Paul Kildea Welcomes you to Season 2025
In 1941 Bertolt Brecht arrived in America, narrowly escaping the European conflagration. Bewildered, alienated and angry, he wrote his ‘Sonnet of an emigrant’, which encapsulates the experience of exiles and migrants throughout history.
‘Wherever I go they ask me: “Spell your name!” | And oh, that name was once accounted great.’
This line is at the heart of a work Musica Viva Australia has commissioned from composer Cathy Milliken for the Takács Quartet in celebration of our 80th birthday. It is our tribute to Richard Goldner and Walter Dullo, two mid-century immigrants who founded our organisation and, overnight, changed the sound of Australia. For in December 1945 Richard Goldner’s Sydney Musica Viva gave its first concert, which included the astonishing Grosse Fuge, a piece perhaps as incomprehensible to that Sydney audience as it was to its first audience in Vienna 120 years earlier. Notwithstanding, these Sydneysiders applauded the audacious vision of these two refugees, who must have been asked quite often to spell their names.
The Takács Quartet — with its own roots in migration and displacement — has a long history with MVA, and its members sit alongside artists with more recent history. It’s a thrill to have Cédric Tiberghien back on our stages, reviving his fabulous collaboration with FutureMaker Matthias Schack-Arnott, a sculptural exploration of John Cage’s epic Sonatas and Interludes. It is equally thrilling to welcome back the Signum Saxophone Quartet in conjunction with the brilliant Ali McGregor in another nod to the transformative impact of immigrants on the culture of their adopted homes.
I’ve known the wonderful Piotr Anderszewski since the late 1990s, first in Aldeburgh, then at Wigmore Hall, and it is a joy to include him in our birthday year. It was in those years that we all wondered who would ever replace the legendary Beaux Arts Trio; crisis averted, for we now have the virtuosic Trio Isimsiz, featuring a new work by the astounding Francisco Coll.
Our early music is later than usual, concentrating on the period in which both Mozart and Beethoven wrote milestone works for the new clarinet, here performed by three outstanding musicians: Nicola Boud, Simon Cobcroft and Erin Helyard. Equally thrilling collaborations are those between Australian pianist Jennifer Marten-Smith and Swedish-Norwegian virtuoso Johan Dalene — including a new work from Jack Frerer — and partnership between singersongwriter Jess Hitchcock and Penny Quartet, the five musicians having worked with eleven different Australian composers on arrangements from Jess’s first two CDs.
It is a year of innovation and tradition, of collaborations between brilliant international artists and their Australian colleagues, a catalogue of names still accounted great. We are delighted to share it with you.
Paul Kildea, Artistic Director
With special thanks to MVA's Ensemble Patrons whose support of each tour helps us bring this work to life. We also thank the Amadeus Society for their support of MVA's 2025 concert season.
