At the 2015 Canberra International Music Festival there was no doubt about it – Australian percussionist Claire Edwardes was the standout star.
Percussionist Claire Edwardes
Now the canny chief conductor and artistic director of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Milton, will lead Edwardes as the featured artist in the CSO’s final concert for 2015, “Rachmaninov.”
Edwardes will perform Elena Kats-Chernin’s 2009 concerto “Golden Kitsch”, a piece on which she worked with the composer.
“Elena and I workshopped the piece at great length,” Edwardes says, “She made many visits to my studio as she was writing it and it was probably the truest collaboration I’ve ever had with a composer.”
Elena Kat-Chernin
Edwardes praises the percussion solo part as “ever-changing and offset with a really fun orchestral part… there are loads of toy pianos featured in the work (I play one up the front and the percussion section have several), and there is even a bit where the wind section plays ratchets and other fun handheld percussion.”
Preceding the concert will be another ‘fun’ piece in Márquez’s “Danzón No. 2,” which will see the CSO converted into a Mexican dance band, building to a heady climax.
As the title suggest, the season concludes with Rachmaninov’s “Symphonic Dances”, a showpiece for large orchestra. This work, the CSO says, is the culmination of Rachmaninov’s compositional life.”
Expect to see the largest orchestra the CSO has presented this year – it’s bound to raise the roof.
CSO’s Llewellyn Series 04 RACHMANINOV, 7.30pm, November 4 & 5 at Llewellyn Hall, bookings to ticketek.com.au or 1300 795 012.
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