What a treat to have a concert program that was so well-thought out! There are so many programs that really just stuff a couple of vaguely related pieces together and call it a day, close enough is good enough and so on. Here, we had a concert that considered the ebb and flow of the individual pieces, all while drawing some neat thematic parallels between works, too.

Sofia Troncoso, Patrick Nolan and Alex Raineri

The thematic centre for this concert was “music from two salons, one in Chopin’s day and one in Proust’s”. So, that means we’re looking at music from the 1830s or 40s (Bellini, Doppler and Chopin himself), and music from the first few decades of the twentieth century (Roussel, Szymanowski, Debussy and Ravel). This performance was originally slated to have the Queensland Conservatorium’s own Stephen Emmerson playing piano, which I’d have loved to have seen (Emmerson’s incredibly refined sense of phrasing is to die for), but Alex Raineri’s playing is fabulous as well, so no harm done there.

The performance began with Sofia Troncoso (soprano) singing Bellini’s Eccomi in lieta vesta…O quante volte from his opera...