Antoinette Halloran, Coady Green, Lyrebird Brass - Linda Kouvaras: Piano Music, Chamber Works & Songs, Vol. 3 (2026) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: I. Lady Macbeth on a Soapbox at Last (after Verdi’s Macbeth)
02. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: II. The Nurse’s Curse (after Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet)
03. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: III. Pinkerton’s Lament (after Puccini’s Madama Butterfly)
04. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: IV. Buttercup and the Cruel Stomp of Time (after Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore)
05. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: V. Just Gilda (after Verdi’s Rigoletto)
06. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: VI. Musetta’s Schmaltz (after Puccini’s La Bohème)
07. She, Who Should Have Been a Queen for Soprano & Piano: VII. The Snake’s Persssspective. A Revisionist Commentary on The Drover’s Wife (after Mills’ The Ghost Wife)
08. To the Lighthouse for Brass Quintet
09. Bundanon Suite for Piano: I. Secrets of the Amphitheatre
10. Bundanon Suite for Piano: II. Shimmering Haze on the Shoalhaven
11. Bundanon Suite for Piano: III. Lament for Helen
12. Bundanon Suite for Piano: IV. Haunted Point
13. Bundanon Suite for Piano: V. Bundanon Rhapsody
14. Bundanon Suite for Piano: VI. Old Forest Growth

The Australian Linda Kouvaras (b. 1960) – pianist and musicologist as well as composer – adopts an explicitly feminist viewpoint in her work. She describes She, Who Should Have Been a Queen as a song-cycle, but in fact the text, by Antoinette Halloran, presents a series of dramatic scenas that radically re-assess the fates of a series of female characters from famous operas, the edgy humour and familiar musical language only slightly softening the implied social commentary. To the Lighthouse for brass quintet has, improbably, both a feminist subtext and the engaging buoyancy of a Baroque canzona. As with many other Australian composers, Kouvaras’ piano music has a strong sense of space and place, and her expansive Bundanon Suite uses virtuosic piano-writing to present a series of sketches of the landscapes around the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales, with lyrical, elegiac melodic lines that soar over freewheeling piano textures.

Antoinette Halloran, soprano
Coady Green, piano
Lyrebird Brass