January 26th is a day of celebration all around Australia to commemorate the founding of our wonderful nation. The focus is on friendship and what better way to celebrate this than through music? Despite the fact that Australia is still a relatively young nation we boast a rich culture encompassing the artistic spectrum, as well as many well known colourful characters who have passed into legend – the famous and the infamous.

Wherever you find yourself in Australia on the 26th you will find a wide range of festivities to enjoy, however, should you be in Europe on that day you can catch a very special concert in Munich which will celebrate Australia’s birthday and highlight our unique folklore and heritage.

Kunstlerhaus.

Munich-based Australian baritone, Martin Cooke, will collaborate with pianist Rosemarie Ammende-Haaf to present a programme combining the music of Germany and Australia at the beautiful Kunstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz. This historic building of the Munich House of Artists and its culture of festivities has become a part of the history of Munich.

Martin Cooke with Rosemarie Ammende-Haaf.

The programme will include the music of Franz Schubert, Dietrich Ammende, Phillip Wilcher and George Palmer.

The Composers…

George Palmer was born in 1947. He graduated in Arts and Law from Sydney University in 1970 and specialised as a solicitor practising Commercial Law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1974 and became a Queens Counsel in 1986. Since 2001 he has been a Judge of the Supreme Court of NSW. As a youth he had studied piano and has been composing since his teens. In 2003 his music came to the fore when he was commissioned to compose for the ABC. His works are now widely performed aound the world. This concert will highlight his song cycle “Letters from a Black Snake”.

This work was commissioned by Ernst & Young to mark the major opening of a retrospective of the works of the great Australian artist Sidney Nolan. The text is taken from the letters of the infamous Bushranger, Ned Kelly, who was hanged in 1880. Sidney Nolan painted an iconic series of pictures of Kelly and by his own admission identified strongly with him.

Phillip Wilcher is a composer of whose works I have had the great pleasure of reviewing in recent times. At the age of 14 he became Australia’s youngest published composer. His early teachers were Gladys Woodward and Jean Teasel and was one of the youngest students ever to be selected to study with the emminent German-Australian musicologist Dr Franz Holford.

His longest association however was with the acclaimed Australian composer Miriam Hyde whose influence, both as mentor and friend, to this day remains central to Phillip’s music. His works can be described as ‘music on canvas’ for the sheer beauty and colour they combine. Drawing from their past collaboration, Martin will perform Art Songs featuring the poetry of W H Davies and A E Housman set to music composed by Phillip.

Dietrich Ammende is the late husband of pianist Rosemarie. He was a noted composer of 20th century German Leider and his music has been performed by international singers such as Jan-Hendrick Rootering, Hans Hotter and Karl Schmitt-Walter.

His orchestral works have formed the repertoire of the leading European orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. His music embraces the significant Era’s of Romantic, Impressionistic and Expressionistic.

Martin Cooke and Rosemarie Ammende-Haaf have recorded a CD celebrating the music of Germany and Australia – music from three centuries from one nation with centuries of cultural history and a young nation which has firmly made it’s mark in the world of the Arts. Music, once again, being the one language we can all speak.

This concert will be performed at the Munich Kunstlerhaus.

January 26th at 7.30pm.

Further details here.

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