Stephen Downes

I went with Dominique last night to hear Geoffrey Lancaster play — superbly — five Haydn piano sonatas at the new Melbourne Recital Centre.
Geoffrey strode on to the platform in black patent leather shoes, black trousers and a well-fitted Chinese-style charcoal smock and told us before he began that he was in heaven. Here he was about to start the first of 10 concerts, to perform the complete Haydn sonatas on the centre’s own exquisite new fortepiano, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, in one of the finest concert halls in the world.
Trouble was, Geoffrey was talking to about 100 of us. In a hall that seats 1000, I think it is! Deducting giveaways, I suppose, to critics and friends, perhaps three-quarters of us might have been paying customers. Our tickets cost a very reasonable $50 each, but if you do the maths, you can see why the centre is in a financial mess, bleeding money quicker than on onballer’s head-gash.
What is wrong with the people of Melbourne!!?? (And don’t tell me they were at the Pussy Cat Dolls, or whatever they are!)
Lancaster’s performances were world-class — lyrical, quirky (which Haydn’s keyboard music can take so easily because his writing is so magically wry), breathtakingly fast in the prestos, lyrical … just consummate. The instrument was superb, the textures the fortepianist was able to draw out of it varying and vibrant. I’m convinced, despite a fortepiano’s inferior power compared with a contemporary Steinway, that you could have heard well anywhere.
Geoffrey Lancaster has nine more of these concerts to play, and if the MRC had the slightest gram of marketing ability it should, first, get tickets to Half-tix, which they don’t do the last time I asked, secondly, allow students to take up unsold seats for free, and sell door tickets cheaper to anyone. It seems to me that the time is past when it can afford to be haughty about its small audiences and financial catastrophe. It needs a massive PR and marketing campaign just to tell Melburnians what a great venue we have: and in Geoffrey Lancaster’s case what treat after treat we we can look forward to over the next six months as he plays the book of Haydn, in many ways the greatest keyboard composer — OK, outside Bach — ever.