Adelaide Festival. Anthony Marwood. Elder hall. 2 Mar 2026
Shadow and Light features esteemed British violinist Anthony Marwood in concert with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as part of the Adelaide Festival. The program comprises two works only: an arrangement for string orchestra by Marijn van Prooijen of Dimitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68, was paired with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ enduring and much-loved tone poem The Lark Ascending.
Elder Hall was close to capacity, and the audience were largely there for one reason: to again experience Marwood’s crystalline artistry. A frequent and warmly welcomed visitor to South Australia, with close ties to Ukaria, Marwood has cultivated an audience that responds instinctively to his artistry. Quite simply, there can never be too much of him.
This reviewer adores Shostakovich, and admires his symphonies and chamber works, especially the string quartets, but had not previously heard van Prooijen’s arrangement. (A number of Shostakovich’s string quartets have been arranged principally for string orchestra over the years by other arrangers, especially by his friend Rudolf Barshai.) Van Prooijen’s reimagining is exceptional. It successfully maintains the intimacy of the original quartet while leveraging the power of the larger ensemble and harnesses the resonance and depth of the double basses that add harmonic dimension and weight) without ever merely ‘thickening’ the texture or losing the ‘conversation’. Lines remain lucid; counterpoint breathes.
The arrangement not only preserves harmony, it also gives each section a clear and substantial melodic role. This is most evident in the second movement, when Marwood’s Stradivarius rises with unforced authority above an unbarred chordal tapestry from the ensemble. The third movement provided opportunity for the violas and cellos to have their eloquent say. The result was not an enlargement of the quartet so much as a deepening of its expressive palette.
Marwood is sublime in The Lark Ascending. He elicits the faintest of sounds from his instrument: they seemingly materialise from silence itself and build as they mellifluously wind their way through the majestic acoustic and architecture of the Elder Hall. Marwood directs a fine dynamic balance throughout the piece, with the woodwinds and horn always complementing and never detracting from the aethereal strings.
As a lunchtime concert of barely an hour’s duration and shaped by a musician at the height of his powers, Shadow and Light was a temporary and blissful haven from a troubled world.
Kym Clayton
When: 2 Mar
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival. Adelaide Town Hall. 28 Feb 2026
As part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival, French choir and orchestra Pygmalion made an arresting Australian debut with Bach: Good Night World, directed by founder Raphaël Pichon. For listeners attuned to the possibilities of early music, and for novices, this was a performance of depth and refinement.
The concert began almost casually: players drifted onstage to adjust chairs and stands, testing the acoustic with fragments of tuning before withdrawing off stage. Yet the formal entrance marked a transformation. In the generous acoustic of the Adelaide Town Hall, ten voices and ten instrumentalists produced a sonority of remarkable amplitude and focus. The blend was seamless; the contrapuntal lines etched with crystalline clarity. What might appear to be modest forces sounded vast—an object lesson in disciplined ensemble singing and historically informed instrumental performance underscored with precise articulation and phrasing.
The name Pygmalion alludes to the mythic sculptor whose creation was animated into life and is an apt metaphor for the ensemble’s artistic philosophy. Their work is not merely reconstruction but rebirth: overlooked or underperformed Baroque repertoire—much of it French—is approached with scholarly commitment as well as theatrical imagination. Text and music are treated as inextricably joined, their impact heightened through exquisite phrasing and beautifully controlled dynamic nuance.
The program, comprising thirteen works arranged in four groupings, was structured around music written in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The devastation of that conflict—demographic, political and spiritual, with an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldier and civilian casualties, and some areas in Germany suffering up to a fifty percent loss of population—formed the backdrop to works by Adam Drese, Daniel Speer, Dieterich Buxtehude, members of the Bach family, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Melchior Franck, Heinrich Schütz and Hans Leo Hassler. Rather than presenting them as disconnected compositions, Pichon sequenced them as a contemplation on anguish, endurance and healing.
The opening soprano solo, Drese’s Nun ist alles überwunden, immediately established the ensemble’s aesthetic. Sung with a pure, unforced straight tone and superb pitch, the vocal line carried effortlessly through the hall.
If that wasn’t compelling enough, Speer’s Ach wie elend was the stuff of goosebumps. Pichon deployed the choir throughout the hall—in doorways, along the sides, even in the aisles of the balcony—so that the canon unfolded spatially as well as musically. The effect was immersive without being theatricalised for its own sake: polyphony circulated through every crevice of the Adelaide Town Hall, surrounding and enveloping the listener. It was eery but deeply satisfying sensurround! Some audience instinctively turned toward to locate the unseen singers, and this testified to the potency of the moment. The ‘architectural’ strategy was again used later in the program to great effect. Applause, though formally reserved for the end of each bracket, often broke out spontaneously—a natural response to such immediacy—and was received with gracious composure by the ensemble. They never lost momentum.
The concert proceeded with cumulative force, each work deepening the emotional path laid out before us. Even a snapped cello string—repaired efficiently and without fuss off-stage—served as a reminder of the palpable immediacy of live performance.
Pichon conducts with economy. His gestures are precise, unexaggerated, yet charged with intent and purpose. When he expands his physical language, it is purposeful and galvanising; the ensemble responds as one, and with immediacy. Pichon also demonstrates a keen understanding of ‘musical dramaturgy’, not only in sound but in movement: the choreographed positioning and processing of singers as they took their places was executed with almost ritual grace.
To describe Pygmalion as “world class” is accurate rather than inflated. This was music-making of rare expressivity. It was intellectually rigorous, technically superb, and profoundly moving. The music sounded fresh and possessed a satisfying sense of ‘newness’.
The performance was much more than a concert: it was a palpable demonstration of the enduring capacity of early music to speak eloquently and clearly to a modern audience as if it were for the first time.
Pygmalion produces music that makes the world turn and the human heartbeat: they produce the music of the spheres.
Just stunning.
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Pilgrim Church. 25 Feb 2026
Einaudi’s Piano by Candlelight features British pianist Matthew Shiel performing a selection of meditative piano works by Ludovico Einaudi, Erik Satie, and Philip Glass, but it’s more than that.
Shiel is an alumnus of the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and he clearly knows his way around a piano. He has performed hundreds of concerts at fringe festivals and other events around the world and has received awards and glowing reviews. His concerts are diverse and arouse curiosity, especially in those who are looking for non-traditional programs and settings.
Shiel is dressed in an Indian Kurta shirt, and at the start of the concert he processes slowly from the entrance of Pilgrim Church down through the audience to the alter area where the piano is situated. He sits at the piano and immediately starts playing. There is no attempt to acknowledge the audience and receive applause.
Behind him is a large projection screen on which play digital animations of Japanese Zen stories. The projections play continuously and in between Shiel’s musical selections there are voice-overs in his own voice to make sense of what we are seeing on the screen. This is ostensibly the ‘spine’ of the show, the ‘glue’ that holds it all together: a story about finding enlightenment with empathetic music underpinning its unfolding and linking the narrative. All the while, the only light in the venue is (electric) candlelight and the dying sunlight of the afternoon creeping in through the church’s stained windows.
There is gravity in the air. There is a stark juxtaposition of cultures.
It all bodes for a compelling experience, but it is not. The voice-overs lack clarity and are very difficult to understand. They really need some quality sound engineering to improve them so that they can indeed behave as the ‘glue’ that is so very much needed for this show: the story portrayed in the projections is not self-evident, and even though Zen is about understanding through intuition rather than conscious effort, intuition in the context of this concert will only take you so far.
Shiel’s playing is expressive—he shapes his hands and forearms beautifully—and his physicality is fluid and evocative. At times one feels it borders on becoming immoderate, and he is at times heavy on the pedal and could more clearly voice the melody.
Shiel clearly has a penchant for the emotion and style of Glass and Einaudi, and the modestly sized audience appreciated that.
Kym Clayton
When: 25 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: Pilgrim Church
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★1/2 stars
Adelaide Fringe. Pilgrim Church. 25 Feb 2026
Debussy’s Romantic Piano by Candlelight - ‘Clair de Lune’ features British pianist Matthew Shiel performing a selection of piano music which can all be associated with “scandalous love affairs” enjoyed by the composers! The musical selections are mostly popular, but some are less well known, and there was a new composition, a gentle ‘romance’ titled Notturno VI composed by Dr Alfredo Caponnetto.
Shiel is an alumnus of the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and he is a skilled pianist. He has performed hundreds of concerts at fringe festivals and other events around the world and has received awards and glowing reviews. His concerts are diverse and arouse curiosity, especially in those who are looking for non-traditional programs and settings. Tonight’s concert is as much a look into the personal lives of the featured composers as it is a survey of piano literature (predominantly) from the Romantic era. In between musical items Shiel gave anecdotes and interesting insights into the lives of the composers, but the clarity of his speaking voice is sometimes poor.
Shiel begins his program with Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 (Love Dream). It is the perfect choice to start a concert dedicated to affairs of the heart and Shiel is overt in his legato phrasing with aesthetically pleasing and fluid arm movement and hand shaping. Pedalling and rubato is appropriate, and sensitive. One senses that Shiel is at home with the romantic piano literature.
He follows the Liszt with Tchaikovsky’s Barcarolle (June, from The Seasons, op. 37a, no. 6), and again, accentuates the legato phrasing. His work in the right hand clearly brings out the melody. This strong start is followed by works from Bach, Brahms, more Liszt, Caponnetto and finally Debussy (with Clair de Lune, of course!)
Deserving of comment is Shiel’s performance of Liszt’s transcription of Isolde’s Liebstod (literally Love-Death) from the opera Tristan und Isolde by Wagner. It is a fiendishly challenging and muscular piece to play. Liszt’s transcription attempts to make the piano emulate a full orchestra, and therefore requires the pianist to navigate dense chords, lengthy developments, layered textures, varied and rapidly changing dynamics, and demanding yet delicate tremolos in the left hand. The main melody is simple, but just gorgeous, and it is essential it comes through all the ‘feuer und schwefel’ that surrounds it. Shiel worked hard to expose the melodic line and was mainly successful, and he did well to make the piece come to life. The tempo and meter occasionally wandered, but Shiel displayed sensitivity, understanding and stamina. An impressive effort.
The concert was advertised as including “…digital animations by acclaimed Shanghai artist and Disney illustrator Emma Yitong Shen. An immersive musical experience designed to wind you down, find romantic inspiration and open your heart to live and to love.” There were no such animations.
The program finished almost anticlimactically with Caponnetto’s Notturno VI, and with the last note gently fading away into the recesses of the graceful Pilgrim Church, Shiel stood, bowed, and walked away into the gentle gloom.
Kym Clayton
When: 25 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: Pilgrim Church
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Spiegel Zelt. 24 Feb 2026
“It starts like this” says Moko Kodo (aka Monica) of many songs in this delightful gig a happy audience experienced.
This cheeky lady wrote a bunch of songs to see if they landed with herself and an audience, despite not knowing much about being in the music game (ok, a Melbs mate loaned a song) let alone playing a bass guitar.
Stuff to write, stuff to say and gusto to do it.
Bass guitar as foundational structure to bunch of songs of break up, family issues, weirdness.
That’s a really strange take. Name a song you know where the bass is up and front of everything (alright a few). This gig? It works. Big time.
Especially if the writing is good and you have brilliant band mates on violin like Jacob Usplooji, and total control from Dave Watkins on drums. It is the most gentle, but solid support you could want for an act that relies totally on each other to make a ripping night.
Numbers like Nick’s Song to My Girl are filled with resigned sadness up to the kick arse satiric fun of She Wants to Die (crazy mother in hospital) and two hands-down, laugh-out-funny numbers I Know You Don’t Love Me (“ do you want your drivers license back?”) and title song of the night, I’m Not Going to Marry You.
There is a delightful line of emotional introspection and hilarious sarcasm in these songs. Moko can go deep and high vocally and lyrically. Laugh? Hell yes! Sit back and think yes, I lived that, given there’s a lot of experiences here many will have shared in their time.
If you missed this gig, be assured there will be another one!!
David O’Brien
When: Season Closed
Where: Spiegel Zelt, Garden of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au