Ghostscapes

Acclaimed legends of the Australian chamber music scene, the Sutherland Trio, are three of this nation’s most celebrated, international award-winning musicians, who return to Port Fairy as Festival favourites to present Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, propelling us along a transcendent journey of bold ebullience, haunting shade, and pure exhilaration. Champions of contemporary Australian music, the Sutherlands feature prominent Australian composer and jazz pianist Nat Bartsch’s poignant recollections of the 2019-20 Victorian bushfires, dedicated by the composer to its victims, and seeking to capture her grief of the fires, her frustration of climate inaction, and the endlessness of the grey world outside. Our intrepid explorers round off their versatile and imaginatively curated voyage with Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks’ contrastingly luminescent Plainscapes, an ecstatically climactic vision of dawn breaking and the awakening of nature with its profusion of birdsong.