Great Barrier Reef Orchestra, Theodore Kutchar to play Queen’s Gardens, St James Cathedral

One of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music’s most popular performances is returning, with famed conductor to also perform free show at NQ church.

Internationally renowned conductor and artistic director of the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra Theodore Kutchar is back in the city to for two concerts with the GBRO. Picture: Evan Morgan

Members of the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra will be giving two performances in the space of a week – the first in a cathedral and the second in a park – and both under the guiding hand of the orchestra’s artistic director Theodore Kutchar.

This Tuesday there will be a free intimate evening of chamber music at St James Cathedral for Theodore Kutchar and Friends.

The international renowned conductor will also be performing on the night and said the program would be a combination of chamber music and orchestral music.

He said it would be the first time he had performed with is viola since the same concert at the cathedral 12 months earlier.

The first half of the concert features a Dvorak violin sonata and Schumann’s Piano Quintet with the second half of the program incorporating more GBRO members with Stamitz’s Sinfonia Concertante and perhaps the first time Mozart’s Divertimento in D Major having being performed in the country.

Then this coming Sunday is the popular Australian Festival of Chamber Music Queens Gardens Concert with Kutchar conducting the GBRO with international artists Jack Liebeck on violin and Stefan Dohr on French horn.

Kutchar said the program would be a number of classical pot boilers including the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and children’s film music from How to Train a Dragon.

“Two of the participants in this year’s AFCM, Stefan Dohr, the principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic will be playing a Mozart horn concerto. And Jack Liebeck, one of my successors as the AFCM artistic director will be playing the Bruch Violin Concerto,” he said.

With an audience expected in the thousands he said the Concert in the Park had proved it was one of the most popular events on the AFCM program.

“It’s an emotional high for any musician when you see such an audience. I mean, literally in the 1000s,” he said.

“Nobody wants to play to an empty concert hall. Nobody wants to play for an empty cathedral. Ultimately, the greatest gratification for a musician is not in terms of dollars and cents. It’s in terms of the reaction that you generate in your listeners.

“It’s a highlight for everybody involved. If this (Queens Gardens) concert can attract similar numbers to what it has in the past few years, when I’ve conducted the last three, then it will be a feather in the cap of everybody’s involved. The Townsville City Council, the AFCM, and, most importantly, those presenting the concert, the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra.”

The free concert at St James Cathedral on Tuesday evening starts at 6pm and the free all ages AFCM Queens Gardens Concerts at 3pm this Sunday.

Originally published as Great Barrier Reef Orchestra, Theodore Kutchar to play Queen’s Gardens, St James Cathedral