The Beach Boys are surfing into the Sydney Opera House to play with the Sydney Symphony for two nights only! Catch the vocal harmonies of summer’s hottest act as the boys sing all their greatest hits including “Good Vibrations”, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Kokomo” with the full rich sound of the Sydney Symphony. Featuring original band members Mike Love and Bruce Johnson, the shows promise to be the feel-good event of 2010!

Listen or Purchase tracks by the Beach Boys on BigPond Music

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ABOUT THE CONCERT

They say the beginning is a very good place to start. With Mahler that’s true, and as we set off with this 20-something composer there are twin strands to be discovered – symphonies and songs. The Songs of a Wayfarer follow the fortunes of a roaming apprentice, bereft and alone. It’s a melancholy subject, but in Mahler’s hands it’s beautifully poignant. On the other hand, his first symphony, composed around the same time, catches him in a good mood and – for Mahler! – a concise frame of mind.

Here is the emerging Mahler sound in music that sings and revels in youthful humour. There’s irony too. This is the symphony that famously turns “Frère Jacques” into a funeral march: the forest animals following a dead hunter. Blumine is a literal flowering of musical beauty, once a part of the symphony and recovered from the cutting room floor. From one appealing moment to the next, this is the perfect concert to discover the genuine Mahler voice.

R STRAUSS Don Juan
MAHLER Blumine
MAHLER Songs of a Wayfarer
MAHLER Symphony No.1

Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Markus Eiche baritone

AUDIO PLAYER LISTING

Track 1 – R STRAUSS Don Juan: two highlights
Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 480 04411
Track 2 – MAHLER Songs of a Wayfarer: Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld (As I walked this morning through the field)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone soloist
Track 3 – MAHLER Symphony No.1: 2nd movement
Track 4 – MAHLER Symphony No.1: finale
Mahler tracks: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 449 735-2
 
Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.

Currently available from iTunes: Mahler 1 and Wayfarer; Don Juan

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Mahler's 'Symphony of a Thousand' makes for a monumental concert.

We’d better admit first up that you won’t be able to count a thousand musicians on the stage, but with eight wonderful soloists, several choirs joining us from all over Australia, and nearly 120 instrumentalists, you’ll be able to see how Mahler’s Eighth Symphony got its nickname.

This is inspired music. It transcends symphonic form to celebrate the “Creative Spirit” of its opening hymn and the redeeming power of love. Mahler said that it came to him as if it had been dictated, a creative outpouring over an astonishing two months. Imagine, he says, the whole universe beginning to sing and resound, and not mere human voices but planets and suns.

Of course, you don’t have to imagine – these performances of Mahler 8, the first in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall for nearly 20 years, will bring a musical universe to life before your eyes and ears.

Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Annalena Persson soprano
Marina Shaguch soprano
Sara Macliver soprano
Dagmar Pecková mezzo-soprano
Bernadette Cullen mezzo-soprano
Simon O’Neill tenor
Markus Eiche baritone
Martin Snell bass
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs
Adelaide Symphony Chorus
WASO Chorus
Sydney Children’s Choir
Gondwana Voices

Find out more about the Gondwana Voices and Sydney Children's Choir.

*Please note that as Annalena Persson has had to withdraw from the concert, Twyla Robinson is taking her place.
 

AUDIO PLAYER LISTING

Track 1 – MAHLER Symphony No.8: Part I Veni, creator spiritus (Come, O Spirit of creation)
Track 2 – MAHLER Symphony No.8: Part I Accende lumen sensibus (Kindle the light of our understanding)
Track 3 – MAHLER Symphony No.8: Part II introduction
Track 4 – MAHLER Symphony No.8: Part II Chorus mysticus (finale)
All tracks: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir with other German choirs, conducted by Rafael Kubelik
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 463 738-2
 
Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.

No one ever expects ordinary music-making at a Nigel Kennedy concert. He’s a serious musician who takes his fun seriously and breaks down the barriers at every turn.

On this visit Nigel and his friends will be putting the jazz into Bach and the art into the standards of Duke Ellington. Sure, he’ll stomp about the stage and he’ll talk to you like the others don’t, and you can be sure the concert won’t come out till late. But you can also bet on great music and great artistry all night long. Wicked.

A unique mix of highlights from the music of Johann Sebastian BACH and Duke ELLINGTON

Nigel Kennedy violin-director

 

Special Canberra Performance

For one night only you can catch Nigel Kennedy and the Sydney Symphony at the Royal Theatre Canberra.

Thu 4 Mar 8pm
Royal Theatre Canberra

Bookings through Ticketek only - ticketek.com.au or 132 849
Tickets from $49.

Please note that tickets for this performance are not available through the Sydney Symphony Box Office.

No one ever expects ordinary music-making at a Nigel Kennedy concert. He’s a serious musician who takes his fun seriously and breaks down the barriers at every turn.

On this visit Nigel and his friends will be putting the jazz into Bach and the art into the standards of Duke Ellington. Sure, he’ll stomp about the stage and he’ll talk to you like the others don’t, and you can be sure the concert won’t come out till late. But you can also bet on great music and great artistry all night long. Wicked.

A unique mix of highlights from the music of Johann Sebastian BACH and Duke ELLINGTON

Nigel Kennedy violin-director

 

Special Canberra Performance

For one night only you can catch Nigel Kennedy and the Sydney Symphony at the Royal Theatre Canberra.

Thu 4 Mar 8pm
Royal Theatre Canberra

Bookings through Ticketek only - ticketek.com.au or 132 849
Tickets from $49.

Please note that tickets for this performance are not available through the Sydney Symphony Box Office.

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“Anyone hearing him for the first time,” wrote The Independent after François-Frédéric Guy’s Wigmore Hall recital, “must have recognised that here was a big as well as a very polished player.” In 2010 Sydneysiders will be hearing Guy for the first time, in the first of our recitals celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth.

Chopin is represented by two nocturnes – filigreed music in the genre he made his own – and his inspired Polonaise-Fantaisie. Then Guy’s “astonishing expressiveness” joins forces with his powerful sound for three Beethoven sonatas, concluding with the magical and atmospheric “Moonlight” Sonata.

CHOPIN
Nocturne in C minor, Op.48 No.1
Nocturne in E, Op.62 No.2
Polonaise-fantaisie, Op.61
BEETHOVEN
Sonata No.31 in A flat, Op.110
‘Tempest’ Sonata, Op.31 No.2
‘Moonlight’ Sonata, Op.27 No.2

Please note revised program.


Hear F-F Guy in recital then experience the power of his Emperor Concerto in 
The Hall of Heroes (17, 18, 19 March).

AUDIO PLAYER LISTING

Track 1 – CHOPIN Nocturne, Op.48 No.1
Vladimir Ashkenazy
DECCA 475 8046

Visit us again closer to the concert for more highlights from this program.

Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.

Currently available from iTunes: Chopin

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A Count goes hunting on a Sunday. A Musician (ok, it’s Berlioz) poisons himself with opium. According to the music, they both come to grief: one is chased by demons to eternity, the other is overwhelmed by dreams of witches and the scaffold. It seems wrong to enjoy their fates so much, but who can resist it when these wild stories have been given such exhilarating and evocative music?

Ravel’s piano concerto is just as thrilling – it begins with the crack of a whip and ends in a jazz-inflected whirlwind of notes. Fantastique!

FRANCK The Accursed Huntsman
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G
BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique

Pinchas Steinberg conductor
Louis Lortie piano

AUDIO PLAYER LISTING

Track 1 – FRANCK The Accursed Huntsman
L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ernest Ansermet
DECCA 480 0052
Track 2 – RAVEL Piano Concerto in G: 3rd movement (Presto)
Alicia de Larrocha, piano, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conduced by Lawrence Foster
DECCA 476 235-1
Track 3 – BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique: At the Ball
Track 4 – BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique: March to the Scaffold
Hungarian Radio and Television Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch
PHILIPS 476 7962

Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.

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Beethoven was the first musical hero and as far as some of us are concerned he’s the greatest of them all. His Emperor Concerto takes the heroic spirit of the Napoleonic age and turns it into music that’s muscular and commanding, wrapping the noblest of emotions in breathtaking virtuosity. It’s weighty music for a powerful pianist like François-Frédéric Guy.

Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung brought together a whole raft of heroes in a massive cycle of four operas that begins in the Rhine and ends with the halls of Valhalla aflame. At 20 hours it’s too much for one concert, but Alexander Briger has chosen the orchestral highlights, beginning with the Ride of the Valkyries, for a Wagnerian musical adventure – minus the singing!

LEDGER Arcs and Planes
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 (Emperor)
WAGNER The Ring of the Nibelung: An Orchestral Suite

Alexander Briger conductor
François-Frédéric Guy piano

TEA & SYMPHONY - 19 MARCH
Short program: Beethoven, Wagner

 

AUDIO PLAYER LISTING

Track 1 – BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 (Emperor): 1. Allegro
Track 2 – BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 (Emperor): 2. Adagio un poco mosso
Track 3 – BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 (Emperor): 3. Rondo (Allegro)
Radu Lupu, piano, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta
DECCA 66 6892

Visit again closer to the concert for more highlights from this program.

Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.

Currently available from iTunes