An Unusual but Brilliant Concert

I love Armidale's vibrant musical life and last Saturday I attended yet another inspiring concert. We had two highly accomplished performers, John Bell and Simon Tedeschi. John worked an  artistic director and administrator and actor with many different organisations: Royal Shakespeare Company, Nimrod Theatre (which he founded along with Bell Shakespeare), Opera Australia, and the Sydney Theatre Company. He's played most of the major roles in Shakespeare's plays over the years and he's about to star in Moliere's "The Miser". For all this work he was awarded the Order of Australia (AO) and, remarkably, the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

His co-performer is equally accomplished. He's performed on the piano in most of the renowned concert halls of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. And he's performed for an amazing array of world leaders, including George W Bush, Vladimir Putin, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama! And, get this. He first performed a Mozart piano concerto at the Sydney Opera House at the age of 9. Yes, that's not a misprint. He has also recorded a variety of works for posterity and won many overseas awards including the New York Young Jewish Pianist Award.

Here are the two performers, one a musician and the other an actor - a strange combination for a musical evening.

But, when you see the program you can that this concert involves Tedeschi playing a series of piano works by Schubert intermingled with Bell reciting poems written by John Keats. Schubert and Keats had, in a way, much in common. They were contemporaries, but probably never met each other. Keats' and Schubert's lives were horribly short: 1795 - 1821 for the former and 1797 - 1828 for the latter. Keats reached 25 and Schubert 31, just 56 years of age combined. Both came from lower-down the social pecking order. Keats' father was an inn-keeper, while Schubert's was a teacher. And Keats' famous poetry was written in just 6 years. Both K and S were, however, key early romantics who influenced that genre through much of the 19th century.

Strange or not, our performers were truly excellent and won great applause from the large audience in Armidale's town hall. They alternated their genres and kept the audience rapt. Of course, Keats had the same effect on latter 19th century poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites, who praised him hugely, such that he's now regarded as the most quoted of all English poets. Likewise, Schubert became regarded as one of the greatest composers of early 19th century. He managed to compose over 1,500 works during his short life.

What our audience appreciated were the commentaries of both performers on the works they performed or recited and their role and status in driving the genre of Romanticism in the 19th century.

Armidale has a highly educated work-force that laps up such cultural highlights and I'm proud to be part of this genre. The combination of music and poetry was so well done that maybe others will try it.

This is my third post of today and the harbinger of things to come. I've been off-air so to speak for about 6 weeks, three of which were spent in the USA again - added to the four weeks in May-June. And you'll soon discover that I roamed that country across the north starting from Burlington in Vermont - just South of the Canadian border and Montreal. I spent another week in the Mid-West based at Saint Paul (a twin city with Minneapolis), but roaming widely through both Wisconsin and  Minnesota. And, unsurprisingly, I spent another week with family in Seattle. It was a glorious, but tiring trip.

AS