Saturday, 27 September 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari gamarruwa, Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Custodians of this land, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.  In doing so, I also acknowledge the enduring connection of First Nations’ people to the sacredness of this land, expressed through music, stories and song.

On this beautiful, warm evening, it is a great pleasure, as Patron, to welcome you to Government House for an evening of music by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. 

The Ballroom, with its ceiling’s depictions of lute, pipes, and a harp, was originally known as the ‘Music Room’; tonight, fulfilling that purpose with amplitude as we listen in rhapsody to the richly talented musicians of the Brandenburg Orchestra playing musical masterpieces from the baroque era. 

We will have the pleasure of hearing rare period instruments, including the baroque ‘theorbo’,^[ a plucked string instrument from the lute family, the name most likely deriving from the Italian ‘tiorba’, which, in turn, is thought to have originated from the Turkish word, ‘torba’ meaning ‘bag’ or ‘turban’. It was also a nickname in the Neapolitan dialect that denoted the grinding board used by perfumiers for grinding herbs and essences.^1] And in Czech, ‘torba’ is a colloquial name for a mountain herdsman. 

Paul Dyer will introduce the music but to keep the night in context, Vivaldi’s L’Estro armonico, which will feature in the first half of the recital, was first published 132 years before music was first played in this room in 1843, the occasion being Queen Victoria’s Birthday. 

Influenced by Vivaldi, and included in the second half of tonight’s recital, is Presto from Concerto for flute in G Major, by Johann Joachim Quantz^[2] a German flautist, flute maker, and composer of the late baroque period. Much of his career was spent under the patronage of Frederick the Great of Prussia, whom Quantz instructed in flute, thus few of Quantz’s works were published during his lifetime. His treatise ‘On Playing the Flute’, however, written in 1752, remains in print to this day.^[3]  

As to what else was happening in 1752: King George II was King of England. It was another eight years before George III ascended the throne; King at the time of the founding of the Colony of New South Wales. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in Great Britain, causing the loss of 11 days from the month of September in the change from the Julian calendar. 

So tonight, let me lose no more time from this month of September as we look forward to a wonderful evening of music!