Mozart’s Sister is a an immersive event featuring live orchestral music and narration along with the documentary film screening. This is a part of the nationwide Concert Tour promoting the award winning film.
For the first 16 years of her life, Mozart’s sister shared equal billing with her brother. Musical partners and collaborators, Wolfgang Mozart and Maria-Anna Mozart played together before Kings and Queens, and were the talk of Europe. But what happened to her? Forced to withdraw from public life because she was a woman, a stunning new investigation explores why she was retired and what happened to her music.
From multi-awarded Director/Producer Madeleine Hetherton-Miau and Producer Rebecca Barry, Mozart’s Sister is a ‘musical-mystery’ story that explores the lost talent of Maria-Anna Mozart. In this concert, we will perform Wolfgang’s Symphony No. 1, with commentary highlighting Maria’s contributions, and selections from the Original Soundtrack of the AACTA Award-winning documentary.
Fanny Mendelssohn, like her younger brother Felix, was a truly great performer and composer, but unlike him, she faced an almost overwhelming set of obstacles. Her own father told her that, while music might perhaps become his profession, for her it can and must be only an ornament. But Fanny was brimming with musical ideas and carried on composing regardless. Her Overture in C is a vibrant, energetic work, composed when she was just 24 years of age, and features lively interplay between different sections of the orchestra, with elegant melodies and well-crafted transitions.
It is one of the few orchestral pieces she composed, as she worked mostly in smaller forms like songs and piano music but this work reveals what Fanny might have achieved had she been given the opportunity to write more large-scale works.
The South Wind is a collection of five short piano pieces by Australian women composers of the early Twentieth century, arranged for chamber orchestra by Steven Stanke. Dorothy Albery, Mary Bowden, Alice Charbonne-Kellerman, Marcelle Christian and Meta Overman may not be as well-known or as performed as their male counterparts but their music is equally accomplished and expressive.
