Issuu

July–August 2026

Andrea Lam plays Tchaikovsky

Winter Gala featuring Danielle de Niese

Sheku Kanneh-Mason plays Finnis

Acknowledging Country

The MSO has developed a musical Acknowledgement of Country with composer James Henry to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land through the language of orchestral music.

James Henry’s position is supported by Cybec Foundation

About Acknowledgement

‘I wrote this piece to reflect the complex journey toward the recognition of Aboriginal people as the traditional custodians of the land. It opens with rhythms inspired by the character of traditional songs found across many parts of Australia. From this texture, a melody emerges, representing the long period during which Aboriginal ownership of land was disregarded. The piece traces both progress and setbacks over time.

‘With the passing of the Victorian Statewide Treaty Bill, there is a renewed sense of optimism among many Aboriginal Victorians. Through Acknowledgement, I seek to convey a feeling of determination and resilience, reflecting the ongoing work to improve the quality of life for Aboriginal people, and to deepen respect for and awareness of our distinct culture, history and enduring connection to Country.’

James Henry 2025–2026 Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is Australia’s preeminent orchestra, dedicated to creating meaningful experiences that transcend borders and connect communities. Through the shared language of music, the MSO performs to the highest standard, enriching lives and inspiring audiences across the globe.

Woven into the cultural fabric of Victoria for 120 years, the MSO reaches five million people annually through performances and TV, radio and online broadcasts, as well as critically acclaimed recordings on its newly established label.

Jaime Martín continues as the MSO Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor in 2026, leading a diverse and richly talented Artistic Family.

The MSO regularly presents exceptional artists from across the globe in mainstage programming and special events, as well as reaching beyond the customary classical audience with contemporary collaborations. And through a partnership

with the ABC, the MSO’s performances in the Classic 100 in Concert reach more than a million Australians each year.

The first Australian orchestra to perform overseas (1965) and at Carnegie Hall (1970), the MSO has a proud history of international touring that has taken it to China, Indonesia, Singapore, Europe and the UK. Driven by the belief that music is a universal right, the MSO also brings music to all corners of the community, ensuring that everyone can share in the transformative power of music. Whether performing on world stages or in the heart of Victoria, the MSO transforms its mission and vision into reality – enriching lives and creating cultural connections through the unparalleled beauty of music.

First Violins

Natalie Chee Concertmaster

Tair Khisambeev

Assistant Concertmaster

Peter Edwards

Assistant Principal

Sarah Curro

Dr Harry Imber *

Peter Fellin

Deborah Goodall

Karla Hanna

Dawna Wright and Peter Riedel*

Lorraine Hook

Jolene S Coultas*

Anne-Marie Johnson

David Horowicz*

Kirstin Kenny

Mark Mogilevski

Michelle Ruffolo

Anna Skálová

Kathryn Taylor

Second Violins

Matthew Tomkins Principal

The Gross Foundation*

Jos Jonker

Associate Principal

Monica Curro

Assistant Principal

Dr Mary-Jane Gething AO*

Mary Allison

Emily Beauchamp

Isin Cakmakçioglu

Tiffany Cheng

Val Dyke*

Freya Franzen

Cong Gu

Andrew Hall

Robert Macindoe

Philippa West

Andrew Dudgeon AM*

Patrick Wong

Cecilie Hall*

Roger Young

Shane Buggle and Rosie Callanan*

Violas

Christopher Moore Principal

Lauren Brigden

Katharine Brockman

Anthony Chataway

Peter T Kempen AM*

William Clark

Morris and Helen Margolis*

Aidan Filshie

Suzie and Edgar Myer*

Gabrielle Halloran

Patricia Nilsson

Jenny Khafagi

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson*

Fiona Sargeant

For a list of the musicians performing in each concert, please visit mso.com.au/musicians

Cellos

David Berlin Principal

Rachael Tobin

Associate Principal

Elina Faskhi

Assistant Principal

Rohan de Korte

Andrew Dudgeon AM*

Joshua Jones

Rebecca Proietto

Peter T Kempen AM*

Ariel Volovelsky

Caleb Wong

Rosemary Meagher and the late Douglas Meagher *

Michelle Wood

Andrew and Theresa Dyer*

Double Basses

Jonathon Coco Principal

Rohan Dasika

Acting Associate Principal

Benjamin Hanlon

Acting Assistant Principal

Aurora Henrich

Suzanne Lee

Stephen Newton

Flutes

Prudence Davis Principal

Jean Hadges*

Wendy Clarke

Associate Principal

Sarah Beggs

Piccolo

Andrew Macleod Principal Oboes

Johannes Grosso Principal

Ann Blackburn

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson*

Cor Anglais

Michael Pisani Principal Clarinets

David Thomas Principal

Philip Arkinstall Associate Principal

Bass Clarinet

Jonathan Craven Principal Bassoons

Jack Schiller Principal

Dr Harry Imber *

Elise Millman

Associate Principal

Natasha Thomas

Patricia Nilsson* Contrabassoon

Brock Imison Principal

Horns

Nicolas Fleury Principal

Margaret Jackson AC*

Saul Lewis Principal Third Cecilie Halland and the late Hon. Michael Watt KC*

Abbey Edlin

The Hanlon Foundation*

Josiah Kop

Kim and Robert Gearon*

Rachel Shaw

Gary McPherson* Trumpets

Owen Morris Principal

Shane Hooton

Associate Principal Glenn Sedgwick* Callum G’Froerer

Rosie Turner

Dr John and Diana Frew* Trombones

José Milton Vieira Principal

Richard Shirley

Bass Trombone

Michael Szabo Principal

Tuba

Timothy Buzbee Principal

Timpani

Matthew Thomas Principal Percussion

Shaun Trubiano Principal

John Arcaro

Tim and Lyn Edward*

Robert Cossom

Dr Clem Gruen and Dr Rhyl Wade* Harp

Yinuo Mu Principal

MSO Academy

Jamie Miles viola

Georgia White clarinet

Hayden Burge bassoon

Jacob Fenchel horn

MSO Academy is supported by the Robert Salzer Foundation

* Position supported by

Andrea Lam plays Tchaikovsky

Thursday 16 July at 7:30pm

Saturday 18 July at 7:30pm Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday 17 July at 7:30pm Costa Hall, Geelong

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Tabita Berglund conductor

Andrea Lam piano

Program

Stenhammar Excelsior! [14’]

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 [33’]

interval

Sibelius Symphony No. 2 [44’]

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with Sascha Kelly 6:45pm (16 and 18 July) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall 6:45pm (17 July) at Costa Hall

Running time: 2 hours, including a 20-minute interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Tabita Berglund conductor

With a charismatic style that combines elegance, verve, and precision, Tabita Berglund collaborates with leading orchestras and soloists worldwide, and she is Principal Guest Conductor of both the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Dresdner Philharmonie. She studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music, first as a cellist with Truls Mørk and later orchestral conducting with Ole Kristian Ruud. She played regularly in the Oslo and Bergen philharmonic orchestras and Trondheim Soloists before conducting became her main focus, taking up her first titled position as Principal Guest Conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra (2021–2024).

Her programming reflects the breadth of her repertoire interests, which range from Mozart and Schubert to Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Mahler, Bartók, Schoenberg and Lutosławski. She also champions Nordic composers such as Sibelius, Ludwig Irgens-Jensen and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

Debut appearances in the 2025–26 season included the Frankfurt Radio Symphony,

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Cincinnati, St Louis, Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestras. She also conducted a Northern Lights Festival in Detroit.

Other recent engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Bamberger Symphoniker, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, and the Iceland and Polish National Radio symphony orchestras. In the theatre she has conducted The Marriage of Figaro (Garsington Opera) and The Nutcracker (Norwegian National Opera and Ballet). Her debut recording, with the Oslo Philharmonic and violinist Sonoko Miriam Welde performing the Bruch and Barber concertos, was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemann) in the 2022 Classical Music category.

Andrea Lam made her concerto debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at 13 and was the Keyboard finalist of the 1999 ABC Young Performers Awards. Since then she has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic and New Zealand Symphony orchestras, as well as all the major Australian symphony orchestras, and has played to audiences from New York’s Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House.

Having returned to Australia after two decades in New York, Andrea featured in the Sydney Opera House International Piano Day 2020 and 2022 livestreams, appeared in the 2023 and 2025 ABC Classic 100 concert broadcasts, and last year performed before an audience of 8,000 in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Other recent highlights have included an acclaimed national tour of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Musica Viva), recitals for the Sydney Opera House Utzon Music Series, and appearances for the Chelsea Music Festival (NYC) and Grand Teton Music Festival. Last year she won the 2025 ARIA

Award for Best Classical Album with her chart-topping Piano Diary.

In addition to the MSO, this season Andrea performs with the West Australian and Adelaide symphony orchestras, Auckland Philharmonia and Melbourne Chamber Orchestra; in recital with Bryn Terfel for the SSO; and in Four Winds (NSW) where she is Artistic Curator.

Andrea has featured in national television programs, including Andrea’s Concerto, as a guest on ABC TV’s Spicks and Specks and A Bite to Eat with Alice, and as the classical expert on the hit series The Piano, which earned her a nomination for Most Popular New Talent in this year’s Logie Awards. She recently made her radio debut presenting The Art of the Piano on ABC Classic.

Andrea holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University. She is a Lecturer in Piano at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and sits on the board of the Australian National Academy of Music.

Andrea Lam piano

About the music

Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927)

Excelsior! –Symphonic overture, Op. 13

‘Excelsior’ is the kind of word that turns up in school mottos. It’s a Latin word of high ideals – ‘higher’, ‘loftier’, ‘ever upward’ –and its striving spirit must have appealed to 19th-century Romantics. It provides the title and theme for an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and is the title of the prelude to Liszt’s cantata The Bells of Strasburg Cathedral (1874), inspired by Longfellow’s Golden Legend. Excelsior was also the title of an 1881 ballet by Luigi Manzotti, celebrating scientific and industrial progress. In 1896, the young Stenhammar joined the aspiring ranks.

Stenhammar was a precocious talent: his song cycle Florez och Blanzeflor, completed when he was 20, caused a sensation. Soon after, he made his debut as a concert pianist, performing his own Brahms-influenced piano concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Richard

Strauss. And it was the Berlin Philharmonic, with Arthur Nikisch, that gave the premiere of Excelsior! in 1896.

But the overture did not enjoy the same success and Stenhammar – his own severest critic – was disappointed. He wrote to his publisher: ‘I think that you are all correct, that the piece does not live up to what you have the right to expect from me and from its title.’

The overture enjoyed just two more performances in Stenhammar’s lifetime. He chose it for his conducting debut (with the Royal Swedish Orchestra in 1897) and programmed it in Gothenburg when he was chief conductor there. After the second performance, Stenhammar wrote again to his publisher, ‘the piece is good, much better than I had thought’, also observing that the Swedish musicians had ‘played with much more understanding than the Berliners had done’.

And yet the most insightful criticism, from Wilhelm Peterson-Berger in Stockholm, was that this finely crafted music showed

Wilhelm Stenhammar is a key figure in Swedish music. He studied in Berlin and early influences included Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms. Later, he became increasingly interested in the work of other Nordic composers: Berwald, Nielsen and Sibelius. He was not especially influenced by folk music but aimed, writes John Horton, ‘to bring Swedish music into the more powerful currents of contemporary European thought’. Stenhammar was also a concert pianist and a conductor, holding the post of chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (1906–1922).

the composer speaking a foreign tongue: ‘This is German.’ As Tomas Block has written, Excelsior! is a piece that’s rooted in German culture – ‘even its genre, the concert overture, was in the tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann’. This is further emphasised by the literary underpinnings of the music and the quotation from Goethe’s Faust in the score, beginning with the lines:

But ’tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, Upwards and onward still to urge our flight…

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)

Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23

Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso –Allegro con spirito Andantino semplice – Prestissimo –Andantino

Allegro con fuoco

Andrea Lam piano

If it was fortuitous that Tchaikovsky succeeded at his first attempt, writing perhaps the ‘greatest piano concerto of all time,’ it is surely remarkable that in the same stroke he created a new Russian genre. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto established a model renowned for drama and an intense lyricism, often marked by extraordinary virtuosity – attributes that can be noted in successive compositions by Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Scriabin, Prokofiev and Khachaturian, to name just a few.

Written over six weeks late in 1874, the concerto is not Tchaikovsky’s only youthful work to find a permanent place in the repertoire – the Romeo and Juliet

Fantasy Overture (1869, later revised) and Swan Lake (1876) are distinguished additions – but it was the first to receive an international premiere. The dedicatee, Hans von Bülow, performed the work in Boston in 1875 to positive reviews, yet it is difficult to imagine the small band, with only four first violins, matching the music’s potential. (A critic noted that, after a missed entry of the trombones in the first movement, von Bülow cried out ‘the brass may go to hell!’) Rather, it is likely that the scope of the new concerto was first realised in a performance in Moscow by Sergei Taneyev later that year – the composer noted that he ‘could not wish to hear a better performance,’ and he was touched that his young Moscow student had dedicated himself to mastering the concerto.

And ‘mastery’ is what is required here. It had been to Anton Rubinstein’s younger brother, Nikolai – an equally gifted pianist by all accounts – that Tchaikovsky had turned within days of the score’s completion, seeking advice about piano writing that only a professional could offer. Instead – and quite notoriously – Nikolai savaged the composition, devastating its composer with comments suggesting that, in all, only a few pages could be salvaged and that the remainder should be discarded. There has been speculation ever since over his reaction – ranging from jealousy to a tempestuous personality –but the defiant young composer remained true to his word, publishing the work exactly as it stood. In any event, Nikolai soon recanted his position: conducting the first Moscow performance with Taneyev, and performing it often as soloist.

In hindsight, it might have been over the demanding solo part that Rubinstein had voiced concerns, or about sections where piano textures might be lost beneath the orchestration. Similarly, it could have been about structural matters that are still difficult to explain today, chief of which is the famous melody that begins the

concerto, but which, inexplicably, never returns. (In this passage, Tchaikovsky eventually relented to the advice of later interpreters, replacing the lightweight arpeggios that had previously accompanied the soaring string melody with the now famous double-octave chords of the 1889 revised version.)

In terms of structure, it is the brisk, dotted theme introduced quietly by the piano after the introduction that is the real first subject in this sonata-form movement. And here, as if to indicate to the world the ethnic authenticity of his music, Tchaikovsky follows the lead of the newly formed ‘nationalist’ group of composers –the so-called kuchka – by borrowing a Ukrainian folksong, ‘Oy, kryatshe, kryatshe’.

The simple theme that opens the second movement typifies Tchaikovsky’s innate gift for melody, the solo flute conjuring folk-like affinities. A central section, however – originally marked Allegro vivace assai but later escalated to Prestissimo, no doubt capitalising on the concerto’s virtuosic appeal – briefly quotes a café waltz, ‘Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire’, well-known to the composer’s circle of friends. And it is to another Ukrainian folksong, ‘Vïdy, vïdy, Ivan’ku’, that Tchaikovsky turns for the principal theme of the finale, its dance-like cross-rhythms evoking ‘national’ character. The broadly lyrical melody that contrasts with this material succeeds in holding back the momentum only momentarily, before the concerto arrives at a seemingly inevitable conclusion: a forceful double-octave passage traverses the entire keyboard, moving headlong into an apotheosised statement of the movement’s lyrical theme. With the pianist indefatigably leading the entire orchestra with fortissimo treble chords, it is now a famous and satisfying ending. (And for more than a few composers who followed, one that proved irresistible to copy!)

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43

Allegretto

Tempo andante Vivacissimo –Allegro moderato

Sibelius, like Brahms, came relatively late to writing symphonies, producing his First Symphony at the age of 33 and premiering it in 1899. Like Brahms, though, Sibelius had accrued considerable experience in writing for orchestra. The 1890s saw the composition of works like Kullervo, En saga, movements which later became the Karelia suite and the original version of the Lemminkäinen Suite, which depicts heroic tales from the Finnish mythological cycle, the Kalevala.

What all these works have in common, of course, is their preoccupation with the myths and legends of Finland, which remained until 1917 a satellite of Imperial Russia. As a member of the Swedishspeaking minority in Finland, Sibelius hadn’t given much thought to the traditional mythology of the Finns until his engagement in 1890 to Aino Järnefelt, whose family were very pro-Finnish. At the time he was studying in Vienna, where the music of Anton Bruckner made a deep impact on him. While Sibelius’s enthusiasm for Bruckner cooled over the years, the influence of the Austrian composer – particularly his ability to structure large-scale symphonic movements – remained crucial.

Sibelius’s nationalist music was related to a growing political consciousness: by 1899 the Russians were actively discriminating against Finns and suppressing their language. The work we know as Finlandia was banned by the Russians and had to be performed under the politically inoffensive title of ‘Prelude’, though no Finn in the audience was unaware of the work’s significance.

Sibelius’s enterprise in the 1890s, then, was to create a Finnish musical language out of the drama of its legends, the typical modal patterns of its folksong (though he never quoted actual folk tunes) and the rhythmic imprint of its verse, and to blend these elements with the contemporary idioms of Bruckner, Liszt and Tchaikovsky.

Sibelius always denied that the Second Symphony, which appeared in 1902, had any extra-musical significance. The journey it enacts from darkness to light relates it to works of ‘absolute’ music such as certain Beethoven symphonies, but commentators – particularly in Finland –have often argued for its having an implicit program of national liberation. The audiences at its premiere performances certainly thought so: the concerts were sold out, the audiences ecstatic and the composer acclaimed as a national hero. Its first movement seems to evoke the pastoral landscapes of Finland, shot through with a sense of incipient grief. During its course the symphony passes through often fragmentary stages of deep melancholy and conflict before emerging in the final movement with one of Sibelius’ most stirring and memorable tunes.

In fact, Sibelius began writing music which ended up in the symphony while holidaying in Italy, leading some writers to comment on the more than usually warm textures that he draws from a modestly constituted orchestra. From his correspondence we know he was contemplating at least two projects: a set of tone-poems called Festivals and a single-movement work –inspired perhaps by Richard Strauss, whom Sibelius had recently met – on the story of Don Juan. Out of the sketches for these works, Sibelius fashioned some of his most memorable gestures: the sinister opening of the second movement, with its soft pizzicato opening, horn calls and bassoon solo, was originally to have evoked the figure of Death arriving at Don Juan’s castle.

The work may be a document of national liberation, but it is also about the process of unifying and reconciling diverse, often fragmentary, musical gestures, so that the expansive melody of the finale seems the inevitable outcome of all that went before. Five years later, Sibelius would have his much reported meeting with Mahler where he advocated a ‘severity of style and the profound logic that creates an inner connection between all the motifs’. Mahler’s response, ‘No, the symphony must be like the world and embrace everything,’ missed the point. In their different ways, they were saying the same thing.

Grand Organ Festival

Grand Organ Gala

3 & 5 September

Saint-Saëns’ exuberant Organ Symphony comes to life with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Joseph Nolan, before the drama continues with Bizet’s Carmen and Márquez’s Danzón No.2.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Emilia Hoving conductor

Joseph Nolan organ

Duruflé’s Requiem

4 September

The MSO Chorus and organist Joseph Nolan unite for Fauré’s graceful Cantique de Jean Racine, Duruflé’s haunting motets, and his transcendent Requiem rooted in Gregorian chant.

MSO chorus

Warren Trevelyan-Jones conductor

Sally-Anne Russell mezzo-soprano

Simon Meadows baritone

Joseph Nolan organ

Organ Recital: Joseph Nolan

5 September

Joseph Nolan performs 19thcentury French masterworks on Melbourne Town Hall’s Grand Organ, including Guilmant’s dramatic Sonata No.1 and Widor’s celebrated Symphony No.5.

Joseph Nolan organ

Winter Gala featuring Danielle de Niese

Thursday 30 July at 7:30pm

Saturday 1 August at 2:00pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

Danielle de Niese soprano

Program

Bernstein Overture to Candide [5’]

SONGS FROM CLASSIC MUSICALS [14’]

Bernstein ‘A Little Bit in Love’ from Wonderful Town

Bernstein ‘I Feel Pretty’ from West Side Story

Gershwin ‘I Got Rhythm’ from Girl Crazy

Gershwin Cuban Overture [11’]

SONGS FROM CLASSIC MUSICALS [14’]

Porter ‘I Hate Men’ from Kiss Me, Kate

Porter ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ from Anything Goes

Kern ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’ from Show Boat

interval

Ginastera Variaciones Concertantes [23’]

Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story [23’]

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with Barkley Heuser 6:45pm (30 July) and 1:15pm (1 August) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall

Running time: 2 hours and 5 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Jaime Martín conductor

MSO CHIEF CONDUCTOR AND ARTISTIC ADVISOR

In addition to his role with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Spanish conductor Jaime Martín is Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He was previously Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (2019–24), Principal Guest Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra (2022–24) and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Gävle Symphony Orchestra (2013–22).

Having spent many years as a highly regarded flautist, working with the most inspiring conductors of our time, Jaime turned to conducting full time in 2013 and soon became sought after at the highest level. He now regularly conducts major orchestras in the UK, Europe, US and Australasia. Recent highlights include an acclaimed BBC Proms appearance with BBC NOW and an 11-day Beethoven Festival with the MSO, conducting all nine symphonies. In 2025 he also led the MSO on a tour of the UK and Europe, the

orchestra’s first full international tour since 2019, with performances at the Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms.

His extensive discography includes recordings with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra de Cadaqués, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as releases on the MSO’s recently launched label: Debussy & Strauss, featuring soprano Siobhan Stagg; Gustav Holst: The Planets with Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s Earth; and two albums of Dvořák symphonies (Nos. 2, 5, 6 and 8).

Jaime Martín is Artistic Advisor and former Artistic Director of the Santander Festival and a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, London, where he was a flute professor.

PHOTO: PAUL MARC MITCHELL

Danielle de Niese soprano

Melbourne-born Danielle de Niese has been hailed as ‘opera’s coolest soprano’ (New York Times Magazine) and is known for her superb stagecraft, assured singing, and powerful communication. She appears regularly on the world’s most prestigious opera and concert stages and is a prolific recording artist and Emmy Award-winning television personality, promoting opera to wider audiences.

Highlights of the 2025–26 season included her role debut as Jenny in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (English National Opera), her London Mozart Players debut, and headlining a Valentine’s Day concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2025, she also returned to Opera Australia to sing the title role of Carmen in Sydney and Melbourne.

Her operatic roles range from Handel, Mozart and Rossini heroines, to Musetta (La bohème) and the title role in The Merry Widow, as well as creating roles in contemporary works. Concert highlights include Stravinsky’s Perséphone (Boston Symphony Orchestra), her Edinburgh

International Festival debut in A Grand Night of Singing, opera galas with RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, multiple appearances in the BBC Proms and Proms in the Park, and a Baroque to Broadway program with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

In the world of musical theatre, she has sung Aldonza/Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha (London Coliseum) and starred alongside Michael Ball in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love in the West End. And in 2017 she sang the lead role of Eileen in sold-out performances of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle, subsequently released on LSO Live.

Her debut recording for Decca, Handel Arias with Les Arts Florissants, received Orphée d’Or and ECHO Klassik awards and earned her a Classical Brit nomination for Female Artist of the Year. This was followed by the release of The Mozart Album, Diva and Beauty of the Baroque.

About the music

Leonard

Bernstein (1918–1990)

Overture to Candide

‘The greatest piece of slap-dash ever written’ said Lillian Hellman of Candide, the 1759 novel by Voltaire that formed the basis of her and Leonard Bernstein’s musical of the same name. And Bernstein’s overture captures that – uproarious, highspirited, felicitous. A perfect opening to a light-hearted night out at the theatre.

Light-hearted? Candide, the hero, endures wars, famines, shipwrecks and earthquakes, all the while remaining steadfastly loyal to the increasingly ridiculous philosophy of his teacher, Dr Pangloss, an adherent to the Leibniz philosophy that ‘all is for the best…in this best of all possible worlds.’

At one stage Bernstein had conceived the work as a ‘big three-act opera with chorus and ballet’. By the end of 1954 he saw nothing wrong with being a composer of musicals. (The following year he would entertain plans for a piece called ‘East Side Story’.)

The original 1956 version – book by Lillian Hellman with lyrics by Richard Wilbur, John LaTouche and Dorothy Parker – was accounted a failure on Broadway, and over the years many writers tried their hand at knocking the piece into some sort of final shape with versions teetering between opera and musical. But one thing was always clear. The show contained some of Bernstein’s most exhilarating music. Lenny seems to have torn ahead of all his collaborators, music pouring forth. If ever there was a case of ‘first the music and then the words’, this was it. As Andrew Porter writes: ‘It was as if Candide music bubbled into Bernstein’s fertile brain and

then waited to discover its just verbal expression.’

That is something that we could believe from hearing the tearaway overture, a modern-day Marriage of Figaro overture, complete with a ‘missing’ development section (not such a contradiction as it sounds). Bernstein gives the overture a brilliant main theme that is not heard again after the curtain rises – played by strings and winds, it conveys the spirit if not the tunes of Candide.

The rest of the overture, however, does draw on themes from the musical, beginning with the fanfare that punctuates the music: an echo of the strident ‘Objections!’ from Dr Pangloss’s students as he sings of ‘The Best of all Possible Worlds’. This is followed by the battle music for the Hessian invasion of ‘Westphalia’, and for the second subject, music from the duet ‘Oh Happy We’. Finally, he brings in the refrain from Cunegonde’s aria ‘Glitter and be Gay’ – but there’s barely time to stop for recognition.

Whatever the continuing debate over the merits and final form of Candide (the show), Leonard Bernstein’s volcanic musical inspiration has given the concert hall one of its most effective and effervescent overtures.

Songs from Classic Musicals

‘A Little Bit in Love’ from Wonderful Town

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden

‘I Feel Pretty’ from West Side Story

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

‘I Got Rhythm’ from Girl Crazy

Music by George Gershwin

Lyrics by Ira Gershwin

Arranged by Hershy Kay

‘I Hate Men’ from Kiss Me, Kate

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter

Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett

‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ from Anything Goes

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter

Orchestrated by Elman Anderson

‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’ from Show Boat

Music Jerome Kern

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett

‘I feel pretty!’ – Carol Lawrence as the first Maria in the 1957 production of West Side Story

Since the first piece of musical theatre hit Broadway in the 19th century, New York City has not only been at the core of the genre’s development, but also the backdrop – and arguably the star – of some of its greatest hits. Leonard Bernstein, the quintessential New York composer, set three of his best-known musicals there, starting in 1944 with On the Town, the show which gave us the classic number ‘New York, New York’.

His second New York show, Wonderful Town, follows the adventures (and misadventures) of a pair of sisters from Ohio as they do their best to forge successful careers in 1930s Greenwich Village – and maybe find love along the way. The dreamy early days of infatuation have rarely been better captured in song than in aspiring actress Eileen’s ‘A Little Bit in Love’, Bernstein’s lilting melody matching perfectly the breathlessness and innocence of Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s lyrics.

West Side Story’s Maria is another recent arrival in New York, although her romance takes a far more tragic turn. But at the beginning of Act Two, blissfully unaware that Tony has killed her brother, she too is giddily in love, and the euphoria of ‘I Feel Pretty’ is all the more poignant for our knowledge of what’s to follow. Bernstein

composed West Side Story and Candide simultaneously – a prodigious feat of musical productivity – and there’s a touch of family resemblance between this song and Cunégonde’s ironic ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ in their combining of effervescent humour with a darker undercurrent.

‘I Got Rhythm’ from George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 musical Girl Crazy – the show that made Ginger Rogers a star – is one of those songs that has outstripped the fame of its source. A showcase for the brassy entertainer Frisco Kate Fothergill, imported by playboy ranch manager Danny Churchill to draw in the tourists, its unbridled optimism (‘I’ve got starlight / I’ve got sweet dreams / I’ve got my man / Who could ask for anything more?’) struck an immediate chord with Depressionweary Americans, and it has remained a jazz standard ever since, for singers and instrumentalists of every stripe.

❖ ❖ ❖

Like West Side Story, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate takes its cue from Shakespeare, although this time the result is sheer fun. Porter’s longest-running Broadway success is a romp through the on- and off-stage antics of a company staging a

‘I hate men!’ – Patricia Morison was the original Kate in the 1948 Broadway production of Kiss Me, Kate

musical version of The Taming of the Shrew – and whose personal lives have a tricky habit of mirroring Shakespeare’s play. The magnificently acidic ‘I Hate Men’ is sung by Lilli Vanessi in character as ‘shrewish’ Kate, and Porter’s words and music both manage wittily to interweave the modern and the Elizabethan: ‘While he’s away in Mandalay / ’Tis thee who’ll have the baby’ is one among many flashes of his inimitable genius.

Lilli has a sassy sister of sorts in Reno Sweeney, the evangelist-turned-nightclub singer who rules the waves in Porter’s Anything Goes and sings several of the show’s best-known numbers. ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ is the first of these, an upbeat take on unrequited love which exemplifies Reno’s charismatic blend of swagger and tender feeling. Along with ‘You’re the Top’, ‘All Through the Night’ and the title song –an impressive hit rate for a single show – it has persisted as a pop and jazz mainstay for the best part of a century.

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat was a milestone in musical theatre history, widely acknowledged as the first truly ‘integrated’ musical, in which book and score were deeply interwoven, with songs which advanced plot and character rather than bringing them to a standstill. The sultry ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’, a bluesy torch song, also plays a key role in the show’s central crisis: the revelation that leading lady Julie is ‘passing’ as white and that her marriage to Steve – the man in question – is illegal under Mississippi’s racist state laws.

George Gershwin (1898–1937)

Cuban Overture

For many decades before Fidel Castro’s revolution, Cuba was American cafe society’s playground. In the 1920s and early 1930s, its many natural attractions were enhanced by the American holiday maker’s ability to drink alcohol in public at a time of Prohibition at home.

Gershwin’s own Cuban holiday of 1932 was as much about wine and women (and cigars) as it was about song. He frequented the nightspots, lay in the sun, gambled at the casinos, caroused with his cronies and was seen in the company of many attractive women. He also found the inspiration for his next orchestral piece.

On his numerous spins on Havana’s dance floors he became intrigued by the many special Latin percussion instruments featured by the native dance bands. He brought some of these back with him to New York in July and began work on the Cuban Overture immediately. An all-Gershwin concert by the New York Philharmonic at New York’s Lewisohn stadium was imminent, and he wanted to

include the work on the program. Writing at speed, he finished the whole piece in three weeks, completing the orchestration just days before the first performance on 16 August 1932 at what the Philharmonic billed as the first all-Gershwin concert ever given. Nearly 18,000 people attended, 5,000 were left trying to get in, and Gershwin described it as ‘the most exciting night I have ever had’.

At that first performance it went under the title ‘Rumba’. Three months later, for a Metropolitan Opera gala, Gershwin renamed it Cuban Overture, ‘a symphonic overture which embodies the essence of Cuban dance’. The music is constructed in three parts, the two outer, dance-inspired sections framing a central idyll that might be regarded as the Cuban equivalent of the ‘Blues’ section in Gershwin’s other musical travelogue, An American in Paris.

The work’s novelty lies in the changes Gershwin’s musical language had undergone as a result of his recent studies with the teacher and theorist Joseph Schillinger. These brought to the Cuban Overture a greater textural diversity and harmonic complexity than in many of Gershwin’s previous works. The other major innovation for Gershwin was his use of Cuban percussion instruments, including gourds, bongos and maracas, which a conductor’s note specified should be positioned up the front of the orchestra, near the podium. These are the work’s driving force, and dominate many of its most memorable passages.

Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983)

Variaciones Concertantes, Op. 23

1. Theme for solo cello and harp (Adagio molto espressivo) –

2. Interlude for strings (L’istesso tempo) –

3. Playful variation for flute (Tempo giusto) –

4. Scherzo variation for clarinet (Vivace)

5. Dramatic variation for viola (Largo)

6. Canonic variation for oboe and bassoon (Adagio tranquillo)

7. Rhythmic variation for trumpet and trombone (Allegro) –

8. Perpetual motion variation for solo violin (L’istesso tempo)

9. Pastoral variation for horn (Largamente espressivo)

10. Interlude for winds (Moderato)

11. Return of the theme for solo double bass (Adagio molto espressivo)

12. Final variation in the form of a Rondo for orchestra (Allegro molto)

Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes (‘Concerto Variations’) was designed as a showpiece for a small orchestra. The variations are concertante in the sense that each features a part of the orchestra, often a solo instrumentalist. Writing on commission from the Buenos Aires Association of Friends of Music, Ginastera knew the musicians for whom he was writing; Igor Markevitch, one of the work’s dedicatees, conducted the premiere in Buenos Aires on 2 June 1953.

Alberto Ginastera is probably the bestknown Argentinean composer. He studied at the National Conservatory in his native Buenos Aires with José André, a pupil of French composers Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel. And before entering the conservatorium, he had lessons with Alberto Williams, one of the pioneers of the national movement in Argentine music, who superimposed folkloristic elements on a traditional European style.

Ginastera’s early compositions followed Williams’ lead, but André also introduced him to the music of Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. Ginastera acquired a national reputation in 1937 with the ballet Panambí, based on indigenous, gauchesco (cowboy) themes – an attempt at an ‘objective nationalism’, as in Bartók’s early music. It was followed in 1940 by

another ballet in the same style, Estancia, which won admiration abroad, including praise from Aaron Copland.

Variaciones Concertantes was written after Ginastera’s stay in the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship (1945–47), during what he considered a transitional period. His music no longer depended on direct folk music quotation – although it still captured a subjective feeling for the mood and ambience of a people and a country – but was yet to adopt the idioms of polytonality, atonality and serialism that emerge in his later music.

Ginastera created his own brand of ‘imaginary folklore’, and the sounds of the pampas are part of his colour world, as Latin dance is of his rhythms. His music is spontaneously ‘felt’, but disciplined by a strong sense of form: ‘A work without form is a work deformed,’ he said, ‘Music is architecture in movement, and the form must always be born with the music. It is not a different thing; it is the same thing.’ Far from the stereotype of the fiery, volatile Latin, Ginastera struck his friend Everett Helm as a serious, quiet, even reticent person ‘who gives the impression of a benevolent owl’.

The main theme of the Variaciones Concertantes is stated by a single cello

over a figure played by the harp, sounding the notes of the open strings of the ‘gauchesco’ guitar (E–A–D–G–B–E’). This tuning in fourths runs through the chordal structure of the work and its ‘openness’ suggests the feel of the pampas: the vast treeless plains and ranch lands that identify almost all of Argentina outside Buenos Aires and its suburbs. An analogy could be made between the role of the pampas in the Argentine imagination and the bush in the Australian. In the final variation, where the whole orchestra is used for the first time, there is an element of the malambo, the dance associated with the dance contests of the gauchos. Beyond these observations, Ginastera’s

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Prologue (Allegro moderato) –Somewhere (Adagio) –Scherzo (Vivace leggiero) –Mambo (Presto) –

Cha-Cha (Andantino con grazia) –Meeting Scene (Meno mosso) –Cool, Fugue (Allegretto) –Rumble (Molto allegro) –Finale (Adagio)

In August 1957, when Leonard Bernstein signed a contract to become the next conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he was also preparing to open West Side Story. Three-and-a-half years later, on 13 February 1961, the NYP premiered Symphonic Dances from West Side Story in ‘A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein’ –a benefit gala concert to celebrate the extension of his contract with the orchestra.

In between, the musical had run 732 performances on Broadway, toured the United States and returned to New York for another 249 performances; an Original

detailed and informative headings to each of the variations provide a clear guide.

Echoes and influences of Bartók, Falla and Stravinsky (especially his ballet The Rite of Spring) can be heard in this music, to its advantage. It provides a consistently entertaining, orchestrally resourceful, and expressive introduction to Ginastera who, in Helm’s judgment, was the first composer to have achieved a music unmistakably Latin American, yet free of specific dialects and valid in universal terms.

Broadway Cast album was released and development had begun on a film. Bernstein, meanwhile, had been promoted from the New York Philharmonic’s joint principal conductor (alongside outgoing Dimitri Mitropoulos) to music director, and become a television star through the NYP’s Young People’s Concerts.

This was the peak Bernstein era. As a composer, Bernstein had already created the ballet Fancy Free with choreographer Jerome Robbins and developed it into the musical On the Town, written the opera Trouble in Tahiti, written the musical Wonderful Town, scored the Marlon Brando picture On the Waterfront, and begun the operetta/musical comedy Candide. The idea for West Side Story –a musical update of Romeo and Juliet set among New York City gangs – had been simmering since 1949, with the concept and choreography by Robbins and a book by Arthur Laurents. The last piece fell into place when Stephen Sondheim joined as lyricist.

At the 1961 all-Bernstein gala, it’s likely the entire Carnegie Hall audience had seen West Side Story, owned the record and could hum its tunes. But Bernstein,

Lenny knew the suite should begin with the famous signature tritone on which so much of the show’s music is based, and go directly into the Prologue (including finger snaps in the orchestra). The order of the rest of the material in the suite is based on ‘feel’ rather than on the plot of the show. Ergo, Somewhere finds itself in between the Prologue and the Mambo. The Meeting Scene gets compressed into an atmospheric lead-in to the Cool Fugue – that tritone ties everything together! Finally, after the Rumble, Lenny inserted a flute solo unique to these Symphonic Dances, which makes a dramatic and beautiful change to ‘I Have a Love’, which was Jack Gottlieb’s suggestion to end the suite (and which is the only music in the suite that is not a dance in the show).… Somehow, the Symphonic Dances manage to be both ‘serious’ and ‘popular’. This suite brings music of Broadway into the concert hall, orchestrating with symphonic character the music every theatre-goer loves. Miraculously, Lenny could do it all.

Sid Ramin, orchestrator and dedicatee of the Symphonic Dances (1992)

working with orchestrators Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, wanted to create more than a medley of hits for this special concert. Instead, they took the dance numbers and just a few lyrical snippets, reordering them ‘according to alternating high and low levels of emotional intensities’, as Bernstein’s assistant Jack Gottlieb observed. The result is seamless – like a memory of the musical, abstracted through free association.

In his program note for the premiere, later adapted as a preface to the published score, Gottlieb wrote: ‘Why are these dances called symphonic? Simply because the dance music, even in its original format, is symphonically conceived.…This is music on its own terms, music that does not have to depend upon presupposed knowledge of the unfolding events.’ (He did, however, go on to describe the plot correspondences for those who wanted to know.)

The Prologue establishes a recurring interval – the dissonant tritone – which can signal instability and danger, but also yearning (as in ‘Maria’). In Gottlieb’s description, the introduction shows ‘the growing rivalry between two teenage street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks’, ending with a police whistle.

Somewhere, with lyrical strings accompanied by lilting harp and piano, is

‘a visionary dance sequence, [in which] the two gangs are united in friendship’. The Scherzo turns folksy with plucked strings and chirping woodwinds: ‘In the same dream, the gangs break away from the city walls, suddenly finding themselves in a playful world of space, air and sun.’

The dream is interrupted by drums… brass… and Mambo! ‘Reality again; competitive dance between the gangs.’

The Cha-Cha is lighter and coy, as the star-crossed lovers see each other for the first time and dance together. Sugary violins, celesta and vibraphone colour the alluring Meeting Scene between Tony and Maria and their first spoken words.

The ‘Cool’ Fugue swings into a pile-on as ‘Riff leads the Jets in harnessing their impulsive hostility, figuratively “cooling their jets”.’ The Rumble is fuelled by a propulsive piano riff and squawking brass that all breaks down in a ‘climactic gang battle’ during which the two gang leaders, Riff and Barnardo, are killed. A mournful flute cadenza surveys the carnage, leading to the Finale – ‘Maria’s “I have a love” develops into a procession, which recalls, in tragic reality, the vision of “Somewhere”.’

Sheku Kanneh-Mason plays Finnis

Thursday 6 August at 7:30pm

Saturday 8 August at 2:00pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

Sheku Kanneh-Mason cello

Program

Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun [10’]

Edmund Finnis Cello Concerto* [25’]

interval

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 [50’]

* Australian premiere of an MSO co-commission with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Dresdner Philharmonie and London Symphony Orchestra

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with Callum Moncrieff 6:45pm (6 August) and 1:15pm (8 August) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall

Running time: 1 hour and 55 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Jaime Martín conductor

MSO CHIEF CONDUCTOR AND ARTISTIC ADVISOR

orchestra’s first full international tour since 2019, with performances at the Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms.

Jaime Martín is Artistic Advisor and former Artistic Director of the Santander Festival and a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, London, where he was a flute professor.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason cello

Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether performing for children in schools, at underground clubs, or leading concert venues.

In addition to the premiere of the Finnis Cello Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his MSO debut, highlights of the 2025–26 season have included Artist in Residence at the New York Philharmonic, touring with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, Auckland Philharmonia and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. In October he will give the UK premiere of the Finnis Cello Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra.

He also collaborates with his pianist sister Isata Kanneh-Mason, performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Europe and the US, and in duo recitals.

Last year he released the album Shostakovich and Britten, featuring Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.2, as

well as appearing on the second KannehMason family album, River of Music. These followed Song (2022) and Elgar (2020), which reached #8 in the overall Official UK Album Chart, making him the first cellist to reach the UK Top 10.

Sheku studied with Hannah Roberts at the Royal Academy of Music and in 2022 he was appointed the RAM’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he was named patron of UK Music Masters. He is an ambassador for both Breakthrough T1D and Future Talent, and in Antigua, where he has family connections, he is an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.

After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, his performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was watched by two billion people worldwide. In 2020 he was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Sheku plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700, which is on indefinite loan to him.

About the music

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)

Published in 1876, Stéphane Mallarmé’s eclogue L’Après-midi d’un faune is a monument of symbolist poetry, reflecting in its sumptuous but fragmentary language the erotic fantasies of a drowsy faun – a mythical half-man, half-goat – on a hot, languid Sicilian afternoon. Running like a thread through the imagery of fruit and flowers and naked nymphs are references to music, specifically to the syrinx. This instrument, the ‘pan-pipes’, was fashioned by the god Pan from reeds into which a young nymph, desperate to escape his amorous attentions, had been transformed.

One such reference, to the syrinx’s ‘sonorous, airy, monotonous line’, would become the kernel of Debussy’s musical rendering of the poem. (Debussy hated hearing his music described as ‘what imbeciles call Impressionism’ and preferred his work to be compared to Symbolist poetry.) Inviting Mallarmé to hear the work in 1894, he described ‘the arabesque which… I believe to have been dictated by the flute of your faun’.

In fact, the work’s genesis was in a proposal by Mallarmé to present a staged version of his poem at an avant-garde theatre in 1891. By now he knew and admired some of Debussy’s vocal music, and went so far as to announce in the newspaper that the staged version would include music by the young composer ‘M. de Bussy’. The project fell through, but Debussy’s imagination had been whetted. The orchestral piece that finally appeared made an immediate and positive impact with the audience, if not the critics, and may be said to be Debussy’s breakthrough

work. In 1912 it was choreographed and danced by Vaslav Nijinsky, whose erotic performance caused one of those typically Parisian fracas.

The first phrase of the solo flute arabesque with which the piece begins has rightly been described as a founding moment in modern music. Its chromatic, rhythmically ambiguous line traces and retraces the equally ambiguous interval of the tritone: like the material elsewhere in the work that is derived from the wholetone scale, it is in no clearly discernible key, as is shown by the varied ways in which it is harmonised on its subsequent reappearances. The second half of the melody provides more ‘conventional’ motifs that are taken up from time to time by the rest of the orchestra.

Mallarmé’s poem rhymes, but otherwise avoids traditional forms or a narrative line; similarly, Debussy’s piece avoids the

Léon Bakst’s design for Nijinsky’s Faun (Ballets Russes, 1912)

goal-directed development and tonal architecture that informs 19th-century symphonism. As Pierre Boulez puts it, ‘What was overthrown was not so much the art of development as the very concept of form itself.’ Musical events, like the vivid splashes of colour that first answer the flute, are there for the immediate pleasure they give; climaxes are approached by simple repetition of motifs; the most extended melody is a richly scored, Massenet-like tune at the work’s midpoint, accompanied by layered, rocking ostinatos.

The faun’s dream is overcome by sleep and the ‘proud silence of noon’, and the piece ends with flutes, muted horns and the glitter of harp and antique cymbals, fading to nothingness.

Edmund Finnis (born 1984)

Cello Concerto

The Shimmering Space

Nocturnal Lament Radiant Ecstasy

Sheku Kanneh-Mason cello

Unlike the piano or the violin, none of the most famous concertos in the cello repertoire were composed by cellists. Victor Herbert (whose concertos inspired Dvořák), Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, (better known in connection with Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations) and Luigi Boccherini (whose portrait hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria) are hardly household names. And so it’s rare to hear a cello concerto by a composer with a deep, firsthand knowledge of the instrument.

Edmund Finnis grew up playing the cello. (He first tried the violin but ‘was terrible at it’.) The very first time he played the low C string on a cello, he was ‘immediately drawn’ to its richness and roundness of

sonority. And his music for the instrument reveals distinctive colours and techniques that have emerged from his own playing. For instance, he likes to work with quick, sudden shifts in volume.

To date, Finnis has composed two works for Sheku Kanneh-Mason: a set of five solo Preludes (2021) that ‘made the instrument sing, speak, trace shapes in the air, growl in the depths and reach up into the ether’ (The Times) and this Cello Concerto. Kanneh-Mason has found he shares with the composer an appreciation for subtlety and variation of colour, explaining in an interview that Finnis truly understands how to communicate through the instrument.

Finnis himself has described the Cello Concerto as ‘the most lyrical, intense and emotionally direct music’ he has written so far. The deeply personal, almost intimate character of the work is key to its threemovement architecture, which unfolds like a journey through various states of light.

The composer writes…

The piece opens with the orchestra creating a wide, shimmering space across which the cello sounds out long, lyrical lines. Melodic patterns recur and evolve, heard in different speeds and guises, becoming more urgent with each iteration. Waves of energy accumulate and disperse as the movement traces a gradual overall intensification.

The central movement is a lament. Amid a nocturnal atmosphere, the cello sings a song of yearning against shifting harmonies, crying out before eventually arriving at a solitary space. Here the resonant sounds of the cello’s lower strings expand and contract, as if slow, deep breaths. The movement ends with a gradual descent through the moonglow of faint string overtones.

Out of quiet origins, a sense of flowing, propulsive energy comes to define the

final movement. The cello glides above the iterative patterning of the orchestra’s streams of notes before assuming that sense of flowing energy itself. The outpouring music moves ever forwards, the singing out of the cello becoming radiant, ecstatic.

It was especially meaningful to write this concerto for the instrument that I loved playing in my youth. Growing up, much of my life was spent expressing musical ideas through singing and playing the cello. This concerto is concerned with all of those things: the cello, singing, expression, life.

English-born EDMUND FINNIS studied with Julian Anderson and Rozalie Hirs at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and in 2012 received a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at Tanglewood. The London Sinfonietta was an early supporter – performing, touring and recording six of his works since 2011, including four commissioned works, and he was Composer-in-Association with the London Contemporary Orchestra (2013–2016). He then developed a close working relationship with the Manchester Collective, including a commission, The Centre is Everywhere (2019), which was performed at the BBC Proms, and more recently Blue Divided by Blue (2024) for choir, strings and percussion.

In addition to Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Finnis has composed for some of today’s leading soloists (including pianist Víkingur Ólafsson and saxophonist Jess Gillam) and ensembles such as the Britten Sinfonia, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and London Sinfonietta. His music has also been performed by the London and BBC Scottish symphony orchestrsa, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among

others. In 2015, Edmund Finnis was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)

Symphony No .5 in E minor, Op. 64

Andante – Allegro con anima

Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza

Valse (Allegro moderato)

Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace

After completing his Fourth Symphony (1877), Tchaikovsky wrote to his former pupil Sergey Taneyev: ‘I should be sorry if symphonies that mean nothing should flow from my pen.’ He insisted that the Fourth definitely followed a ‘program’, even though, like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on which he had partly modelled the work, it could not be expressed in words. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Tchaikovsky’s own Fifth Symphony, composed in summer 1888, likewise could not ‘mean nothing’, and even if a precise meaning will probably never emerge, Tchaikovsky did leave clues as to the direction of his thoughts.

Fate and providence were certainly on his mind, having in mid-1887 spent two

PHOTO: VENETIA JOLLANDS

distressing months at the bedside of a dying friend. Later, in his sketchbook, he verbally outlined a first movement whose slow introduction began with ‘total submission to fate’, followed by an allegro that introduced ‘murmurs, doubts, laments, reproaches’ before considering succumbing to ‘the embrace of faith’. He described this as ‘a wonderful program, if only it can be fulfilled’. Although no irrefutable evidence links this plan directly with the 1888 symphony, the Fifth’s main theme does lend itself to a musical personification of grim fate (in its minor form) and of beneficent providence (in its major form), and a journey from the first to the second is a plausible program, if not for the opening movement (which ends in the minor), then for the whole work.

The main theme (played at the outset by solo clarinet) also pays homage to the man Tchaikovsky called ‘the father of Russian music’, Mikhail Glinka. He borrowed the germinal first eight-note phrase from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Czar, where it opens the second half of a melody sung in succession by all three principal characters in the first act trio. But Tchaikovsky develops Glinka’s melodic fragment (first sung to the words ‘Do not turn to sorrow’) into an entirely new motto theme whose subliminal transformations and literal reprises bind the symphony’s four movements together. The first transformation is into the dancelike theme of the Allegro con anima announced by clarinet and bassoon.

The horn melody in the second movement is one of the most beautiful in all of Tchaikovsky’s music. He actually scribbled on a sketch of this melody (in French): ‘I love you, my love!’ But it is more than just a love theme; it, too, is subtly related to the motto (of the motto’s first eight notes, it is a varied reworking of the last five). This connection is made explicit when the undisguised motto returns, portentously with trumpets and

kettledrums, just before the reprise of the love theme.

Tchaikovsky called the third movement a ‘waltz’ – a modestly understated example compared with his great ballet waltzes, but one whose easy mood makes it a perfect structural foil to the slow movement’s passionate intensity. It may well be significant that he crafted the tune out of snippets of a Tuscan folksong, La Pimpinella, that he heard in Florence in 1877, sung by (as he noted) a ‘positively beautiful’ young (male) street-singer. Certainly significant, the waltz tune also audibly echoes the rhythm of the preceding movement’s soulful horn theme, of which it is essentially a faster, lighter reworking. The same rhythm also reappears in the sinuously exotic subsidiary tune introduced by the bassoon. But only once does the motto itself intrude on this pleasant reverie, from clarinets and bassoons, right at the movement’s close.

The motto returns fully, in major mode, as a solemn march, introducing the fourth movement, sumptuously scored with all the violins playing down low in unison with the cellos, passing next to the woodwinds, before trumpets and kettledrum signal the imminent Allegro vivace. Tchaikovsky energises the motto’s second, falling-scale element to create a new minor-key theme that launches further transformations and combinations of germinal fragments, underpinned by the quick tick-tock of bassoons, kettledrums and basses, plateauing out on a brilliantly shrill major-key woodwind chorus. Winding down and then up again through more furious returns of the minorkey theme, a massive climax builds, breaking back into the now almost unbearably splendid march, the motto’s apotheosis capped at the last possible moment by a trumpet reprise of the first movement’s allegro theme.

QUICK FIX AT HALF SIX

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony

Monday 10 August at 6:30pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

Daniel Corvaia* presenter

Program

Tchaikovsky Symphony No.5 [50’]

The conductor biography and program note for this performance can be found on pages 28 and 32.

* Cybec Assistant Conductor

CONCERT EVENTS

Tonight’s onstage introduction will be Auslan interpreted

Running time: 1 hour and 15 minutes. Timings listed are approximate.

Quick Fix at Half Six is supported by City of Melbourne.

The MSO’s Auslan interpreted performances receive funding from the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing

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Robert Salzer Foundation

Instrument Fund

Tim and Lyn Edward, Catherine and Fred Gerardson, Pauline and David Lawton, Joe White Bequest

Platinum Patrons ($100,000+)

AWM Electrical Q

Gandel Foundation

Professor Mary-Jane Gething AO ♡

The Gross Foundation ♡

Dr David Li AM and Angela Li Q

Lady Primrose Potter AC Anonymous (1)

Virtuoso Patrons ($50,000+)

The Aranday Foundation Q

Besen Family Foundation

Mrs Jennifer Brukner OAM Q

Dr Harry Imber ♡

Margaret Jackson AC ♡

Lady Marigold Southey AC Q

The Yulgilbar Foundation Q Anonymous (1)

Impresario Patrons ($20,000+)

Michael Aquilina

Christine and Mark Armour

Ren Barlow

Shane Buggle and Rosie Callanan ♡ Q

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM

Debbie Dadon AM Q

Tim and Lyn Edward ♡ ♫

Edwards Family Trust Q

Catherine and Fred Gerardson

The Hogan Family Foundation

Pauline and David Lawton

Suzie and Edgar Myer ♡

Paul Noonan

Elizabeth Proust AO and Brian Lawrence ☼

Sage Foundation ☼

Kim Williams AM ♫ Anonymous (2)

Maestro Patrons ($10,000+)

John and Lorraine Bates ☼

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson ♡

Nigel and Sheena Broughton

Cooper Investors

The Cuming Bequest

Audrey Cutting

Miss Ann Darby in memory of Leslie J Darby

Craig Drummond

Andrew and Theresa Dyer Q ♡

Val Dyke ♡

Fancourt Capital Group Q

The Finkel Foundation Q

Bill Fleming Q

Cecilie Hall and the late Hon Michael Watt KC ♡ ♫

Hanlon Foundation ♡

Ryan Harkness

Jo Horgan AM and Peter Wetenhall Q

David Horowicz ♡ Q

Peter T Kempen AM ♡ Q

Suzanne Kirkham

Peter Lovell

Janet Matton AM and Robin Rowe Q

Allan and Evelyn McLaren

Rosemary and the late Douglas Meagher ♡

The Mercer Family Foundation

The Myer Foundation

Patricia Nilsson ♡

Dr Justin O’Day and Sally O’Day Q

Ian and Jeannie Paterson

Prior Family Foundation

RQ Squared Consulting

Ralph and Ruth Renard

Glenn Sedgwick ♡ Q

Cathy Simpson and John Simpson AM Q

Straight Bat Private Equity Q

Lyn Williams AC Q

Igor Zambelli

Anonymous (4)

Principal Patrons ($5,000+)

Andyinc Foundation

Mary Armour

Arnold Bloch Leibler Q

Philip Bacon AO Q

Barbara Bell in memory of Elsa Bell

Natasha Bowness

Julia and Jim Breen

Jannie Brown

Janet Chauvel and the late Dr Richard Chauvel

John Coppock OAM and Lyn Coppock

Mrs Jolene S Coultas ♡

Philip Crutchfield KC

David and Kathy Danziger

Anthony and Marina Darling Q

♡ Chair Sponsor | Q 2025 Europe Tour Circle | ☼ First Nations Circle ♫ Commissioning Circle | ∞ Future MSO

Mary Davidson and the late

Frederick Davidson AM

Sandra Dent

Carol des Cognets

Equity Trustees ☼

Diane and Stephen Fisher

John and Diana Frew ♡

Geelong Friends of the MSO

The Glavas Family ♡

Colin Golvan AM KC and Dr Deborah Golvan

Dr Rhyl Wade and Dr Clem Gruen ♡

Louis J Hamon OAM

Noela Henderson

Dr Keith Higgins and Dr Jane Joshi

Geoff and Denise Illing

Amy and Paul Jasper

Sandy Jenkins

John Jones

Merv Keehn and Sue Harlow

Mr Ian Kennedy AM and Dr Sandra Hacker AO

Ann Lahore

Lucas Family Foundation ♡

Morris and Helen Margolis ♡

Samantha Mark

Christopher Menz and Peter Rose

Gary McPherson ♡

Rupert Myer AO and Annabel Myer

Anne Neil in memory of Murray A Neil ♡

Sophie Oh

Jan and Keith Richards

Dr Rosemary Ayton and Professor Sam Ricketson AM

Meredith Schilling KC

The Kate and Stephen Shelmerdine Family Foundation Q

Dr Michael Soon

Harry Stamoulis

Gai and David Taylor

Mary Waldron

Kee Wong and Wai Tang Q

Dawna Wright and Peter Riedel ♡

Shirley and Jeffrey Zajac

Anonymous (5)

Associate Patrons ($2,500+)

Barry and Margaret Amond

Carolyn Baker

Lyn Bailey

Ariane Barker

Michael Bartlett

Janet H Bell

Allen and Kathryn Bloom

Boncal Family Foundation

Drs Alan and Jennifer Breschkin

Stuart Brown

Dr Giovanni Butera

Dr Lynda Campbell

Oliver Carton

Christine Clough

Caroline Davies

Leo de Lange

Escala Partners

Donald Farrands KC

James Flintoft and Siobhan McKenna

Martin Foley Q

Elizabeth Foster

Barry Fradkin OAM and Dr Pam Fradkin

Anthony Garvey and Estelle O’Callaghan

Janette Gill

The Glenholme Foundation

R Goldberg and Family

Miss Catherine Gray

Christine Grenda

Susan and Gary Hearst

Michael Heine Q

Julie Kantor AO and Michael Kantor

Halina Lewenberg Charitable Foundation

Dr Jenny Lewis

Liza Lim AM ♫

Andrew Lockwood

Lisa and Brad Matthews

Andrea McCall

Chris McDermott

Peter McMullin AM

Craig Moffatt and Peter Cameron

Dr Paul Nisselle AM

George Pappas AO in memory of Jillian Pappas

Roger Parker and Ruth Parker

Alan and Dorothy Pattison

James Ring

Tom and Elizabeth Romanowski

Dr Ronald and Elizabeth Rosanove

Gillian Ruan Q

Viorica Samson

Adam Seward

Steinicke Family

Jenny Tatchell

Aaron Turner

Christina Turner

Nicholas and Faith Vann

Timothy Walker CBE AM

Janet Whiting AM and Phil Lukies Q

Anonymous (5)

Player Patrons ($1,000+)

Dr Sally Adams

Don Adamson

Jessica Agoston Cleary ∞

Applebay Pty Ltd

Margaret Astbury

Geoffrey and Vivienne Baker

Marlyn Bancroft and Peter Bancroft OAM

Mr Robin Batterham

Kate Beattie

Peter Berry and Amanda Quirk

Rick Berry

William Birch

Michael Bowles and Alma Gill

Joyce Bown

Jill and Robert Brook

Drs John D L Brookes and Lucy V Hanlon

Suzie Brown OAM and the late

Harvey Brown

Roger and Coll Buckle

Jill and Christopher Buckley

Ronald Burnstein

John Chapman and Elisabeth Murphy

Kaye Cleary

Warren and Margaret Collins

Sue Dahn

Mrs Nola Daley

Panch Das and Laurel Young-Das

Michael Davies and Drina Staples

Rick and Sue Deering

John and Anne Duncan

Dr Matthew Dunn

Christopher R Fraser

Chris Freelance

Miles George

David I Gibbs AM and Susie O’Neill

Sonia Gilderdale

Joy and Dr Henry Glennie

Dr Celia Godfrey

George H Golvan KC and Naomi Golvan

Dr Marged Goode

Louise Gourlay AM Q

Hilary Hall, in memory of Wilma Collie

David Hardy

Cathy Henry

Gwenda Henry

Michael Hill

Anthony and Karen Ho

In Memory of Rosemary Hodgson

Anna Holdsworth

Rod Home

Lorraine Hook

Doug Hooley

Katherine Horwood

Penelope Hughes

Basil and Rita Jenkins

Wendy Johnson

Sue Johnston

Dr Gint Kalpokas and Dr Michael Upson

Drs Bruce and Natalie Kellett

Dr Anne Kennedy

In memory of Tannah Kirkman

Tim Knaggs

Melissa Tonkin and George Kokkinos

Dr Jerry Koliha and Marlene Krelle

Jane Kunstler

Kerry Landman

Janet and Ross Lapworth

Rex Lau

Bryan Lawrence

Phil Lewis

David R Lloyd

Elizabeth H Loftus

Dr Helen MacLean

Eleanor Mancini

Sandra Masel in memory of Leigh Masel

Wayne McDonald and Kay Schroer

Lesley McMullin Foundation

Dr Eric Meadows

Sylvia Miller

Susan Morgan ∞

Ian Morrey and Geoffrey Minter

Dr Anthony and Dr Anna Morton

Dr Judith S Nimmo

Rosemary O’Connor

Brendan O’Donnell

Phil Parker

Bruce Parncutt AO

Ian Penboss

Ronald Pitcher AM

Liz and Graham Pratt

Peter Priest

Professor Charles Qin OAM and Kate Ritchie

Eli and Lorraine Raskin

Michael Riordan and Geoffrey Bush

Cathy Rogers OAM and Dr Peter Rogers AM

The Rowe Family

Marie Rowland

Liliane Rusek and Alexander Ushakoff

Marshall Segan in memory of Berek Segan OBE AM and Marysia Segan, Founders of the Castlemaine State Festival

Martin and Susan Shirley

P Shore

Janet and Alex Starr

Dr Peter Strickland

Bernard Sweeney

Russell Taylor and Tara Obeyesekere

Frank Tisher OAM and Dr Miriam Tisher

Margaret Toomey

Andrew and Penny Torok

Chris and Helen Trueman

Ann and Larry Turner

Dr Elsa Underhill and Professor Malcolm Rimmer

Edward and Paddy White

Willcock Family

Robert and Diana Wilson

Anonymous (20)

Overture Patrons ($500+)

Anna A’Beckett

Margaret Abbey PSM

Vera Afanasyeva

Jane Allan and Mark Redmond

Jenny Anderson

Doris Au

Robbie Barker

Marcus Beames

Amrita Bhattacharyya and Anna Kontarini

Caroline Bowler

Stephen and Caroline Brain

Robert Bridgart

Miranda Brockman

Christine Brown

Elizabeth Brown

Phillip Brown

Patricia Buchanan

Marc Buchholz and Stephan Duchesne

Ian Carson AM

Dr Catherine Cherry

Dr Hyein Ellen Cho

Alan and Wendy Chuck

Robert and Katherine Coco

Gregory Crew

Sue Cummings

Dr John Daley and Dr Rebecca Coates

Toby Duffy

Jane Edmanson OAM

Ron Elisha

Vivien and Jack Fajgenbaum

Brian Florence

Nadine Fogale

M C Friday

Nikki Gaskell

Dr Julia Gellatly

David and Geraldine Glenny

Hugo and Diane Goetze

Eva Gory

The late George Hampel AM KC and Felicity Hampel AM SC

Dr Neville Hathaway

Geoff Hayes

Alison Heard

Dr Jennifer Henry

C M Herd Endowment

William Holder

Oliver Hutton and Weiyang Li

Rob Jackson

Shyama Jayaswal

Chris and Merryl Jessup

Karen Johnson

Tony and Nathalie Johnson

Linda Jones

John Keys

Lesley King

Dr Judith Kinnear

Heather Law

Peter Letts

Andrew Levy

Sarah and Andrew Lindsay

Elena Lovu

Janice Mayfield

Dr James McComish

Joel McGuinness

Gail McKay

Jennifer McKean

Shirley A McKenzie

Richard McNeill

Alison Milne

Professor Heather Mitchell

Lisa Mitchell

Joan Mullumby

Yoko Murakoshi

Rebecca-Kate Nayton

Adrian and Louise Nelson

Marian Neumann

Ed Newbigin

Valerie Newman

Amanda O’Brien

John O’Toole

Phil Parker

The Hon Chris Pearce and Andrea Pearce

Jason Peart

Sienna di Pietro and Lewis Pierce

Geoffrey Ravenscroft

Ian Reddoch

Dr Christopher Rees

Fred and Patricia Russell

Grant Samphier

Julia Schlapp

Faye Simpson

Irene Sutton

Rosemary Swift

Tom Sykes

Allison Taylor

Hugh and Elizabeth Taylor

Lily Tell

Serey Thir

Geoffrey Thomlinson

Wendy Thorpe OAM

Mely Tjandra

Sally and Adrian Wallis

Rosemary Warnock

Amanda Wasilewski

Amanda Watson

Shirley and Peter Watson

Brian and Leanne Whiter

Deborah and Dr Kevin Whithear OAM

David Willersdorf AM and Linda Willersdorf

Charles and Jill Wright

Richard Ye

Anonymous (13)

MSO Guardians

Jenny Anderson

David Angelovich

Lesley Bawden

Peter Berry and Amanda Quirk

Tarna Bibron

Joyce Bown

Patricia A Breslin

B J Brown

Jannie Brown

Jenny Brukner and the late John Brukner

Sarah Bullen

Georgie and Phil Burg

Peter A Caldwell

Peter Cameron and Craig Moffatt

Luci and Ron Chambers

Roger Chao

Sandra Dent

James Dipnall

Sophie E Dougall in memory of Libby Harold

Alan Egan JP

Gunta Eglite

Marguerite Garnon-Williams

Dr Clem Gruen and Dr Rhyl Wade

Louis J Hamon OAM

Charles Hardman and Julianne Bambacas

Carol Hay

Dr Jennifer Henry

Graham Hogarth

Rod Home

David Horowicz

Lyndon Horsburgh

Katherine Horwood

Tony Howe

Lindsay Wynne Jacombs

Michael Christopher Scott Jacombs

John Jones

Merv Keehn and Sue Harlow

Pauline and David Lawton

Robyn and Maurice Lichter

Christopher Menz and Peter Rose

Dr Helen MacLean

Andrea McCall

Cameron Mowat

Laurence O’Keefe and Christopher James

David Orr

Matthew O’Sullivan

Rosia Pasteur

Kerryn Pratchett

Penny Rawlins

Margaret Riches

Anne Roussac-Hoyne and Neil Roussac

Michael Ryan and Wendy Mead

Anne Kieni Serpell and Andrew Serpell

Jennifer Shepherd

Suzette Sherazee

Professors Gabriela and George Stephenson

Pamela Swansson

Frank Tisher OAM and Dr Miriam Tisher

Mr and Mrs R P Trebilcock

Christina Helen Turner

Michael Ullmer AO

The Hon Rosemary Varty

Francis Vergona

Mr Steve Vertigan and Ms Yolande van Oosten

Tam Vu and Dr Cherilyn Tillman

Robert Weiss and Jacqueline Orian

Terry Wills Cooke OAM and the late Marian Wills Cooke

Mark Young

Anonymous (18)

The MSO gratefully acknowledges the support of the following Estates

Norma Ruth Atwell

Angela Beagley

Barbara Bobbe

Michael Francois Boyt

Christine Mary Bridgart

Margaret Anne Brien

Ken Bullen

Deidre and Malcolm Carkeek

Elizabeth Ann Cousins

The Cuming Bequest

Margaret Davies

Blair Doig Dixon

Neilma Gantner

Angela Felicity Glover

The Hon Dr Alan Goldberg AO QC

Derek John Grantham

Delina Victoria Schembri-Hardy

Enid Florence Hookey

Gwen Hunt

Family and Friends of James Jacoby

Audrey Jenkins

Joan Jones

Pauline Marie Johnston

George and Grace Kass

Christine Mary Kellam

C P Kemp

Jennifer Selina Laurent

Sylvia Rose Lavelle

Dr Elizabeth Ann Lewis AM

Peter Forbes MacLaren

Joan Winsome Maslen

Lorraine Maxine Meldrum

Professor Andrew McCredie

Jean Moore

Joan P Robinson

Maxwell and Jill Schultz

Miss Sheila Scotter AM MBE

Marion A I H M Spence

Molly Stephens

Gwennyth St John

Halinka Tarczynska-Fiddian

Jennifer May Teague

Elisabeth Turner

Albert Henry Ullin

Cecilia Edith Umber

Jean Tweedie

Herta and Fred B Vogel

Diana Whitehead

Dorothy Wood

Joyce Winsome Woodroffe

The MSO honours the memory of Life Members

The late Marc Besen AC and the late Eva Besen AO

John Brockman OAM

The Hon Alan Goldberg AO QC

Bertha Jorgensen MBE

Harold Mitchell AC

Roger Riordan AM

Ila Vanrenen

Listing current as of 3 July 2026

The MSO relies on the generosity of our community to help us enrich lives through music, foster artistic excellence, and reach new audiences. Thank you for your support.

♡ Chair Sponsors – supporting the beating heart of the MSO.

Q 2025 Europe Tour Circle patrons –elevating the MSO on the world stage.

☼ First Nations Circle patrons –supporting First Nations artist development and performance initiatives.

♫ Commissioning Circle patrons –contributing to the evolution of our beloved art form.

∞ Future MSO patrons – the next generation of giving.

The MSO welcomes support at any level. Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.

MSO Family

MSO Board

Chair

Edgar Myer

Co-Deputy Chairs

Martin Foley

Farrel Meltzer

Board Directors

Shane Buggle

Tony Grybowski

Lorraine Hook

Chris Howlett

Joel McGuinness

Gary McPherson

Lisa Mitchell

Meredith Schilling SC

Mary Waldron

Company Secretary

Randal Williams

MSO Artistic Family

Jaime Martín Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor

Benjamin Northey Principal Guest Conductor

Daniel Corvaia Cybec Assistant Conductor

Sir Andrew Davis CBE † Conductor Laureate (2013–2024)

Hiroyuki Iwaki † Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)

Warren Trevelyan-Jones MSO Chorus Director

Karen Kyriakou Artist in Residence –Learning and Engagement

Christian Li Young Artist in Association

Joe Chindamo Composer in Residence

Andrew Aronowicz Cybec Young Composer in Residence

James Henry Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence

Xian Zhang, Lu Siqing, Tan Dun Artistic Ambassadors

MSO Staff

Richard Wigley

Chief Executive Officer

ARTISTIC OPERATIONS

Simonette Turner Director of Orchestra & Operations

Meg Bowker Orchestra Manager

Ffion Edwards Orchestra Manager

Callum Moncrieff Head of Operations

Andrew Robinson Production Lead

Nicholas Cooper Operations Lead

Katharine Bartholomeusz-Plows Head of Artistic Planning

Keturah Haisman Artistic & Engagement Manager

Veronika Reeves Artistic Administrator

Julia Potter Artistic Coordinator

Jennifer Collins Principal Librarian

Glynn Davies Orchestra Librarian

Meg Baker Chorus Administrator

Nicholas Bochner

Head of Learning & Engagement

Fergus Inder Jams Program Coordinator

Erika Noguchi

Executive Producer, MSO Presents

Rebecca Moore

Associate Producer, MSO Presents

Monica Curro MSO+ Creative Director

Emma Wigley MSO+ Producer

DEVELOPMENT & REACH

Suzanne Dembo Chief Operating Officer

Caroline Buckley Head of Strategic Priorities

Sally Hern Head of Digital Experience

Allison Blahna Director of Development

Charlotte Crocker

Philanthropy Programs Lead

Isobel Lake Grants & Reporting Lead

Keith Clancy Donor Liaison

Nellie McLean Head of Partnerships

Nina Dubecki Events & Partnerships Lead

Jayde Walker Director of Brand & Communications

Phil Paschke

Senior Manager, Content & Digital

Samantha Meuleman

Digital Content Lead

Prue Bassett

Publicity Manager

Beckie Peel

Social Media Coordinator

Dylan Stewart Director of Marketing & Sales

Laura Mitton

Campaign Marketing Manager

Claudia Biaggini

Senior Marketing Coordinator

Leah Toyne

Marketing Administrator

Alison Kearney

Customer Experience Manager

Ben Wallace

Box Office Manager

Nicole Rees

CRM & insights Manager

Sam Harvey

CRM & Data Specialist

Marta Arquero

Ticketing & Customer

Experience Coordinator

Box Office Attendants

Angela, Ashley, Bec, Bradd, Christine, Emil, Jessica, Josh, Kara, Kez, Leah, Lucy, Maeve, Sasha, Stephanie

FINANCE & PEOPLE AND CULTURE

Anita Drake Chief Financial Officer

Sonia Yakub

Senior Management Accountant (on leave)

Susan Teele Management Accountant

Laura Estupiñan Accountant

Marilen Manalo

Assistant Accountant

Jess Kirkman Payroll Officer

Matthew Bagi Project Officer

Holly Wighton People & Culture Lead

Major Partner

Supporting

Supporting Partners

Paul Noonan, Keypoint Law

Training and Education Partners

Trusts and Foundations

Broadcast and Production Partners

Venue Partners

Freemasons Foundation Victoria

Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund

The Ledger Charitable Trust

Perpetual Foundation –Alan (AGL) Shaw Endowment