More than 65 people enjoyed the Lotte Betts-Dean and Stewart Kelly recital at the Savage Club.
Lotte Betts-Dean
23 year-old Lotte began her musical life as a cellist and chorister and received her BMUS in 2012 from Melbourne University. Lotte is a versatile and popular vocalist who has appeared as soloist with several ensembles, including Ironwood, La Compania, Royal Melbourne Philharmonic and Ensemble Gombert. Her singing has been broadcast regularly on 3MBS FM and ABC Classic FM and she is featured on La Compaia's forthcoming album.
Her credits with Victorian Opera including Nancy T'ang (cover) (Nixon in China), El Trujaman (MAster Peter's Puppet Show), Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) and Benjimen (The Magic Pudding). Other roles include Polly Peachum (The Threepenny Opera) and Venus (Pepusch's Venus and Adonis).
An active contemporary chamber music performer, Lotte frequently performs with ANAM, having undertaken Berio's Folksongs and Stravinsky's Pribaoutki among others. This year, Lotte performer her debut festival recitals at the Peninsula Summer Music Festival and will be presenting several recitals in next year's Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival, before making her North American concert debut with Atlanta based new music ensemble Chamber Cartel.
Lotte won the 2012 Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Aria and Armstead Award, among others. She was named runner up in the 2012 Mietta Song Competition and Liederfest and was a finalist in the 2012 3MBS Young Performer of the Year and the prestigious 2012 IFAC Australian Singing Competition.
Stewart Kelly
Stewart is a Queensland pianist who holds a Bachelor of Music Performance (Distinction) from QUT and a Master of Music Studies from the Queensland Conservatorium. He is now in his second year at ANAM with Timothy Young.
Programme
BRAHMS
Mein Liebe ist grun
Wie rafft ich mich auf
Standchen
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. Firmly rooted in the compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters, Brahms was also noted to have advanced the structures of traditional music into the Romantic genre through bold new approaches to harmony and melody.
LISZT
Es muss ein Wunderbares sein
Ihr Glocken von Marling
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the 1840's he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt was also a well-known and influential composer of the New German School as well as a piano teacher and conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Wagner, Berlioz, Saint-Saens, Grieg and Borodin.
ALMA MAHLER
Laue Sommernacht
Alma Mahler (1879-1964) was the Viennese-born composer of at least seventeen songs for voice and piano and an important feature of the artistic scene in Vienna. She was married to composer Gustave Mahler at the time that he was the senior director of the Vienna Court Opera. Although a significant amount have been lost, she composed many Lieder, and also worked on instrumental pieces as well as a segment of an opera.
BARBER
Must the winter come so soon- from the Opera Vanessa
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) was an American composer of piano, choral, operatic and orchestral music. Composing many well-acclaimed works, Barber may be seen as one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. His four act opera Vanessa (1958) was first performed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
SUTHERLAND
The Night Wind
I who am dead a Thousand Years
Margaret Sutherland (1897-1984) was an Australian composer who pioneered a style very much against the popular trends of the 1920’s and 1930’s. More than half her output is chamber music, though she made important contributions to the genres of orchestral music and song as well. Contrary to the popular English Romantic style, Sutherland was more interested in the modern European trends of neoclassicism, spiky rhythms and harmonies, interesting and unusual instrumental combinations. She developed her style right through her composing life and wrote music to the words of writers such as Emily Bronte (The Night Wind), Shaw Neilson, Lord Tennyson and Shakespeare.
WEILL
Barbara Song (from the Threepenny Opera)
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was a German composer active from the 1920’s who spent his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage and was well known for his collaborations with dramatist and playwright Bertolt Brecht. The most notable of these collaborations is the musical the Threepenny Opera (1928) which offers a critique on the capitalist world. Weill’s music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts
PIANO INTERLUDE- BRAHMS
Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 21
HAHN
Quand je fus pris au pavilion
Nocturne
Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) was a Venezuelan-born composer, conductor, music critic, diarist and theatre director. He was best known as a composer of songs and wrote in the French classical tradition of the melodie. Having studied in France at the Conservatoire, he became the director of the Paris Opera and wrote many operettas as well as incidental music for plays and ballets.
DEBUSSY
Tois chansons de France:
1. Rondel- Le temps a laissie son manteaux
2. La Grotte
3. Rondel- Pour que ce Plaisance est morte
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer associated with the genre of Impressionist music. Noted for his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism, Debussy is regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 19thorchestral music, adapting his distinctive compositional language to the demands of each. Debussy’s evocative use of sound to express instrumental colour and texture cemented him as an exponent of the Impressionist movement.
SATIE
Je te veux
Erik Satie (1866-1925) was a French composer and pianist known for his unusually witty and eccentric style. His music represents a definitive break with the French Romanticism of the 19th century, instead allying itself with the disregard for traditional forms and structures seen in the Dada and Surrealist movements of art. From 1899 onwards, Satie worked as a cabaret pianist adapting popular music for piano and voice. Je te veux (1903), composed to a text by Henry Pacory, is a sentimental waltz and a notable example of Satie’s cabaret pieces.
DONIZETTI
All'afflitto e dolce il pianto (from Roberto Devereux)
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy who contributed significantly to the bel canto style of opera. Whilst Donizetti also wrote for string quartets, church and orchestral pieces, he is best known for his prolific operatic works. He composed a total of 75 operas, including the tragedy Roberto Devereux (1837) which was performed widely throughout Europe during the 19th century.
THOMAS
Me voici dans son boudoir (from Mignon)
Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896) was a French composer best known for his operas Mignon (1866) and Hamlet (1868). Based upon Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Mignon was staged for more than a thousand performances before 1984, becoming one of the most successful French operas in history due to its fresh and simple approach to melody and plot. Despite their conventionality, Thomas’ greatest operas are renowned for their effective vocal characterization and sentimental, atmospheric writing.