“Playing inside The Neilson feels like being inside a giant viola, it’s a space that exudes so much warmth and depth,” ACO Principal Viola Stefanie Farrands says.
“Maybe that’s why I’m biased,” she laughs, “but I enjoy every moment I get to play with both these instruments together.”
She continues:” Because of the size and architectural features of the building, I think there is also a particularly intimate connection we can form with our audiences that is hard to find in other venues.”
Farrands is looking forward to a season of intimate ACO Up Close recitals at the Orchestra’s ACO On The Pier home, including this May when she joins a quartet of ACO musicians to perform Steve Reich’s iconic Different Trains alongside music by Osvaldo Golijov.
“Reich’s music brings me into the present,” Farrands says. “Somehow my mind stops flowing erratically between the past and future and I drop into a state of flow.”
Different Trains is an affecting and hypnotising minimalist piece of music, with a dark subject matter. Reich seeks to compare and contrast his childhood memories of trains in New York and California in 1939-41, with the horrifying evocations of very different trains being used to transport Jewish children to their deaths under Nazi rule during the same time period.
“It was written in a period of Reich’s life when he was connecting deeply with his Jewish heritage,” Farrands explains. “The intensity of the music and the momentum created by the melodic element of the speech dispersed within the quartet evokes an undeniable emotion… It moves you,” she says.
Farrands sees minimalism as an opportunity to listen with a different mindset than she usually would.
“Narratives become irrelevant and we become subject to pure experience,” she says. “Our chaotic lives tend to distract us and pull us away from these moments of awareness.”
More than ever, I think we need to be open to letting go.”
Farrands will perform with fellow ACO musicians, including Richard Tognetti, who celebrates his 35th anniversary as Artistic Director of the Orchestra this year.
“It’s an honour to be here for Richard’s 35th anniversary with the ACO,” Farrands says. “I think he has changed the history of music in Australia with his vision, dogged determination and passion for performance.
“Every concert changes my life and pushes me to reimagine and refine my approach to music.”
Click here to discover the 2025 season of ACO Up Close.
