Musical harmony among festival delights
FOR the past four years, brilliant Israeli pianist Yaron Kohlberg and Arab piano virtuoso Bishara Haroni have performed together as Duo Amal in leading concert halls around the world.
Next month the two musicians, both 28, will perform in Australia for the first time at the Melbourne Festival.
Their concert will feature classic works by Schubert and Prokofiev as well as new works by Israeli and Palestinian composers.
Kohlberg was born in Jerusalem in 1983 and graduated from Tel Aviv University. He has won many international awards, including first prize in the Shostakovich Competition in Hanover and the Parnassos International Competition in Monterrey.
He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras around the world and in Israel with the Israel Philharmonic, and the Jerusalem and Haifa symphony orchestras.
Haroni was born in the northern Israeli town of Nazareth and began his piano studies at the age of 12 in Haifa, followed by eight years in Jerusalem before travelling to Germany for further studies.
He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras in Europe and the United States, and has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival.
Kohlberg and Haroni met in Jerusalem and at Kohlberg’s suggestion they joined forces in 2008 for a concert in Oslo. Following the success of the concert and the enthusiastic response of the audience, which included many musicians and diplomats, they decided to form Duo Amal and have toured through Europe, America and Asia to critical acclaim. On a personal level, the two musicians have become close friends.
Their concert is one of many highlights of this year’s Melbourne Festival, which features 18 world premieres and 34 Australian premieres in a program of 77 shows, events and projects held over 17 days from October 11.
Artistic director Brett Sheehy has explored the themes of identity and place in a diverse program that kicks off with Michel van der Aa’s contemporary opera, After Life.
British singer Billy Bragg has been speaking out through his music for three decades, starting as an anti-Thatcher, folk-punk agitator. He will perform some of his most inspired music in An Evening With Billy Bragg, followed by a tribute concert to folk singer Woody Guthrie to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Guthrie’s birth.
The concert, Billy Bragg Celebrates Woody Guthrie, will feature classics from Guthrie’s 12 studio albums as well as rare songs from the singer’s lost manuscripts.
Last year the Schaubühne Berlin theatre company stunned Melbourne audiences with its chilling, ultra-modern interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. This year the German company returns with a bold new slant on Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. A darkly satirical tale of greed and corruption, it is set in a community that turns on a man speaking uncomfortable truths.
Pop-classical violin prodigy Hahn-Bin brings his musical journey to the festival in Till Dawn Sunday. A long-time protege of Itzhak Perlman at the prestigious Juilliard School, the 24-year-old Korean-American prodigy made an acclaimed international debut at the Grammy Awards when he was 12.
Edgy and charismatic, with a theatrical flair, Hahn-Bin is pushing classical music into the popular fold of mainstream culture.
Singer Antony Hegarty, the lead singer of the band Antony and the Johnsons, has also cultivated a diverse catalogue of drawing, collage and sculpture that has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. He explores a variety of themes in the exhibition, Paradise, at the Arts Centre Melbourne.
Legendary choreographer William Forsythe returns to the Melbourne Festival for the first time since 2001 to present a collage of images and voices about the nature of man’s existence in I Don’t Believe in Outer Space. The production features 17 dancers from the Forsythe Company in Germany.
For the first time, the Melbourne Festival is including a program of international films curated by former Melbourne International Film Festival director Richard Moore.
Among the films is Portrait of Wally, a documentary about an Egon Schiele painting, stolen by the Nazis from its Vienna museum and later discovered hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1997. The subsequent criminal investigation, bitter legal wrangling and landmark court case are covered in this American-British-Austrian co-production.
British filmmakers David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky’s documentary Making War Horse offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the stunning theatre production, War Horse – which premieres in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve – and inspired Steven Spielberg’s epic film.
Staging Wagner’s Ring Cycle has always been one of opera’s greatest challenges with its 16-hour run time and sweeping, celestial plot. The New York Met hired Robert Lepage to create a 21st-century vision of Wagner’s opus, and filmmaker Susan Froemke has documented this production in Wagner’s Dream.
Jim Sharman, the legendary director of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, makes his long-awaited return to the world of cinema with Andy X, a musical about the life and legacy of Andy Warhol. Sharman has melded verse, song, dreamlike imagery, cabaret and installation art into a dramatic filmic portrait.
The Melbourne Festival will be held from October 11-27. Duo Amal performs on October 24 at the Melbourne Recital Centre at 7.30pm. Bookings: www.melbournefestival.com.au.
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of pianists Yaron Kohlberg (right) and Bishara Haroni
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