[01:17.01]As you all know, the university is planning an arts festival for later this year, and here in the music department we've planned three concerts.
[01:28.24]These will be public performances, and the programme has just been finalised.
[01:34.04]The theme of the festival is links between the UK and Australia, and this is reflected in the music: each concert will feature both British and Australian composers.
[01:47.31]I'll tell you briefly about the Australian music, as you probably won't be familiar with that.
[01:54.01]The first concert will include music by Liza Lim, who was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1966.
[02:03.97]As a child, Lim originally learned to play the piano 一 like so many children - and also the violin, but when she was 11 her teachers encouraged her to start composing.
[02:18.14]She found this was her real strength, and she studied and later taught composition, both in Australia and in other countries.
[02:28.19]As a composer, she has received commissions from numerous orchestras, other performers and festivals in several countries.
[02:38.79]Liza Lim's compositions are vibrant and full of energy, and she often explores Asian and Australian Aboriginal cultural sources, including the native instrument, the didgeridoo: this is featured in a work called The Compass.
[02:57.62]Her music is very expressive, so although it is complex, it has the power of connecting with audiences and performers alike.
[03:08.57]In the festival we're going to give a semi-staged performance of The Oresteia.
[03:15.09]This is an opera in seven parts, based on the trilogy of ancient Greek tragedies by Aeschylus.
[03:24.02]Lim composed this when she was in her mid-20s, and she also wrote the text, along with Barrie Kosky.
[03:32.92]It's performed by six singers, a dancer, and an orchestra that, as well as standard orchestral instruments, includes electric guitar, and a traditional Turkish stringed instrument.
[03:47.42]Lim wrote that because the stories in the tragedies are not easy to tell, the sounds she creates are also disturbing, and they include breathing, sobbing, laughing and whistling.
[04:03.74]The work lasts around 75 minutes, and the rest of the concert will consist of orchestral works by the British composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius.
[04:20.74]Moving on now to our second concert, this will begin with instrumental music by British composers - Benjamin Britten and Judith Weir.
[04:31.95]After the interval we'll go to Australia for a piece by Ross Edwards: The Tower of Remoteness.
[04:41.02]According to Edwards, the inspiration for this piece came from nature, when he was sitting alone in the dry bed of a creek, overshadowed by the leaves of palm trees, listening to the birds and insects.
[04:56.32]The Tower of Remoteness is scored for piano and clarinet.
[05:02.60]Edwards says he realised years after writing the piece that he had subconsciously modelled its opening phrase on a bird call.
[05:13.01]Ross Edwards was born in 1943 in Sydney, Australia, and studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the universities of Adelaide and Sydney.
[05:26.23]He's well known in Australia, and in fact he's one of the country's most performed composers.
[05:33.48]He's written a wide range of music, from symphonies and concertos to some composed specifically for children.
[05:42.64]Edwards's music has been described as being 'deeply connected to Australia', and it can be regarded as a celebration of the diversity of cultures that Australia can be proud of.
[05:58.64]The last of the three Australian composers to be represented in our festival is Carl Vine.
[06:06.31]Born in 1954, Vine, like Liza Lim, comes from Perth, Western Australia.
[06:14.27]He took up the cornet at the age of five, switching to the piano five years later.
[06:21.04]However, he went to university to study physics, before changing to composition.
[06:28.24]After graduating he moved to Sydney and worked as a freelance pianist and composer.
[06:35.28]Before long he had become prominent in Australia as a composer for dance, and in fact has written 25 scores of that type.
[06:46.69]In our third concert, Vine will be represented by his music for the flag hand-over ceremony of the Olympics held in 1996.
[06:58.23]This seven-minute orchestral piece was of course heard by millions of people worldwide, and we'll hear it alongside works written by British composers Edward Elgar and, more recently, Thomas Ades.
