The Song Company: Ross Edwards at 75
The Song Company will be presenting a 75th birthday concert for Ross Edwards with an intimate chamber performance of Fauré’s perennial Requiem.
Sat 1 Dec | Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music | 3pm
Gabriel Fauré claimed that his “Requiem wasn’t written for anything – for pleasure, if I may call it that!”. This version for vocal and instrumental consort brings new clarity to Fauré’s vivid harmonies and is surrounded by the elemental soundworld of Ross Edwards, one of Australia’s most distinguished composers.
Celebrating the 75th birthday of one of Australia’s most eminent living composers, Ross Edwards, with an intimate chamber performance of Fauré’s ever-popular Requiem is a canny pairing which makes the most of the French composer’s delight in harmonic frisson and melodic panache – set against Ross’s vivid rhythmic carillons inspired by the natural world of his beloved Australia. Artistic Director Antony Pitts confides that “we’re presenting a kind of ‘pass-the-parcel’ to Ross, to kick off his actual 75th birthday month, with extracts from a number of his a cappella works appearing unannounced in-between the movements of the Fauré. Aside from hearing Genevieve Lang both in the opening of The Harp and the Moon and combined with The Song Company in his latest commission De Spiritu Sancto, Ross himself won’t know what’s coming next of his in the program. For a composer that has to be a very unusual experience, and we hope, a suitable birthday present for someone who has forged an extremely personal and recognizably Australian style in his vocal writing over the decades.”
Susannah Lawergren | Amy Moore SOPRANO
Hannah Fraser | Philippa Dracakis ALTO
Dan Walker | Owen Elsley TENOR
Mark Donnelly | Andrew O’Connor BASS
Genevieve Lang HARP
Véronique Serret VIOLIN
Paul Stender CELLO
Brett McKern ORGAN
Antony Pitts CONDUCTOR
