Opening Concert

This festive opening concert to the 2019 ANAM Season begins with not one but two fanfares: Richard Strauss’, created for the inaugural Vienna Philharmonic Ball in 1924, and the equally spectacular one from Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. The festivities then move from multiple brass to multiple pianos for British composer Graham Fitkin’s funky Flak, which has a neat trick up its sleeve—it only uses the pianos’ white notes. But there’s definitely something dark (and spooky) about the transcription of Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre for four pianists, created by the composers’ friend Ernest Guiraud.

Grainger described his Random round as "an experiment in concerted partial improvisation," and it’s full of rich humour and outdoor spirit. The concert grows in size as it nears its conclusion, firstly for the double wind quintet by the man Yehudi Menuhin described as the greatest musician he’d ever met, George Enescu; then for Ernest Bloch’s shining tribute to the spirit of the Baroque, and finally for the joyous overture to Glinka’s fairy-tale opera.