about | 2008 recital series | listen | critic's reviews | our cd's | home   Wendy Dixon - soprano David Miller - piano guest artists 2008 season

May 24th I've learnt how to put small sound files up on the web page now, so hopefully these little "teasers" will entice potential audience members.Any suggestions regarding the webpage will be thankfully received. Whether I can The rehearsal with Margery Smith was much fun with pauses, extra bars and different pedalling being added as we explored textures in the music. From a singer's point of view it is great to have the words set at pitches where they have a fighting chance of being heard. This is a gorgeous cycle, lovely light textures, big dynamic range, humour, poise... The dress rehearsal cum first full run finds us timing all the sections, adding them up and deciding how long we can afford to talk. John Carmody got to the first half of the rehearsal and is now reading each Auden poem just before we perform them. Recital Hall West has a very live acoustic and is just the right size for the intimacy of vocal and instrumental recital. For the piano buffs, David has chosen the Steinway Chamber piano, exactly the right size for this venue. May 18th Time flows too quickly and I haven't updated this page for 4 weeks and it's almost recital hour zero. Tomorrow Margery Smith comes to our rehearsal to workshop her lovely new song cycle. We've been corresponding via email and phone, but it is always exciting and a little intimidating to have the composer present. No doubt it is the same for Margery with three musicians to contend with. We tend to come up with questions like "what do you want to achieve here?" and "is this right?". As another composer friend has commented, "notation is an imprecise art", which means performers can't always figure out what it is the compser wants. Another wonderful reason for working with a live composer creating a new piece and getting closer to their original conception. April 20th We've begun exploring the W.H. Auden poetry that Benjamin Britten has set in his cycle "On this Island". We will be performing the entire cycle for our first time at the May 25 recital. Looking back over the Grevillea files, we have performed at various times songs one to four, but not the fifth (both of us have done the complete cycle in non-Grevillea mode and with non-Grevillean others). These are early Britten settings, Opus 11, written before the outbreak of World War 2, so the writing is pretty tonal, at times almost what I term English pastoral. The Auden poems span from social commentary to descriptions of nature. The first song, "Let the florid music praise" could be considered obscure (although after 1932 Auden decided that obscurity was a bad fault) and we managed to spend over an hour attempting to decifer the text and put it in context with Britten's setting. I have two collections of his poetry, one that he published when he was 50 in which he states that he has made revisions of some poems. Two revisions apply to the first song, "the" in the first line becoming "a", and death receiving a capital to become Death. Just as well I bought the books. So, rehearsing is never just figuring out where to breath so we both sound okay. Dictionaries, poetry books, internet... Lots of fun. April 13th Some of the program for May 25 has already been aired in public. Wendy, David and James gave a performance at St. Stephens Church, Macquarie St, Sydney on Friday 4th April in which two delightful trios by Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1938) and André Caplet (1879-1925) were given their first outing. We also managed a flute/voice/piano version of Delibes' Flower duet from Lakme. Interestingly, Delibes was Emmanuel's composition teacher for some time, although he did not agree with Emmanuel's use of folk tunes and modes in his musical writing. Groves has an extensive article, although I am unable to give you this link. If you have the time, a quick search on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maurice_Emmanuel&oldid=178688790) will tell you a little about this composer. Our most exciting news is the shift from the Music Cafe to Recital Hall West. The opportunity to use the beautiful piano and acoustic in the Recital Hall is very seductive. Mind you, the state of the air-conditoning and the hard chairs in the Music Cafe, plus the need to move all those tables and chairs for each performance have also contributed to our decision. More soon Wendy   Grevillea Ensemble is proudly sponsored by Stephen Yarrow Design & Print