The Music Show ABC listen

Duo Windborne are two of Australia’s finest recorder players: Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams. Their debut album, Venus Bay Fireside Sessions, is a record of their improvisational partnership. Originally intended to be recorded outside as a direct response to the natural world of Venus Bay, the weather drove them indoors and beside the fire – hence the title. They join Andy in studio with a fraction of their huge instrument collection to talk about their relationship with nature, their collaboration, and mount a defence of their much maligned instrument.

Coral Reid is a fiddle player, a clog dancer, and a sword dancer (!) too. She’s an English folk music specialist and she’s brought her violin, her clogs, but sadly no swords into studio to demonstrate some of the traditions that spilled out from the mills, the mines and the pubs of northern England around the Industrial Revolution.

Plus new music from Tonya Lemoh and Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion.




Duo Windborne launch their album Venus Bay Fireside Sessions on 19 April at Victorian Artists Society in Melbourne.

Coral Reid is on tour with the Sofa of Fools across Victoria and NSW until 21 April.

Tonya Lemoh’s album I Dream A World is out now via ABC Classic.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Browns
Artist: Duo Windborne
Composer: improvised by Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams
Album: Venus Bay Fireside Sessions
Label: Independent release

Title: Dances in the Canebrakes No. 1; Nimble Feet
Artist: Tonya Lemoh
Composer: Florence Price
Album: I Dream A World
Label: ABC Classic

Title: Mangrove Inlet
Artist: Duo Windborne
Composer: improvised by Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams
Album: Venus Bay Fireside Sessions
Label: Independent release

Three improvised pieces performed live in The Music Show studio by Duo Windborne – Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams

Title: The Bonny Miller (trad)
Performed live by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Clog dances “Sam Sherry’s Beginner Hornpipe”, and “Mrs. Willis’s Rag” demonstrated by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Title: Road to Poynton
Composer: Rob Harbron
Performed live by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Title: Rectangles and Circumstance
Artist: Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion
Composer: Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion
Album: Rectangles and Circumstance
Label: Nonesuch (releasing 14 June)

Technical production by Tim Jenkins, Tim Symonds, and Hamish “Tim” Camilleri

This episode of The Music Show was produced on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Gadigal and Gundungurra Land

Benjamin Northey picked up the baton as Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra only a few years after the devastating 2011 earthquake. In a wide-ranging conversation he talks to Andrew Ford about the rebuilding of the musical life of the city (there was a period where the CSO performed at an Air Force museum after many performance venues were damaged). He also looks back on his years learning under the great Finnish conductor Jorma Panula, and why starting his career as a saxophone player put him in perfect stead to be on the podium. 

And we hear an interview with New Orleans singer and pianist Clarence 'Frogman' Henry. "I sing like a girl and I sing like a frog....." Clarence Henry croaked on his 1956 debut hit Ain't Got No Home, which earned him the nickname of 'Frogman'. In 2000 Andrew Ford crossed the Mississippi to Clarence's home in Algiers, New Orleans and sat down in his garden amongst the decorative frogs for a chat. Clarence Henry died on 7 April 2024 at the age of 87.

Music heard in this program

Title: (I Don't Know Why) But I Do
Artist: Clarence 'Frogman' Henry
Composer:  Paul Gayten and Bobby Charles
Album: You Always Hurt The One You Love
Label: Viking AUSLP 1009

Title: Ain't Got No Home
Artist: Clarence 'Frogman' Henry
Composer: Clarence Henry
Album: Ain't Got No Home
Label: Chess CHD 9346

Title: McPancake
Artist: Apolline
Composer: Stuart Morison, John Morris Rankin, Jonathan Berkahn
Album: Home Home EP
Label: Blythe Records

Title: Finlandia, Op. 26 
Artist: Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Jorma Panula conductor
Composer: Jean Sibelius
Album: The Very Best of Sibelius
Label: Naxos 8.552135-36

Title: Symphony in F sharp, Op. 40, ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto
Artist: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Daniel de Borah piano, Benjamin Northey conductor
Composer: Erich Korngold
Live recording: Courtesy ABC Classic, 2022

Title: Waratah Bay
Artist: Duo Windborne
Composer: improvised by Ryan Williams and Rodney Waterman
Album: Venus Bay Fireside Sessions 
Label: Independent

Four pieces of music written in the years after World War II – Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Britten’s War Requiem, and Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, ‘Babi Yar’  – paint a complicated picture of how European composers memorialised war in Jeremy Eichler’s new book Time’s Echo. Jeremy joins Andy on the show to trace the connections and conflicts in the ways that a German, a Jewish Austrian in exile, an Englishman, and a Russian looked back at the war(s) and the Holocaust.

Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler is published by Faber.

Music heard in the show:

Title: War Requiem, Op. 66
Composer: Benjamin Britten, text by Wilfred Owen
Artists: Peter Pears (tenor), Heather Harper (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Coventry Festival Choir, Boys of Holy Trinity Leamington and Stratford, John Cooper (organ), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Melos Ensemble, Meredith Davies and Benjamin Britten (conductors)
Album: Britten War Requiem (recorded live at Conventry Cathedral, May 1962)
Label: Testament SBT 1490

Title: Metamorphosen
Composer: Richard Strauss
Artists: Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler (conductor)
Album: Wilhelm Furtwängler: An Anniversary Tribute
Label: Deutsche Grammophon 477 006-2

Title: A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46
Composer: Arnold Schoenberg
Artists: Günter Reich (narrator), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez (conductor)
Album: Boulez - Schoenberg
Label: Masterworks G010003768085J

Title: Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, Op. 113, ‘Babi Yar’; i. Babi Yar
Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich
Artists: Arthur Eisen (bass), Male Group of Republican Russian Academic Choir Capella, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin (conductor)
Album: Shostakovich Complete Symphonies
Label: Melodiya RCID18056928

Technical production by Bethany Stewart on Gadigal Land

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Land

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the name of someone who has died.

Melbourne double bassist Sam Anning’s latest album is dedicated to Archie Roach. The album’s title Earthen comes from a remark Roach made from his hospital bed about instruments being ‘earthenware’—coming from the earth, carrying music and then returning to the earth. The septet on this record is made up of Anning's friends and long-term collaborators and he reflects on writing for specific people rather than instruments, and how tragedy and grief can become jazz.

Two hundred years ago, Beethoven was almost completely deaf, pushing fifty, and working on his massive – and final – 9th Symphony. He also completed (years behind schedule) the biggest of his sacred works, his Missa solemnis. On the 200th anniversary of its first performance, Peter Tregear is presenting the mass in its full liturgical context at St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, and he joins Andy to unpack what makes the piece “profoundly humanistic” and a little less religiously zealous than you might imagine.

Music in Sam Anning:

Titles: Rise Up Lights; Strangers featuring Kyrie Anderson; Transitive States featuring Julien Wilson; Uvalde featuring Kyrie Anderson; Moonland featuring Carl Mackey
Artist: Sam Anning
Composer: Sam Anning
Album: Earthen
Label: Earshift Music EAR075

Music in Peter Tregear:

Titles: Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123: Kyrie; Agnus Dei; Dona Nobis Pacem; Credo In Unum Deum
Artist: Laura Aikin, Bernarda Fink, Johannes Chum, Ruben Drole, Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Composer: Beethoven
Album: Beethoven: Missa Solemnis in D Major, Op. 123
Label: Sony Classical 0889853135929

Title: Missa In Tempore Belli, ‘Paukenmesse’ In C Major (Hob.XXII:9; 1796): Agnus Dei
Artist: Kirsten Sollek, Richard Lippold, Ann Hoyt, Daniel Neer, Trinity Choir, Rebel Baroque Orchestra, 
Composer: Haydn
Album: Mariazellermesse (Missa Cellensis) / Paukenmesse (Missa In Tempore Belli)
Label: Naxos 8.572124

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is most of the way through an international tour that sees him playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations almost a hundred times, including his first ever performances in Australia. He joins Andy in the studio, in front of the piano, to talk about finding infinite variety in those Variations.

We remember the late pianist Maurizio Pollini who died this week. “With Pollini things were never simple,” says Víkingur Ólafsson, “Chopin became the musical architect, Stockhausen the poet, Beethoven the philosopher. Many of us became better listeners and players.”

Plus new music from Aussie singer-songwriter Emily Barker.




Music heard in the show:

Title: Goldberg Variations BWV988: Var. 1
Artist: Víkingur Ólafsson
Composer: J.S. Bach
Album: Bach: Goldberg Variations
Label: Deutsche Grammophon 4864553

Title: … sofferte onde serene…
Artist: Maurizio Pollini
Composer: Luigi Nono
Album: Maurizio Pollini: 20th Century
Label: Deutsche Grammophon 4779918

Title: Boulez: Piano Sonata No. 2
Artist: Maurizio Pollini
Composer: Pierre Boulez
Album: Maurizio Pollini plays Prokofiev, Boulez, Webern and Stravinsky
Label: Deutsche Grammophon 4192022

Title: Preludes Op. 28; No. 24, Prelude in D Minor, Allegro Appassionato
Artist: Maurizio Pollini
Composer: Frédéric Chopin
Album: Maurizio Pollini: Chopin
Label: Deutsche Grammophon 4779908

Title: Goldberg Variations BWV988: Aria; extracts from other movements
Artist: Víkingur Ólafsson
Composer: J.S. Bach
Performed live in studio

Title: The Quiet Ways
Artist: Emily Barker
Album: Fragile As Humans (out 3 May)
Label: Independent release

Technical production by Virginia Read and John Jacobs

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

In the 1960s, the Les Girls Revue made Carlotta a star, and earned her the moniker “Queen of the Cross”. In Sydney’s red light district, she made a name for herself before hitting the road – she’d be the first to remind you that Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is at least partially based on her rural tours. Now she’s contemplating (but not committing to) retirement, she looks back at her career as an entertainer with Andrew Ford.  

Maria Grenfell is a composer for the concert hall and for film, and also a teacher of composition at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music. With her follow composer-academics Linda Kouvaras and Natalie Williams she has edited two volumes about the experiences of composing women. She recently sat down with Andrew in her home town of Christchurch to talk about writing for orchestra, teaching, and whether the term 'woman composer' is a help or a hindrance.

Teho. is a Finnish fiddle duo made up of Tero Hyväluoma and Esko Järvelä (who are also members of 7-piece folk band Frigg). At the end of a whirlwind Australian tour the pair speak to Andrew about the rich musical history in the Kaustinen region, bringing traditional music into the 21st Century and how they can get such a big sound out of just two violins. 

Music in Carlotta:

Title: Got To Be Real 
Composer: Cheryl Lynn, David Paich and David Foster
Artist: Cheryl Lynn
Album: Cheryl Lynn
Label: Columbia

Title: I'm The Greatest Star
Composer: Jule Styne, lyrics Bob Merrill 
Artist: Barbara Streisand
Album: Funny Girl (Original Broadway Cast)
Label: Capitol Records W 2059

Music in Maria Grenfell:

Title: Di Primavera III. With energy and bounce
Composer: Maria Grenfell
Artist: Claire Edwardes and Karin Schaupp
Album: Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers
Label: ABC Classics 4817995

Title: River Mountain Sky
Composer: Maria Grenfell
Artist: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Northey
Recording: Courtesy of ABC Classic

Music in Teho.:

Title: Jokivarren Polska & Flikuleeri
Composer: Esko Järvelä
Artist: Teho.
Album: Not A Violin Duo
Label: Independent

Title: Tähtisilmävalssi
Composer: Konsta Jylhä
Artist: Teho.
Album: (E2 + ε + V) x I3 = P
Label: Independent

Music at the end of the show:

Title: No. 1: "Múzika igráyet tak bódro" (Olga, Masha, Irina)
Composer: Peter Eötvös
Artist: Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Lyon, conducted by Kent Nagano
Album: Eötvös: Three Sisters
Label: Deutsche Grammophon E4596942