Events: Concert Series

Lunchtime Concert - Ravel 150

Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

In a concert commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel, pianist Roy Howat offers an exquisite selection of works highlighting the intriguing connections between Ravel, Chopin and Chabrier.

Elder After Hours - Beauty and Power

Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2025, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: Elder Hall

Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano span the full arc of the composer’s creative life, from the young man mastering traditions in order to break them, to the transcendent inner beauty of the mature master. In this special Elder After Hours concert, Timo-Veikko Valve (Principal Cello of the Australian Chamber Orchestra) and Aura Go (Head of Piano at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University) perform three of these visionary works, paired with the intensity of Anton Webern’s twentieth-century works for cello and piano: music of immense scope distilled into mere moments of beauty and power.

Lunchtime Concert - Airs and Graces

Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

A fun and fiery display of baroque virtuosity by five of Australia’s leading period performers.

Lunchtime Concert - Rhythms of Celebration

Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

This program is a jubilant celebration of rhythm, spirit, and energy.

Elder After Hours - Classical meets Jazz: Crossing the Great Divide

Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2025, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, a lively and rhythmically-charged celebration of Latin American influences, is filled with the composer’s signature flair. Mark Simeon Ferguson’s Live and Die With the Butterflies is an evocative work combining lyrical beauty with cinematic intensity. Ravel’s Bolero, a masterpiece of orchestral color and hypnotic rhythm, is performed here in its original form followed by a reimagined version featuring improvisations that breathe new energy and creativity into its iconic theme.

Lunchtime Concert - Pictures and Dances

Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

Spanish-born Australian pianist Simón Pazos Quintana – a recent doctoral graduate of the Elder Conservatorium – is rapidly building a reputation as one of South Australia’s busiest musicians, appearing regularly as a collaborative pianist, chamber musician, recitalist, and concerto soloist. In his debut solo recital in our Elder Hall series, he performs eight vignettes from Dvořák’s rarely-heard Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85 (‘the great forgotten cycle of 19th-century piano music’, according to Leif Ove Andsnes) and concludes with a tour of his homeland through Turina’s irresistible Danzas fantásticas, Op. 22.

Elder After Hours - Radiance

Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2025, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

In its third concert for 2025, Ensemble Lumen draws the audience into a dance of light and shadow, where three remarkable works shimmer with their own unique brilliance.

Lunchtime Concert - Cycles of Life

Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

Professor Anna Goldsworthy (Director of the Elder Conservatorium) and Andrew Haveron (Concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra) both possess that rare quality necessary for all enduring artistic partnerships: an irrepressible energy that becomes atomic in one another’s company. It will be a special pleasure to see them reunite in Elder Hall to perform sonatas by Beethoven and Franck.

Lunchtime Concert - Orchestral Pianos

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2025, 1:10 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

In a recital that opens with a sparkling arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite for two pianos, staff pianist Michael Ierace is joined by Sydney-based pianist Vatche Jambazian (a Masters graduate of The Juilliard School in New York) to explore the inverse of this process, culminating in the premiere of a new two-piano version of Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra by Dr Joe Chindamo OAM.

Elder After Hours - A Birthday Celebration: Charles Bodman Rae

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2025, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location: Elder Hall

This concert marks the 70th birthday of our seventh Sir Thomas Elder Professor of Music, Charles Bodman Rae.