Page 2177 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 May 2013
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MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I have not seen it listed.
Mr Coe: Use some discretion here.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I will. We will continue with the adjournment debate and you will both be called to order if you interject again.
DR BOURKE: The highlight was the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2 with Konstantin Shamray. Those of you who are familiar with the Sydney international piano competition in 2008, which was broadcast on ABC FM, will know that Mr Shamray was the winner of this internationally prestigious competition for young pianists. At Llewellyn Hall his performance on the night was exemplary with a standing ovation from the audience.
Nicholas Milton, the CSO’s chief conductor and artistic director, was a human dynamo at the podium. Canberra Times music critic Jennifer Gall wrote:
It was a joyous orchestral welcome back to Nicholas Milton, who conducted with passion and exhilarating movement.
Ms Gall was even more effusive about Konstantin Shamray:
He played with an intense focus so powerful that it created a profound silence in the auditorium, witnessed only once before in a concert by the Borodin Quartet.
In Saturday’s Canberra Times Ian Warden wrote about the Wednesday night performance:
Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Milton and soloist Konstantin Shamray … were superb but my special applause here is for the audience. In my time in Canberra I have seen the audiences at Canberra concerts go from being corsetted and mummified burghers afraid to show their feelings, to being the demonstrative flock they … were on Wednesday. Everyone had left their corsets at home and the standing ovation for Shamray after he’d soared, skedaddled and caressed his way through Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto was spontaneous and sincere. Canberra, and its Canberrans, become better every day. The Canberran who is tired of Canberra is tired of life.
The Rachmaninov piano concerto is one of my favourite pieces of music and formed the core of this concert. The Canberra Symphony Orchestra also demonstrated their virtuosity with a Festival overture by Shostakovich and pictures of an exhibition by Mussorgsky. I am very pleased to see that the ACT government recognises the important contribution of the orchestra to the ACT and fully supports the orchestra in its endeavours and aspirations. This is why the ACT government provides considerable funding to the CSO.
The ACT invests $297,000 per year from the ACT arts fund to the CSO for its core costs. Another $100,000 per year comes from the ACT government’s ANU community outreach program for the cost of hiring Llewellyn Hall, and $66,000 per
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