Yesterday I attended a fabulous orchestral concert delivered by Armidae's symphony orchestra and a group of singers known as Fiori Musicali. The performers were all local and the event was staged as usual at Armidale's conservatorium of music. The porchestra played to a full house as usual. It's marvellous that a town of ponly 25,000 people can stage such a high quality event delivered professionally by local participants. And the works performed were mind-blowing in many respects., all coming under the theme of Intimations of Immortality.
Get your head around this! There were two renowned classical works: Camille Saint-Seans' Piano Concerto #5 in F Major (op. 103) written in 1896 and Grabiel Faure's Equiem in D Minor (op. 48) dating from c. 1890. I didn't know it before the concert that Camille was an 'over-achiever. He wrote his first composition at the age of 4 and made his first performance in public at the age of 10. Here's the chorus for the requiem.
What also blew the audience away were the other 4 works which are all recent compositions. Has any reader of mine heard of an Australian named Deborah Cheetham born in 1964? Her work called Long Time Living Here was first performed in 2019. She's Aboriginal and her song was sung in Armidale native's Anaiwan language! The work was for Soprano and a background chorus - Fiori Muscali - shown in this picture's background. The soprano, Jessica Suann, is facing us on the left
The next Australian composition was written by Rachel Bruerville and first performed in 2018 when she was only 37 years old!! It was called "dancing on tiptoes - but never falling"!!! More amazingly, this beautiful work was written to help calm people in hosptal with mental health problems!!!! Then came Nick Wales' Marine. He, too, was born in 1964 - obviously a good year for composers. His work was called 'Marine' and is a serene song for a soprano evoking the serenity of the ocean. However, the words sung were written by the French Poet Paul Verlaine (Poemes Saturniens) in the late 1800s. The last of the 4 recent works - all connected in some way to environments was written by Ola Gjeilo (born in 1978) - a Norwegian who called the work Tundra! It reflects life in a beautiful mountainous area between Oslo and Beregen.
The audience was ecstatic with this repertoir and the amazing quality of the performers. Come and live here!
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