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Edith Pageaud, Sandgate Town Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart

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EDITH PAGEAUD
@ Sandgate Town Hall,
Brisbane,
23rd August 2025
(Live Review)

Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)

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Edith Pageaud, Sandgate Town Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart

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French classical guitar virtuoso Edith Pageaud performed a solo recital at Sandgate Town Hall in Brisbane to a full house. Her 11-song set, featuring personalised arrangements of classic works by mainly European and South American composers, held the audience spellbound for over an hour.

Her performance, the second-last in a nine-date Australia-wide tour overseen by Concerts Australia, showcased her extraordinary and diverse talent. The all-ages audience were treated to music by a mixture of historic and contemporary artists, ranging from familiar tunes by Franz Schubert, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Heinrich Biber to lesser-known pieces by 20th century composers Philip Glass, Alexander Tansman and Atahualpa Yupanqui.

Pageaud (pronounced ‘pajoo’) appeared onstage in a beautiful black ball gown with a collection of elegant mock black roses sewn along the neck collar. Sat on a black chesterfield stool, alongside black microphone stands and framed by a black stage curtain behind, her bright red tresses and lipstick created a colourful contrast.

She introduced her songs with a summary of whether they were originally written for the guitar or another instrument – such as a violin, piano, lute or cello – and then modified.

She occasionally utilised a small sustainer device that replicates the drone of a cello bow and enables her to play extraordinarily complicated scales over the top of a background melody.

Pageaud also relied on what looked like a small grey strip of industrial wet-and-dry sandpaper to file her fingernails. “You can recognise a guitarist by their long right nails and short left nails,” she explained, referring to the right hand employed picking strings whilst the fingers on the other pressed them flat against the guitar neck frets.

She added that her next piece, Yupanqui’s Danza de la Paloma Enamorada, which requires intermittent fast-and-furious picking, made her anxious she might split one of her elongated right fingernails.

Occasionally she adjusted the tuning on her guitar – for example, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor involved lowering the bass E string to a C#, whereas the previous song, Biber’s Passacaglia, saw the E string tuned up to a B. However, she revealed the string on her guitar sometimes resisted to being retuned up or down from what it was calibrated to play.

Pageaud has a remarkable talent that she discovered and nurtured at a young age. Her biography states, “Edith Pageaud’s extraordinary musical journey began at the age of seven, when she first picked up the guitar and quickly became a child prodigy, winning numerous national competition prizes by the age of nine. 

At just 14, she graduated with a Diplôme d’Études Musicales in classical guitar from the prestigious Paris CRR under Gérard Abiton…

“Pageaud’s technical brilliance and expressive depth have earned her top honours on the international stage, including first prizes at the Drome de Guitares competition in 2022, the Roland Dyens International Competition in 2023, and the Florence International Guitar Competition Alvaro Company in Italy.”

Pageaud finished her captivating set and retired, but a standing ovation encouraged her reappearance and she finished on the encore of Brazilian jazz guitarist Diego Figueiredo’s Los Caujaritos. Afterwards, she chatted in turn with a queue of appreciative fans.

Side note: the three ushers on duty at Sandgate Town Hall revealed they were all classical guitar players.

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Set List

Mertz – Introduction & Rondo Brillant, Op. 11
Glass – Opening (arr. Miladinovic)
Messiaen – Louange à l’éternité de Jésus (arr. Tozzola)
Schubert – Gute Nacht (arr. Pageaud)
Biber – Passacaglia (arr. Pageaud)
Rachmaninoff – Prelude in C# minor (arr. Pageaud)
Yupanqui – Danza de la Paloma Enamorada
Piazzolla – Oblivion (arr. Dyens)
Yupanqui – El bien perdido
Tansman – Passacaille

Encore

Figueiredo – Los Caujaritos (arr. Diaz)

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Edith Pageaud, Sandgate Town Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart

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Check out Alec Smart’s (@alecsmart_fotos) full gallery of this event HERE

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Edith Pageaud, Sandgate Town Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart

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Follow EDITH PAGEAUD
Instagram – Facebook – YouTube

Concerts Australia: HERE

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AMNPLIFY – DB