Australian Chamber Choir Performs ‘True Romantics’
The Australian Chamber Choir directed by Douglas Lawrence OAM, presents True Romantics featuring music by Brahms, Elgar, Barber, Ravel and Monteverdi, alongside works by Australian composers Allan Holley and Brenton Broadstock.
The True Romantics program moves beyond the conventional boundaries of the Romantic period, as well as meditating on the theme highlighted by one of the works on the program. Johannes Brahms suffered from depression and assembled the text of Warum?, the first work on the program, to focus on the issue. As well, September 13 is R U OK? day.
The program includes a premiere of a piece by Alan Holley And the rain which sets a poem by Mark Tredinnick; and a work by Australia’s Brenton Broadstock written in memory of composer, Michael Easton. True Romantics includes an arrangement of Elgar’s Nimrod, Samuel Barber’s setting of his Adagio for Strings as an Agnus Dei alongside his masterful Twelfth Night, Ravel’s Trois Chansons and madrigals by Monteverdi sung by small ensembles.
R U OK? day on 13 September alerts us to the presence of depression in its many forms. One in five Australians is affected by mental illness, and yet many don’t seek help because of stigma. We can all do something about this.
When an admirer, Vincenz Lachner, wrote to Johannes Brahms about the strange shadows (trombones and timpani) in Brahms’ sunny Second Symphony, Brahms responded:
“I would have to confess that I am a severely melancholic person, that black wings are constantly flapping above us, and that in my output – perhaps not entirely by chance – that symphony is followed by a little essay about the great ‘Why’. The Motet, ‘Warum’ casts the necessary shadow on the serene symphony and perhaps accounts for those timpani and trombones”.
