5 Stunning New Programs from Selby & Friends in 2023

Season 2023 Promises 5 Stunning New Programs  

Selby & Friends is delighted to announce the 2023 Season of five intimate chamber music programs around the country – at City Recital Hall in Sydney, The Salon at the Melbourne Recital  Centre for Evening and Matinee series, Elder Hall & the Flinders Street Church (Tour 1 only) in  Adelaide, St Jude’s Church in the NSW Southern Highlands, Turramurra Uniting Church in  Turramurra and in Canberra they return to the newly renovated Fairfax Theatre at the National Gallery.  

“Our 17th Season is truly an exciting one with an enviable ensemble of brilliant Australian and international artists, including a starry array from a talented young generation. The programs are luscious and a true showcase of the incredibly breadth and variety provided by the piano trio repertoire. It will be wonderful to welcome back old friends and introduce exciting new artists to  our audiences,” says Kathryn Selby AM, Pianist and Artistic Director.  

Selby & Friends has been described as presenting concerts that are “absolutely superb”  “blockbuster performances,” with Selby having “excellent taste in friends”.  

Selby & Friends was created by Kathryn Selby, AM in 2007, and her guest artists include many of  the finest solo and ensemble performers from Australia and around the world. The series is widely considered “world class” and of “the highest possible level of performance” with many hailing Ms  Selby as amongst the finest of Australian artists, as well as an “entrepreneurial force” on the Australian music scene.  

5 Dazzling Programs and 11 Amazing Artists  

New this season is Selby & Friends’ creation of the 2PM one-hour Matinee Series on the same days as the Evening Series n the intimate Primrose Potter Salon at the Melbourne Recital Centre.  Another exciting announcement is the return to our long-time home in the beautiful and recently renovated Fairfax Theatre of the NGA in Canberra. In Sydney, Selby & Friends return to the prestigious City Recital Hall; in Adelaide to Elder Hall, with one concert at Flinders Street Baptist during Elder Hall renovations in March; in the NSW Southern Highlands at St Jude’s Church in Bowral and Turramurra Uniting Church in Turramurra near Sydney.  

This absorbing new subscription season features Piano Trios by Arensky, Dvořák, Fauré. Smetana, Nigel Westlake, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Haydn and much more. It is a joyful journey through 3 centuries of the flowering of the piano trio and its enormous impact on chamber music. A hallmark  of the Selby & Friends series is always the delightful anticipation of the musicians’ speaking from the stage about their own experiences in music – all within the intimacy of the chamber music performance setting. 

FULL PROGRAM HERE >>

Tour 1 – First, By No Means Last!  

18th – 27th March 2023  

The season kicks off with the wildly popular Café Music by the American composer Paul Schoenfield, the inspiration for which was a stint as a replacement pianist in a coffee house to  help out a friend. What better than to follow this brilliant work with two iconic piano trios from the Romantic repertoire – Mendelssohn’s first – a masterful work beloved by artists and audiences alike – and the incredible first trio by Brahms. Composed initially in his early 20s, Brahms returned some 40 years later to rewrite sections he felt he could improve. It is a true masterpiece.  We welcome back the stunning American cellist Clancy Newman and for the first time introduce  to our S&F audience Harry Bennetts, Associate Concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony and  leader of the Chroma Quartet.   

Tour 2 – A Matter of Heritage  

7th – 14th May 2023  

Our second program for 2023 brings together two of the most outstanding stars of the young generation in violin soloist Grace Clifford and teenage cellist Benett Tsai. It is exciting to be able  to present these two brilliant young artists in a delightful program that shines a light on the  incredible diversity of the piano trio genre through the influence on these three composers of  country of birth, customs, culture and heritage. Nigel Westlake, one of Australia’s most beloved  composers, wrote this stunning and highly atmospheric work for the Macquarie Trio in 2003 to  great acclaim. It is with great pleasure we program it again for this Season. We follow with the  stunning Fauré Trio, revered for its complexity and gorgeous flowing melodies – the work of a  highly mature artist in the final year of his long life. The program culminates in the Smetana Piano  Trio, a poem of love to his little daughter. This is truly a program to be savoured. 

Tour 3 – Iconic ‘Fathers’  

8th – 16th July 2023  

Selby & Friends is delighted to welcome back Natalie Chee and Julian Smiles after a Covid interrupted tour in 2022. In this special program, Kathy and her friends present three iconic trailblazing composers whose influence exploded previous conceptions to pave an entirely new  path forward. Haydn was a prolific piano trio composer who literally created our idea of the genre.  Dvořák, the great Czech composer and father of nationalism in music, made it possible for composers who followed to revel in their mother tongue and express it through music. And the  giant Viennese/American composer, Schoenberg, changed the face of music entirely with his revolutionary approach to harmony in music. A stunning concert presented by three of Australia’s finest artists.  

Tour 4 – Three Stages of Man  

27th August – 4th September 2023  

Our fourth program of the year celebrates the three stages of man – to begin, the very youthful Lili Boulanger, sister of the famous Nadia, whose untimely death in her twenties brought an end to a spectacularly gifted artist whose talents are easily displayed in this powerful set. We follow with the succinct genius of a mature Brahms at the height of his powers, and finally an elegy to the memory of a great artist by Rachmaninov as he remembered Tchaikovsky in one of the most  encompassing piano trios in the genre. With Kathy for this tour is the brilliant and irrepressible  Susie Park, visiting from the US, and the ever-popular Timo-Veikko Valve, Principal Cellist of the  ACO. 

Tour 5 – Final Statements  

29th October – 6th November 2023  

This extraordinary final program for the 2023 Season brings together two brilliant guest artists of  the younger generation who are making great waves now they are back in Australia – the brilliant violinist Ike See, previously Assoc. Concertmaster of the Adelaide Symphony and now a core member of the tightly knit ACO, and solo cellist and lecturer at the Melbourne Conservatorium,  Richard Narroway. The program opens with Copland’s famous ‘Vitebsk’, a beautiful but brief  work by the great American composer. We follow with the passionate and powerful Arensky  Piano Trio No.1 after having presented Arensky’s second piano trio in 2022. And to bring the  Season to a close, Schubert’s delightful, melody-rich piano trio composed in the last year of his life – a testament to a beautiful and rich life extinguished too soon.  

Five-concert subscription packages begin at $242 and are now available at selbyandfriends.com.au.