Montville’s celebrated rainforest concert hall announces a compelling first half of 2026, featuring four distinguished pianists across three landmark programmes
Lucas Parklands, the celebrated concert venue and accommodation estate set on a private rainforest estate in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, has announced its first programme of concerts for 2026, and it is one that will delight even the most discerning of classical music audiences. Across three Sunday afternoon performances, four exceptional pianists will take to the stage of the venue’s acoustically distinguished 160-seat concert hall, bringing a repertoire that spans from the crystalline classicism of Mozart to the sweeping late-Romantic grandeur of Rachmaninov.
For those who have not yet experienced Lucas Parklands, the setting alone is worth the visit. The auditorium, designed by founder Ian Lucas, sits surrounded by undisturbed rainforest on the edge of Kondalilla National Park. French concert pianist Pascal Rogé has described it as one of the two finest performance venues of its size in the world. Soft lighting, large windows framing lush green canopy, and acoustics that have drawn international artists back time and again create an atmosphere quite unlike any other concert experience in South-East Queensland.
The 2026 series opens with a programme of rare range and elegance, and only grows more ambitious as the year progresses.
Concert One – Reuben Tsang
Sunday 29 March, 3pm
Mozart · · · Piano Sonata in C major, K.330 Chopin · · · Ballade No.4 · Scherzo No.4 · Nocturne Op.62 Liszt · · · · Réminiscences de Norma
Cairns-born Reuben Tsang is one of the most compelling young pianists to emerge from Australia in recent years. Now studying at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University under the tutelage of Natasha Vlassenko OAM, he has accumulated a competition record that would be remarkable for a pianist of any age, let alone one still at the beginning of his career.
In 2023, Tsang entered the Sydney International Piano Competition and sailed through to the semi-finals, becoming the second youngest competitor in the competition’s history to do so. He collected the prestigious Nancy Weir Best Australian Pianist Prize in the process. The following year brought further distinction: First Prize, the Best Recital Prize, and the People’s Choice Award at the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, where he performed Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Reviewers have described his playing as possessing “technical wizardry and versatility,” and the Canberra CityNews declared it “brilliant pianism” — the work of a musician “destined for a brilliant career.”
His programme at Lucas Parklands marks his debut at the venue, and it is a boldly chosen one. Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C major, K.330 provides a radiant opening, a work of deceptive simplicity that rewards playing of genuine stylistic refinement. The second half plunges into Chopin at his most profound, pairing two of his greatest large-scale works, the Fourth Ballade and the Fourth Scherzo, with the intimate, other-worldly beauty of the Nocturne Op.62. The concert closes with Liszt’s breathtaking Réminiscences de Norma, a virtuosic fantasia on Bellini’s opera that remains one of the most exacting showpieces in the entire piano canon. This is a programme that demands a pianist of exceptional range, and Tsang appears to have it in abundance.
Concert Two – Ida Pelliccioli
Sunday 19 April, 2pm
Sibelius · · Six Impromptus, Op.5 Fauré · · · Excerpts from Huit Pièces brèves, Op.84
April’s concert brings a warmly familiar face back to the Montville rainforest. Ida Pelliccioli, the Italo-Croatian pianist based in Paris, has performed at Lucas Parklands before and clearly left a strong impression, her return is sure to be equally anticipated by those who witnessed her previous appearance on this stage. Performing across Europe, Australia, Canada and South Africa, she is a musician of exceptional intellectual rigour and deeply personal artistic conviction. Born in Bergamo, Italy, she studied at the Nice Conservatoire de Région and the École Normale de Musique de Paris – Alfred Cortot, receiving a double diploma in interpretation and pedagogy. Before committing fully to a concert career, she completed a double master’s degree at the Sorbonne, in Italian Literature and Ancient Greek History, a scholarly depth that permeates her approach to repertoire.
Pelliccioli has received artistic guidance from Norma Fisher of the Royal College of Music in London, and is one of the rare pianists to have worked closely with the legendary Cuban virtuoso Jorge Luis Prats. Critics have praised her for possessing “iron hands, but with velvet elegance,” noting that her formidable technical command never overwhelms the music’s inner life. Her 2024–25 season has taken her to Sweden, Lithuania, Austria, Iceland and Australia, with engagements at the National Gallery in London and the Royal Theatre and Concert Hall in Nottingham.
Her programme pairs two composers whose music occupies territory rarely explored in Australian concert halls. Sibelius’s Six Impromptus, Op.5, written in the early 1890s, are relatively little-known works that reveal the Finnish master as a composer of considerable pianistic imagination, blending Nordic lyricism with a harmonic language quite distinct from his Austro-Germanic contemporaries. Fauré’s Huit Pièces brèves, Op.84 distil the French composer’s extraordinary gift for intimate, luminous expression. Those who heard Pelliccioli at Lucas Parklands previously will need little persuading; those who did not should consider this their second chance.
Concert Three – Konstantin Shamray & Daniel Le
Sunday 24 May, 2pm
Rachmaninov · Piano Concerto No.1 – Daniel Le (soloist), Konstantin Shamray (piano 2) Rachmaninov · Piano Concerto No.2 – Konstantin Shamray (soloist), Daniel Le (piano 2)
The season reaches its summit in May with a programme of breathtaking ambition: both pianists performing a Rachmaninov concerto each, with the second pianist providing the orchestral reduction on a second grand piano. Lucas Parklands possesses two magnificent instruments for precisely such occasions, “The Flame Mahogany,” the last Steinway ever built with ivory keys, and a seven-foot Kawai with carbon fibre action.
Konstantin Shamray is, by any measure, one of the most celebrated artists in the Lucas Parklands story. Having performed at the venue on multiple occasions to great acclaim, he has become something of a beloved fixture of the concert series, an artist whose return is greeted each time with the particular warmth reserved for old friends who also happen to be world-class. Beyond the Hinterland, his reputation is equally formidable. The Russia-born, Australia-based pianist became a figure of legend in 2008 when he won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition, the first and, to this day, only competitor in the competition’s four-decade history to claim both the Jury’s First Prize and the People’s Choice Award simultaneously, along with six further special prizes. He subsequently won the First Prize at the 2011 Klavier Olympiade in Bad Kissingen, Germany, receiving the festival’s coveted Luitpold Prize for outstanding musical achievement. He has since performed with orchestras and at festivals across the world and is currently Senior Lecturer in Piano at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Described as “a pianist of great intelligence matched by tremendous power,” Shamray brings both qualities to bear on the Rachmaninov Second Concerto, perhaps the most beloved piano concerto ever written.
Daniel Le, the Melbourne-born pianist who joins Shamray on stage, is equally well known to Lucas Parklands audiences. The pair have appeared together at the venue previously, performing Rachmaninov, Liszt, and Gershwin, and the musical chemistry they bring to two-piano repertoire has become one of the highlights of the Lucas Parklands canon. Le’s standing extends well beyond the Hinterland: hailed by the New York Concert Review as a “brilliant young pianist,” he has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Centre, the Melbourne Recital Centre, and Hamer Hall. He is a prize-winner at the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, the Australian National Piano Award, and the Kerikeri International Piano Competition, and holds doctoral qualifications from the Manhattan School of Music. In May, he takes on Rachmaninov’s seldom-heard First Concerto, a gem of the composer’s early years that richly deserves greater exposure.
That both concertos will be performed in a single afternoon, in an intimate rainforest concert hall, on two magnificent grand pianos, is the kind of musical experience that simply does not exist anywhere else in the region. For those who have seen Shamray and Le perform together here before, the prospect of this programme will already feel unmissable. For those who have not, there has never been a better time to begin.
Planning Your Visit
Lucas Parklands is located at 126 Narrows Road, Montville, Queensland 4560, a short, scenic drive from Montville, Mapleton, and the wider Blackall Range townships, and approximately one hour from Brisbane or the Sunshine Coast. Given the intimate scale of the venue and the calibre of the artists on offer, audiences are strongly encouraged to book early. The Lucas Parklands team also offers accommodation on the property, making these concerts an ideal centrepiece for a Hinterland weekend away.
Concert enquiries: Ian Lucas – 0409 623 228 Accommodation enquiries: Lee – 0403 958 798 Website: lucasparklands.com.au
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