MUSICA VIVA Announces Concert Program For 2021

Musica Viva Australia has announced its eagerly anticipated 2021 national concert series, the first program under the artistic leadership of Artistic Director Paul Kildea.

The 2021 concert program comprises of a unique line-up of the very best of Australian musical talent in a series of works that celebrates great composers alongside Australian and world premieres of new commissions. The 2021 season also features a new collaboration with Musica Viva's Artist in Residence, visual artist and poet Judith Nangala Crispin, a descendant of the Bpangerang people. She will work throughout the company during the course of 2021.

When imagining the 2021 season Kildea found a glorious opportunity - a blank slate - where he could build a season that celebrated positivity. 'We wanted to create something optimistic and thrilling, filled with pride and imagination,' he explains. 'All of us at Musica Viva have worked together to ensure that the musicians we've assembled under this single banner are outstanding in every regard.'

Oboist Diana Doherty is acclaimed worldwide for her mastery of this challenging, beautiful instrument. In March the award-winning Streeton Trio shares her delightful, eyes-alight style of performance in this ravishing program of masterworks and rarities for piano trio and oboe, alongside a brand-new commission, fresh from the pen of Perth-based composer Lachlan Skipworth.

In May an ensemble of Australia's finest young musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music, led by the dynamic Sophie Rowell, collaborate with brilliant pianist Konstantin Shamray for a beautiful and emotionally intense program: a new arrangement of Mahler's Piano Quartet; a heartfelt work by Mihkel Kerem; Schnittke's serious, deeply moving Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's sunny Serenade.

June will see the national tour of two legendary works for French horn and one thoroughly engaging new violin sonata, as they are brought to life by three wonderful musicians. With exceptional individual artistic voices, yet alike in their sensitive virtuosity, Nicolas Fleury, Emily Sun and Amir Farid together create the true magic of chamber music. Sun and Farid will further demonstrate their virtuosity with the world premiere of a sonata by Gordon Kerry.

Bower was conceived as a recording project by the recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey, an artistic reflection on the year that was 2020. In creating a delicate juxtaposition of music both old and new, Lacey commissioned seven original works from Australian composers to be performed with her friend, the renowned harpist Marshall McGuire.

During August, the brilliant Queensland-based group Ensemble Q will tour a program featuring a showpiece written by their founding member and clarinettist Paul Dean, his Concerto for Cello and Wind Quintet. Kildea is full of praise for this contemporary work: 'it's difficult, it's virtuosic, and soloist Trish Dean is a fantastic advocate'. Ensemble Q is a collection of 'exceptional players and wonderful people.'

Long-time friends and collaborators will reunite when Piers Lane joins the marvellous Goldner String Quartet to embark on their postponed 2020 tour. Boasting a line-up of their founding members - violinists Dene Olding and Dimity Hall, violist Irina Morozova, and cellist Julian Smiles - the quartet will perform two complementary programs of Dvořák, Korngold, Brahms and Elgar, and the world premiere of a new work by the emerging Australian composer Jakub Jankowski.

Chopin's twenty-four Preludes are regarded as a great monument of nineteenth-century Romantic literature; they are at the heart of Chopin's Piano, an immersive blend of chamber music and theatre. Featuring the extraordinary pianist Aura Go and director Richard Pyros, this is an evocative retelling of the rich history and ultimate fate of the piano central to key Chopin works, adapted from Paul Kildea's book Chopin's Piano.

The popular Morning Masters concerts returns to Sydney and Melbourne in joyous fashion, offering an hour of exquisite music in the company of friends and new musical experiences.

Subscription packages and single tickets are available now via musicaviva.com.au

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