MSO 2025 November Program by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

November 2025

Ryman Healthcare Spring

MSO Mornings: Respighi’s Rome New Worlds

The Voice of the Viola

Gala: Joyce DiDonato

Acknowledging Country

In the first project of its kind in Australia, the MSO has developed a musical Acknowledgement of Country with music composed by Yorta Yorta composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ao, featuring Indigenous languages from across Victoria.

Generously supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and the Commonwealth Government through the Australian National Commission for UNESCO, the MSO is working in partnership with Short Black Opera and Indigenous language custodians who are generously sharing their cultural knowledge.

The Acknowledgement of Country allows us to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we perform in the language of that country and in the orchestral language of music.

About Long Time Living Here

As a Yorta Yorta/Yuin composer, the responsibility I carry to assist the MSO in delivering a respectful acknowledgement of country is a privilege which I take very seriously. I have a duty of care to my ancestors and to the ancestors on whose land the MSO works and performs. As the MSO continues to grow its knowledge and understanding of what it means to truly honour the First People of this land, the musical acknowledgement of country will serve to bring those on stage and those in the audience together in a moment of recognition as we celebrate the longest continuing cultures in the world.

—Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ao

Our musical Acknowledgement of Country, Long Time Living Here by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ao, is performed at MSO concerts.

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 delivers performances of the highest standard, enriching lives and inspiring audiences across the globe.

Woven into the cultural fabric of Victoria and with a history spanning more than a century, the MSO reaches five million people annually through performances, TV, radio and online broadcasts, as well as critically acclaimed recordings from its newly established recording label.

In 2025, Jaime Martín continues to lead the Orchestra as Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor. Maestro Martín leads an Artistic Family that includes Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor – Learning and Engagement Benjamin Northey, Cybec Assistant Conductor Leonard Weiss, MSO Chorus Director Warren Trevelyan-Jones, Composer in Residence Liza Lim am, Artist in Residence James Ehnes, First Nations Creative Chair Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ao, Cybec Young Composer in Residence Klearhos Murphy, Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence James Henry, Artist in Residence, Learning & Engagement Karen Kyriakou, Young Artist in Association Christian Li, and Artistic Ambassadors Tan Dun, Lu Siqing and Xian Zhang.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the people of the Eastern Kulin Nations, on whose un‑ceded lands we honour the continuation of the oldest music practice in the world.

First Violins

Tair Khisambeev

Acting Associate Concertmaster

Anne-Marie Johnson

Acting Assistant Concertmaster

David Horowicz*

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*

Kirstin Kenny

Eleanor Mancini

Anne Neil*

Mark Mogilevski

Michelle Ruffolo

Anna Skálová

Kathryn Taylor

Your MSO

Second Violins

Matthew Tomkins

Principal

The Gross Foundation*

Jos Jonker

Associate Principal

Monica Curro

Assistant Principal

Dr Mary Jane Gething AO*

Mary Allison

Isin Cakmakçioglu

Emily Beauchamp

Tiffany Cheng

Val Dyke*

Freya Franzen

Cong Gu

Andrew Hall

Robert Macindoe

Isy Wasserman

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

Jenny Khafagi

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson*

Fiona Sargeant

Learn more about our musicians on the MSO website. * Position supported by

Cellos

David Berlin

Principal

Rachael Tobin

Associate Principal

Elina Faskhi

Assistant Principal

Rohan de Korte

Andrew Dudgeon AM*

Rebecca Proietto

Peter T Kempen AM*

Angela Sargeant

Caleb Wong

Michelle Wood

Andrew and Theresa Dyer*

Double Basses

Jonathon Coco Principal

Rohan Dasika

Acting Associate Principal

Benjamin Hanlon

Acting Assistant Principal

Stephen Newton

Aurora Henrich

Suzanne Lee

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

Craig Hill

Rosemary and the late Douglas Meagher *

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

The late Hon. Michael Watt KC and Cecilie Hall*

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*

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

Drs Rhyl Wade and Clem Gruen*

Harp

Yinuo Mu

Principal

Pauline and David Lawton*

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

Creating connections one note at

a time

As the Program Partner of MSO Jams in Schools, we are building a more connected community and the next generation of music lovers.

Artists

The Voice of the Viola

Friday 7 November at 7:30pm The Round, Nunawading

Saturday 8 November at 7:30pm

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Leonard Weiss* conductor

Fiona Sargeant viola

Program

Hindemith Der Schwanendreher [27’]

Brahms Serenade No. 2 [29’]

* 2025 Cybec Assistant Conductor

CONCERT EVENTS

Friday 7 November: Join us in the Studio at The Round for 6:30pm Performance by the Blackburn String Orchestra 6:50pm Pre-concert talk by double bassist and educator Miranda Hill

Saturday 8 November: Learn more about the music with Miranda Hill in a pre-concert talk at 6:45pm in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Running time: 1 hours and 5 minutes without interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Leonard Weiss conductor

Leonard Weiss cf will mark several milestones in 2026, including his Boston Symphony Orchestra mainstage debut in a program shared with Music Director Andris Nelsons, following his Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellowship earlier this year. As the recipient of the 2025 Berlin Music Opera Award (The Opera Foundation for Young Australians), he will also work as Assistant Conductor at Deutsche Opera Berlin. In Australasia he makes debut appearances with the Adelaide and Queensland symphony orchestras, and will return to the MSO and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.

As the MSO’s Cybec Assistant Conductor since 2024, he has conducted a variety of programs, including the 2024 Metropolis Festival, concerts shared with James Ehnes, ABC Classic broadcasts and his Sidney Myer Music Bowl debut.

He was previously the 2022 New Zealand Assistant Conductor in Residence, working particularly closely with the Auckland Philharmonia. He studied with Marin Alsop at the Peabody Conservatory, receiving the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s BSO–Peabody Fellowship, and he has participated in masterclasses with Riccardo Muti, Gianandrea Noseda, the Salzburg Festival and the Australian Conducting Academy.

His accolades include the Mr and Mrs Gerald Frank New Churchill Fellowship (CF), an Australia Council Career Development Grant and an Ars Musica Australis Arts Fellowship. Earlier this year, he won the 21st Khachaturian International Competition in Armenia and received the Special Prize for Best Interpretation of Khachaturian’s Symphony No. 2, earning an invitation to conduct the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra in their 2026–27 season. He subsequently won Third Prize at the Arturo Toscanini International Conducting Competition and was invited to the prestigious Concours de Genève.

PHOTO: WILLIAM HALL

2025 CYBEC ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR

Fiona Sargeant viola

Fiona Sargeant’s career has been shaped by guidance from renowned mentors such as Hermann Voss, Ulrich Koch, Wolfram Christ and Gérard Caussé. While in Germany, she gained recognition as a finalist in the Maurice Vieux International Viola Competition.

She has held key roles, including Principal Viola with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Det Jyske Ensemble in Denmark, and Associate Principal Viola with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. She was also a founding member of the Australian World Orchestra’s viola section, performing with famous conductors Zubin Mehta, Simone Young, Simon Rattle and Alex Briger.

Fiona has collaborated with celebrated artists such as pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist James Ehnes, and performed at prestigious festivals such as the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, Schwetzingen Festival in Germany and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico.

Her solo repertoire includes works by Bartók, Hoffmeister, Schubert and Bruch, and she has performed with orchestras such as the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra. In the past two years, she has focused on solo viola performances, presenting highly praised recitals at Tempo Rubato in Brunswick.

PHOTO: JULIE HEDGES,THREE HEARTS

Paul Hindemith was a multi-faceted musician. He began his professional life as a violinist, then acquired an international reputation as a viola player before teaching himself to play virtually every instrument of the orchestra. (There’s a well-known story of a bassoonist arriving late to a rehearsal only to hear the composer playing his part!)

Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)

Program Notes

Der Schwanendreher –Concerto after old folksongs

I. ‘Zwischen Berg und tiefem Tal’

II. ‘Nun laube, Lindelin, laube!’ –‘Der Gutzgauch auf dem Zaune saß’

III. Variations on ‘Seid ihr nicht der Schwanendreher?’

Fiona Sargeant viola

Paul Hindemith, modernist composer and superb violist, wrote Der Schwanendreher in 1935 to augment his own repertoire and gave the first performance that year with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Its title, ‘The Swan-Turner’, comes from mediæval German slang for a hurdy-gurdy player, who operated his instrument by cranking a handle shaped like a swan’s neck. Thoughts of these itinerant musicians conjured for Hindemith this enticing picture:

A minstrel comes into merry company and shows what he has brought from afar: serious and happy songs, and finally a dance tune.

To lend his vision authenticity, Hindemith wove his concerto around four old German songs such as a minstrel might have played on request. In some ways, Der Schwanendreher is a classical version of ‘Hey, Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me’, except in this case the lyric would be, ‘Hey, Mr Swan-turner, turn the swan for me’.

After an arresting call to attention from the soloist, we hear our first song, ‘Between Mountain and Deep Valley’, played by trombone and horns. It is the sad song of a solitary walker, soon contrasted against a dogged march theme.

‘Hey, Mr Swan-turner, turn the swan for me.’

The second movement begins with a pensive siciliano for viola and harp, punctuated by hymn-like phrases of the second folk song, ‘Bloom, Little Linden, Bloom!’ The bassoon lightens the mood by triggering a fugato based on the jolly ‘Cuckoo Sat On the Fence’. This builds to a riotous climax in which both songs briefly mingle.

The rip-snorting finale is based on the song ‘Aren’t You the Swan-Turner?’, a question to which the viola triumphantly answers ‘Yes!’ in a series of brilliant variations. Hindemith’s clever scoring for small orchestra minus violins and violas ensures the soloist’s predominance.

Philip Lambert © 2025

The MSO gave the first Australian performance of this rarely programmed concerto in a studio concert broadcast on 9 August 1968 with soloist Paul O’Brien and conductor Patrick Thomas.

“Downright

TYSON STELZER

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16

I. Allegro moderato

II. Scherzo (Vivace) – Trio

III. Adagio non troppo

IV. Quasi Menuetto – Trio

V. Rondo (Allegro)

At the age of 20, Brahms introduced himself to Robert Schumann and his wife Clara. Schumann, that most perspicacious of 19th-century talent scouts, immediately hailed the young man’s genius, declaring in an article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik that he had found a successor to Beethoven. Such attention, while flattering for the young Brahms, also proved overwhelming, and it was not until he was in his 40s that he dared attempt a symphony. (‘Writing a symphony is no laughing matter,’ he explained.)

The Serenade No. 2 in A major, and its companion piece, the Serenade No. 1 in D major, are Brahms’s first published forays into symphonic writing. Composed between 1857 and 1859, they unfold along neo-classical dimensions, as suites for chamber orchestra. While they clearly reveal Brahms’s mastery, these serenades were also works of initiation, in which he came to grips with the orchestra.

Brahms made this task even more difficult in the Second Serenade through his choice of instrumentation: woodwinds, two horns and strings without violins. This combination lends the work the colouring and autumnal hues we expect from Brahms. The Serenade has a cosmopolitan flavour, and reveals Brahms’s familiarity with a number of national idioms. The outer movements contain distinctly Hungarian moments, while the Scherzo has a Czech flavour and a minuet unfolds as a Viennese waltz. It is the central Adagio non troppo, however, that best

reveals Brahms’s genius and his visionary approach to harmony.

The Serenade was premiered in Hamburg in 1860, and revised by the notoriously self-critical Brahms 15 years later.

The most distinctive, and unusual, feature of Brahms’s second serenade is the absence of violins. Giving the violas the top line in the strings creates a warmer, mellow palette but it also places the wind instruments in high relief, especially when, as in the first movement, they are heard over plucked strings.

As the serenade begins, listen for the use of the clarinets in their lower register, with the bassoons adding richness to the sound. By contrast, Brahms’s use of cooler, brighter combinations of oboe and flute gives a neoclassical flavour, suggesting the wind serenades of Mozart that he would have heard during while working at the prince’s court in Detmold.

Brahms without violins

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Artists

Ryman Healthcare Spring Gala Joyce DiDonato

Thursday 20 November at 7:30pm

Saturday 22 November at 7:30pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano

Program

Rossini William Tell: Overture [12’]

Berlioz Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights) [32’]

Interval [20’]

Respighi Fountains of Rome [17’]

Respighi Pines of Rome [26’]

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with MSO Head of Learning & Engagement Nicholas Bochner and mezzo-soprano Karen Van Spall at 6:45pm in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall

Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes including interval. Timings listed are approximate.

The MSO Gala series is proudly presented by MSO Premier Partner, Ryman Healthcare.

Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 2022, and Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra since 2019, with those roles currently extended until 2028 and 2027 respectively, Spanish conductor Jaime Martín also took up the role of Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales last year, and has held past positions as Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (2019–2024), Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España (Spanish National Orchestra) (2022–2024) and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Gävle Symphony Orchestra (2013–2022).

Having spent many years as a highly regarded flautist, Jaime turned to conducting full time in 2013. Recent and future engagements include appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as a nine-city European tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jaime Martín is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London, and in 2022 the jury of Spain’s Premios Nacionales de Música awarded him their annual prize for his contribution to classical music.

Jaime Martín’s Chief Conductor Chair is supported by the Besen Family Foundation.

Jaime Martín conductor

PHOTO: PAUL MARC MITCHELL

A winner of multiple Grammy awards and an Olivier Award, Joyce DiDonato entrances audiences across the globe – acclaimed as a performer and producer, and a fierce advocate for the arts. With a concert and stage repertoire spanning four centuries, a much-praised discography, and industry-leading projects, she has defined what it is to be a singer in the 21st century.

These concerts are part of her first major Australasian tour, performing with the Tasmanian and New Zealand symphony orchestras as well as the MSO.

Recent highlights include season opening galas for the Minnesota Orchestra, Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Bregenz Festival, where she premiered Emily – No Prisoner Be, a song cycle by Kevin Puts on poetry of Emily Dickinson. She returned to Teatro Real Madrid for Handel’s Theodora and a European recital tour, and made appearances with the London Philharmonic and Norwegian National Opera orchestras. After a ground-breaking three years, she also completed her global touring project EDEN, reaching more than 15 million people.

In 2025–26, she returns to Musikkollegium Winterthur for Another Eve, collaborates with Radio France for Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, and reunites with pianist Craig Terry for recitals in Geneva and Tokyo. She also makes her Lincoln Center stage debut as the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and a role debut in Saariaho’s Innocence (Metropolitan Opera). Concert appearances include Mahler with Yannick Nézet-Séguin: Symphony No. 2 (Philadelphia Orchestra) and Symphony No. 3 (Berlin Philharmonic). She will tour her album Songplay throughout Asia and will join the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra on a European tour following a performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano

PHOTO: SIMON PAULY

Program Notes

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)

William Tell: Overture

This concert begins with one of the most recognisable works in classical music. Part of it, that is. Some years ago, an Australian newspaper described it as a ‘medley of classical tunes, ending with the William Tell Overture’ – the reviewer had recognised only the famous ending.

Unlike some other Rossini overtures, which really are medleys, the William Tell overture doesn’t contain any themes from the opera. And it was atypical in other ways; it lacks, for example, the famous ‘Rossini crescendo’ heard at the end of overtures such as The Barber of Seville. This overture is more sophisticated, effectively a symphonic poem.

It begins with an evocation of what Hector Berlioz called ‘the solemn silence of nature’, adopting the unique effect of five solo cellos, each with their own part to pay, to depict sunrise over the Swiss alps. There are nods to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony: thunderous drum rolls for a sudden storm, and an alphorn melody or ranz des vaches (literally a procession of cows), for which Rossini gives the cor anglais an authentic Swiss tune. Finally, after a trumpet ‘call to revolt’, there is the thrilling gallop.

This part of the overture has taken on a life of its own. As early as the 1920s, it was a staple of silent film pianists. Even today, most listeners will think ‘Hi-Yo, Silver!’ before they think of 14th-century Swiss freedom fighters. As the quip goes: An

intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger.

Rossini would have understood that level of celebrity very well. When he arrived in Paris in 1823, he was the most famous composer of the day, more famous even than Beethoven. He’d conquered the world – faster, claimed novelist Stendhal, than Napoleon. As a composer for the theatre, Rossini clearly knew the winning formula, not unlike the composers of hit musicals today.

The following year he composed a new opera, Il viaggio a Reims, and adapted others for performance in French. This new phase of his glittering career culminated in the premiere of Guillaume Tell (to use its French title) in 1829.

But to everyone’s surprise – just 37 years old and with 38 operas to his name –Rossini suddenly retired from operatic composition. He lived in retirement, mostly in Paris, writing almost nothing for over 20 years; his new fame was for wit, love of good food and his Saturday soirées. This was not because William Tell had failed –on the contrary. Neither ill-health and depression nor the changes in operatic fashion he deplored can wholly account for Rossini’s retirement – it was a mystery then, and remains one today. The most interesting theory is Robert Donington’s attributing to Rossini ‘some strange inability to tolerate great success’ –prompting the thought that Rossini could afford to retire, in more ways than one.

The story of William Tell, based on a play by Schiller, comes from the fight of the Swiss cantons for liberation from oppression in the 14th century. William Tell was the famous cross-bow marksman who, after being forced by the despotic bailiff Gessler to shoot an apple placed on his son’s head, killed the tyrant.

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)

Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights)

Villanelle

Le Spectre de la rose (The Spirit of the Rose)

Sur les Lagunes (On the Lagoons)

Absence

Au Cimetière (The Cemetery)

L’Île inconnue (The Unknown Isle)

Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano

Les Nuits d’été is based on poems by Berlioz’s close friend and neighbour in Paris, Théophile Gautier. Performed as a cycle, the songs suggest an emotional arc, in which, according to commentator John Mangum, ‘the longed-for “always” of the first song, Villanelle, becomes unattainable in the last one, L’Île inconnue’. Villanelle is the only song to carry a date –23 March 1840 – though Absence and Le Spectre de la rose were meant to be part of a concert (which didn’t take place) in November 1840. All six songs were published for high voice and piano during the summer of 1841. Absence was orchestrated in 1843 for concerts in Germany and Le Spectre de la rose was orchestrated for a concert in Gotha in February 1856, attended by a Swiss music publisher who asked Berlioz, through composer Peter Cornelius, to orchestrate the remainder – which he did by the end of that year.

Why did Berlioz write these songs? Often this most literary of composers provided reams of background information. But there are few clues about Les Nuits d’été. Mangum sees significance in the fact that this was the period in which Berlioz’s marriage to the actress Harriet Smithson began to sour. Program notes on Berlioz’s most famous work, the Symphonie fantastique of 1830, always tell of how Berlioz fell in love with Smithson after seeing her as Ophelia in a touring English company’s production of Hamlet, and how

he pursued and married her (in 1833). But it was probably always a case of reality chasing an idealised image. By 1840 their marriage was doomed. By the same token, Absence, the first of the songs Berlioz orchestrated, was a favourite of his mistress and later wife, Marie Recio, and she sang it on that concert tour in Germany in 1843.

The Songs

Rather than being about ‘summer nights’, Villanelle is set in springtime and looks forward to never-ending love. ‘Fleetfooted’ might well describe the progress of its vocal line over unexpected modulations. The orchestration is light – a simple accompaniment of repeated woodwind chords with occasional string underlining of melody and some imitation of birdsong.

In Le Spectre de la rose, a rose consoles itself with the thought that in being plucked to be worn by a beautiful woman at the previous night’s ball, its death is to be envied. (Gautier’s poem is perhaps best known as the inspiration for a Diaghilev ballet, danced to Berlioz’s orchestration of Carl Maria von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance.) Here, Berlioz sets Gautier’s original poem in a slow waltz time that suggests languid reminiscence of the previous night’s dancing.

In Sur les Lagunes a fisherman mourns the fact that he must continue to travel the sea alone, left bereft by the angel who took his beloved but ‘would not take me’. In Berlioz’s hands there is anguish, darkly coloured, but the singer stops short of operatic outpouring of grief.

Absence is strikingly restrained. The complete reprise (twice) of the solemn first verse gives the song a marked formality.

There is evidence that Berlioz really wrestled with the setting of Au Cimetière, which seeks to convey a complex linkage

Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936)

Undoubtedly the most popular and, arguably, successful Italian composer of his generation, Respighi was responsible for the rebirth of Italian instrumental music in the 20th century. He and his composer peers explored a range of ideas in a bid to create a uniquely Italian, especially non-operatic, music in the wake of the social upheavals of Unification.

of images: graves, shadows, yew trees, doves, melodies, fragrances, angels, ghosts… The orchestration of this song may be the lightest of the set but the violin and viola harmonics suggesting a ghostly presence at the end of verse four reveal the perennial resourcefulness of Berlioz’s imagination.

Berlioz chose a spirited Allegro for the final song. The young man wants to be off – ‘the breeze is up’. His fair one wants him to take her to a shore where love is forever. Of course, the title of the song is ‘The Unknown Isle’.

In his day, Berlioz was often criticised for writing oversized music. ‘The orchestra that Beethoven used is not enough for him,’ said critic Paul Scudo. It’s a criticism you hear even now, but the nuanced chamber-music subtlety of Les Nuits d’été provides a corrective to any impression that Berlioz’s music is always pure bombast and grandiosity.

These ideas, evident to varying degrees in all of Respighi’s music, come together in his so-called ‘Roman trilogy’: the revival of early Italian music; an interest in the ancient modes and Gregorian chant of the early church; openness to the latest musical developments abroad (Debussy, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, in particular); the exploration of folk and popular music; and a fascination with the glories of ancient Rome.

Respighi moved to Rome from his native Bologna in 1913 to take up the post of compositions professor at the Accademia Nazzionale di Santa Cecilia. The sheer scale of the Eternal City overwhelmed him and, although he had plenty of friends and activities to keep him occupied, Respighi struggled to settle in, enduring severe bouts of melancholy for several years.

According to his wife and biographer (and former student) Elsa Olivieri Sangiacomo, Respighi composed Fountains of Rome:

solely to satisfy a spiritual need; it can be called the synthesis of the feelings, thoughts and sensations perceived by the Maestro in his first few months of life in Rome.

His fascination with the landscapes and life of the city he adored ultimately resulted in three of his best-known pieces: Fountains of Rome (completed in 1916), Pines of Rome (1924) and Roman Festivals (1928).

Orphan Girl at the Cemetery (1824) by Eugène Delacroix

Despite their obviously Italian topics, these often hedonistic orchestral pieces bear the direct influence of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom Respighi had studied in Russia. From RimskyKorsakov, he developed a thorough knowledge of orchestration techniques, which was coupled with his own innate ability to present strikingly visual imagery through musical forms.

A point usually missed, however, is that in most cases the titles and descriptive programs of Respighi’s symphonic works were written after the music had been composed. Claudio Guastalla, the librettist of a number of Respighi’s operas, wrote in his memoirs: ‘I did not know Respighi when he composed the Fountains of Rome, but I wrote the “programs” to the Pines and Festivals and I assure you that I wrote them after the Maestro had composed the score and not before.’ Respighi does not intend his music to be descriptive of things material or immaterial. Rather, he seeks to convey the impression of a series of sensations, or, as Guastalla called it, ‘transfigured truth converted into sound’.

Fountains of Rome (Fontane di Roma)

The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn –

The Triton Fountain in the Morning –

The Fountain of Trevi at Midday –

The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset

Respighi himself sanctioned the following program for his Fountains of Rome, which was published with the score:

In this symphonic poem the composer has endeavoured to give impression to the sentiments and visions suggested to him by four of Rome’s fountains, contemplated at the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or in which their beauty appears most impressive to the observer.

Respighi’s autograph with the oboe theme from The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn

The first part, inspired by the Fountain of Valle Giulia, depicts a pastoral landscape: droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh damp mists of a Roman dawn.

A sudden loud and insistent blast of horns above the trills of the whole orchestra introduces the second part, The Triton Fountain in the Morning. It is like a joyous call, summoning troops of naiads and tritons who come running up, pursuing each other and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water.

Next there appears a solemn theme, borne on the undulations of the orchestra. It is the Fountain of Trevi at Midday. The solemn theme, passing from the woodwind to the brass instruments, assumes a triumphal character. Trumpets peal; across the radiant surface of the water there passes Neptune’s chariot, drawn by sea-horses and followed by a train of sirens and tritons. The procession then vanishes, while faint trumpet blasts resound in the distance.

The fourth part, The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset, is announced by a sad theme which rises above a subdued warbling. It is the nostalgic hour of sunset…

Pines of Rome (Pini di Roma)

Pines of the Villa Borghese –Pines near a Catacomb –Pines of the Janiculum –Pines of the Appian Way

The success of Fountains of Rome put Respighi’s career on the map in Italy and abroad, as well as marking a new chapter in the composer’s life and a newfound happiness in his adopted hometown. It became the template for Pines of Rome (1924), for which he had long been collecting sketches and themes. After the work was completed, his librettist, Claudio Guastalla, wrote the ‘captions’ (as Respighi described them) that appear at the front of the score of Pines of Rome:

I. The pine trees of the Villa Borghese Children are at play in the pine groves of Villa Borghese [the traditional children’s song Madama Doré]; they dance round in circles, they play at soldiers, marching and fighting, they are wrought up by their own cries like swallows at evening, they come and go in swarms. Suddenly the scene changes, and…

II. Pine trees near a catacomb We see the shade of the pine trees fringing the entrance to a catacomb. From the depth there rises the sound of mournful psalm-singing, floating through

The Golden City: Rome from the Janiculum (1873) by Samuel Palmer shows the distinctive umbrella shape of the Italian stone pine

the air like a solemn hymn [the Advent plainchant ‘Veni, veni, Emmanuel’], and gradually and mysteriously dispersing.

III. The pine trees of the Janiculum

A quiver runs through the air: the pine trees of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of a full moon. A nightingale is singing. [Respighi requested a gramophone recording of a real bird for the nightingale, making this the first instance of a pre-recorded sound forming part of a musical score.]

IV. The pine trees of the Appian Way Misty dawn on the Appian Way: solitary pine trees guarding the magic landscape; the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps. The poet had a fantastic vision of bygone glories: trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly risen sun, a consular army bursts forth towards the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph to the Capitol.

For the resplendent brass writing of the Appian Way, Respighi introduces six extra brass parts (sometimes played, as in this concert, by trumpets, bass trumpets and trombones). He calls these ‘buccine’ in reference to the martial brass instruments of ancient Rome.

Artists

Respighi’s Rome

Friday 21 November at 11:00am

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

Program

Rossini William Tell: Overture [12’]

Respighi Fountains of Rome [17’]

Respighi Pines of Rome [26’]

The artist biography and program notes for this performance can be found on pages 18, 20 and 22.

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with MSO Cybec Assistant Conductor Leonard Weiss at 10:15am in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall

Running time: 1 hour and 5 minutes without interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Artists

New Worlds

Thursday 27 November at 7:30pm

Saturday 29 November at 2:00pm Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday 28 November at 7:30pm Costa Hall, Geelong

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Jaime Martín conductor

William Barton yidaki

Program

Price Concert Overture No. 2 [15’]

Cheetham Fraillon* Treaty** [16’]

Interval [20’]

Dvořák Symphony No. 9, From the New World [40’]

* MSO First Nations Creative Chair

** Australian premiere of an MSO commission

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with composers Aaron Wyatt and Deborah Cheetham Fraillon 6:45pm (27 Nov) and 1:15pm (29 Nov) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall 6:45pm (28 Nov) at Costa Hall

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes, including interval. Timings listed are approximate.

MSO’s Geelong performance is supported by AWM Electrical, Freemasons Foundation Victoria, the Robert Salzer Foundation, Estate of the late Blanch Brooke Hutchings, and Perpetual Foundation – Alan (AGL) Shaw Endowment

Jaime Martín’s Chief Conductor Chair is supported by the Besen Family Foundation.

PHOTO: KRISTIAN GEHRADTE

Jaime Martín conductor

William Barton yidaki

William Barton is Australia’s leading yidaki (didgeridoo) player as well as a highly esteemed composer, instrumentalist and vocalist. He learnt the instrument from his uncle, Arthur Peterson, an elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga people, and worked from an early age with traditional dance groups and fusion–rock jazz bands, orchestras, string quartets and mixed ensembles. Throughout his diverse career, he has forged a path in the classical musical world, from the London, Berlin and Bremer philharmonic orchestras to historic events at Westminster Abbey (Commonwealth Day 2019), Anzac Cove in Gallipoli and the Beijing Olympics. He has released five albums on the ABC Classic label, including Heartland (2022) with violinist Véronique Serret and the words of his mother, Aunty Delmae Barton. He has been developing a new musical language, which is epitomised in this recording.

In 2023 he was named Queensland Australian of the Year, received the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music, and was an Australian of the Year nominee. In 2022 he was recognised for his work with the Australian Chamber Orchestra on the soundtrack from the film River, which won Best Soundtrack Album and Best Original Song Composed for the Screen (APRA–AMCOS Screen Awards), Best Original Score in a Documentary (AACTA Awards) and Best Original Soundtrack (ARIA Awards). Other awards include the Australia Council’s Don Banks Music Award (2021), Best Original Score for a Mainstage Production (2018 Sydney Theatre Awards) and Best Classical Album (ARIA) for Birdsong at Dusk in 2012. William Barton holds honorary doctorates from Griffith University and the University of Sydney.

PHOTO: KEITH SAUNDERS

Program Notes

Florence Price (1888–1953)

Concert Overture No. 2

Like many of her American contemporaries, Florence Beatrice Price frequently experimented with the integration of folk music into conventional classical idioms. Several of her surviving symphonies and chamber works, for example, contain a ‘juba’ – an upbeat percussive dance with African and African American origins that was commonly performed among enslaved people. She was also deeply attuned to the spirituals, a sung repertoire arising from slavery with lyrics that often focused on liberatory narratives in scripture. She once wrote: ‘We are waking up to the fact pregnant with possibilities that we already have a folk music in the Negro spirituals.’ Antonín Dvořák had made a similar argument in the 1890s, but his own musical engagement with spirituals was perfunctory at best.

For Price, the compositional ‘possibilities’ in the spirituals were opportunities for intense musical and emotional exploration

of these signal cultural touchstones. By the 1920s, African American vocal soloists and choirs had popularised the repertoire around the world, including in Australia as early as the 1880s. Across Price’s catalogue, we can find works in practically every genre that either quote from wellknown spirituals, creating a symbolic network of associations, or adopt their distinctive melodic and rhythmic vocabulary. Her Concert Overture No. 2 (1943) falls into this first category.

The opening half of the overture presents three miniature scenes in rapid succession. Based on three spirituals in turn – ‘Go Down, Moses’, ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ and ‘Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit’ – the musical character of these sections moves from sombre to poignant to ebullient. The more abstract second half combines melodic fragments from the three previous sections into a unified portrait that closes with a return to the profundity of Moses’s cry for liberation found in the first spiritual.

FLORENCE PRICE was a virtuoso pianist, organist and teacher as well as a prolific composer, writing in nearly every genre except opera. After training at Boston’s New England Conservatory, she devoted the first 20 years of her career to music education and the composition of pedagogical works. In 1927, pervasive racist violence drove her family to Chicago, where she found an invigorating cultural environment shaped by the Black Renaissance. It was here that she refined a distinctive musical language honouring her cultural heritage. In 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her First Symphony, making her the first African American woman to have a work performed by a major US orchestra.

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon (born 1964)

Treaty

William Barton yidaki

Treaty is the second instalment of Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s concerto for yidaki, of which the first was Baparripna –Dawn, premiered by William Barton and the MSO in 2022 and reprised in July this year. Treaty received its world premiere in Edinburgh on 22 August during the MSO’s European and UK tour.

The composer writes…

When I first sat down to write this program note it was June 2025. The process of Treaty was underway in Victoria. The long walk for Truth and Justice from Portland to Melbourne undertaken by Travis Lovett and countless others, had just passed through Colac.

Two months later, as MSO prepared to play the premiere of this new work, half a world away, Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly ratified an in-principle treaty agreement with the State Government of Victoria, representing an historic step towards the formal treaty.

The synchronicity of this occasion was uppermost in my mind as William Barton took to the stage with the MSO that night. This was the first time in Australia that a state or territory had legislated a treaty process with its Indigenous people. On the other side of the globe, unheralded, we were telling this story to a sold-out audience in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.

Months passed and even for a people who know what it is to wait, the anticipation was almost too much to bear. Finally, on the evening of Thursday 30 October – just as I prepared to update my program note for the Australian premiere of Treaty – the news we had been longing for came through. The votes had been tallied.

The Statewide Treaty Bill had completed its final test and was passed through both houses of Parliament without amendment. Only Victoria has been able to achieve this critical step towards true self-determination for First Nations people of this land.

As we now give the first Australian performance of the work named in honour of this process, I think of the unique opportunity this presents, and of works which, through the centuries, have held a similar place in history as composers have grasped the shift in the very fabric of society and transformed that into a musical score. You will have your favourite works telling of such moments and achievements that resonate throughout history. The passing of the Statewide Treaty Bill is one such moment for us, right now.

While I do not claim to place this work alongside such giants as Beethoven, Verdi and Shostakovich, this moment in our nation’s history and the timing of the Australian premiere is one I hope will bring the MSO into focus and relevance for the people of Victoria in a unique and powerful way.

Together we are standing in history as this work is played and this speaks to the reason why I create music. To speak truth. To honour my ancestors and their lived experience and to strengthen the journey from knowing to understanding.

Treaty captures the journey from final moments of self-determination and sovereignty to the present day.

The arrival of colonisation is heralded by the ominous majesty of the French horns. They represent not only the invaders but equally the leadership of The People (First Nations people) as they stare down the threat of invasion. Even in the face of cannon fire we can sense their nobility –not as simplistic savages, as Jean-Jacques

PROF. DEBORAH CHEETHAM FRAILLON AO

(Yorta Yorta/Yuin) has long championed the voice and visibility of classically trained Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island musicians through her achievements as a composer, performer and artistic director. Her landmark compositions include Australia’s first Indigenous opera Pecan Summer (2010), Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace (2018), Parrwang Lifts the Sky (2020) and Woven Song (2018–2025). Her major commissions include works for the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hawaiʻi symphony orchestras; the Flinders, Goldner, Australian and WASO string quartets; Chineke! Orchestra (UK); Rubiks Collective; Melbourne Ensemble; Plexus Collective; Sydney Philharmonia Choirs; Victorian Opera; the Australian Ballet; the MPavilion Project and the ABC. In 2021 she began a five-year appointment as MSO First Nations Creative Chair and in 2023 was appointed the inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Rousseau would have us think, but as the warriors, scientists, musicians, philosophers, farmers, healers, dancers, story tellers, architects, musicians and astronomers of the longest continuing culture in the world.

Why use a Western instrument to speak to this? Many First Nations leaders were quick to learn the language of the invaders, hoping to be able to better negotiate with them. This shared horn theme then becomes a kind of dialogue of determined will for both the invaders and those facing invasion. The bass drum, however, speaks only one language –destruction and decimation.

The yidaki’s sound of wind through the sheoak provides a moment of respite. On the east coast of Australia, the sheoak [casuarina] provides a protected space for babies to sleep in their tarnuk or cradle. The pine needles which cover the ground at the base of the tree are a natural repellent to insects and other creatures which would otherwise harm the babies.

PHOTO: STEFANIE ZINGSHEIM (SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC)

The yidaki falls silent as the Aboriginal people, startled by the brutality of the conflict, mourn their losses. The cellos and violas lament in the aftermath: loss, regrouping and mourning.

A yidaki bird call (kookaburra) rings out, reasserting nature’s presence as the wind blows through an open space and exposed landscape.

The sorrow of those who mourn is individualised by the bassoon solo until aggression returns as a shocking interruption of grief, inserting terror. Once again, the machinery of warfare is rolled into place. The attack is unrelenting. The people are scattered, running for their lives, the sound of military drums in pursuit. The yidaki’s wild call sounding the warning of imminent attack becomes an agitated heartbeat and heavy breathing of those who have once again been forced to flee.

Plagued by uncertainty and fear, The People gather, this time in ever diminishing number, to determine their next move. They shelter once again in the shade of the sheoak.

The bodies of the mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, young men and old warriors, painters, singers, healers and dancers lie strewn across the abundant fields of their tribal nations. The smoke lingers as does the sound of distant cannon fire as the progress of colonisation moves on to the next nation and the next.

The yidaki growls as hunger sets in for those who have survived the onslaught. Cut off from hunting lands and water sources, those who were not blown apart by cannons and gunfire succumb to the slow torture of hunger and disease. Heartbroken, the survivors determine to draw on their resilience.

Those with good intentions arrive. Across the continent, at whatever time colonisation arrived, it was quickly

followed by those with good intentions, often religious, offering hope. A new way of life. Missions grew. Relative safety for those who lived there, but the low growl of the yidaki is a warning.

Eventually, echoing historic records during this time, the yidaki is silenced as cultural expression and language were suppressed and eventually replaced with the trappings of Western Christianity. Many of the people adopted these ways as a means of survival. But the good intentions were often corrupted by the hatred and greed of the mission managers, and the people realised that safety was conditional at best and routinely unreliable.

The People find whatever way they can to remain connected to their identity, culture and spirituality, even if expressed through a new language. Leaders emerge and The People begin to look towards a return to self-determination and the reassertion of sovereignty. The yidaki, silent for so long, returns with a high gentle call to the French horn, the return of culture, cautious but undeniable, gentle but strong.

Talk of a Treaty is introduced (falling minor and major thirds of the tonic chord signal ‘Trea-ty’). Surely after having lived within the bounds of the new laws, having fought and died as Australian service men and women in two world wars and other global conflicts; surely after having learned about, practised and accepted the introduced spiritual language and customs, a conversation about sovereign rights could begin?

No, The People must stay in their place. But they rise and rise again in the face of so many defeats.

Inevitably the protest and the movement of The People gains momentum in the face of anger, hostility, denialism, ignorance, fear, racism, deaths in custody, youth suicide, homelessness,

dispossession, all bound together with so much bureaucracy (snare rim-shots like so many keyboard clicks in the ‘Circumlocution Office’*).

Calls for Treaty ring out now as a major and minor seconds.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission –Victoria’s and Australia’s first formal truthtelling inquiry into historic and ongoing systemic injustices perpetrated is formed and declares once and for all the official status of the genocide committed. Yidaki –rhythmic growls with wild calls of defiance rhythmically to the finish demanding Treaty!

The work crescendos to end on a knifeedge. Breathless, we fall on the tonic but what does it actually mean? What will come of it all? What is the next movement of this work?

Deborah

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, From the New World

I. Adagio – Allegro molto

II. Largo

III. Scherzo (Molto vivace)

IV. Allegro con fuoco

Musical nationalism in the 19th century was based on the idea that each nation has folksongs that are inherently their own, and the job of a composer was to discover, refine and develop these songs into a national classical music. This was especially relevant to Czech composers as a National Revival was drawing cultural distinctions between themselves and their Austrian neighbors after centuries of Habsburg rule.

Americans, too, began to wonder if they should have classical music of their own. In 1885 the New York philanthropist Jeannette Thurber founded the National Conservatory of Music and in 1892 recruited Antonín Dvořák to be its director. She hoped he would help educate local musicians and advance a national style much like he had in his homeland of Bohemia. In the words of H. L. Mencken, he was hired to ‘introduce Americans to their own music’.

*The type of government department, satirised in Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit (1857), in which the establishment is shown as run purely for the benefit of its incompetent and obstructive officials.

The National Conservatory had several Black students, among whom was Harry T. Burleigh, a composer and singer who showed Dvořák a variety of American folk styles. Based on what he heard, Dvořák concluded that American classical music should draw from African American spirituals as well as the indigenous music of American Indians. He wrote: ‘These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.’

And so he wrote the New World Symphony and American String Quartet as models, loosely integrating elements of African American and Native American musical traditions. The Symphony was premiered by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on 16 December 1893, conducted by Anton Seidl, and was immediately met with acclaim. But the

Panic of 1893 (the worst American economic crisis before the Great Depression in the 1930s) left the National Conservatory’s finances – and Dvořák’s expensive salary – in jeopardy. He returned to Bohemia in April 1895, penning a bitter goodbye in Harper’s Magazine lamenting the lack of government support for music in America.

The title page of the autograph score of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony

Dvořák’s subtitle was an afterthought, written on the score just as his American-born secretary, Josef Kovařík, was about to deliver it to the conductor Anton Seidl. Significantly, he wrote in Czech – ‘Z nového světa’ – rather than the German or English that Seidl or his American audience would have understood. And in doing so, writes Anthony Cane, Dvořák was seen to be addressing the work, like a picture postcard, to his fellow countrymen back in Europe, sending them impressions and greetings ‘from the New World’. At the same time, Dvořák challenged listeners to identify depictions of America or elements of American music.

Kovařík always said the inscription was just ‘the Master’s little joke’, but the ‘joke’ has, ever since, prompted the question: Is the New World an ‘American’ symphony or the work of a homesick Bohemian? Many listeners and musicians have heard it as both. Seidl, for example, wrote: ‘from the very first I have been deeply impressed by the adagio [Largo]. It is so sad. It sounds to me so suggestive of the loneliness of the immense prairie; of the Far West. And it is pathetic with the pathos of homesickness.’ Another conductor, Walter Damrosch, said of the same ‘exquisite’ movement: ‘As to whether it is American or not I cannot say. To me it suggests nothing American. It is Dr Dvořák. His genius has evolved the work and you can see him in every bit of the work.’

There are no wholesale American folk tunes in the New World Symphony – just elements of what Dvořák thought made them distinctive: pentatonic (five-note) scales, drumming patterns and syncopated rhythms. The middle movements were partly inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, a romanticised epic about Native Americans. And Dvořák’s own Czech style still remains throughout the piece, even as he tried to overlay it with American elements.

The first movement begins with a slow and quiet Adagio introduction that paints a hazy scene. Then the faster Allegro molto section introduces a bold call-andresponse pattern, first heard between the horns and woodwinds. A second theme appears with the flute and oboe playing quietly together in a pentatonic scale. The last theme to be introduced is a lyrical flute solo reminiscent of the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ which Burleigh had taught Dvořák. All these elements are mixed together and recur throughout the movement.

The slow movement, Largo, begins with seven mysterious chords that connect into the now famous cor anglais solo. This, too, sounds like a traditional spiritual or hymn, but was actually composed by Dvořák (in 1922, one of Dvořák’s students added lyrics to it, creating a popular song called ‘Goin’ Home’ – occasionally mistaken as the original source). Much of the movement develops this melody, including a striking passage where it’s accompanied by a pizzicato (plucked) walking bass line. After a contrasting section that brings back the opening theme of the first movement, the cor anglais melody returns and grows warmer, joined by the strings.

The third movement, Vivace, begins with a loud falling pattern that is very similar to the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The music here is

Dvorak conducting in Chicago in 1893

dancelike, inspired by Hiawatha’s wedding feast in the Longfellow poem.

The finale, Allegro con fuoco, opens with a tense rising half-step pattern in the strings, building to a powerful brass fanfare, and then a second theme in the clarinet. The movement brings back earlier melodies –including ‘Goin’ Home’ – before arriving at a coda and a fortissimo E major ending. But in a final touch evoking America’s wide-open landscapes, Dvořák adds an echo that fades into silence.

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Dr Richard Knafelc and Mr Grevis Beard

Tim Knaggs

Dr Jerry Koliha and Marlene Krelle

Jane Kunstler

Ann Lahore

Wilson Lai and Anita Wong Q

Kerry Landman

Janet and Ross Lapworth

Rex Lau

Bryan Lawrence

Halina Lewenberg Charitable Foundation

Phil Lewis

Elizabeth H Loftus

David Loggia

Chris and Anna Long

Elena Lovu

Wayne McDonald and Kay Schroer

Andrea McCall

Lesley McMullin Foundation

Dr Eric Meadows

Ian Merrylees

Sylvia Miller

Ian Morrey and Geoffrey Minter

Susan Morgan ∞

Anthony and Anna Morton

Dr Judith S Nimmo

George Pappas AO, in memory of Jillian Pappas

Bruce Parncutt AO

Ian Penboss

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

Guy Ross ☼

Marie Rowland

Liliane Rusek and Alexander Ushakoff

Viorica Samson

Martin and Susan Shirley

P Shore

Kieran Sladen

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

Nicholas and Faith Vann

Jayde Walker ∞

Edward and Paddy White

Willcock Family

Dr Kelly and Dr Heathcote Wright

Demetrio Zema ∞

Anonymous (19)

Overture Patrons ($500+)

Margaret Abbey PSM

Jane Allan and Mark Redmond

Jenny Anderson

Doris Au

Lyn Bailey

Robbie Barker

Anne M Bowden

Caroline Bowler

Stephen and Caroline Brain

Robert Bridgart

Miranda Brockman

Dr Robert Brook

Christine Brown

Elizabeth Brown

Phillip Brown

Patricia Buchanan

Marc Buchholz and Stephan Duchesne

Ian Carson AM

Jungpin Chen

Dr Hyein Ellen Cho

Alan and Wendy Chuck

Robert and Katherine Coco

Dr John Collins

Gregory Crew

Sue Cummings

Dr Catherine Duncan

Dr Matthew Dunn

Vivien and Jack Fajgenbaum

Brian Florence

Nadine Fogale

Elizabeth Foster

Chris Freelance

M C Friday

Simon Gaites

Nikki Gaskell

Lili Gearon

Dr Julia Gellatly

David and Geraldine Glenny

Hugo and Diane Goetze

The late George Hampel AM KC and Felicity Hampel AM SC

Dr Neville Hathaway

Geoff Hayes

Alison Heard

Noela Henderson

Dr Jennifer Henry

C M Herd Endowment

Carole and Kenneth Hinchliff

William Holder

Peter and Jenny Hordern

Gillian Horwood

Oliver Hutton and Weiyang Li

Rob Jackson

Ian Jamieson

Karen Johnson

Linda Jones

Leonora Kearney

Jennifer Kearney

John Keys

Lesley King

Dr Judith Kinnear

Katherine Kirby

Heather Law

Peter Letts

Sarah and Andrew Lindsay

Dr Helen MacLean

Sandra Masel in memory of Leigh Masel

Janice Mayfield

Dr James McComish

Gail McKay

Jennifer McKean

Shirley A McKenzie

Richard McNeill

Marie Misiurak

Professor Heather Mitchell

Joan Mullumby

Yoko Murakoshi

Rebecca-Kate Nayton

Adrian and Louise Nelson

Marian Neumann

Ed Newbigin

Valerie Newman

Amanda O’Brien

Rosemary O’Connor

Brendan O’Donnell

Phil Parker

Sarah Patterson

The Hon Chris Pearce and Andrea Pearce

Jason Peart

William Ramirez

Geoffrey Ravenscroft

Ian Reddoch

Dr Christopher Rees

Fred and Patricia Russell

Carolyn Sanders

Julia Schlapp

Irene Sutton

Tom Sykes

Allison Taylor

Hugh and Elizabeth Taylor

Lily Tell

Serey Thir

Geoffrey Thomlinson

Mely Tjandra

Noel and Jenny Turnbull

Rosemary Warnock

Amanda Wasilewski

Amanda Watson

Michael Whishaw

Deborah and Dr Kevin Whithear OAM

Adrian Wigney

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 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

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

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

Harold Mitchell AC

Roger Riordan AM

Ila Vanrenen

Listing current as of 29 October 2025

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 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 Family

MSO Artistic Family

Jaime Martín

Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor

Benjamin Northey

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor – Learning & Engagement

Leonard Weiss CF Cybec Assistant Conductor

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

Hiroyuki Iwaki † Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)

Warren Trevelyan-Jones

MSO Chorus Director

James Ehnes

Artist in Residence

Karen Kyriakou

Artist in Residence –Learning & Engagement

Christian Li Young Artist in Association

Liza Lim AM

Composer in Residence

Klearhos Murphy

Cybec Young Composer in Residence

James Henry

Cybec First Nations

Composer in Residence

Prof. Deborah Cheetham

Fraillon AO

First Nations Creative Chair

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

Brenton Burley

Production Manager

Renn Picard

Production Coordinator

Andrew Robinson

Production Coordinator

Nicholas Cooper

Operations Coordinator

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

Erica Dawkins

Learning & Engagement Lead

Fergus Inder Jams Program Coordinator

Erika Noguchi

Executive Producer, MSO Presents

Kate Weston

Associate Producer, MSO Presents

DEVELOPMENT & REACH

Suzanne Dembo Chief Operating Officer

Amy Jackett Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer

Caroline Buckley Head of Strategic Priorities

Christina Chiam Head 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

Shannon Toyne Head of Marketing & Sales

Sally Hern

Senior Manager, Campaign Marketing

Claudia Biaggini

Senior Marketing Coordinator

Leah Toyne

Marketing Administrator

Alison Kearney Customer Experience Manager

Nicole Rees

CRM & insights Manager

Sam Harvey

CRM & Data Specialist

Marta Arquero

Ticketing & Customer Experience Coordinator

Box Office Attendants

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

FINANCE AND PEOPLE & CULTURE

Alistair Mytton Chief Financial Officer

Sonia Yakub

Senior Management Accountant

Lilian Karidza Assistant Accountant

Matthew Bagi Project Officer

Holly Wighton

People & Culture Lead

Aileen Eyou

People & Culture Administration Officer

Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund

Estate of the late Blanch Brooke Hutchings

Perpetual Foundation –Alan (AGL) Shaw Endowment