CLASSICAL
Various Artists
Music of Betty Beath
(Wirripang) ****
THIS anniversary of our statehood is a timely reminder that Queensland has nurtured some very fine talents. Many are displayed on this CD featuring music by Betty Beath - five song cycles, a piece for string ensemble and for piano and viola - all performed by Queensland artists. It is an admirable output from this daughter of a cane farmer-soldier. Beath's love of the Australian bush inspires her music, and her vision extended to Asia after she and her artist husband David Cox won a fellowship from the Australia Council to study and research in Java and Bali. The result is creations of immense beauty. Towards the Psalms (words adapted from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels) is sung here in all its luminous beauty by Margaret Schindler, a former student of Janet Delpratt who also taught Beath, and who sings her exquisite cycle River Songs with Richard Mills conducting the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Another Delpratt graduate singer, Susan Lorette Dunn, accompanied on piano by Beath, brings a dramatic depth to In This Garden, poems by David Cox with imagery that locates the work clearly in Brisbane's river milieu. Dunn also sings Nawang Wulan and Genesis (Indonesian texts by Subagio Sastrowardoyo),avd pianist Colin Spiers and violist Patricia Pollett capture the sensitive atmosphere of the Nepal-inspired From a Quiet Place. Yet outshining them all is Lament for Kosovo, Adagio for Strings, into which violinist extraordinaire Brendan Joyce and his Camerata of St John's pour rivers of tears for this war-torn place etched so poignantly by Beath's music.
Patricia Kelly
COURIER-MAIL JULY 4, 2009