Melbourne Chamber Orchestra open their 2026 season with Matthew Hindson’s Song and Dance on 26 February at Melbourne Recital Centre. The 10-minute work for string orchestra appears as part of their programme Flexible Sky with guitar virtuoso Slava Grigoryan, alongside works by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bartók, and new pieces from Joe Chindamo and Wolfgang Muthspiel.
Song and Dance is cast in two movements, each reflecting differences in life experience and lifestyle between young adults over a 90-year time span. Hindson writes,
Its first movement refers to 1916, when young men were fighting and dying in European battle fields. Young women of the time were at home, married, possibly with children, with the prescribed role of a ‘housewife’. In contrast is the typical 18-25 year old in 2006 – single, juggling a frenetic career and social life, surrounded by information and technological advancements.
It opens with a restive, lyrical, solo cello, later joined by solo violin and viola. The first movement concludes with a melancholy reference to the Last Post with solo violin harmonics. The ‘Dance’ begins with frenetic, repeated semiquavers, passing the same open A between violins and violas, before cellos and double basses add their own energetic interjections.
Commissioned by the Orchestras of Australia Network with the financial assistance of the Australia Council, it premiered in 2006 William Lovelock String Orchestra at the Queensland Conservatorium; it has since appeared with musicians from the Sydney Conservatorium, Cairns Winter Music School, and the Australian Youth Orchestra.