T  H  U    3    J  U  N  ,    7  P  M 

Lawrence Power

& Simon Crawford-Phillips  piano

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“Sumptuous tone and passionate conviction... unlikely to be equalled"

- THE SUNDAY TIMES

“Could hardly be more glowing…. enviable fluency and achievement”

- GRAMOPHONE

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One of the world’s most celebrated viola stars performs the great works.

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Programme

Tombeaux: Music and Remembrance

BOWEN Phantasy in F, Op.54

BRAHMS Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1 (Arr. for Viola and Piano)

– Interval –

BERLIOZ The Death of Ophelia (Arr. for Viola and Piano)

PROKOFIEV Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (Arr. for Viola and Piano)

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Fresh off the back of his debut tour as guest director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra in 2026, star violist Lawrence Power is back in Australia, this time with long-time collaborator Simon Crawford-Phillips. With Tombeaux: Music and Remembrance, they bring a compelling programme of music they have been championing for the last three decades to Snow Concert Hall.

York Bowen – dubbed the ‘English Rachmaninov’ – wrote his Phantasy in F, Op.54 for viola and piano in 1918, the year Europe came out of the First World War, and the work has the deep emotional range to reflect its time. It’s a piece Power and Crawford-Phillips’s complete recording of Bowen’s music for Viola and Piano has helped to shine a spotlight on.

In this programme, the Bowen is followed by three works by Romantic heavy hitters, arranged for the viola and piano. An exquisite chamber arrangement of Hector Berlioz’s haunting song The Death of Ophelia sits alongside Sergei Prokofiev’s celebrated score for Romeo and Juliet, which includes the rousing ‘Dance of the Knights’, which some listeners will also know as the stomping theme music for the British Alan Sugar-fronted reality TV show, The Apprentice.

And before that, we get a chance to hear how Johannes Brahms shed new light on his own autumnal Clarinet Sonata in F minor, when he exchanged the alto register of the clarinet for the deep sonorities of the viola. Pure magic.