Welcome from the Artistic Director

The 2012 Port Fairy Spring Music Festival takes its inspiration from the season it celebrates, Spring, in a program of musical awakenings. Awakenings can take a number of forms – romantic, artistic, intellectual – and this year's program explores all of these.

We celebrate the awakening of early creativity with Mendelssohn's beloved Octet for strings, coupled with Mozart's operatic Gran Partite for winds. Two programs honour the musical awakening that is teaching, and we welcome in the season with Beethoven's 'Spring' Sonata for violin and piano and Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'. We will be joined by a stellar array of Australian instrumentalists, from string quartet to didgeridoo, alongside visual artists, actors, and a stray comedian. Lest all these awakenings become too exhausting, we offer two projects inspired by lullaby, including an intriguing new approach to Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Looking forward to awakening with you in October.

Anna Goldsworthy
Artistic Director