Team of Pianists
Erica Kennedy (violin), Robert Chamberlain (piano)
Beethoven - Sonata in G major, op. 30 no. 3
Faure - Sonata in A major, Op. 13
Messiaen - Theme and variations
Part - Spiegel im spiegel
Erica Kennedy is a Masters graduate of The Faculty of Music, The University of Melbourne where she studied with William Hennessy. As a soloist she has won numerous awards, recorded for national television and radio and performed with various Australian orchestras including the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, the Soirées Musicales Orchestra, the Stonnington Symphony and the Melbourne Musicians. Performance highlights have included the Sibelius, Stravinsky and Korngold violin concertos with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra as well as the Beethoven violin concerto and the Brahms double concerto for violin and cello with the Stonnington Symphony and Zoe Knighton and the Bach double violin concerto with Nigel Kennedy and the Sydney Chamber Strings.
As first violinist with the Flinders Quartet, she performs regularly throughout Australia and overseas including residencies undertaken at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, recording cds and performing with artists including Menahem Pressler and Geoff Nuttal, and at the International Musicians' Seminar in Prussia Cove (UK). The quartet has also toured the UK Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore.
As a chamber musician, in Australia Erica has performed in most of the major festivals including the Bangalow, Barossa, Coriole, Huntington and Port Fairy festivals as well as the Melbourne International Festival, with acclaimed groups and artists including Duo Sol, the Goldner Quartet, the Tang Quartet, members of the Melba Quartet and the Southern Cross Soloists as well as David Thomas, Keith Crellin, Janis Laurs and Dutch duo Grace Kim and Teije Hylkema. Erica also performs in a duo with pianist Kristian Chong.
Having studied in the USA, Switzerland, London and at the Australian National Academy of Music with masters including Gabor Takacs-Nagy, David Takeno, Hatto Beyerle and the Vermeer and Emerson String Quartets, Erica is now sought after as a chamber music mentor and tutors for Youth Music Australia, Mt. Buller Chamber Music Summer School, Mellbourne Youth Music and the University of Melbourne. She has also given masterclasses in Singapore.
Erica has worked as concertmaster with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Victoria. She is a core player with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and also performs with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Commercial recordings include the solo violin arrangement of Richard Meale's "Cantilena Pacifica" with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and "Reinventions" with the Flinders Quartet and Genevieve Lacey featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Kats-Chernin and Bowman.
ROBERT CHAMBERLAIN is a versatile and accomplished pianist, with interests ranging from period performance to contemporary music and with specialisations including chamber and ensemble music of all kinds. He studied for Bachelors and Masters degrees in Australia under Max Cooke, in Vienna as a winner of the Apex/Robert Stolz Scholarship, and also at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, where he worked with many distinguished international artists, such as John Perry, Peter Donohoe, Janos Starker and Lorand Fenyves.
A partner in the Melbourne based Team of Pianists, Artists in Residence for the National Trust of Australia (Vic), he has developed and directs the Team's annual Spring Piano School for talented school age pianists, as well as the Weekend Retreat for Adult Piano Students.
His concert engagements in recent years have included performances in Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand, at the 2005 Barossa Music Festival in period instrument collaborations on the music of Brahms with clarinettist Craig Hill, numerous contemporary music projects including recordings, performances and an Australia Council funded mentorship with the contemporary music ensemble re-sound, as well as many chamber and solo recitals, recordings and radio broadcasts. In July 2008 he gave recitals, workshops and masterclasses in Bangkok for the Thailand Music Educators Association and in Kuala Lumpur for The Talent Makers music school, and in August 2009 will give masterclasses and lecture recitals in Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur and Johor in Malaysia, and in Singapore and will act as a piano adjudicator in the Malaysian Youth Music Festival and the Kota Kinabalu Music Festival.
For four years he performed in the piano trio, Trio Erytheia, presenting the Australian premieres of works by Peteris Vasks, Sidika Özdil, Andrián Pertout, Andrew Blyth, Astor Piazolla as well as mainstream and contemporary piano trio repertoire in innovative broadcasts and concerts. He has collaborated with other chamber groups including the Hamer String Quartet and members of the Flinders Quartet, in piano quartet and piano quintet repertoire, with instrumentalists such as flautist Megan Sterling (Hong Kong Philharmonic), saxophonist Jason Xanthoudakis, clarinettists David Griffiths and Phillip Miechel, and with vocalists such as sopranos Emily Xiao Wang and Michelle Marie Cook and Lousie Page.
Robert has recorded on some 15 CD's for a number of labels including Tall Poppies, Naxos (his recording with Len Vorster of Holst's Music for two Pianos was one of a number of discs selected for Gramophone Editors Choice Award in 1999), Move Records and VoxAustralis.
As a scholar Robert has edited, with violinist Marina Marsden (Sydney Symphony Orchestra), a critical edition of Australian composer Margaret Sutherland's Sonata for Violin and Piano (Currency Press, 2000), which they also recorded on the Tall Poppies label.
Robert is a distinguished teacher, for many years on the sessional staff at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Music, but now at the School of Music - Conservatorium, at Monash University. He also teaches children of all ages, as well as adults and has adjudicated widely, for the Australian National Piano Award in Shepparton, for Eisteddfods and competitions in Albury, Ballarat, Wollongong and Melbourne. He gives masterclasses and workshops in Universities and music schools on a wider range of topics, focusing in particular on teaching and learning processes, and on style and technique in piano performance.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS
"Stylish setting for classy performances"
"His performance of the C minor and F sharp major preludes and fugues (by J S Bach) highlighted his finger dexterity and control, while his rendition of the C major prelude featured very precise articulation"
"the second half of the recital featured two works by Elgar - the delightful Salut d'amour, Op 12, and the passionate and dramatic Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 82, both handled with great expertise by these artists. (with Sonia Baldock, violin)"
The Hobart Mercury, March 3, 2009
"Duo shines as violist sets pace (with Stephanie Farrands, viola)"
"Effortless in their fluency, the collection made its strongest impression in the C sharp fugues, the whole complex of eight works treated with Chamberlain's usual calm and considerable scholarship"
The Age, June 19, 2008
"Chamberlain performed American composer Donald Freund's Feux d'artifice Tombeau, a searing lament commemorating the Challenger disaster of 1986. Despite its sectional nature, this ballad speaks clearly of a fierce loss and a hard-achieved state of reconciliation in a thunderously contemporary language, the whole conveyed by Chamberlain with high virtuosity and ardent responsiveness"
The Age, January 30. 2006
"Chamberlain and Coote also combined for Rachmaninov's Suite no. 2 for two pianos, demonstrating excellent dialogue as the melody bounced between primo and secondo piano. The third movement showed fine senstitivity, with Chamberlain especially drawing out the emotion in the work"
The Australian, September 22, 2005.
"..such was Hill's gentle eloquence that these performances offered new insight into these works. [Brahms sonatas for clarinet and piano]Robert Chamberlain's equally eloquent playing on a newly restored 1870's Blüthner grand piano proved the ideal accompaniment"
The Australian, May 19, 2005.
"Pianist Robert Chamberlain produce some of the most memorable sounds of the day from a magnificent Hornung 1870 square piano in three of Schumanns simply crafted but poignantly felt Albumblätter Op. 99.
The Adelaide Adverstiser, May 18, 2005.
"The following Beethoven D major Sonata Op. 28 was one of the evening's major works. The pianist generated a mobile character for this summery optimistic piece, aiming for calm and restraint, even if the powerful surges of the opening and middle two movements came across without dynamic compromise.
... the Etude -Tableaua in E flat from Op. 39 set by Rachmaninoff came closest to deluging the listener with its force. "
The Age, February 3, 2004.
"...Trio Erytheia - Isin Cakmakcioglu (violin), Rachel Atkinson (cello) and Robert Chamberlain (piano) - handled the tight sight lines to give a committed performance of very diverse music. This ensemble is making a name for itself in the new-music field. At last, Melbourne has a group that maintains a focus in that specialised area rather than instrumentalists coming together for a concert and then dispersing"
The Age, October 28, 2003.
"A beautifully played and recorded recital of music old and new for violin and piano from Australia's Tall Poppies imprint."
"Marsden and Chamberlain's performance here is pretty much ideal". (Grieg Violin Sonata in F major, Nielsen violin Sonata no. 1
Neil Horner, a UK website review, October 2003 (http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2003/Oct03/marsden.htm)
"Full house audience for top Aussie musicians"
"The duos masterful interpretation of the dramatic sonata....The audience was captivated by the dreamlike ambience....It was pure heaven, a night to remember for all who came"
New Sabah Times (Malaysia), May 2000, review of recital by Isin Cakmakcioglu, violin, & Robert Chamberlain, piano.
"...allowing Mr Chamberlain to bring his commanding technique and vision to the service of truly great music. This was compelling playing, delivering a kaleidoscope of original ideas with the full range of power, control and subtlety required."
The Border Mail (Albury NSW) September 1999
