Chamberfest Concert Four

'This concert begins with four minutes of four hands at the piano – an aural ‘ginger shot’ of zingy energy.

We celebrate a fresh song cycle by two Adelaide women: Anna Goldsworthy and Anne Cawrse. In Snapshots, Goldsworthy’s poetry reckons with love in a nontraditional way, observing how ‘failed’ relationships morph into new and different futures for families today. With splashes of humour and deep sincerity, this is like Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben (Women’s Love and Life) for the twenty-first century, and I’m so proud to present it for you here.

Quatuor Agate commissioned Last Flight from Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun as part of their ECHO Rising Stars nomination in 2024/25. I heard them play it in Barcelona and it was riveting. Despite tech advancements and social progress, aren’t we just repeating the same patterns, over and over? I don’t know the answer, but when the Chanson perpétuelle (Perpetual Song) sounds this good, the catharsis is real.

Judith Wright’s pithy poem After the Visitors speaks of the feeling at the end of a dinner party when you take off your social mask and wonder… which version is the ‘real’ me? My heart explodes with light when I hear To a Child and I’m gripped by Failure of Communication. These ‘young’ Australian pieces were commissioned by Katie Noonan with the Brodsky Quartet a few years ago, and I’m grateful for such wonderful additions to the Australian chamber music canon. The latter has a stretch of vocal improvisation, where I can bring out my jazzy Mildura roots!

Inspiration: Music as educator, bias-breaker, social mirror, empathy machine. Passing of the guard and updating emotional software.
Recognise: Bach and Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle.
Discover: The evocative poetry of Australians Judith Wright and Anna Goldsworthy, matched with instantly affecting music by celebrated living composers.

– Siobhan Stagg

Artists
Siobhan Stagg | Soprano
Rachel Fenlon | Soprano / Piano
Sophie Rennert | Mezzo-soprano
Jonathan Ware | Piano
Quatuor Agate

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106
(transcribed for Piano Four Hands by György Kurtág)

I. Sonatina

Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Sonata for Four Hands, FP8

I. Prélude

Anne Cawrse (b. 1981)
Snapshots of Love and Life

I. One Morning
II. One Potato, Two
III. Surprise!
IV. Catalogue of Blessings
V. I Love Men
VI. That Hill
VII. Snapshots

SHORT BREAK

Ernest Chausson (1855–1899)
La Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37

Anna Korsun (b. 1986)
Last Flight

Andrew Ford (b. 1957)
After the Visitors

David Hirschfelder (b. 1960)
To a Child

John Rodgers (1962–2024)
Failure of Communication