Peninsula Summer Music Festival ★★★★
“Bringing the breathtaking vistas of the Mornington Peninsula together with astutely selected fine music, the Peninsula Summer Music Festival remains a deservedly popular and enticing holiday proposition …
Rising musical stars featured in the festival curtain raiser, the first of three concerts under the umbrella of the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. In the atmospheric ambience of St John’s Flinders, violinist Helena Kozdra, violist Neil Wang and double bassist Jude Hill from ARCO’s emerging artists program, the Young Mannheim Symphonists, offered a varied program permeated with optimism …
Accompanied by pianist Donald Nicolson, Kozdra gave a polished account of the first movement from Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.3, summoning the courage to present a brilliant cadenza. By way of contrast, Wang revelled in the Russian romanticism of Glinka’s Viola Sonata, projecting assurance and empathy in its first movement, while Hill enjoyed negotiating the technical challenges of the final movements of Dittersdorf’s Concerto No.2 for Double Bass …
Contemporary Australian music found a place in another concert featuring ARCO’s principal string players, led by Rachael Beesley. Commissioned by the orchestra, Wavelength by Brisbane-based composer Nicole Murphy is scored for historical basset clarinet and string quartet. Based on the composer’s experience of visiting the Cocos Keeling Islands, this evocative score is marked by an expert handling of texture and the unique sounds of the unusual instrument adeptly played by ARCO artistic co-director Nicole van Bruggen …
Other opening weekend highlights included a program titled Love & Life in the newly built Flinders Civic Hall. Soprano Jacqueline Porter lent ardent advocacy to well-known lieder (Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock) in effective arrangements for voice and string quintet by Shauna Beesley, with van Bruggen’s clarinet bringing added lustre to the Schubert.”