Ears Wide Open 3, 2019 Concert Program

EARS WIDE OPEN: L’ITALIANA IN ALGERI 26 AUGUST 2019 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Nicholas Bochner conductor / presenter Rossini L’Italiana in Algeri: Overture

During this time he forged a strong reputation as an exponent of new music and has had several works commissioned for him.

NICHOLAS BOCHNER CONDUCTOR / PRESENTER Nicholas began his music studies on piano aged 7 and took up the cello two years later. Throughout his school years he pursued a widely varied range of musical styles. After leaving school Nicholas concentrated on cello, studying with Janis Laurs at the University of Adelaide where he completed a Bachelor of Music with honours. Nicholas then spent two years with Stefan Popov at the Guildhall School of Music, London.

In 1995 he returned to Australia to take up the position of Artist in Residence at Queensland University as part of the contemporary music ensemble Perihelion.

In 1998, Nicholas joined the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Principal cellist. In addition to his work with the orchestra, Nicholas has been in demand as both a chamber musician and a teacher. He was a principal instrumental teacher at the Australian National Academy of Music from 2004 to 2009.

In 2009 Nicholas was awarded the Dame Roma Mitchell Churchill Fellowship to travel to the UK to study the use of improvisation in teaching classical musicians. He also spent time exploring the London Symphony Orchestra’s iconic Discovery program.

In 2011 Nicholas appeared as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in performances of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, and in 2012 appeared at the Adelaide Festival in a concert for solo cello and electronics. In 2016 Nicholas was awarded a Fellowship at ANAM to develop and present educational concerts and since then has presented educational concerts for ANAM, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra.

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.

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

The MSO performs the overture to L’Italiana in Algeri as part of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (26 September at Melbourne Recital Centre / 27 September at Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University).

M E L B O U R N E R E C I TA L C E N T R E

Presented by

Nicholas Bochner Schumann: 2 March Wagner: 15 June Beethoven: 28 September

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