In Saturday’s (7/13) Weekend Australian (Melbourne), Luke Slattery writes about Zubin Mehta’s October 2013 appearances in Melbourne and Sydney leading “the Australian World Orchestra, which unites the global diaspora of Australian classical musicians with top-shelf home-based performers. The sheer heft of the homecoming party, with more than 100 musicians performing Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Gustav Mahler’s magisterial First Symphony, has earned it among insiders the ironic sobriquet: World Domination Orchestra.… The AWO was born in 2011 from a dream of peripatetic Australian conductor Alex Briger, and now, after a gap year, it returns.… Briger says the concept was raised among Australian musicians based abroad whenever they connected in the orchestra pit, the hotel lobby or bar.… The line-up this year includes Matt McDonald, first principal double bass for the Berlin Philharmonic. Then there is Lyndon Watts, principal bassoonist for the Munich Philharmonic, and oboist Nick Deutsch, who plays for Mehta’s Israel Philharmonic and is a friend of the conductor.… Also included this year are twins Toby (viola) and Ben (violin) Lea from the Vienna Philharmonic… Hector McDonald, principal horn of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the most recognised Australian horn player since Barry Tuckwell; and Michael Mulcahy, trombonist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
Posted July 16, 2013
