QPAC

Witness alchemy at play when pianist Alexander Melnikov joins the Australian Chamber Orchestra for a celebration of Classical titans

Richard Tognetti and pianist Alexander Melnikov are two of the world’s most fearless and innovative interpreters. Here they join forces to celebrate the Classical era and the composers who evolved music into a new age. The result will be revelatory. 

Haydn’s Sinfonia to Armida is dramatic and urgent – the story of his opera captured in six minutes of stormy orchestral writing. Haydn was an innovator and Mozart admired him deeply, taking his forms and refining them to create works of astonishing elegance and emotion. His 29th Symphony, written at just 18, sparkles with energy and tender lyricism. A sunny, joyful ode to life, Richard Tognetti describes it as a sparkling jewel.

Melnikov is renowned for his performances of Mozart and brings his depth of sound to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.17 in G major, a lively, irresistible and witty exchange of ideas between piano and orchestra. The concert closes with Schubert’s effervescent Fifth Symphony. Here, Schubert pays homage to his hero, Mozart, while offering glimpses into the future. Already imbued with the pathos and emotion for which he became renowned; the symphony expands towards the future with the murmurings of Romanticism.

This is music you will know and love, treated with reverent inventiveness by two rule-benders who understand that music is alive, and in the interpretation lies the magic.