Presentations by Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick (SA Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia)
- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2025, 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
- Location: Hartley Concert Room, The University of Adelaide
- Cost: The event is free. Numbers are needed for booking purposes.
- More information: Register
The SA Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia will host two presentations by two renowned scholars from the UK. Professor Roy Howat will present a talk, visually and at the piano, on 'Refreshing Chopin's Études: the new Peters edition'. Professor Emily Kilpatrick will present on her latest and recently published book, Critical Lives: Maurice Ravel (Reakton, 2025). Roy is internationally renowned as a pianist and scholar; his concerts, broadcasts, lectures and masterclasses regularly take him worldwide. Emily is a scholar of French music and its cultural and literary intersections through the long nineteenth century. She is particularly interested in the creative exchange between musical practice and documentary research.
Friday 22 August 5.30–8.00pm
Hartley Concert Room, The University of Adelaide
The event is free. Numbers are needed for booking purposes.
Please register your attendance via the link below:
REGISTER
Let us know on arrival if you will need access to the lift instead of using the stairs.
'Refreshing Chopin's Études: the new Peters edition'
Professor Roy Howat
Editing Chopin's complete Études (all twenty-seven) for the Peters Edition The Complete Chopin has yielded numerous insights that can inform our perception and performance of the pieces, despite the dozens of editions already extant. Several questions emerge. What really was or were their purpose or purposes? Can a critical edition be in any way definitive? The Peters Chopin series is predicated on Chopin's different treatment of the same pieces at different times, and this talk illustrates, visually and at the piano, how we can still rethink these often-hackneyed pieces and hear them afresh.
'The life and music of Maurice Ravel, a fascinating mind in a turbulent age.'
Professor Emily Kilpatrick: Critical Lives: Maurice Ravel (Reakton Press, 2025)
Maurice Ravel is one of the twentieth century's most intriguing and contradictory composers. This timely new biography – published for the 150th anniversary of his birth – describes Ravel's journey from Parisian apprentice to global musical icon. Drawing on fresh research, Emily Kilpatrick reveals Ravel as both a daring provocateur and a reflective elder, his lifelong quest for originality driven by his deep love of history and literature. Set against a background of profound cultural and political upheaval, Ravel's story unfolds through his battles with the artistic establishment, his creative resilience after wartime losses and the tragic incapacitation of his final years. The result is an intimate portrait of a composer whose music continues to enchant and challenge audiences worldwide. To find more information about book purchase options, please visit: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/maurice-ravel.
Roy Howat is internationally renowned as a pianist and scholar, his concerts, broadcasts, lectures and masterclasses regularly take him worldwide. His doctoral research culminated in the book Debussy in Proportion (1983) and his second book is The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier (2009). He has produced many critical editions, including Chopin's Etudes for the new Peters Edition Complete Chopin. For Peters Edition he also produced numerous editions of Fauré piano and chamber music and co-edited, with Emily Kilpatrick, the first critical edition of the Complete Songs and Vocalises of Gabriel Fauré.
Emily Kilpatrick is a scholar whose research is centred on French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Australian born, Emily has held lectureships at the Royal Northern College of Music (UK), the Elder Conservatorium of Music, and is currently at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has given recital performances, radio broadcasts, masterclasses and seminars across the UK and internationally. She is author of two other monographs on French music: The Operas of Maurice Ravel (2015), and French Art Song: History of a New Music, 1870–1914 (2022).