September 2019 Concert Program

CONCERT PROGRAM

SEPTEMBER 2019 PIANOS AND PERCUSSION

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M OZ A R T A N D E LG A R

M E N D E L S S O H N ’ S V I O L I N C O N C E R TO

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CONTENTS

05 10 16

THE MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Your MSO Guest musicians PIANOS AND PERCUSSION Sunday 15 September / 11am Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre

MOZART AND ELGAR Thursday 19 September / 7.30pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall Friday 20 September / 7.30pm Costa Hall, Geelong

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MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO Thursday 26 September / 7.30pm Melbourne Recital Centre Friday 27 September / 7.30pm Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University

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Your MSO

Your MSO

Sir Andrew Davis Chief Conductor

Benjamin Northey Associate Conductor

Tianyi Lu

Cybec Assistant Conductor

Hiroyuki Iwaki

Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)

FIRST VIOLINS Dale Barltrop Concertmaster

Sophie Rowell

Concertmaster The Ullmer Family Foundation#

Tair Khisambeev

Assistant Concertmaster

Peter Edwards

Assistant Principal

Kirsty Bremner Sarah Curro

Michael Aquilina#

Peter Fellin Deborah Goodall Lorraine Hook Anne-Marie Johnson Kirstin Kenny Eleanor Mancini Mark Mogilevski Michelle Ruffolo Kathryn Taylor Michael Aquilina#

SECOND VIOLINS

CELLOS

Matthew Tomkins

David Berlin

Robert Macindoe

Rachael Tobin

Monica Curro

Nicholas Bochner

Principal The Gross Foundation# Associate Principal

Assistant Principal Danny Gorog and Lindy Susskind#

Mary Allison Isin Cakmakcioglu Tiffany Cheng Freya Franzen Cong Gu Andrew Hall Isy Wasserman Philippa West Patrick Wong Roger Young VIOLAS Christopher Moore Di Jameson#

Christopher Cartlidge Associate Principal Michael Aquilina#

Lauren Brigden Katharine Brockman Anthony Chataway

Dr Elizabeth E Lewis AM#

Principal MS Newman Family# Associate Principal Assistant Principal Anonymous*

Miranda Brockman

Geelong Friends of the MSO#

Rohan de Korte

Andrew Dudgeon#

Keith Johnson

Barbara Bell, in memory of Elsa Bell#

Sarah Morse Maria Solà#

Angela Sargeant Maria Solà#

Michelle Wood

Michael Aquilina#

DOUBLE BASSES Steve Reeves Principal

Sylvia Hosking

Assistant Principal

Damien Eckersley Benjamin Hanlon Suzanne Lee Stephen Newton

Gabrielle Halloran

Sophie Galaise and Clarence Fraser#

Trevor Jones

FLUTES

Maria Solà# Anne Neil#

Fiona Sargeant

Prudence Davis

Maria Solà

Principal Anonymous#

Cindy Watkin

Wendy Clarke

#

Associate Principal

Sarah Beggs

Sophia Yong-Tang#

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Your MSO

PICCOLO Andrew Macleod

HORNS

PERCUSSION

Nicolas Fleury

Robert Clarke

Saul Lewis

John Arcaro

Principal John McKay and Lois McKay#

Principal

OBOES

Principal Third The Hon Michael Watt QC and Cecilie Hall#

Jeffrey Crellin

Principal

Thomas Hutchinson Associate Principal

Ann Blackburn

The Rosemary Norman Foundation#

COR ANGLAIS Michael Pisani

Principal

Abbey Edlin

Nereda Hanlon and Michael Hanlon AM#

Trinette McClimont Rachel Shaw

BASS CLARINET Jon Craven Principal

BASSOONS Jack Schiller

Principal

Elise Millman

Associate Principal

Yinuo Mu Principal

Shane Hooton William Evans Rosie Turner

Craig Hill

HARP

Principal

David Thomas

Associate Principal

Drs Rhyll Wade and Clem Gruen#

TRUMPETS

Associate Principal

Philip Arkinstall

Tim and Lyn Edward#

Robert Cossom

Owen Morris

CLARINETS Principal

Principal

John and Diana Frew#

TROMBONES Richard Shirley

Tim and Lyn Edward#

Mike Szabo

Principal Bass Trombone

TUBA Timothy Buzbee

Principal

TIMPANI**

Natasha Thomas

Dr Martin Tymms and Patricia Nilsson#

CONTRABASSOON Brock Imison

Principal

# Position supported by ** Timpani Chair position supported

by Lady Potter AC CMRI

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Guest Musicians

Guest Musicians MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September Aaron Barnden

William Clark

Jessica Buzbee

Madeleine Jevons

Isabel Morse

Tim Corkeron*

Jenny Khafagi

Zoe Wallace

Yiang Shan Sng^

Michael Loftus-Hills

Alexandra Giller^

Nicholas Waters

Vivian Qu Siyuan

Merewyn Bramble

Esther Toh

violin violin violin violin violin viola

viola viola cello

principal trombone timpani

percussion

double bass double bass double bass

MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September Aaron Barnden

Jenny Khafagi

Isabel Morse

Madeleine Jevons

Michael Loftus-Hills

Donald Nicolson

violin violin

violin violin

* Appears courtesy of Queensland Symphony Orchestra ^ University of Melbourne Masters of Music student 8

Information correct as of 5 September 2019.

viola

harpsichord

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Pianos and Percussion 15 September 2019 | 11am Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre John Arcaro timpani Robert Cossom percussion Louisa Breen piano Leigh Harrold piano Andrew Aronowicz presenter BARTĂ“K Sonata for two pianos and percussion

[27']

BERNSTEIN (ARR. MUSTO / COSSOM) Symphonic Dances from West Side Story [23']

Running time: approximately 70 minutes with no interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Robert Cossom

John Arcaro has been a member of the MSO since 1990. He has also been a guest timpanist/percussionist with Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa Japan, Malaysian Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, West Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras.

He has worked as a chamber musician and soloist with ensembles such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Synergy Percussion, Speak Percussion, Astra, Aphids, The Pokrovsky Ensemble Russia and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Robert Cossom was born in Hobart, and learned everything he knows from Eric Johnstone and Tom O’Kelly. He is proud to have worked with and to be a friend of them both. He starting playing casually with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at age 15, and was appointed to a permanent position in the MSO in 1995. Personal highlights of his MSO career include playing with KISS and The Wiggles, and working with Sir Andrew Davis. He created and endows the MSO Snare Drum Award for undergraduate percussion students.

Performance highlights have included a critically acclaimed performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte with pianist Michael Kieran Harvey in 1996. John has recorded numerous film scores and performed with a wide range of popular artists, including Frank Sinatra, Olivia Newton-John, KISS and Sting. John studied in New York and Philadelphia with leading orchestral percussionists and graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) with high distinction.

He is currently a member of staff at the University of Melbourne and the VCA.

Robert’s music has been played by, among others, the TYO Percussion Ensemble, the TSO and the MSO Chamber Players. He has also been composer-in-residence for the Sydney Youth Orchestras.

timpani

percussion

PIANOS AND PERCUSSIONS | 15 September

John Arcaro

Robert likes sunsets, long walks on the beach, and being caught in the rain. He is supported by Zildjian, Evans Drumheads, Pearl Drums and Just Percussion. His music is published

by Rhythmscape Australia.

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PIANOS AND PERCUSSIONS | 15 September

Louisa Breen

Leigh Harrold

Melbourne-born Louisa Breen started her piano lessons with Nehama Patkin.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Music Honours from the University of Melbourne, she studied at the Royal College of Music in London where she completed her Masters in Musical Performance.

Leigh Harrold is one of Australia’s most sought-after pianists. Completing his studies at The University of Adelaide with Gil Sullivan, Leigh received the Beta Sigma Phi Classical Music Award – the conservatorium’s highest honour. He took up a full scholarship at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in 2003 under Geoffrey Tozer and was made the Academy Fellow in 2004.

piano

Louisa has toured Asia and Australasia as a member of the RCM Premiere ensemble and performed regularly as a soloist and as a chamber musician in concerts throughout the UK. She has performed concertos with orchestras in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and New Zealand, including the European Premiere of Carl Vine’s Piano Concerto with the RCM Sinfonietta.

Since returning to Melbourne in 2005, Louisa has been a freelance pianist, and is currently Associate Artist at the Australian National Academy of Music. She performs regularly as a solo and chamber musician, and with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. As half of the Brown and Breen piano duo, she has released a CD of Australian compositions for two pianists.

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piano

Leigh has performed extensively throughout Europe, North America, Africa and Australia as both soloist and chamber musician, including concerts at the Royal Academy of Music, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and concerto engagements with Australian orchestras.

He has collaborated with such luminaries as flautist Michael Cox, soprano Camilla Tilling and pianist Mark Gasser. Twice awarded the Geoffrey Parsons Award for Associate Artists, Leigh was also the recipient of the pianist’s prize in the 2014 Mietta Song Competition.

Leigh currently holds positions at ANAM and the University of Melbourne, and is pianist with the MSO.

BÉLA BARTÓK

(1881–1945)

Sonata for two pianos and percussion, Sz 110, bb115 Assai lento – Allegro molto Lento, ma non troppo Allegro non troppo

Andrew Aronowicz presenter

Andrew Aronowicz is a composer, teacher and music writer, currently working as a Program Producer at ABC Classic. His music has been performed around the country by a number of acclaimed Australian ensembles, including commissions by Plexus Ensemble and Syzygy Ensemble as part of the Glen Johnston Composition Award at Macedon Music.

Andrew has a diverse experience communicating about classical music to various audiences. He has worked as a subject coordinator and lecturer at the University of Melbourne, a critic and feature writer for Limelight magazine, and as a pre-concert speaker for the Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony and Australian Chamber Orchestras.

Andrew holds a Bachelor of Music with honours and a Master of Music specialising in composition, both from the University of Melbourne. He’s also a keen cryptic crossword enthusiast, and likes collecting coloured socks.

Bartók and his wife, Ditta Pásztory, spent the summer of 1937 in the Austrian region of Carinthia, where Bartók spent the time composing his Sonata for two pianos and percussion, commissioned by legendary Swiss conductor and entrepreneur, Paul Sacher. A fine pianist, Pásztory took over as the foremost interpreter of Bartók’s work as his health declined. The premiere performance of this Sonata in 1938 was also Bartók and Pásztory’s debut as a piano duo.

Malcolm Gillies has noted that the work, like its companion Music for strings, percussion and celesta, moves from tight chromatic writing at the start to ‘open, “acoustic” scale’ patterns in the finale.

This creates a movement from a highly tense sound-world to one that grows out of powerful dance rhythms – the theme of the Sonata’s finale, announced by xylophone, is an example of such exuberance. The central movement, whose two themes could not be more different from each other, dramatises the showdown between the serenity of the first and the more emphatic rhythms of the second. Bartók scholar Lajos Lesznai points out the similarities of the opening theme to that of Bartók’s Allegro barbaro (which contrasts with an icily quiet second theme).

PIANOS AND PERCUSSIONS | 15 September

Program Notes

Bartók’s own program note stresses the classical nature of the composition: The first movement opens with a slow introduction which anticipates a motif of the Allegro. The Allegro itself, in

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PIANOS AND PERCUSSIONS | 15 September

C, is in sonata form. The exposition presents the principal subject group consisting of two themes (the second of which has already been mentioned in connection with the introduction); then there follows a contrasting theme which gives rise to a broadly fashioned concluding section, at the end of which the contrasting theme again appears briefly. The development section, after a short transition with fourths overlaying each other, consists basically of three sections. The first of these uses the second theme of the principal subject group, in E, as an ostinato motif, above which the imitative working out of the first theme of the principal group takes on the character of an interlude.

After this, the first section – with the ostinato in G flat and inverted – is repeated in greatly altered form. The recapitulation has no real final section; this is replaced by a fairly extensive coda which (with a fugato opening) is based on the concluding theme, to which the principal theme is eventually added. The second movement, in F, is in simple ternary form. The third movement, in C, represents a combination of rondo and sonata form.

Between the exposition and the reprise there appears a new thematic group fashioned from two motifs of the first theme, treated in imitation. The coda, which dies away pianissimo, concludes this movement and the work.

This covers the facts but hardly does justice to the work’s groundbreaking (and typically ‘modernist’) use of colour, and the variety of percussive sounds made possible by the line-up.

Gordon Kerry Symphony Australia © 2003/2019 This is the first performance of this work by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

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LEONARD BERNSTEIN

(1918–1990)

West Side Story: Symphonic Dances arr. John Musto and Robert Cossom for two pianos and percussion Prologue (Allegro moderato) Somewhere (Adagio) Scherzo (Vivace e leggiero) Mambo (Presto) Cha-Cha (Andantino con grazia) Meeting Scene (Meno mosso) Cool, Fugue (Allegretto) Rumble (Molto allegro) Finale (Adagio) The idea, conceived as early as 1949, to use Romeo and Juliet as the basis for a story set in contemporary Manhattan was that of choreographer Jerome Robbins. Robbins discussed the idea with Arthur Laurents, who would go on to write the book, and Bernstein.

The trio debated the various ways of representing the social chasm between their modern-day Montagues and Capulets: at one point it was to have been an East Side Story, with the starcross’d lovers drawn from the Jewish and Catholic communities. Eventually the creators, who now included Stephen Sondheim as lyricist, agreed on a story that pits two street gangs – the ‘American’ Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks – against each other, with tragic consequences for the lovers Tony and Maria. West Side Story was not, by any means, the first Broadway show based on Shakespeare: Rodgers and Hart had produced The Boys from Syracuse (after The Comedy of Errors) in 1938, and ten years later, Cole Porter’s Kiss me, Kate – based on The Taming of the Shrew – appeared. But West Side Story, which hit the stage in 1957, was certainly the first work based on a Shakespearean tragedy to play on Broadway.

In Act II, Maria is at first horrified that Tony has killed her brother, but agrees to escape the city for a better life together in the countryside. Bernardo’s girlfriend, Anita, understanding that Maria loves Tony, tries to find Tony to warn him that one of the Sharks, Chino, is coming after him with a gun; but she is brutally treated by the Jets, and angrily claims that Maria has been killed

by Chino. Tony seeks out Chino, and is mortally wounded just as he sees Maria alive. Her grief persuades the gangs to bring the war of attrition to an end.

West Side Story is unusual in that the dance element is integrated into the drama, rather than interrupting it with a series of set-pieces. Moreover, its musical language, despite the contrasts of Latin dance music and romantic duets, is a very tightly constructed score, featuring motifs based on certain intervals. Most prominent is the tritone, or augmented fourth (heard in the first

gesture of the prologue, for instance, or the first two syllables of ‘Maria’) – an interval which is inherently unstable, and which therefore contributes a pervasive unease to the music. Bernstein could rightly describe this selection as ‘symphonic dances’: their contrast of mood and style is unified by just such techniques.

The Prologue has a growing sense of macho swagger and latent violence.

An instrumental version of Somewhere follows – the duet that Tony and Maria sing at the opening of Act II when they dream of leaving the violence of Manhattan behind them, and which Maria reprises in the final scene of the work. The Scherzo, too, is an idyllic vision of a peaceful world, whose spell is broken by the more muscular rhythms of the Mambo as the gangs compete in the dance at the gym. The Cha-Cha and Meeting Scene are brief glimpses of happiness, reminiscences of Tony’s ‘I just met a girl named Maria’. Cool, Fugue comes from Act I, as the Jets, increasingly impatient, wait for the Sharks to arrive for their council of war at Doc’s Candy Store. The Rumble takes place at the end of Act I, with the deaths of Bernardo and Riff. The slow Finale is based on Maria’s ‘I have a love’, from earlier in Act II, in which she explains to Anita how much she loves Tony, despite his having killed Bernardo. Its melody’s similarity to the so-called ‘redemption through love’ motif that ends Wagner’s Ring Cycle is probably not coincidental; the work concludes with a fading memory of Somewhere.

PIANOS AND PERCUSSIONS | 15 September

The action takes place in 1950s Manhattan. A fight between the gangs is disrupted by the police, so Riff, the Jets’ leader, proposes to attend a dance at the local gym where he will challenge Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, to a ‘rumble’ which will establish the primacy once and for all of the gangs. Tony, Riff’s best friend, has left the gang, but is persuaded to come to the dance; there he sees Maria, sister of Bernardo, who has recently arrived from Puerto Rico; they fall in love. After the dance, Tony serenades Maria outside her apartment, then joins the gangs in their discussion of the rules for the coming fight. The next day Tony and Maria meet and dream about marrying, and Tony agrees when Maria asks him to stop the rumble. Tony, however, trying to break it up, inadvertently makes Riff vulnerable, and Bernardo kills him. In fury, Tony kills Bernardo.

Gordon Kerry © 2009 The MSO first performed the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (original orchestral version) on 28 February 1978 under conductor David Measham, and most recently in February 2014 under Benjamin Northey. This is the first performance of this arrangement for two pianos and percussion.

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Mozart and Elgar 19 September 2019 | 7.30pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall

20 September 2019 | 7.30pm Costa Hall, Geelong Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Ryan Wigglesworth conductor / piano Paul Lewis piano MOZART Concerto for two pianos No.10

[24']

— INTERVAL — BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.3

[34']

ELGAR Enigma Variations [29']

Running time: approximately two hours including a 20-minute interval.

Timings listed are approximate.

Pre-concert talk: 19 September at 6.15pm, Hamer Hall / 20 September at 6.30pm, Costa Hall. Learn more about the performance at a pre-concert presentation with MSO Artistic Coordinator, Michael Williamson.

Thursday’s performance is being broadcast live and recorded by ABC Classic for repeat broadcast on 19 December.

Paul Lewis

Yorkshire-born Ryan Wigglesworth was Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra (2015–2018) and Composer in Residence at English National Opera.

He held the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellowship with the Cleveland Orchestra for the two recent seasons and was Composer-in-Residence at the 2018 Grafenegg Festival. With the Royal Academy of Music, he recently founded the Knussen Chamber Orchestra.

Paul Lewis works regularly as soloist with the world’s great orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, London Symphony, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras, among others.

conductor / piano

Recent opera engagements include a new production of The Magic Flute in the 2019 Glyndebourne Festival Opera season (also to be performed at the 2019 Proms) and Birtwistle’s The Minotaur for Covent Garden. Recent concerts include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Bavarian Radio Symphony, and Finnish Radio Symphony. Active as a pianist, performances include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, directed from the keyboard.

Also a composer, Ryan Wigglesworth’s first opera, The Winter’s Tale, premiered at ENO in 2017. Current projects include a piano concerto premiered at the 2019 Proms.

piano

MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

Ryan Wigglesworth

His numerous awards have included the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year, two Edison awards, three Gramophone awards, the Diapason D’Or de l’Annee, the Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, and the South Bank Show Classical Music award.

Recordings include the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, concertos, and Diabelli Variations, Liszt’s B minor sonata and other late works, all of Schubert’s major piano works from the last six years of his life including three song cycles with tenor Mark Padmore, and Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding.

Forthcoming performances include recitals in Tokyo, Singapore, London, Amherst, and Schenectady, and appearances with the Tokyo Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and New York Philharmonic.

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MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

Program Notes WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

(1756–1791)

Concerto in E flat for two pianos, K365 Allegro Andante Rondeaux (Allegro) Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos is one of the first fruits of his emancipation from the stifling environment and working conditions in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. It was written in 1779 or early 1780 after his return from a fateful journey to Paris, during which his mother died; he was exposed to French music and to French indifference, and he fell in love with the unresponsive Aloysia Weber, whose sister he was eventually to marry. It is not going too far to say that before the journey Mozart was a gifted adolescent; after it, a man. A new maturity is evident in the compositions of this period, notably the opera Idomeneo, the Serenade in B flat for 13 instruments (Gran Partita), and the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K364, with its profound slow movement.

There are no such depths in the Concerto for two pianos, but the work reflects the assurance of style which became a consistent feature of Mozart’s music from then on. It is a brilliant and diverting entertainment, with a majesty in the first movement often found in Mozart’s works in the key of E flat.

The concerto should be understood as a product of the composer’s desire to please, while he provides recherché touches for the connoisseur.

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The orchestra plays a subordinate part in this concerto. On the other hand, the interplay between the two keyboards is very rich. The writing shows two fine players to good advantage, but it is not

intended as a virtuosic showpiece – there is little overt bravura display. The pianos carry a great profusion of themes.

This is how Mozart usually wrote when he himself was to play the music, and indeed the work was almost certainly written for him to play with his sister Nannerl. Later, in Vienna, he performed the concerto several times with one of his pupils, Josepha Auernhammer.

Mozart made disparaging remarks about this lady’s appearance, but admitted her musical talents.

The opening of the concerto is notable for the breadth and dignity of the first theme. The exposition is dominated, however, by a theme first heard in the violas and cellos, accompanied by repeated notes on the violins and a horn call. Once the pianos have come in on a unison trill, the orchestra retreats into the background, but the pianos exploit every possibility of their combination, sporting a succession of themes. In the most beautiful passage of the development, the winds reappear to take up a yearning theme, the mood prolonged by scale figures passing from one piano to the other. In the recapitulation the music suddenly turns briefly to the minor key – an event unusual in Mozart’s concertos, having the effect of a momentary passing of darkness across the face of an otherwise cheerful movement. The cadenza is by Mozart himself.

The slow movement, an Andante in B flat, is a meditative but graceful piece, rich in themes which are presented then left, rather than worked out. There are passages of greater forcefulness, and an excursion into C minor, but the last impression is one of charm. The Frenchinfluenced galant style is in evidence in this movement, and may be found in the concertos of Schröter, who in some respects served Mozart as a model.

In the Rondo the orchestra plays a more significant part. The refrain is a two-step

© David Garrett The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed this concerto on 31 October 1942 with conductor Williams Cade and soloists Lindsay Biggins and Raymond Lambert, and most recently in November 2009 with Reinhard Goebel and soloists Stephen McIntyre and Caroline Almonte.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor, Op.37 Allegro con brio Largo

opening minute of this concerto, to the interactive exchanges between strings, winds, brass and timpani), and his talent for wringing every drop of potential from themes and motifs was becoming a hallmark of his style (again, listen to the ways in which the short, simple idea enunciated by the strings right at the start pervades so much of the first movement). Added to that, the Allegro con brio demonstrates Beethoven’s tremendous flair for bringing drama to instrumental music. There are no words in this drama but, rather, dramatic tension is created through the sheer force of music’s constituent parts – melody, harmony, key, rhythm, form, dynamics and texture. As you would expect, the solo piano is a crucial player in the drama, creating much of the momentum through brilliant passages (forceful scales, decisive octaves, dazzling ornamentation) but also by pulling back and lowering the temperature as required. That said, the temperature reaches fever pitch in the first-movement cadenza, written out by Beethoven in 1809.

Beethoven worked on the Piano Concerto No.3 in the early years of the new century. By the time it was premiered – in Vienna in 1803 at a concert which included his First and Second symphonies (the latter a premiere) together with the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (also a premiere) – Beethoven had been living in the Austrian capital for more than a decade.

He arrived in Vienna from the small Rhineland city of Bonn as a pianist of repute and a composer of promise. Ten years on, his skills at the piano remained formidable and he had developed into a composer of epoch-making potential.

As soloist at the 1803 premiere, Beethoven would have improvised the cadenza. According to the page-turner on that occasion, Beethoven largely performed the slow movement, Largo, from notes he had in his head but had not fully committed to paper (bear in mind he had two symphonies and an oratorio to prepare for the same concert!). The terrified page-turner stared at page after page of barely notated dots and dashes. In the rather surprising key of E major, the gentle middle movement embraces a range of piano textures, from chords in the chorale style to filigree passages in double thirds to arpeggios that swirl up through the registers.

By now, Beethoven’s proficiency in orchestration had attained a new level of sophistication (listen, in the

We return to C minor, a brisk tempo and bravura piano writing for the last movement. While less intense than the

Rondo: Allegro

MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

theme whose silent first beats impart a note of piquancy. The most magical parts of this movement are the returns to the rondo theme after each of the episodes. In the second of these, in C minor, Mozart writes almost exactly the phrase which he gave much later to Papageno in The Magic Flute, to the words ‘O were I a mouse…’, a moment of tragi-comedy. The conclusion of this good-humoured, almost boisterous movement belongs largely to the soloists, whose concerto this has been from start to finish.

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MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

opening movement (as befits a concerto finale), the piano remains brilliant and transparent throughout. (Note how Beethoven momentarily shines a spotlight on the solo clarinet in one of the contrasting, lyrical episodes.) As the movement comes to a close, the shackles of C minor are cast off and we enter the realm of the opera buffa stretta with a still faster tempo, breathless surface rhythm, and jolly back-and-forth between piano and orchestra. Our drama closes on a comic note, with high-spirited antics in the key of C major.

Robert Gibson © 2019 The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed this concerto in February 1944, conducted by Sir Bernard Heinze with soloist Raymond Lambert, and most recently in July 2018 with Joshua Weilerstein and Jayson Gillham.

EDWARD ELGAR (1857–1934)

Variations on an Original Theme, Op.36 Enigma Theme (Enigma: Andante) I ( C.A.E.) – Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife II (H.D.S.-P) – Hew David SteuartPowell, pianist in Elgar’s trio III ( R.B.T.) – Richard Baxter Townshend, author IV ( W.M.B.) – William Meath Baker, nicknamed ‘the Squire’ V (R.P.A.) – Richard Penrose Arnold, son of Matthew Arnold VI (Ysobel) – Isabel Fitton, viola player VII ( Troyte) – Arthur Troyte Griffith, architect VIII ( W.N.) – Winifred Norbury IX (Nimrod) – August Johannes Jaeger, reader for the publisher Novello & Co X (Dorabella) Intermezzo – Dora Penny, later Mrs Richard Powell 20

XI (G.R.S.) – Dr G.R. Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral

XII (B.G.N.) – Basil G. Nevinson, cellist in Elgar’s trio XIII (***) Romanza – Lady Mary Lygon, later Trefusis XIV (E.D.U.) Finale – Elgar himself (‘Edu’ being his nickname) In middle age, Edward Elgar loathed having to earn the bulk of his income as a humble rural music teacher.

Nevertheless, in spite of his obvious talent as a composer (displayed in a handful of shorter works which sometimes elicited the odd flicker of interest), his career during his 20s and 30s had been a series of disappointments. After a stint conducting the band at the local lunatic asylum he had gravitated toward London, but Elgar and the big city never got on. And so, at a time when Schoenberg was emerging in Austria and Debussy was writing his Nocturnes in France, poor Elgar (who was older than both of them) found himself back in his native Malvern region, eking out a living as best he could. He took in students, made instrumental arrangements, played in an occasional performance and continually threatened to give away music altogether. (He often mentioned his desire to become a professional golfer.)

Elgar’s disappointment – indeed downright bitterness – during the 1890s was understandable. For ‘serious’ composers England had produced no role models since the days of Purcell, and even the modest Renaissance of English music sparked by the efforts of the Brahmsians Stanford and Parry involved styles and personalities which were a world away from Elgar’s Roman Catholic sentiments and pro-Wagnerian aesthetics.

And so by 1898, as the 41-year-old Elgar languished in the Malvern Hills, he must have realised that time was passing him by. By the same age, his idol Mozart had already been dead for five years.

Elsewhere, the glory days of the British

But one evening in that October, typically weary and perhaps a little bored after a long day’s teaching, Elgar began to doodle away at the piano. Somehow, he chanced upon a brief theme that pleased him. He started fooling around with it, elaborating on its sad, haunting and simple melody. It was in G minor, the key of Mozart’s great Symphony No.40 which he had once reworked bar-for-bar into an original composition.

Imagining his friends confronting the same theme, he commented to his wife, ‘This is how so-and-so would have done it.’ Or then he would try to catch another friend’s character in a variation, asking his wife to guess, ‘Who is that like?’

The harmless bit of fun, initiated accidentally, would single-handedly turn around the composer’s career and by February 1899 the work had grown into what would become one of England’s greatest orchestral masterpieces, Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op.36.

Where the word ‘Theme’ should have appeared in the score, the composer wrote ‘Enigma’. In explaining his use of the term, Elgar stated that the theme itself was a variation on a well-known tune. It was an ‘Enigma’ because he never said what it was. (‘The Enigma I will not explain,’ he wrote. ‘Its dark saying must be left unguessed.’) It’s a conundrum which has occupied concertgoers and scholars alike ever since. Elgar himself rejected suggestions of God Save the King and Auld Lang Syne. Other suggestions have included Rule, Britannia!, various nursery rhymes, a theme from Beethoven’s late quartets, an extract from Wagner’s Parsifal, and even Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.

Elgar biographer Michael Kennedy has proposed that the unheard theme

could be Elgar himself, with the famous two-quaver two-crotchet motive on which the entire work is based capturing the natural speech rhythm of the name Edward Elgar. But, mischief-maker that he was, Elgar went to his grave without revealing the truth and no one since has come up with the definitive answer.

The second enigma was the identity of the characters depicted within each variation, who were identified at first only by their initials in the score.

Fortunately this enigma has proved to be much easier to solve and for many years the appeal of the superb orchestration has been balanced by the local snapshots which gave rise to it. The orchestral masterpiece which became Elgar’s first popular success can be enjoyed both as a work of ‘domestic’ music as well as an embodiment of universal themes.

MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

Empire – which meant more to the politically conservative Elgar than to many of his musical contemporaries – were beginning to fade.

The main theme, which will lurch between minor and major keys, is given to the violins, who state it immediately.

Variation 1, which simply elaborates the main theme with prominent wind playing, depicts Elgar’s wife, Caroline Alice (‘Carice’). The second variation brings the first hint of actual imitation.

Pianist H.D. Steuart-Powell was one of Elgar’s chamber music collaborators, who characteristically played a diatonic run over the keyboard as a warm-up. It’s imitated here in this section in 3/8 time.

Variation 3 depicts the ham actor R.B. Townshend whose drastic variation in vocal pitch is mocked here.

The Cotswold squire W. Meath Baker is the subject of Variation 4 while the mixture of seriousness and wit displayed by the great poet Matthew Arnold’s son Richard is captured in the fifth variation. The next two variations parody the technical inadequacies of Elgar’s chamber music acquaintances. Violist Isabel Fitton (depicted in Variation 6) had trouble performing music where the strings had to be crossed while Arthur

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MOZART AND ELGAR | 19–20 September

Troyte Griffith (Variation 7) was a pianist whose vigorous style sounded more like drumming! Poor Winifred Norbury is actually represented in Variation 8 not as herself but in a musical depiction of her 18th-century country house ‘Sherridge’.

The most famous variation of course is Nimrod (No.9). Nimrod (the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ of Genesis chapter 10) was Elgar’s publisher A.J. Jaeger (German for ‘hunter’). Apparently the idea for this particular variation came when Elgar was going through one of his regular slumps in morale and wanted to give away his musical career.

He wrote to Jaeger who immediately took Elgar on a long walk during which they discussed the creative artist’s constant desire to do something other than making art.

Apparently Jaeger said that whenever Beethoven was troubled by the turbulent life of a creative artist, he simply poured his frustrations into still more beautiful compositions. And Jaeger concluded by noting that of course Beethoven’s slow movements were simply incomparable – a statement which met with Elgar’s wholehearted agreement. So in memory of that conversation, Elgar made those opening bars of Nimrod quote the slow movement from Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata. And Elgar later wrote to Jaeger that the Nimrod variation was ‘just like you – you solemn, wholesome, hearty old dear’.

Variation 10 depicts a young woman called Dora Penny, whose soubriquet ‘Dorabella’ comes from Mozart’s Così fan tutte. And then Variation 11 goes beyond the human species. G.R. Sinclair was the organist at Hereford Cathedral but the variation with its downwardrushing opening scale actually depicts Sinclair’s bulldog Dan, falling down the steep bank into the river Wye, paddling upstream, coming to land and then

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barking. Elgar even wrote Dan’s name into his manuscript in the fifth bar where he barks.

The cello features prominently in Variation 12 – a tribute to the cellist Basil Nevinson who would figure again many years later as the inspiration for Elgar’s great Cello Concerto. Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage is quoted in Variation 13, said to depict Lady Mary Lygon’s departure by ship to Australia. And then finally we hear ‘E.D.U.’ where the composer depicts himself (his wife’s nickname for him was Edoo) cocking a snook at all those who said he’d never make it as a composer.

The Enigma Variations, performed for the first time in London on 19 June 1899 under Hans Richter, were the conclusive evidence that he had. © Martin Buzacott The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed Elgar’s Enigma Variations on 29 September 1938 with Sir Malcolm Sargent, and most recently in July 2017 with Benjamin Northey.

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Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto 26 September 2019 | 7.30pm Melbourne Recital Centre

27 September 2019 | 7.30pm Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Dale Barltrop director / violin Ray Chen violin ROSSINI Overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers [8'] MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto

[32']

— INTERVAL — VIVALDI Concerto for two violins in A minor SCHUBERT Symphony No.3

[11'] [25']

Running time: approximately one hour and 45 minutes including a 20-minute interval.

Timings listed are approximate.

Pre-concert talk: 26 September at 6.30pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall / 27 September at 6.30pm, Robert Blackwood Hall balcony foyer. Learn more about the performance at a pre-concert presentation with MSO Second Violin Andrew Hall.

Thursday’s performance is being recorded by ABC Classic for future broadcast on 6 October.

Ray Chen

Dale Barltrop has served as Concertmaster of the MSO since 2014 and First Violinist of the Australian String Quartet since 2016.

Ray Chen redefines what it is to be a classical musician in the 21st Century, with a media presence that enhances and inspires a global classical audience. His commitment to education is paramount, and inspires the younger generation of music students with his series of videos combining comedy and music.

director / violin

Barltrop began his career as Principal Second Violin of the St Paul Chamber Orchestra in the United States and was subsequently appointed Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for seven years. He has also appeared as Concertmaster of the Australian World Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle and guest leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Barltrop made his solo debut with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15 and furthered his studies in the USA. His teachers have included William Preucil, Gerald Fischbach, Elizabeth Morgan and Marcia Cox. Barltrop performs on a violin crafted by JB Guadagnini, Turin, 1784. It is on loan from the Ukaria Cultural Centre and was purchased through the generosity of Allan J Myers AO, Maria Myers AO and the Klein Family.

violin

MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

Dale Barltrop

His profile has grown to encompass the Forbes list of 30 most influential Asians under 30, appearing in “Mozart in the Jungle”, and performing at major events such as the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm and the BBC Proms. He has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and worked with conductors such as Vladimir Jurowski, Manfred Honeck, Kirill Petrenko, and Krystof Urbanski.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray Chen was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age 15, where he studied with Aaron Rosand. He plays the 1715 “Joachim” Stradivarius violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

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MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

Program Notes GIOACHINO ROSSINI

(1792–1868)

The Italian Girl in Algiers: Overture The Italian Girl in Algiers, premiered in 1813 in Venice, was one of Rossini’s first great successes. The French novelist Stendhal, writing a few years later about his experiences in Italy, tells how a kind of musical frenzy would take hold of orchestra and audience at performances of this opera, sweeping one and all away in waves of uncontrollable delight.

Modern Rossini expert Philip Gossett calls this ‘the zaniest of all buffo operas’.

It is the story of a woman who, doing what she pleases, cows a blustering male into submission. The themes are civilisation versus barbarism, authoritarian rule versus liberty, and above all the emancipation of the female sex. The Italian girl, Isabella, confronted by the brutality and sensuality of the Bey, Mustafa, wins out through intelligence, cleverness, and seductive wiles.

Rossini’s trademarks, in his overtures, are the reduction to musical essentials – rhythm, treated as enlivening musical mechanism; a simple structure of slow introduction, first and second subject, recapitulation and coda. Then there is his love of showy noise, achieved by brilliantly skilful orchestral means.

This was essential if the attention of the public was to be captured, as they went about the talkative business of attending the opera house, which was meeting-place, casino, refreshment bar and theatre all rolled into one. Finally there must be the ‘Rossini crescendo’, the piling up of instruments and volume.

The substance of Rossini’s form, Carl Dahlhaus observes, resides in his pattern of dynamics.

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The overture to the Italian Girl is typical, but with distinctive features.

Nineteenth-century English critic Henry Chorley pointed out that no two great Rossini overtures begin in the same way. The opening of this one has been compared to a guilty husband tiptoeing into the house in the dead of night, but tripping over the furniture. Both the main Allegro’s subjects – unusually – are presented by the winds. When the second subject is recapitulated, it is given to piccolo and bassoon, a combination irresistibly described by Richard Osborne as music’s answer to Laurel and Hardy. There is the Rossini crescendo, of which half the point is usually missed – the most telling thing about it may be the sudden drop in dynamic level to pianissimo. This is often combined with an unusual use or matching of instruments. Here the violins, which have been conversing with the flute, suddenly begin to play quietly sul ponticello (near the bridge), a glacial effect added to by the oboe.

Abridged from an annotation © David Garrett The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed this overture in January 1956 with Clive Douglas, and most recently in February 2009 with Oleg Caetani.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

(1809–1847)

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64 Allegro molto appassionato – Andante – Allegro non troppo – Allegro molto vivace In 1826 two precociously gifted teenage boys met in Berlin: Felix Mendelssohn and Ferdinand David. By then Mendelssohn had already composed 13 string sinfonias and five concertos, which were premiered at a series of Sunday concerts instituted by Felix’s father at the family home from 1822 on.

Felix, his sister Fanny and members of the Court Orchestra performed a range of music, but a great deal of the young

The other boy, 16-year-old violinist Ferdinand David, was employed in the orchestra of Berlin’s Königstadt theatre.

Between 1826 and 1829 David worked in Berlin, and frequently played chamber music with Mendelssohn, Rietz and others. Mendelssohn and David would remain friends until Mendelssohn’s early death in 1847, and David would be involved in editing his friend’s work for posthumous publication.

Between 1829 and 1835 David lived and worked in Estonia, but in 1836 accepted Mendelssohn’s invitation to move to Leipzig and become leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. There he also performed frequently with Mendelssohn in chamber concerts, and when the Leipzig Conservatorium opened in 1843, David established its violin department, with 14-year-old Joseph Joachim among his first pupils. (With David, Mendelssohn and Schumann on staff, it must have been quite an institution.)

In 1838 Mendelssohn remarked in a letter to David: I would like to compose a violin concerto for next winter. One in E minor keeps running through my head, and the opening gives me no peace.

Assuming that it is the same opening that Mendelssohn eventually got down on paper, we can understand how the composer might have felt he was onto something. Despite Mendelssohn’s reverence for the past (Berlioz sniffed that he was ‘a little too fond of the dead’), this work is by no means neoclassical in form or manner. The opening, with its flowing arpeggios and distant, Beethovenian drum-taps, launches without introduction or exposition into a beautiful, Romantic melody for the soloist that starts high

and gently ascends further into the stratosphere; the contrasting second subject groups shows Mendelssohn’s exquisite ear, as he exploits unusual warm voicing in the wind section (flutes below the clarinets, for instance) as it accompanies the solo violin.

But for various reasons Mendelssohn was unable to complete the work that winter or the next, despite David’s constant reminders. In 1839 he wrote politely to the violinist: It is nice of you to press me for a violin concerto! I have the liveliest desire to write one for you and, if I have a few propitious days, I’ll bring you something. But the task is not an easy one.

It was made less easy by the sheer amount of work Mendelssohn had at this time. As well as duties with the Gewandhaus, he directed six music festivals in Germany and England, and devoted himself to reviving historical music from Bach to Schubert that had sunk into desuetude. In 1841 he was appointed Kapellmeister by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, so divided his time between Leipzig and Berlin until moving back to the latter city in 1843. There, with the establishment of the new Cathedral choir, and with various composing and conducting engagements in Germany and abroad, Mendelssohn continued his hectic pace until the summer of 1844, when he took a vacation. Finally, after nearly a decade, he was able to return to the Violin Concerto which he completed in September of that year. David performed it under the baton of Niels Gade (Mendelssohn was ill) in March 1845. Joachim played it soon after, and the rest is history.

Mendelssohn was averse to virtuosity for its own sake, likening such effects to ‘juggler’s tricks’. Part of his diffidence may have been a response to the

MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

composer’s work. Among the five early concertos was one for violin and strings in D minor, written when Felix was 13 for his teacher Eduard Rietz.

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MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

challenge of writing a genuine concerto that was not emptily showy. He was no doubt helped by David’s technical artistry and personality, and there seems little doubt that David wrote the first movement’s cadenza. But it was Mendelssohn’s genius to place the cadenza before the recapitulation, thus making it part of the dramatic structure of sonata form, rather than an ‘add-on’, as in many other concertos.

A long bassoon note at the end of the first movement briefly holds the music in suspense before it moves, without a break, into a classically Mendelssohnian song. The slow movement is in simple ABA form, with a contrasting central section. It too passes into the finale without a pause; here the music has all the lightness and grace of the great Mendelssohn scherzos.

Gordon Kerry © 2009 The MSO first performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in March 1939 with conductor Sir Bernard Heinze and soloist Grisha Goluboff, and most recently in February 2017 with Nicholas Carter and Anne-Marie Johnson

ANTONIO VIVALDI

(1678–1741)

Concerto for two violins in A minor, Op.3 No.8 RV 522 Allegro Larghetto e spiritoso Allegro Antonio Vivaldi died in Vienna some time in July 1741 and was buried in an unmarked grave. His music was rarely if ever played between then and the 1930s, when musicians in Italy began rediscovering Vivaldi’s huge and varied output of works.

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Despite his death in obscure poverty, Vivaldi had enjoyed great popularity and success during his lifetime. Born in Venice in 1678, he began learning violin

with his father, a professional musician.

He started studying for the priesthood in his early teens, though this in no way would have been seen as conflicting with the expectation of a career in music.

With his distinctive red hair he was affectionately known as Il prete rosso (the red priest) but in fact Vivaldi ceased saying Mass about a year after his ordination. Late in life he explained in a letter to one of his patrons that he had been afflicted with a chest ailment (variously thought to have been asthma or angina). He nevertheless enjoyed a career as a violin virtuoso, entrepreneur and composer. His works included some 500 concertos as well as many operas, instrumental sonatas and a large body of sacred music. His playing was clearly prodigious. One contemporary describes how Vivaldi ‘put his fingers but a hair’s breadth from the bow, so that there was scarcely room for the bow’. It would seem that Vivaldi pioneered technical advances, such as using the highest register of the strings, which were unknown at the time.

Vivaldi was lucky enough to meet up with the Amsterdam-based printer Estienne Roger, who hit on the solution of engraving plates, and using beams to link shorter notes like quavers and semiquavers. The music could therefore be printed as often as needed, and it had the great virtue of being much more legible. Vivaldi’s Opus 3, or L’estro armonico (The harmonious fancy), a collection of twelve concertos for a variety of instrumental combinations, appeared in Roger’s edition in 1711, becoming, as scholar Michael Talbot puts it, ‘perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the 18th century’. Johann Sebastian Bach quickly made keyboard arrangements of several of the concertos, including this one in A minor, which he adapted for 2 keyboards and pedals as an organ solo (BWV 593).

Gordon Kerry © 2019 The only previous performance of this concerto by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra took place in 2013 with James Ehnes (violin/director) and Wilma Smith (violin).

FRANZ SCHUBERT

(1797–1828)

Symphony No.3 in D, D200 Adagio maestoso – Allegro con brio Allegretto Menuetto (Vivace) – Trio Presto vivace In 1815 Schubert was the sixth assistant in his father’s school, yet that year was almost unparalleled for its sheer volume of musical work. Somewhere in between correcting his pupils’ exercises, Schubert found time for composition on what must have been a daily basis.

Schubert began his Third Symphony on 24 May. Napoleon had landed in France, the Congress of Vienna was in progress, and Europe was in the middle of the ‘Hundred Days’. But these events seem to have had little impact on Schubert’s music; the only hint of martial activity is in the choice of key.

Schubert’s introduction establishes D major, a key long associated with

brilliance, pomp, and ‘rumours of war’. After a single emphatic chord, the introduction assumes a delicately conventional character with a clear debt to classical models: Haydn and Mozart. But Schubert’s own voice emerges almost immediately with a startling harmonic shift preceded by three soft chords. An ascending scale figure in the violins and drooping woodwind figures provide the links with the rest of the movement.

The Allegro con brio marks the first occasion on which Schubert had entrusted a main theme to a woodwind instrument. After toying with various instrumental colours in his sketches, he settled on a crisply rhythmic clarinet figure, alternating with string passages to establish an atmosphere of fun and gaiety. The full orchestra maintains the high-spirited mood and builds to a climax before leaving the listener suspended…

MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

The ‘double’ concerto begins with a characteristic coup d’archet, or ‘strike of the bow’ – a brusque gesture outlining the tonic and dominant chords – and a downward cascade of semiquavers before stating the main ritornello, or refrain, that recurs like pillars, between which the soloists engage in colourful bravura. The second movement, following the fast-slow-fast model that Vivaldi made standard, is more lyrical, starting with a solemn unison figure that leads to more ornate ideas passed between the soloists, while the finale is in an urgent triple time. Here once, again a ritornello provides for a series of contrasting episodes.

Having gained our attention, Schubert presents the second subject as an oboe solo with string accompaniment. At this point he broke off work, resuming on 11 July to complete this first movement and the remaining three in just eight days.

In his most resourceful use of wind instruments yet, Schubert traces the development of the Allegro con brio with a dialogue between woodwinds and strings. Then, artfully avoiding a replica of the exposition in the recapitulation, Schubert introduces elements of the slow introduction – a technique he developed further in his ‘Great’ C major symphony.

For his second movement Schubert began an earnest Adagio molto in 3/4, only to abandon it after two bars.

In its place he wrote, on 15 July, an intermezzo (Allegretto) – light and graceful.

The Menuetto wrenches us from delicacy to earthiness in one heavy

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MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO | 26–27 September

upbeat, combining the style of a scherzo with the spirit of Austrian peasant dances. Its Trio, featuring oboe and bassoon, shows the inevitable path which the folk Ländler was treading (or whirling?) towards the waltz.

The finale (Presto vivace) continues the dance-like mood with a whirlwind of a tarantella. This is orchestral writing at its most brilliant and joyous, with a suggestion of the Italian style and pre-empting the popularity of Rossini’s music in Vienna.

This is the shortest of Schubert’s first three symphonies; its brevity and conciseness points to classical restraint and technical maturity, while its lighter weight and sparkling detail points to the pure joy of music. As one writer has suggested, ‘Genius doesn’t need to reveal itself by plumbing the depths or storming the heights.’

Adapted from a note by Yvonne Frindle ©1997/2009 The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed this symphony on 16 October 1942 under conductor Sir Bernard Heinze, and most recently in March 2009 with Oleg Caetani.

Farewell to Steve Reeves We will soon say farewell to our much-loved Principal Double Bass, Steve Reeves.

Steve will be finishing up with the MSO after the upcoming tour to the USA in October.

These performances of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto are his final Melbourne performances with the Orchestra.

Steve joined the MSO as Principal Double Bass in 1989 and has performed under Chief Conductors Hiroyuki Iwaki, Markus Stenz, Oleg Caetani and most recently Sir Andrew Davis. Steve leaves behind a legacy of artistic excellence and will be greatly missed.

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Stephanie Tanuwidjaja Tara, Tessa, Melinda and Terence Ann and Larry Turner David Valentine Mary Valentine AO The Hon. Rosemary Varty Leon and Sandra Velik Sue Walker AM Elaine Walters OAM and Gregory Walters The Rev Noel Whale Edward and Paddy White Nic and Ann Willcock Marian and Terry Wills Cooke OAM Richard Withers Lorraine Woolley Jeffrey and Shirley Zajac Anonymous (20)

Supporters

Basil and Rita Jenkins Christian and Jinah Johnston Dorothy Karpin Dr Anne Kennedy Julie and Simon Kessel KCL Law Kerry Landman Diedrie Lazarus Dr Anne Lierse Gaelle Lindrea Dr Susan Linton Andrew Lockwood Elizabeth H Loftus Chris and Anna Long The Hon Ian Macphee AO and Mrs Julie Macphee Eleanor & Phillip Mancini Annette Maluish In memory of Leigh Masel Wayne McDonald and Kay Schroer Lesley McMullin Foundation Ruth Maxwell Don and Anne Meadows new U Mildura Patricia Nilsson Sir Gustav Nossal AC CBE and Lady Nossal Laurence O’Keefe and Christopher James Kerryn Pratchett Peter Priest Treena Quarin Eli Raskin Raspin Family Trust Tony and Elizabeth Rayward Cathy and Peter Rogers Andrew and Judy Rogers Peter Rose and Christopher Menz Liliane Rusek Elisabeth and Doug Scott Martin and Susan Shirley Penny Shore John E Smith Dr Sam Smorgon AO and Mrs Minnie Smorgon Dr Norman and Dr Sue Sonenberg Lady Southey AC Geoff and Judy Steinicke Dr Peter Strickland Pamela Swansson

MSO PATRON COMMISSIONS Snare Drum Award test piece 2019 Commissioned by Tim and Lyn Edward

CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE Current Conductor’s Circle Members Jenny Anderson David Angelovich G C Bawden and L de Kievit Lesley Bawden Joyce Bown Mrs Jenny Brukner and the late Mr John Brukner Ken Bullen Peter A Caldwell Luci and Ron Chambers Beryl Dean Sandra Dent Lyn Edward Alan Egan JP Gunta Eglite Mr Derek Grantham Marguerite Garnon-Williams Drs Clem Gruen and Rhyl Wade Louis Hamon OAM Carol Hay Rod Home Tony Howe Laurence O’Keefe and Christopher James 35

Supporters

Audrey M Jenkins John Jones George and Grace Kass Mrs Sylvia Lavelle Pauline and David Lawton Cameron Mowat David Orr Matthew O’Sullivan Rosia Pasteur Elizabeth Proust AO Penny Rawlins Joan P Robinson Neil Roussac Anne Roussac-Hoyne Suzette Sherazee Michael Ryan and Wendy Mead Anne Kieni-Serpell and Andrew Serpell Jennifer Shepherd Profs. Gabriela and George Stephenson Pamela Swansson Lillian Tarry Dr Cherilyn Tillman Mr and Mrs R P Trebilcock Michael Ullmer AO The Hon. Rosemary Varty Mr Tam Vu Marian and Terry Wills Cooke OAM Mark Young Anonymous (28)

The MSO gratefully acknowledges the support of the following Estates: Angela Beagley Neilma Gantner The Hon Dr Alan Goldberg AO QC Gwen Hunt Audrey Jenkins Joan Jones Pauline Marie Johnston C P Kemp Peter Forbes MacLaren Joan Winsome Maslen Lorraine Maxine Meldrum Prof Andrew McCredie Miss Sheila Scotter AM MBE Marion A I H M Spence Molly Stephens Jennifer May Teague Albert Henry Ullin Jean Tweedie Herta and Fred B Vogel Dorothy Wood

TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS

Gall Family Foundation, The Archie & Hilda Graham Foundation, The Gross Foundation, Ern Hartley Foundation, The A.L. Lane Foundation, Gwen & Edna Jones Foundation, Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund, MS Newman Family Foundation, The Thomas O’Toole Foundation, The Ray & Joyce Uebergang Foundation, The Ullmer Family Foundation

36

MSO BOARD

Life Members Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO John Gandel AC and Pauline Gandel AC Sir Elton John CBE Harold Mitchell AC Lady Potter AC CMRI Mrs Jeanne Pratt AC

Chairman Michael Ullmer AO

Artistic Ambassador Tan Dun Artistic Ambassador Geoffrey Rush AC

Board Directors Andrew Dudgeon AM Danny Gorog Lorraine Hook Margaret Jackson AC Di Jameson David Krasnostein AM Hyon-Ju Newman Glenn Sedgwick Helen Silver AO

The MSO honours the memory of John Brockman OAM Life Member The Honourable Alan Goldberg AO QC Life Member Roger Riordan AM Life Member Ila Vanrenen Life Member

Supporters

HONORARY APPOINTMENTS

Deputy Chairman David Li AM Managing Director Sophie Galaise

Company Secretary Oliver Carton

The MSO relies on your ongoing philanthropic support to sustain our artists, and support access, education, community engagement and more. We invite our suporters to get close to the MSO through a range of special events.

The MSO welcomes your support at any level. Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible, and supporters are recognised as follows: $1,000+ (Player) $2,500+ (Associate) $5,000+ (Principal) $10,000+ (Maestro)

$20,000+ (Impresario) $50,000+ (Virtuoso) $100,000+ (Platinum)

The MSO Conductor’s Circle is our bequest program for members who have notified of a planned gift in their Will.

Enquiries P (03) 8646 1551 | E philanthropy@mso.com.au 37

CALENDAR

OF EVENTS

18 October

26 October

26 October

Spring: Lu Siqing in Recital

Fairytale Ball

MSO Chorus: Brahms’ Requiem

Melbourne Recital Centre

Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall

31 October

1 November

3 November

Evil Dead in Concert

Tchaikovsky and Brahms

Ghost Stories

Palais Theatre, St Kilda

Melbourne Town Hall

Melbourne Recital Centre

Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank

Tickets at mso.com.au

Thank you to our Partners Principal Partner

Government Partners

Premier Partners

Premier Education and Research Partner

Major Partners

Venue Partner

Program Development Partner

Education Partners

Supporting Partners

Quest Southbank

The CEO Institute

Ernst & Young

Bows for Strings

The Observership Program

Easts meets West Program Partners Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Melbourne

LRR Family Trust

Media and Broadcast Partners

Mr Chu Wanghua and Dr Shirley Chu

Associate Professor Douglas Gin and Susan Gin

BEST SEAT in the house

As Principal Partner of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, we know the importance of delighting an audience. That’s why when you’re in Emirates First, you’ll enjoy the ultimate flying experience with fine dining at any time in your own private suite.

*Emirates First Class Private Suite pictured. For more information visit emirates.com/au, call 1300 303 777, or contact your local travel agent.