Mozart is the message for this team of north shore volunteers
For almost 70 years the Sydney Mozart Society has been bringing the master’s music to north shore audiences without funding and entirely run by volunteers.
North Shore
Don't miss out on the headlines from North Shore. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Planets align for Vladimir
- All hands on deck for Mozart
- Young talent time for Brandies
- Take me to your lieder
Affiliated with the Mozarteum foundation in Mozart’s home town of Salzburg, Austria, the society is based at Eastwood and with the opening of the Concourse at Chatswood in 2011 has found a superb venue for its six concerts a year.
The latest in their 2019 season featured two of Australia’s finest chamber musicians in violinist Sophie Rowell and pianist Kristian Chong with a program that included Mozart, of course, along with Beethoven and Saint-Saens.
Rowell is currently concertmaster of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra but is best known to Sydney audiences as the former leader of the Australian String Quartet and founder of the Tankstream Quartet.
Chong has performed as a soloist with all of Australia’s major orchestras as well as an accompanist to our best and brightest. He demonstrated why he is in such demand with a sparkling performance of Mozart’s piano sonata in B flat major K570.
Rowell and Chong have a particularly strong musical chemistry and three of the works they performed showed the development of writing for the two instruments from the classical era of Mozart to the late 19th century’s romantic period.
EVEN
Mozart’s charming 1778 sonata for piano and violin says it all in the title. The composer was equally adept at both instruments but the piano dominates.
Less than 20 years later Beethoven’s sonata in A minor Op 23, had the same designation but he was breaking new ground by putting both instruments on an even footing.
The piece was written as a darker companion to his popular and sunny Spring sonata and here we saw Rowell with more to do and with technical challenges to overcome, which she did with customary aplomb.
This is a wild emotional ride, full of bravura passages for both instrumentalists and some sensuous melodies
But the duo was put fully to the test in the final work, Camille Saint-Saens’ sonata for violin and piano No 1 (note the change of order in the title). Written in 1885, the year before his Organ symphony and the Carnival of Animals appeared, this is a wild emotional ride, full of bravura passages for both instrumentalists and some sensuous melodies in the slow movement.
One of the work’s themes inspired Marcel Proust’s fictional sonata in Swann’s Way, the first volume of Remembrance of Times Past.
On a day when the Harbour Bridge was lit up with the colours of the French tricoleur as a memorial tribute to former president and Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, the allegro finale was a fitting and exhilarating end to the evening — complete with church bells.
Next up is the Enigma Quartet at Concourse Concert Hall Chatswood at 8pm on Friday, October 25, with works by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Smetana.
DETAILS
● CONCERT Sydney Mozart Society: Sophie Rowell and Kristian Chong
● WHERE Concourse Concert Hall Chatswood
● WHEN Friday, September 27