’s Islamey is arguably one of the most difficult pieces ever written, a suitable vehicle for Gugnin who breezed through the piece effortlessly and crushed a torrent of fiendish passagework, his hands so fast on the keys they blurred like a humming bird’s wings. This has to be the most thrilling event so far.
Sa Chen, one of the Sydney Competition’s judges, played four of Debussy’s favourite Preludes with The Submerged Cathedral included. She was so engrossing and magnetic to listen to, it’s a wonder some of the audience didn’t find themselves perched on top of the piano.
Quite apart from the piano wranglers coaxing a huge variety of colour, tone and pedaling effects from the Civic Centre’s ‘grand’ Roderick Williams and Valda Wilson have won ticket holders’ hearts. Williams has sung in several concerts across a range of styles.
In the Governor’s Gala on the 31 July, William’s haunting evocation of Ravel’s Songs of Madascar with classy support from the very fine cellist Trey Lee, flautist Bridget Bolliger and pianist Andrew West impressed.
Piers Lane the Artistic Director, has a flair for programming and in this concert the composer-in-residence Paul Stanhope’s wonderfully atmospheric Three Lorca Songs resonated well with the Ravel.
Soprano Valda Wilson’s reading of these songs, ‘Song of the Moon’ (world premiere) was beautifully sung with lovely colouring and sensitive support courtesy of violinist Indira Koch, cellist Wolfgang-Emanuel Schmidt and pianist Timothy Young.
Schubert’s Trout Quintet performed by one of Britain’s star violinist Tasmin Little, Paul Silverthorne, (viola) Wolfgang-Emanuel Schmidt, Kirsty McCahon (doublebass) and Irish pianist Finghin Collins wowed the crowd.
It’s impossible to go to all of the concerts but someone whispered that bassist Kirsty McCahon’s delivery of the formidable Psy for bass solo, ‘rocked.’ A bad one to miss. And there’s a lot more to come including a semi-staged ‘Don Juan’ about Byron’s classic poem and the poet’s life devised by actor Tama Matheson and Guitarist Karin Schauup.
The Australian Festival of Chamber Music
29 July – 6 August 2016
