From the fragility of life to frenetic inner turmoil music is the empowering medium through which composers pass on stories and honour the continuous flow of time.

Program

Arvo PART Mozart-Adagio
Franz SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 14, ‘Death and the Maiden’
Brenda GIFFORD World Premiere *
Graeme KOEHNE Time is a River

* Commissioned by Omega Ensemble and The Joan with the generous support of Richard Cobden

About the Music

Written in memoriam of one of Russia's leading violinists, Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio is neither an arrangement nor a collage, with fragments of Mozart's Piano Sonata in F Major placed in balance with Pärt's idiomatic “Tintinnabuli” style as a symbol of sorrow that permeates the entire work.
Composer and proud Yuin woman, Brenda Gifford’s culture is the basis of her music and arts practice. Previously commissioned by Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Canberra International Music Festival and Four Winds Festival, Brenda was also recently First Nations Resident Composer with Ensemble Offspring and nominated for an ARIA award for her children’s album Music for the Dreaming.
Described as “one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire” Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden was composed in a period of serious illness, and with the composer’s realisation of impending and inevitable death. This inner turmoil is characterised by the sudden dramatic shifts from fortissimo to pianissimo, from the lyrical to the compelling and dramatic.
The score of Graeme Kohene’s Time is a River is prefaced with a dedication note: In memory of my mother. Full of aching nostalgia, cascades of passion and calm mystical lyricism, the quintet is a meditation on the flow of time that bears all in its path. It is performed in this concert in a new arrangement for Omega Ensemble.