In November 2026 Camerata are joined by cellist Hyung Suk Bae – Principal of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra – for Peter Sculthorpe’s Lament for cello and strings, appearing at QPAC in Brisbane (12 November) and The Empire, Toowoomba (14 November). The 10-minute work appears in an intense and elegiac programme framed by Mozart’s G minor symphonies; Camerata have previously give Australian tours of the work in 2010 and 2015.
The work reflects what Sculthorpe calls “a melancholic convention in Australian literature and painting”, emerging from European and immigrant accounts of the harsh and unyielding landscape. A sense of loss, Sculthorpe notes, began to enter the Australian music too in the years following the Second World War. His piece is a “farewell” to that elegiac quality, with a downward falling central melodic motif that he would turn upwards in his later music, reflecting a newfound sense of optimism. It unfolds in three clearly-defined sections – a desolate opening, with the cello sharing its melody with the violins; an impassioned and yearning central section; and a return of the desolate atmosphere for a close domination by the solo cello.
Lament, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, was originally created in 1976 for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, who later premiered the version with solo cello with Raphael Wallfisch in 1991 at Sydney Opera House, expanding the writing for solo cello in the original version. It has appeared internationally since with the City of London Sinfonia and Richard Hickox and Oslo Chamber Orchestra.
The piece also exists in versions for string sextet – created for longstanding Sculthorpe champions the Brodsky Quartet, augmented by cello and bass – and for violin, cello and strings, premiered in 2014 and the University of Western Australia.