Remarkable Concert

I’ve just attended the most peculiar orchestral concert of my life delivered by the Armidale Symphony Orchestra, several of whose members I know.

In a way, all the works were connected in some way with this city!! As you’d probably guess from that, none of the works were core items in the international repertoire.

Two of the pieces were written and conducted by Richard Peter Maddox, an Armidale resident now c. 80 years old! One, his Op 138 (!!), was entitled “… shall never fade …” and is a musical elegy to horrific bush-fires. The second of his works was called Kubla Kahn, and is setting for voice and choir of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem of the same name. The choir, Fiori Musicali, all live locally and the soloist, Ruth Strutt, was (a) born in Armidale and (b) now works with the Australian opera.

The third work was by Cecile Chaminade (1857 – 1944), one of few women composers. Her flute concerto was performed by a local resident, Gerard Larkins, who (a) went to the same school as both Emily and Rebecca and (b) was taught the flute by the same teacher as Emily’s (Margaret Hawkins).

The concert finished off with the Symphony #1 by Australian composer Alfred Hill (1869 to 1960). Have you ever heard of him? He played in an orchestra at Leipzig and, among his conductors he worked under were Brahms, Greig, Tchaikovsky and Bruch. Anyway, this work was substantially written in Leipzig, but left unfinished. It was eventually finished in Armidale, which seems quite a remarkable outcome.

So this town of 25,000 people has a remarkable musical life.

Tony