This was the sixth festival for Artistic Directors Stefan Cassomenos and Monica Curro, and another triumph of programming and logistics. This year’s theme was “Mosaic” as a means of exploring how myriad assemblages of music over the centuries can create a meaningful whole. Over the course of just a weekend, one could wander for example, from a recital of renaissance solo theorbo music to improvised contemporary percussion over lunch, to a tango spectacular, and to finish, an opera premiere with a cast of thousands. Yet despite such diversity, you still went away with a satisfying sense of the unifying power of music. Curro and Cassomenos continue to champion and support the community and local talent, including school concerts, masterclasses and free public events as well as participation in the splendid closing gala.
Speaking of logistics, we have been remiss in previous years’ Festival reviews in not making mention of the huge amount of behind-the-scenes work undertaken by festival organisers, stage crew and a band of wonderful local volunteers. A big thankyou to all those folk!
And now to our reports on the fifteen events that one or other or both of us attended – with so many parallel sessions, sadly, there were nine others we couldn’t get to.
Chronology Friday 10 October 8pm
Nicholas Pollock,Theorbo; Mia Robinson, Soprano; Philip Arkinstall, Clarinet; Monica Curro, Violin; Jenny Khafagi, Violin; Caroline Henbest, Viola; Molly Kadarauch, Cello; Eclective (Lachlan MacLaren, Violin; Rollin Zhao, Violin; Eunise Cheng, Viola; Daniel Smith, Cello)
A program that was to take us across tens of thousands of years of music unfortunately had to do without the scheduled opening didgeridoo of Amos Roach due to transport hitches (we are four hours from Melbourne!). We began instead in 16th century Italy with Nicholas Pollock’s diversions on Renaissance lute, a beautiful instrument with great depth of tone. The pieces by Anon, Francesco da Milano and Pierre Attaingnant were full of rural imagery, dreamy country dances, cascades of running streams – a gentle and soothing and, for us, perfect introduction to a frenetic weekend. Pollock seemed to be unobtrusively miked by a clearly very good sound engineer.
Next we had the gloriously rich and honeyed tones of Philip Arkinstall’s clarinet in Mozart’s A major Quintet whose slow movement was meltingly beautiful. He was accompanied by the Eclective string quartet, young musicians who played in several other events over the weekend and impressed with their sensitive playing and communication with one another. The five players were obviously enjoying themselves, especially with the playful colours in the third and fourth movements, the last with a lovely viola solo from Cheng.
Following on chronologically, the foreboding first chords of the string quartet accompanying Mia Robinson (in a fabulous frock!) took us straight into the nineteenth century and the first of the Five Songs by Alma Mahler. Originally for piano and voice, the poems benefitted from a string arrangement by American conductor Cliff Colnot. Robinson’s lovely voice, with such floating effortless top notes, ably communicated and differentiated the poems’ themes of mystery, longing and love, though she very occasionally sang to the players rather than engaging the audience fully. It was a pleasure to watch and hear the supportive interplay between Robinson and the quartet of Curro, Khafagi, Henbest and Kadarauch. Robinson is clearly a presence to watch. Still in her early twenties, she has already won numerous awards and has a great future ahead of her.
The program closed with Seletsky’s wonderful Klezmer Fantasy for clarinet and string quartet, returning to the partnership of Arkinstall and Eclective. This was so much fun! I love klezmer! Arkinstall’s virtuosic clarinet technique was extraordinary, ranging from jazzy flourishes to whining and cascading chromatic passages, and the ambience was well matched by some splendid playing from Eclective. Smith’s cello solo was spectacular. It was a wild ride, exciting as a Road Runner cartoon in full flight.
The Lecture Hall provided the ideal acoustic for the intimacies of these works which would have been somewhat lost in the Reardon Theatre – remember the bad old days of chamber music in Hamer Hall before the Recital Centre opened? It is a bit of a shame that this concert was scheduled against the Opening Gala, as the audience should have been much larger for this excellent program.
Ruth Roshan: Salon Noir Friday 10 October 10pm
Ruth Roshan, Voice/Mandolin; Phil Carroll, Accordion; Rollin Zhao, Violin; Nils Hobiger, Cello; Philip Arkinstall, Clarinet; Stefan Cassomenos, Piano
Akin to the experience of a nightclub in old Berlin, a late night of provocative and hilarious song from the inimitable Ruth Roshan rounded out our Friday night, with great backing from the instrumentalists who really got into the mood. Carroll’s wonderfully spicy accordion and Roshan’s electric mandolin provided great interpolations and counter melodies. Roshan was a red rose among her black-clad fellow-musicians, and her versatility is astounding – as the program notes put it, “irreverently cavorting across times and styles … from classical to tango, from the waltz to the habanera”, she took us on a journey “to the bittersweet heart of the 1930s European salon”. But Roshan really won us over when she interspersed these with her experiences as an unconfident school student and young mandolinist-in-training from Warrnambool; the audience relished her local references in these songs and were often in stitches. Roshan may not have the vocal qualities of an opera singer, but what she has in delivery and expressive communication of her own lyrics aced the night in spades. The backing group were fantastic, capturing the changing moods with by turns onomatopoeic and dazzling effects: Carrroll’s “drunken” accordion in the Little French Waltz, Zhao scratching below the violin’s bridge in The Last Cherry, Hobiger strumming his cello like a guitar on his knee, Cassomenos playing tambourine with his right hand and piano with his left. Many of the songs (such as Cherry Song) dripped with nostalgia but flooded us with happiness. A night to remember.
Image supplied.
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Kristina and Bruce Macrae reviewed concerts and events featured in the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival held at various Port Fairy venues from October 10-12, 2025.
