Performers will be tickling the ivories at two very different events in Bendigo and Shepparton in the coming days. Australian National Piano Award: image supplied If one were to trade only in stereotypes, it would be easy to assume
http://www.artshub.com.au/festival/news-article/news/festivals/pianists-provide-a-soundtrack-for-regional-victoria-245623[2/09/2014 4:13:39 PM]
RICHARD WATTS
TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER, 2014
Performers will be tickling the ivories at two very different
events in Bendigo and Shepparton in the coming days.
Australian National Piano Award: image supplied
If one were to trade only in stereotypes, it would be easy to assume
that the natural habitat for classical music aficionados would be
restricted to such well-heeled suburbs as Ascot in Brisbane,
Melbourne’s South Yarra and Vaucluse in Sydney. Reality, of course,
is quite different; lovers of classical music and contemporary
composition live throughout Australia, as evident by two successful
events taking place in regional Victoria in the coming days.
Pianists provide a soundtrack for
regional Victoria
Pianists provide a soundtrack for regional Victoria | ArtsHub Australia
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Now in its second year, Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory
Music (BIFEM) is the brainchild of Helpmann Award-winning
composer David Chisholm, who describes the festival as being ‘firmly
focused on long-form works, world and Australian premieres, and
presenting a flawless international company of musicians
(http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/performingarts/
saved-by-the-bell-111-bicycles-make-exploratory-music-
244871)’.
The Australasian premiere of French composer Phillipe Manoury’s
Pluton, a demanding work from 1988 featuring a duet between a
piano and live electronic processing, is sure to be a highlight at
BIFEM this weekend.
Pianist Peter Dumsday describes Pluton as a duet between piano and
live electronics, and is looking forward to collaborating with visiting
San Diego multi-disciplinary artist Samuel Dunscombe on the
performance.
‘The more I’ve gotten into the work the more I’ve loved thinking about
the electronics – and Sam, the electronic musician – as a duet
partner. I often respond to the momentum of the electronic response
to what the piano plays, and the electronics in return, almost
exclusively, react to what I’m playing. So it’s definitely a dialogue, and
that’s actually been really exciting for me,’ Dumsday said.
Though he describes Manoury’s Pluton as ‘one of the most important
electronic pieces in the second half of the 20 century,’ his and
Dunscombe’s performance of the work at BIFEM will mark its
Australasian premiere. Dumsday said there were ‘probably a couple
of reasons’ why it has not been performed locally until now.
‘One is that Sam has struggled and had to call in help from overseas
to translate the original program, the '80s computer program, so it will
run on a modern computer. And also, as I’ve discovered more and
more over the last few months, the piano part is fiendishly difficult and
would require the commitment of someone who is fully committed to
contemporary music, I think, and also at a pretty high level, I
suppose.’
Bendigo audiences are in for a treat when they hear Pluton, Dumsday
explained.
‘A work like this, which is the better part of an hour long, it has such a
huge emotional journey in it. And even though it’s very primitive
electronics from the mid-'80s, the variety of it … There are no dull
moments at all, and in fact, I believe that even someone not very
familiar with modern classical music language would have an absolute
ball listening to this rollercoaster journey of a piece,’ he said.
Some 121km north of Bendigo, the regional city of Shepparton is set
to host another event of interest to devotees of composition and
th
Pianists provide a soundtrack for regional Victoria | ArtsHub Australia
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classical music: the Australian National Piano Award (ANPA).
Held every two years, ANPA 2014 will see 13 finalists aged between
21 and 35 years competing for the honour of being crowned
Australia’s best up-and-coming classical pianist.
Among this year’s finalists is 21-year-old Alex Raineri, a recent
graduate from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music who is
currently undertaking a Master of Music Research through the
Australian National Academy of Music and Queensland
Conservatorium. An active soloist and chamber musician, Raineri is
also co-artistic director and pianist in the ensemble Kupka’s Piano,
which recently returned from performing at the International Summer
Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany.
‘The Australian National Piano Award is one of the most prestigious
and large-scale events for pianists certainly in the country, perhaps in
the southern hemisphere, so for me this is really a personal thing,’
Raineri said.
‘I really find that these competitions are excellent goals to work
towards, so in a sense – immaterial of the event results in terms of
prizes and end results – I think it’s important to go through the
process of preparing for a competition like this, because the standard
is so, so high and there’s so much repertoire to have under your
fingers; it really helps raise the bar for my own personal playing.’
Competitors perform up to four recitals in front of a live audience, to
be judged on technical mastery, style, emotional and intellectual
interpretations of the repertoire. This year they will be judged by
internationally respected pianists and adjudicators Paul Badura-
Skoda (Austria), Murray McLachlan (UK) and Wendy Lorenz
(Australia), with Professor Max Cooke OAM the event’s Artistic
Director.
Describing the competition as ‘a strange, pressured environment’,
Raineri said there was nonetheless a collegiate atmosphere among
competitors.
‘It starts to feel more like a music festival … There’s been so much
work poured into it by the time everyone gets there that there tends to
be a kind of nice, over-riding feeling that we’re there to play music
rather than go head-to-head and battle it out.’
That said, Raineri is still keenly aware of the competition that exists
between him and the 12 other finalists.
‘Australia is a great place to live as a musician, especially as a young
musician, but in a sense there’s always some element of competition;
there’s not nearly enough work for everyone to be working all the
time, so you have to be strategic and… I think “compete” is the wrong
word, but you just have to know how to work the scene,’ he said.
‘Competitions are a slightly left-of-centre way of throwing yourself into
Pianists provide a soundtrack for regional Victoria | ArtsHub Australia
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the public eye and knowing how to work with an audience, and work
with programming to your audience as well as programming
something that the jury will appreciate, and something that you want
to perform.’
Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music
www.bifem.com.au (http://www.bifem.com.au)
5-7 September
Australian National Piano Award
www.australianpianoaward.com.au
(http://www.australianpianoaward.com.au)
Eastbank Centre, Shepparton
8-13 September
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Watts is a Melbourne-based arts writer and
broadcaster, and the founder of the Emerging Writers'
Festival. In addition to writing for ArtsHub, Richard presents
the weekly program SmartArts on 3RRR. He currently serves
on the boards of La Mama Theatre and the journal Going
Down Swinging, and is a member of the Green Room
Awards Independent Theatre panel. Follow him on Twitter:
@richardthewatts