CONTENT COURTESY AUSTRALIAN ROMANTIC & CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA
The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra has announced a special performance featuring soprano Jacqueline Porter entitled Love & Life with two performances to take place at Melbourne Recital Centre on 15 March.
The orchestra was forced to cancel the Melbourne performance of its highly praised Illuminate program in February, but has organised this special event to ensure its Melbourne audience doesn’t miss out.
“Performing in Melbourne is so important to us, and we were heartbroken when we had to cancel our Illuminate concert,” says co-artistic director Nicole van Bruggen.
“So many of our core musicians are from Victoria – including my co-artistic director and concertmaster, Rachael Beesley – so we have all keenly felt the trials of the last 12 months.
“We cannot wait to return to the Melbourne Recital Centre and we are delighted that Jacqueline Porter will be joining us again. We had a fabulous time working together on Illuminate, and her performance in that program reaffirmed that she truly is one of the finest voices in Australia.”
This program celebrates love and life in all their hues and textures.
Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben (A Woman’s Love and Life) encompasses the entirety of one woman’s love for her man, from meeting until death. Written in 1840, Schumann’s Liederjahr or ‘Year of Song’ – an extraordinary period in which many of his most famous songs were written – the timing is no accident: he was desperately in love with Clara Wieck and was suing her father for their right to marry. His longing for Clara pours out in these eight songs.
Edvard Grieg creates a similarly longing mood in his Two Elegiac Melodies, Op.34, and his unfinished String Quartet No. 2, though Grieg’s longing, as ever, is for the landscapes of his beloved Norway. The text in the second of the Two Elegiac Melodies, entitled ‘Varen’ (‘The Last Spring’) is taken from a poem by Aasmund Olafsson Vinje, a quintessential Romantic nationalist whose works were preoccupied with rural Norwegian life – all traits he shared with Grieg!
Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra
Rachael Beesley, Director | Jacqueline Porter, Soprano
Edvard Grieg | String Quartet No.2, EG 117
Robert Schumann | Frauenliebe und Leben, Op.42 (arr. Shauna Beesley)
Edvard Grieg | Two Elegiac Melodies, Op.34
6pm and 8.30pm March 15, Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
