Marianne Rothschild
Marianne Rothschild’s violin traces heat, silence and colour through new Australian chamber music. In duo with pianist Glenn Riddle she has premiered and recorded Melbourne scores written for them, from summer haze to jazz waltz and spare lyric.
The Sky is Melting opens in rippling piano against a slow violin line, whole-tone chords suggesting midday at Bundanon with a Gallic tang. Kouvaras’s Bundanon Sonata, written for the duo, moves from Pulpit Rock’s sunken-cathedral chords through river change and a jazz waltz to a moto perpetuo that settles into meditation. Around it sit Greenbaum’s intimate Occasional Pieces, Pertout’s Japanese-inflected Sonus Dulcis and Schmidt’s Argentine Etching: music carried from premiere to disc with poise and warmth. Rothschild also threads McCombe’s stone-placing miniatures, where silence frames each gesture as carefully as the notes, and the gentle chamber textures of Lachlan Brown. Tradition sits beside new work; the playing is stylish, soulful and built for listening.
Marianne Rothschild appears on
Christine McCombe: Three Kinds of Silence
Christine McCombe is a Melbourne-based composer, teacher and writer. This disc gathers four of her chamber works in world premiere recordings, and is the first CD devoted to her chamber music.