Melba Recordings

"... a label of fragrant distinction"

There are no products in your shopping cart.

Governors Speech: Government House

Melba Foundation - Melba Recordings

Reception to celebrate Melba's connections with Queensland musicians and with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra

31st March, 2010

Member for Aspley, Ms Tracy Davis MP, representing the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for the Arts, Mr John-Paul Langbroek MP,

Chief Executive Officer, Melba Foundation Limited, Ms Maria Vandamme,

Guest Conductor, Mr Guillaume Tourniaire,

Guest performers, Mr Paul Dean and Mr Kevin Power,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As has become customary in our State, as an expression of commitment to the national goal of reconciliation, I acknowledge Australia's indigenous peoples and in particular the Jagera and Turrbal peoples who first lived in this region before European settlement.

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Government House this evening to this reception dedicated to musical excellence. Of course, your invitations were worded differently and more directly - "For the Melba Foundation" as I recall - and that is certainly true, but there is a broader purpose, one which could not be expressed succinctly on a card already over-filled with details about dates, times and venues. The occasion is designed to celebrate Melba Recordings, the Melba Foundation and their Queensland connections and has been timed during a week when ‘the Melba team', led by CEO Maria Vandamme, is in Brisbane to record with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra ... but it is the shared passion for/commitment to recognise and promote excellence that really draws us all together, and which, for me, is the true inspiration for this evening. A passion shared by Nellie Melba - with her catch-cry of "Perfection". A passion shared by many, I know, in this room, and a passion shared by Maria Vandamme - expressed through the Melba Foundation and Melba Recordings.

My contact with Maria and the modern ‘Melba', as opposed to its namesake, the incomparable Nellie "I am Melba" Mitchell, was established some four or five years ago, when I was Australia's Ambassador to France and Maria came to Paris seeking assistance with building connections with the French musical world. It was assistance I was pleased to provide, delighted that we should have someone championing the cause of promoting Australia's finest classical musicians and artists internationally and working in such an imaginative way - through the vehicle of the Melba Recordings label - to take Australian classical music excellence to international audiences and critics.

Happily, we achieved some success in our efforts in France - success which I like to think is still paying dividends - but success is no stranger to Maria. Since she established the Melba Foundation in 2001, she has gathered a veritable "Who's Who" of the Australian arts, corporate and political worlds to support the Foundation. There are very good reasons for this success. It was evident from my very first meeting with Maria that the Foundation's formation was based on a very simple and clear logic and has operated ever since using a transparent and disarmingly simple strategy: Australian artists are first rate; geography works as a barrier to broader international awareness of their talents; recordings are a way of defeating distance - that barrier of geography; ergo, we will make recordings - but, and here's the key - not just any recordings. They must be of the highest standard, reaching beyond excellence to that elusive "perfection", and, beyond the technical excellence, the levels of skill and artistry, there must be something extra ... something new, fresh and different. Thus, there developed the strategy of pinpointing artists and repertoire that involved - that involves - bringing something special to the music.

For instance, take a brilliant Queensland organist to a splendid organ in a Danish church, have him play brilliant organ music - JS Bach's - and record it in exemplary fashion. The result is a Christopher Wrench recording that US classical music magazine Fanfare called "... an unequivocal triumph". Or, for Mozart clarinet pieces, make a superb recording with Paul Dean and earn reviews that say "... the soloist's performances is of such quality that is worth hearing on his account"; or record Paul and Brett Dean with pianist Stephen Emmerson to create what one stunned American reviewer called "... the finest trio you've never heard of".

Another clear strategy is to seek out great music that, for no good or obvious reason, is lesser known. Take, for instance, little-known songs by Vierne and Chausson, and record them with tenor Steve Davislim and the QSO under the baton of Guillaume Tourniaire. That way, you cause French reviewers to question why their own orchestras deprive them of the opportunity to hear these "unrecognised treasures"; and you have reviewers all over the world using words like "absolutely cracking form", "superb" or "magnificent" to describe the QSO's playing. One reviewer said of the QSO that it "proves itself anything but a provincial band" and another spoke of "remarkably assured solos from the QSO". To the QSO's principals here tonight, may I suggest that this palpable element of surprise is even more satisfying than untrammelled praise. There are many more examples of wonderful Melba recordings featuring Queensland artists, and it is only the need to avoid trying your patience, not any lack of appreciation, that prevents me from naming them all.

It is important also to acknowledge two other stars common to all of the Melba recordings and acknowledged in many of the reviews. They are called "Superb Recording" and "Superb Packaging" and are clearly an integral part of the Melba brand and a factor in the label's success.

It is a great experience to bathe in this wonderful praise, but none of it should surprise anyone in Queensland or Australia. We know that the musical talent, commitment and the drive for excellence are out there. What has now been added by the Melba Foundation is a powerful vehicle to take the talent to an international audience, a preparedness to form cleverly structured creative partnerships, an acute eye - and ear - for the right repertoire, and the boldness to launch an assault on the forbidding bastions of music communities in Europe and the United States.

The ambitious agenda being pursued by the Melba Foundation requires an enormous amount of commitment, enthusiasm, and sheer hard work and Maria is clearly both a passionate advocate and a demanding taskmaster. Richard Bonynge said that Maria "gives us all a hard time and makes us work hard." Elizabeth Whitehouse - who enchanted highly demanding audiences with her performance at the Australian Embassy in Paris - speaks of Maria's passion and her "absolutely phenomenal ears" - (an aural rather than physical allusion, I hasten to add!) and a compliment that has been one that has been a recurring theme throughout Maria's career. As someone who has spent much of my life promoting Australian culture, art and artists internationally, and now, in my role as Governor and Patron of a number of Queensland's significant cultural institutions, including our ballet, opera and symphony orchestra, with a very special responsibility and interest in promoting Queenslander excellence on the national and international stage, I am grateful to Maria for her passion and commitment - for the energy and effort she has poured into the cause, and I welcome the growing connections between the Melba Foundation and Queensland, with individual artists and, at this time especially, with the QSO. This is a relationship of great importance now and of great potential for the future, one whose growth I will certainly be doing my best to encourage, as Queensland's Governor and as a Patron (one of many) of the Melba Foundation.

For the Melba Foundation and for any arts organisation, it is a challenge to find the way ahead in twenty-first century Australia. Audiences for live and recorded classical music have many calls on their time, attention and discretionary spending. Governments, corporate sponsors and individual donors are also subject to competing demands for funds. Nevertheless, we should never resile from the view that the arts matter to communities, and deserve to have a very high priority assigned to them -even in economic downturns and the aftermath of Global Financial Crisis! We also need to explore more diligently, and embrace more readily, a strategy of collaboration rather than competition - that is, a spirit of generosity between arts institutions and the creation of more partnerships across arts communities in Australia, as an appropriate strategy to achieve ambitious goals. Tonight's gathering has been conceived to contribute to that cause. It has also been designed as an occasion for networking and, I hope, for discovering not only new prospects for creative partnerships, but for identifying new Queensland talent that deserves to be showcased on an international stage. So let me not delay the achievement of those ambitions any further, but invite Maria and then Guillaume Tourniaire to take the stage, before we all make way for the most important offering on tonight's agenda - one of musical excellence by Paul Dean and Kevin Power.

Thank you again for joining us this evening. Thank you, Maria and the Melba Foundation for the interest you are taking in Queensland and for helping us to open the eyes and ears of the world to the excellence of our Queensland musicians.

The event took place during a break from a busy schedule recording A Tribute to Joan Hammond with the orchestra, soprano Cheryl Barker (who will be interviewed in our next newsletter) and conductor Guillaume Tourniaire. It was the second occasion on which Governor Wensley had lent her support to Melba Recordings, having played a crucial part in launching the label in France during her time there as Ambassador.

Also present at the well-attended event were Melba recording artists, soprano Lisa Gasteen (see photo), and Christopher Wrench.

The music on the evening was provided by Paul Dean and Kevin Power whose performance of one of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words had the audience spellbound and looking forward to it being recorded.