Excerpt 1: Elliott Carter, March For Four Timpani (1949)
Excerpt 2: Martin Friedel, Dialogue Of The Pythagoreans - from “The Third Planet” (1995)

From the Gasworks Theatre concert, Saturday December 16 & Sunday 18, 1995.

Soloists including Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Jan Friedl (actor), John Arcaro (timpani) and the Astra Choir and ensemble conducted by John McCaughey.

Click here for photographs of the performance and information about the Gasworks Theatre, Albert Park.

For 30 years, the concerts of Astra Chamber Music Society have ranged around Melbourne’s architectural environment. Each concert has had a site-specific design that takes advantage of the marvellous visual qualities, spatial possibilities, and acoustic personality of each building. The music, in turn, contributes a new quality to the perception of the buildings, now experienced by audiences as a sounding space - an area where cultural issues from music’s history are traversed, and new ideas in Australian composition are explored.