Archived performance
Featuring
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Alpesh Chauhan conductor
Michael Pisani cor anglais
Program
Thomas Adès Three-piece Suite from Powder Her Face
Anne Cawrse The Rest is Silence
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6 Pathétique
About this performance
The MSO uncovers the spaces between sonority and silence in this program, directed by Alpesh Chauhan, Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
- With work performed all over the world, British-born Thomas Adès is one of the most highly acclaimed living opera composers. This ballroom music from his 1995 opera Powder her Face features sleazy clarinets and characterful brass – high energy musical flirtation with a scandalous lilt, reminiscent of the iconic dance scenes from Bernstein’s West Side Story.
- Australian composer Anna Cawrse describes The Rest is Silence as ‘a prayer, a celebration, and a meditation on the quiet still spaces, the silence amidst the hustle, and the enduring power of music’. This concerto features MSO Principal Cor Anglais Michael Pisani in an exploration of this remarkable instrument, often used to express music’s most melancholic, bittersweet, and emotionally profound moments.
- Tchaikovsky wrote that his Sixth Symphony was ‘the best thing I ever composed or shall compose’ – a big claim from the man who wrote Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. This remarkable symphony is infinitely relatable, exploring a struggle between the strength of life force, and emotional and physical demise. In a break from standard practice of the time, this incredible cornerstone of romantic repertoire ends in quiet, contemplative dissolution.
Duration: approx. 100 minutes including interval
