Winther joins the sax 4 who ‘rock the home’

VIOLINIST Kristian Winther is thought to Canberra music lovers as one in all our brightest stars.

Born into Canberra musical royalty, his father, the late Danish pianist John Winther, was a former director of Canberra (now ANU) Faculty of Music and his mom, Vivienne Winther, director of the Macquarie Conservatorium in Dubbo, was a former Canberra Artist of the Yr and director of the chamber opera firm Stopera.

It’s no shock, then, that Kristian has turn into an internationally recognised violinist who has, in his personal nation, appeared with the Melbourne, Sydney, Tasmanian, Adelaide and WA symphony orchestras, the Auckland Philharmonic, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and plenty of chamber ensembles.

Now he’s showing with Germany’s Signum Saxophone Quartet, billed as “4 saxophonists who rock the home”, right here quickly for Musica Viva performing a program billed as “jaunty”. No stranger to Musica Viva, having performed for them when he labored with the Tinalley String Quartet, that is his first time with them as a soloist.

Once I meet up with Kristian by cellphone to Sydney, he tells me, “covid was actually nice” – within the musical sense, that’s.

There have been far worse locations to be caught in through the pandemic than Australia, he relates as he and his companion, one other Australian violinist whom he met whereas she was finding out in Cologne, discovered themselves in Australia on the time and couldn’t have been happier to be again dwelling. 

A buddy in Cologne is packing up their stuff to ship again, however they’re additionally wanting ahead to being up and away on tour quickly and will probably be off to Finland in January. 

The approaching live performance has been billed as a moody, glamorous tour with an unmistakable jazz flavour however Kristian is fast to say that “I’m on no account a jazz musician”.

It’s the pairing with Signum’s sax that has individuals pondering it could be jazz, because the quartet, made up of Blaž Kemperle, Hayrapet Arakelyan, Alan Lužar and Guerino Bellarosa, is known for taking bizarre items and giving them one other likelihood. However some usually are not so bizarre, resembling Bach, performed in a shocking means and Goldberg, to call a few composers.

On this system is the fiendishly troublesome Violin Concerto, Op. 12 and Musica Viva has commissioned Sydney composer Jessica Wells to rearrange this piece particularly for Signum and Winther.

Though individuals may affiliate Kurt Weill with German cabaret of the Weimar Republic, it’s value remembering that he had a classical grounding and studied studio composition below Ferruccio Busoni.

Kristian, now 37, is well-acquainted with the music of Kurt Weill. His mom Vivienne is famously a Weill tragic who, each couple of years, would placed on a Weill opera, in order that as a teen in Canberra, he grew up listening to it round the home. 

The revolutionary programming, he says, comes from Musica Viva’s newish inventive director Paul Kildea, who noticed the chance to mix his violin with sax.

Kildea has give you an audience-pleaser that options Gershwin’s “Three Preludes”, Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” from “West Facet Story”, Camilo’s “Caribe”, Bach, Weill and, from the perennially in style JS Bach, the “Italian” Concerto – “A live performance that performs to everybody’s strengths,” Kristian says. 

“The saxophone could also be a comparatively new musical instrument, solely patented within the nineteenth century, but it surely’s slightly like organ and guitar in that its repertoire is large, although not a lot of it’s recognized.”

He’s anticipating Signum to reach right here with way over simply 4 devices as they’ll be exploring the complete number of the saxophone’s potential. 

Signum Saxophone Quartet and Kristian Winther, Llewellyn Corridor, 7pm, Thursday, November 17.