Whilst the wind brought the rain undercover nothing could dampen the spirit of the audience at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra\u2019s summer concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
Presenter Megan Burslem set the scene for a fun, entertaining night of classical music. Dressed to impress she was relatable, down to earth, friendly.
Burslem\u2019s warm manner plus the music choices alleviated my apprehension that I would not be engaged. The second act presented two well known pieces George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, followed by Maurice Ravel\u2019s Bol\u00e9ro.
The music of the first act was somewhat more of a mystery to me Antonin Dvor\u00e1k\u2019s Third Symphony. My companion, a Ravel enthusiast, was not impressed with this choice, having his favourite piece overlooked. I who knew no better came to enjoy Ravel\u2019s music by the third act as it became more vibrant.
Following a rainy interval was Rhapsody In Blue with wonderful Australian pianist Andrea Lam. Lam is an accomplished musician who played with energy, smiling whilst playing with her whole body.
It was a joy to watch, wonderful to hear the whole orchestra alive. There were times when the piano was difficult to hear, yet this was an acoustic piano against a full orchestra. Lam\u2019s solos were mesmerising, not a murmur in the audience.
Before the final piece, Burslem invited MSO chief conductor Jaime Martin to the stage to speak to the audience. He even allowed us to sing with him, giving us a great introduction into Bolero.
The music was outstanding to my novice ears, various instruments had their moment to shine, all to the continuous drum beat – wow what stamina for this percussionist. The slow build up led to a fabulous crescendo.
We were also treated to a surprise encore. The audience was silenced as we felt the impulse to clap along – fair enough.
In the words of my companion: “Thankyou Mr Myer for the \u2018Bowl\u2019.” In both our words: “Thank you MSO, and Andrea Lam along with conductor Jaime Martin for a memorable night of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Review by Elizabeth Semmel<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whilst the wind brought the rain undercover nothing could dampen the spirit of the audience at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra\u2019s summer concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.Presenter Megan Burslem set the scene for a fun, entertaining night of classical music. Dressed to impress she was relatable, down to earth, friendly.Burslem\u2019s warm manner plus the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2898,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions\/2898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}