Shigeru Kawai Piano Launch

 Armidale's New England Conservatorium of Music has just upagraded its piano. They bought it from the Japanese company Shigeru Kawai and we were advised that their pianos are now regarded as among the world's best.

Here's the instrument in question:

To celebrate its arrival, the Conservatorium planned a concert in their domain and it turned out to be among the most stupendous I've attended there. The entire program consisted of piano works and, remarkably, all performers were based in Armidale. Even two of the 5 performers must have been around 18 years of age - either last year of high school or starting tertiary education. Armidale has a huge array of musical talent. The concert lasted 2 hours.

The opening work was Mendelssohn's stupendous 17 Variations Serieuses Op 54 played by Sheila Guymer. Then came two Danzas Argentinas composed by Alberto Ginastera ... of whom I know nothing. This was beautifully played by young Will Mackson. Both performers received raptuous applause. Here's Sheila.

And here's young Will who performed marvellously.

Next came Nigan from Baal Shem (B. 27, #2) in which joung Emily played the violin accompanied by Robert Manley.

Then the piano teacher, Robert Manley, performed three glorious works by Brahms (1) and Greig (2). 

After this, Sheila resumed her role at the piano while Robert, believe it or not, switched to a 'cello to perform Faure's Elegie Op 24. Again, the performances were top-class.

An intermission now occurred to hand out awards to young performers, after which we saw something I've never seen in public. Kasey Cochrane joined Robert at the piano to play a glorious duet - Lutoslawski's famous Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Again, it was a great performance and the musicians won enormous applause. 

Lastly, the audience was enthralled by an amazing work by Eduard Holst called Shooting Stars Galop. And they sure did gallop!! More amazing still was the fact that there old piano joined the new one and each had two pianists - see above. So we had a sort of piano quartet with 8 hands on the 2 keyboards. Again, the audience was overwhelmed by a brilliant musical they were unlikely to ever see again. The applause at the end was long and resounding, signing off on a great day enjoyed by a large and enthusiastic audience. Lucky Armidale! 

Alas, I forgot to take a picture of this 8 hands event. Maybe I was so enthralled by the music that I forgot to take it. Anyway, here's all 4 piano performer taking their final bow. The applause was monumental.

What a day! Dot and I were enthralled. Come and live here if you like this kind of event.

AS

Blooming Summer

 We're moving here into late summer but, after a lot of cool and wet weather, we're enjoying day-long sunshine and warm temperatures. Today, for example, the forecast is for temperature to reach 30 C (86 F) even though we're 1100 m above sea level. We've a garden with masses of flowers and I've just done a quick walk around it with my camera photographing many of the flowers in tubs, flower beds, and even trees. Here they are:

I'm not really up with the names of the various plants, but Dot has told me that the ones in the mext picture are naked ladies!! I can't quite see the connection, but I'll leave it up to you to work this issue out!

I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did taking them. Thanks to Dot's great efforts we've got heaps of flowers for us to enjoy.

AS