Australia Ensemble UNSW presents

Carnival of the Animals

Finish the year in the company of the fairy tale characters of Ravel’s Mother Goose, the distinctive Australia sound of Ross Edwards, some sparkling Mozart, and the deftly-drawn birds and animals of Saint-Saëns’s ‘Grand Zoological Fantasy’.

Maurice RAVEL | Mother Goose Suite arr. Munro (1908/10 arr. 2001)

Ross EDWARDS | White Cockatoo Spirit Dance (1994)

Wolfgang MOZART | Piano Sonata K448 in D major for two pianos (1781)

Camille SAINT-SAËNS | Carnival of the Animals (1886)

David Griffiths, clarinet; Dene Olding, violin; Dimity Hall, violin; Irina Morozova, viola; Julian Smiles, cello; and Ian Munro, piano

with guest artists Joshua Batty, flute; Andrea Lam, piano; Andrew Meisel, double bass; Joshua Hill, percussion

To end the year a program of fantasy and fun: Originally for two pianos, but arranged here by Ian Munro, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is a set of pièces enfantines that evokes characters such as Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb and Beauty and the Beast from French fairy tales. Its elegance and joyful sparkle carries over into Mozart’s thrilling Sonata for Two Pianos (named as a catalyst in the contentious ‘Mozart Effect’ theory some years ago) performed by Ian Munro and Andrea Lam.

Ross Edwards has long been fascinated by the ‘ecstatic and mysterious’ sounds and rhythms of eastern Australia’s wilderness. In this work, originally for solo viola and arranged for string quartet, he celebrates and ritualises the iconic white cockatoo in his maninya style, full of driving, irregular rhythms at fast speed.

It’s a perfect pairing with Saint-Saëns’s much-loved, but rather less serious, ‘Grand Zoological Fantasy’, with its parade of animals and birds, fish and fossils. And pianists.