Wednesday 18th December, 7:30-9pm (pre-concert talk 7pm)

The Old Museum Building, Studio 2

480 Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills

Purchase Tickets 

PROGRAM

Alberto Ginastera – Piano Sonata #1

Chris Dench –passing bells*

INTERVAL

Frederic Chopin – 24 Preludes, Op. 28

* World Premiere

ARTIST

Alex Raineri – Piano

A solo piano recital featuring Artistic Director Alex Raineri, this program commences with Argentinian composer Alberto Ginstera’s fiendishly virtuosic Piano Sonata #1. Incorporating rhythmic and dance elements of South American cultural idioms, the music is an intensely satisfying blend of mid-20th Century compositional complexity set alongside (and on equal terms to) intuitively dance-based and rhapsodic musical figurations.

The centerpiece of the performance is the World Premiere of a new work commissioned by the Brisbane Music Festival composed by Chris Dench, one of Australia’s foremost composers. Drawing its theme from the correspondences between the catastrophic Middle Ages and our times, passing bells derives its architecture from the mediaeval ‘prayer hours’. The sound-world of the piece encapsulates much mimesis of bell sounds, drawing on Dench’s earlier composition passing bells: night (2004).

Bringing the 2019 Brisbane Music Festival to a close are Frederic Chopin’s monumental 24 Preludes, Op. 28. Miniatures of crystalline perfection, the preludes traverse a spectrum of emotions that speak to the nature of the human condition. Sometimes fragile and ephemeral, at other times stormy and unyielding, the preludes encapsulate the romantic tempest for which the composer is so ardently celebrated.

Ticket price includes a complementary drink and light refreshments at interval.