Canberra Symphony Orchestra Magazine

The piece Miriwa (sky in Durgha language) is about the Sky and its beauty, and its relationship to country, says Brenda Gifford.

“The finale throws us into its hurly-burly almost immediately, with a whirlwind passage for the strings leading to one of the most famous of all themes in Sibelius’ music, that in which, as Donald Tovey famously described it, Thor swings his hammer…”

“The weaving, soaring violin melody that opens Australian composer Arthur Benjamin’s Sonatina for Violin and Piano immediately beguiles the listener and attests to Hubert Howells’ description of Benjamin as ‘an unashamed Romantic,’ writes Angus McPherson.

Bartók incorporates “elements of Hungarian peasant songs into his own, complex harmonic language,” writes Angus McPherson.

Australian composer Holly Harrison’s genre-defying “Fizzin’ Fury” is inspired by musical genres associated with moshing and upbeat movement. The fury side embraces the heaviness of doom metal, punk, and progressive rock, while the fizz captures the energy of electronic dance music, disco, and dixieland.

“Lazy bones are for the Devil’s stockpot…” Read the English text for Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins online, translated by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

Discover the story behind Jane Brown Pearls, one of the generous supporters of the CSO’s Fundraising Gala.

“Hear the ecclesiastical menace of the family in Sloth,” writes Angus McPherson, “the urgent strings in Anger, the cruel, a capella Barbershop Quartet of Gluttony, the valiant tenor aria in Greed and the devastating triumph of Anna I over Anna II in Envy’s grim march…”

“The guitar makes the dreams weep,” Poulenc inscribed above the central movement of his Violin Sonata, completed under Nazi occupation.