–
The Last Resort was first presented at the Observatory Hill Park bandstand overlooking Sydney Harbour. The work reinterprets Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, written in 1791, three years after the First Fleet landed in Australia. Sala altered the score to echo the voyages made between Europe and Australia, modifying its original tempo according to the wind conditions recorded by James Bell, who sailed aboard the Planter from St Katharine Docks in London to Adelaide in 1838. Sala has described that ‘[his] intention was to subvert Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, its flow as a whole, its gravity and its pace, in order to produce the perception of a concert that has traveled a long distance.’ Referencing both the paradigmatic music of the period and the history of colonisation, The Last Resort is a poetic expression of the paradoxes of the Age of Enlightenment.