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One of the leading conductors of her generation, Sydney-born Simone Young, will join British pianist and conductor Alex Soddy at The University of Western Australia on Sunday, 26 July for a one piano, four-handed concert performance.

UWA's School of Music welcomes the pair in German composer Englebert Humperdinck's piano arrangement of Richard Wagner's final opera, Parsifal - based on a 13th century tale of knights and the Holy Grail. With narration in German and English, 12 short movements are brought to life by passages of text from the opera as part of the School's 2009 Keyed Up! Piano Recital Series.

Currently Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg, Ms Young has performed on some of the world's greatest stages. She has also broken one of the world's last bastions of male domination by being named the first woman to conduct the prestigious Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. From 2001 to 2003, she was chief conductor of Opera Australia .

Soddy was educated as a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied conducting and singing. After studying musicology at Cambridge University, he was appointed as repetiteur and conductor at the National Opera Studio in London. A repetiteur is a musician who coaches opera singers.

Their 5pm performance will be held in UWA's Winthrop Hall.

The next Keyed Up! concert, featuring Suzanna Hlinka, a prize-winner at the Praga International Radio Competition for Young Musicians and the Rudolph Firkunsy International Piano Competition in Prague, will be held on Sunday 30 August at 5pm at UWA's Octagon Theatre.

For more information about Keyed Up! visit this website: https://www.music.uwa.edu.au/about/concerts/keyed_up !

Media references

Claire McGowan (School of Music) (+61 8) 6488 2054
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs) (+61 8) 6488 5563 / (+61 4) 32 637 716