Musica Viva’s bigger, bolder, brave new world for everyone
Musica Viva Australia extends its program far beyond chamber music in 2025, says artistic director Paul Kildea, who promises a few surprises in his bag of tricks.
It’s a big year ahead for Musica Viva Australia. Eight tours with numerous concerts in Brisbane, 14 international artists, three new compositions and a wild mix of musical fare.
In curating the 2025 program, Musica Viva Australia artistic director Paul Kildea took into account a bewildering swathe of factors – some musical, some creative, others political, aesthetic or practical.
There’s also the wish to balance the old with new directions and a desire for collaborative enterprises that connect music to art and theatre. Gender parity is another consideration, as well as Kildea’s wish to engage younger performers.
Meanwhile, Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene makes his Australian debut alongside pianist Jennifer Marten-Smith in 2025. And the first Brisbane season features singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock performing with Penny Quartet in March.
On the phone from Sydney, Kildea, who has been artistic director since 2019, explains that he doesn’t want Music Viva Australia to be “just a receiving house”.
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“I want to erase the tyranny of distance by involving international and local musicians and by building dialogue and ongoing relationships between them,” Kildea says. “I want to program traditional chamber works alongside contemporary offerings by living composers.
“In 2025, our 80th anniversary, we lean into our origins. Immigrants like Richard Goldner, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 to settle here, have done an enormous amount of good.
“Goldner invented and patented a fail-proof zipper that would not break under war-time conditions and in doing so made a fortune with which he and associate Walter Bullo founded Musica Viva. In doing so, Goldner linked us to a rich heritage of European music.”
Google “chamber music” and you’ll find it’s predominantly classified as instrumental music performed by a small ensemble with one player to a part. Twenty years ago, Musica Viva’s concerts mirrored this definition, with the majority of concerts featuring top-notch string quartets such as the world-renowned Colorado-based Takacs Quartet, which in next year’s program performs Haydn’s Rider Quartet and Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet.
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But there’s a twist, because sandwiched between these popular evergreens is a new work, with a spoken narrative, by Australian composer Cathy Milliken. Inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s poetry, the oratory riffs on the migrant experience as a tribute to Goldner.
Kildea says chamber music is an autonomous dialogue between musicians, rather than between musicians and a conductor. It’s open-ended and invites flexible programming.
This explains his colourful and adventurous choices, which present diverse and distinctive sound sources, from the crowd-pleasing SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet to French pianist Cédric Tiberghien in The Cage Project, which also features Australian percussionist, composer and sound artist Matthias Schack-Arnott.
Art song, unlike opera, is not of broad appeal in Australia, but Kildea is an enthusiast. When Schubert’s bleak yet haunting song cycle Winterreise toured with Musica Viva Australia, director Lindy Hume’s version highlighted images from Fred Williams paintings because Kildea seeks to position Australia on a world stage.
Next year will see a shift away from choirs. Instead, vocal events reflect an eclectic range of genres. Polystylistic soloist Ali McGregor, an award-winning artist spanning opera, cabaret and comedy, is tipped to make a big splash with The Hollywood Songbook, which spans blockbuster hits from the past century.
In March, accomplished Indigenous singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock performs a playlist of eleven of her songs – each arranged by a different Aussie composer – with Penny Quartet, whose string players take delight in trialling new modes of performance.
As to what Goldner would think of next year’s program, Kildea laughs, and says: “I’ve been asked that before, but in relation to how John Cage would like his sonatas and interludes of 1948 in our augmented and three-dimensional interpretation.
“Richard Goldner was a risk taker. An innovator. He might say, ‘Wow!’ Nothing stands still. I’d like to think he’d enjoy how the organisation he championed is intent on scooping up an audience of all ages, always building a love of music, through imaginative programming of broad appeal.”
Jess Hitchcock and Penny Quartet perform at Adelaide Town Hall on March 1 and Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, South Bank, on March 4. Tickets at Music Aviva Australia.