MSO Concert Program: October 2025 by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

October 2025

Bruckner and Strauss

Impressions of Paris

Quick Fix at Half Six: Franck’s Symphony

A Celebration of Sibelius

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

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

Stephen Newton

Acting Associate Principal

Benjamin Hanlon

Acting Assistant Principal

Rohan Dasika

Aurora Henrich

Suzanne Lee

Flutes

Prudence Davis

Principal

Jean Hadges*

Wendy Clarke

Associate Principal

Sarah Beggs

Piccolo

Andrew Macleod

Principal

Oboes

Johannes Grosso

Principal

Michael Pisani

Acting Associate Principal

Ann Blackburn

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson*

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*

Peter Luff

Acting Associate Principal

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

“Downright

TYSON STELZER

Artists

Bruckner and Strauss

Thursday 2 October at 7:30pm

Saturday 4 October at 7:30pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday 3 October at 7:30pm

Costa Hall, Geelong

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko conductor

Alexandra Flood soprano

Program

Wagner Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman): Overture [12’]

R. Strauss Six Lieder for voice and orchestra [18’]

Freundliche Vision (A Pleasant Vision), Op. 48 No. 1

Winterweihe (Winter Dedication), Op. 48 No. 4

Zueignung (Dedication), Op. 10 No. 1

Waldseligkeit (Woodland Rapture), Op. 49 No. 1

Befreit (Released), Op. 39 No. 4

Cäcilie (Cecily), Op. 27 No. 2

Interval [20’]

Bruckner Symphony No. 7 [65’]

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the concert with composer Kym Dillon 6:45pm (2 Oct) and 6:45pm (4 Oct) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall 6:45pm (3 Oct) at Costa Hall

Running time: 2 hours and 15 minutes including interval. Timings listed are approximate.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, published by MWV, has been supplied by Clear Music Australia Pty Ltd as the exclusive hire agents in Australia and New Zealand.

Vasily Petrenko conductor

Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra following a celebrated 15-year tenure as Chief Conductor (2006–2021). He is also Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and has served as Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra (2015–2024), Oslo Philharmonic (2013–2020) and Principal Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2009–2013). He stood down as Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ in 2022, having been Principal Guest Conductor from 2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.

He studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and began his career as Resident Conductor (1994–1997) of Mikhailovsky Theatre. He has since conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras and is equally at home in opera, with more than 30 operas in his repertoire.

Highlights of the 2025–26 season include tours with the Royal Philharmonic in Spain and the United States. He makes his Warsaw Philharmonic debut and will conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Dresden Philharmonic and Houston Symphony, among others.

His widely acclaimed discography includes Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Elgar cycles with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and recordings of Scriabin, Strauss, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky with the Oslo Philharmonic.

Vasily Petrenko was Gramophone Artist of the Year (2017) and Classical BRIT Male Artist of the Year (2010), and he holds honorary degrees from Liverpool’s three universities. In 2024, he co-founded a young conductors’ academy in Armenia.

PHOTO: SVETLANA TARLOVA

Alexandra Flood soprano

Australian lyric coloratura soprano Alexandra Flood has been a member of the Vienna Volksoper soloist ensemble since 2022. In the 2024–25 season her roles included Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute), Frasquita (Carmen), Princess Fantasia (Le Voyage dans la lune) and Adele (Die Fledermaus), as well as Carmina Burana at Opéra de Dijon. Other recent roles include Clorinda (La Cenerentola), Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Musetta (La bohème), and Pamina (The Magic Flute).

She began her opera career as a young artist at the Salzburg Festival, singing Blonde in Die Entführung aus dem Serail für Kinder and Modistin in Der Rosenkavalier. While completing a master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, she made her debut as Marguerite in Hervé’s Petit Faust (Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz) and sang Norina in Don Pasquale (Opéra Krakow), the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen (Pacific Opera, Sydney), Blonde (Bregenz Landestheater), the soprano lead in Jonathan Dove’s church-opera Tobias and the Angel (Munich Radio Orchestra) and Violetta in Lotte de Beer’s new Traviata Remixed production (Grachten Festival Amsterdam).

She has enjoyed a flourishing solo career singing Maria in West Side Story (Bolzano), Nannetta in Falstaff (Malmö Opera), Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro (Teatro Réal), Jemmy in William Tell (Victorian Opera), Norina (Bregenz), and Elle in La Voix humaine (Opera Queensland), and appearing in the premiere of Moritz Eggert’s Caliban (Dutch National Opera). In France, she has appeared with the Paris Opera as a guest of the Académie singing Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, followed by concerts at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Opéra de Dijon New Year’s Concert. Her Australian concert engagements have included performances with the Adelaide and Queensland symphony orchestras and this is her MSO debut.

Alexandra Flood is Artistic Director of the Queensland Art Song Festival.

PHOTO: LAURIANNE GOULEY

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)

Program Notes

The Flying Dutchman: Overture

Pursued by creditors, in 1839 the 26-yearold Richard Wagner and his wife Minna fled for London from Riga in Latvia, where he’d been music director. Their ship, the Thetis, was battered by storms and took shelter in a Norwegian cove.

There, said Wagner in his memoirs, the idea for his fourth opera, The Flying Dutchman, took root. Listening to the overture’s stormy opening you could believe this. The real inspiration for the opera, however, may have been Heinrich Heine’s Recollections of Herr von Schabelewopski (1834), which contains a version of the Flying Dutchman tale.

Wagner’s opera concerns the old legend of a ship’s captain (the Dutchman) and his ghostly crew, condemned by a curse to sail the seas unless, and until, the Dutchman can find the redeeming love of a selfless woman. In Wagner’s opera, that woman is Senta, who sacrifices her life to save the Dutchman’s soul.

The overture was written in November 1841, after the rest of the opera. Rather like the overtures of Carl Maria von Weber, whom Wagner admired, it foreshadows the opera’s concerns in its juxtaposition of tempestuous passages, the pacifying effect of ‘Senta’s Ballad’ (cor anglais solo) and the dance-like middle section based on the chorus from Scene 7, ‘Steuermann! Lass die Wacht!’, which Wagner claimed to have been suggested by the calls of the Thetis’s crewmen echoing round the Norwegian cove’s granite walls.

The Flying Dutchman was the earliest work that Wagner later acknowledged as part of his canon. Senta was the first of the ‘redeemer heroines’ he portrayed, and although Wagner was still decades away from the Music Drama with which he changed operatic history, The Flying Dutchman points the way to those operas in its dramatic sweep and insight into human motivation. It still features as a standalone overture of course, but that overture is a superb example of 19th-century nature portraiture.

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)

orchestrated by Strauss and Robert Heger*

Six Lieder for voice and orchestra

Freundliche Vision, Op. 48 No. 1

Winterweihe, Op. 48 No. 4

Zueignung, Op. 10 No. 1*

Waldseligkeit, Op. 49 No. 1

Befreit, Op. 39 No. 4

Cäcilie, Op. 27 No. 2

Alexandra Flood soprano

‘Eros himself sings in Mozart’s melody; Love in its most beautiful, purest form speaks to our feelings…’ Like the music of his idol, Strauss’s 200-odd Lieder deal with love, be it erotic yearning, the promise of shared solitude, the sadness of parting.

Fittingly, the uxorious Strauss’s ideal voice was that of Pauline de Ahna, whom he married in 1894, describing her as: the model interpreter of my songs. Her performance is distinguished in equal measure by the most subtle penetration of the poetic content and impeccable taste in shaping the melody refinement and grace.

Norman Del Mar describes the minor poetry of Otto Birnbaum (1865–1910), ‘able to touch a vein of gold in Strauss’s lyrical make up’. Composed in 1910 but orchestrated in 1918, Freundliche Vision (A Pleasant Vision) depicts lovers planning to spend their lives together blissfully in a cool white house in a green wood.

This ideal is reflected in Winterweihe (Winter Dedication) from 1900, a setting of poetry by Karl Friedrich Henckel (1864–1929). Orchestrated in 1918, Winterweihe is restrained, except when imagery of inner light, spiritual bridges, and blessed love takes the voice high above the

orchestra. Strauss alludes to the melody in his opera Arabella at a moment of similar sentiment.

Strauss’s first published songs, a set of six, Op. 10, appeared in 1885 with texts by Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg (1812–1864). The early hit Zueignung (Dedication) is a strophic song with subtle variations, a strong rhythm and bright major tonality; it is a hymn of thanks to the beloved for banishing the evils of solitude.

Conductor Robert Heger orchestrated this version in 1932, though in 1940 Strauss himself revised the song and rescored it.

The singer of Waldseligkeit (Forest Rapture), a setting of a poem by Richard Dehmel (1863–1920), is completely alone, but her anticipation of the beloved is reflected in the transparent murmuring of the orchestra, and its fragmentary rising melodic motifs. Composed in 1901 it too was orchestrated in 1918 and is dedicated to Strauss’s ‘beloved wife’.

Dehmel’s Befreit (Released) is an elusive poem: the refrain of ‘o Glück!’ (O joy!) becomes ever more radiant each time, but as Dehmel noted, the singer is farewelling a dying spouse. Death will release him or her from suffering, but their love will abide; the melody’s sighing semitones gradually broaden, reaching an ecstatic climax on the word ‘weinen’ (weeping) as the couple will meet again in dreams. The song dates from 1898, but was orchestrated in 1933.

In the poem by Heinrich Hart (1855–1906), Cäcilie admonishes her lover that if only he knew how she suffered he could come to her. Strauss responds with turbulent, yearning music. This song is one of the Op. 27 set composed shortly before the Strausses’ wedding in 1894 and orchestrated three years later.

Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)

Symphony No.7 in E major (Nowak edition)

I. Allegro moderato

II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam [Very solemn and very slow]

III. Scherzo. Sehr schnell [Very fast]

IV. Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht schnell [Turbulent, but not fast]

At the age of 60, the diffident, pious Anton Bruckner suddenly achieved international fame as a composer with his Seventh Symphony. He had moved from the provinces to the imperial capital in 1868 to take up a position at the Vienna Conservatory, and had travelled as far afield as Paris and London as one of the greatest organists of the age. But until the mid-1880s, his own music had failed to find a foothold in Vienna’s musical life –partly the result of his idolisation of Wagner, which was anathema in a city where Brahms presided as the resident Great Composer, aided by powerful critics like Eduard Hanslick.

Heading a powerful clique of critics, Hanslick regarded Brahms, not Wagner or Liszt, as embodying the ‘true’ tradition of German music, and he routinely attacked Bruckner’s music in print. Wagner, on the other hand, seems genuinely to have admired Bruckner’s work. The two composers had met in 1873 when Bruckner approached Wagner for permission to dedicate his Third Symphony to the ‘Master of all masters’. Their meeting, over several beers, was a highlight of Bruckner’s life; Wagner’s acceptance of the dedication gave Bruckner immense confidence, even though the premiere of the Third itself was a fiasco. While working on the Seventh Symphony, Bruckner later remarked: ‘One day I came home and felt very sad. It occurred to me that the Master would

soon die, and at that moment the C sharp minor theme of the Adagio came to me.’

Indeed, during the composition of the slow movement, Bruckner heard the news of Wagner’s death, incorporating his grief into the final pages of the movement. But the piece as a whole was conceived before Bruckner’s premonition.

The dimensions and trajectory of the work are signalled by the melody with which the first movement (Allegro moderato) begins. Built over a typical texture of shimmering strings, it is a long and very beautiful tune that outlines the key of E major over two octaves, then moves through seemingly distant keys and a ‘false’ close before returning to E for a fuller restatement of the melody itself. The movement displays Bruckner’s habitual use of three contrasting groups of themes, the second of which is what he liked to call a ‘songperiod’, and out of these he spins a lengthy series of contrasting musical worlds, using key-relationships for maximum dramatic effect.

This principle governs the whole work. The key of C sharp minor, though closely related to the work’s ‘home key’ of E major, is avoided through the first movement (Allegro moderato) so that its appearance in the second (Adagio) is more emphatic. In this, the premonitory elegy for Wagner, Bruckner introduces four Wagner tubas. As in its model, the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, ‘very slow and very solemn’ material is contrasted with a theme in a different mood, speed and key. Bruckner was working on the climax of the movement – a majestic passage in C major – when he heard of Wagner’s death. He quotes a motive from his Te Deum (associated with the words ‘Non confundar in aeternum’ – let me never be put to shame) but it is in the coda which follows with its almost Wagnerian horn calls that Bruckner farewells the Master.

After the catharsis of the Adagio, Bruckner produces in the third movement one of his

Bruckner (left) arrives in heaven, where he is greeted by Liszt and Wagner, followed by Schubert, Schumann and Weber, then Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Haydn and Handel, with J.S. Bach at the organ (Detail from a silhouette by Otto Böhler, c.1900)

most delightfully energetic, and deceptively simple, scherzos. Again, the movement’s key – A minor – has been avoided so far. The octave and perfect fifth which constitute the theme of this section are the most stable intervals in tonal music, but Bruckner effortlessly plays this stability off against a series of unexpected excursions into different keys, and it proves a genuinely witty foil to the central, more lyrical, Trio section (marked ‘somewhat slower’).

The Finale, although less massive than some, is constructed from four large sections of material. The first section is in E major, and deliberately recalls the first movement in its use of the stable intervals of the common chord; the second and third sections are, respectively, in keys a third above and below E; finally the fourth section, using material based on the first, charts the journey from the key of A back to the home key.

It may be that with the death of Wagner, Bruckner was the heir-apparent for his now large group of supporters in Vienna. Nonetheless, Bruckner at first tried to stop performances of this work there, fearing that Hanslick’s opposition would

undermine his growing reputation in other parts of the German-speaking world. The Seventh’s premiere was in the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Arthur Nikisch in 1884 and the applause lasted for 15 minutes. Hermann Levi, who had facilitated Bruckner’s dedication of the work to the Wagner-mad Ludwig II of Bavaria, conducted the work in Munich, declaring it ‘the most significant symphonic work since 1827’, and within a few years it had been heard throughout Germany as well as in New York, Chicago, Amsterdam, Budapest and London. When it finally was heard in Vienna in 1886, Hanslick’s colleague Kalbeck memorably wrote: ‘It comes from the Nibelungen and goes to the devil!’

Actually, it is music about going to heaven, or, as Robert Simpson puts it, ‘a patient search for pacification’. Appropriately, the Adagio was performed at Bruckner’s funeral. Engel writes that: ‘Brahms, a very sick old man, stood outside the gate, but refused to enter. Someone heard him mutter sadly, “It will be my turn soon”, and then he sighed and went wearily home.’

Artists

Impressions of Paris

Thursday 23 October at 7:30pm

Saturday 25 October at 2:00pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Rodolfo Barráez conductor

Nicholas McCarthy piano

Program

James Henry* Newport Lakes** [10’]

Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand [20’]

Interval [20’]

Franck Symphony in D minor [42’]

* Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence ** World premiere of an MSO commission

CONCERT EVENTS

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music with Nicholas Bochner and James Henry

6:45pm (23 Oct) and 1:15pm (25 Oct) in the Stalls Foyer (Level 2) at Hamer Hall

Music & Ideas: Creating an Inclusive Future

Wednesday 22 October at 6.30pm Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre

Learn more about Nicholas McCarthy’s life as an artist alongside fellow pianist Nat Bartsch in a thought-provoking discussion hosted by Morwenna Collett.

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

Rodolfo Barráez conductor

Berlin-based Venezuelan conductor Rodolfo Barráez brings remarkable vivacity, sensitivity and an infectious charisma to his artistry. He is Associate Conductor with both the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela, and Conductor-in-Residence at the Paris Opera. He was previously Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In addition to his MSO debut, the 2025–26 season includes debuts with the New Zealand Symphony, Belgrade Philharmonic and Athens State orchestras, as well as engagements with Opéra de Marseille. Recent highlights include a South American tour with the Münchener Kammerorchester and a China tour with the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela, as well as concerts with the Appassionato Orchestra (Verbier Festival), Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Hallé Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Gävle Symfoniorkester, Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra and Choir, Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias, the Querétaro and Minería symphony orchestras, and the Bogotá, Yucatán and UNAM philharmonic orchestras.

He began his career as a violinist before completing conducting degrees in Venezuela and Berlin. He won first prize at the 2018 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México International Conducting Competition, second at the 2020 Siemens-Hallé International Conductor Competition (Manchester), and first at the 2023 Hong Kong International Conducting Competition. In 2019 he made his European debut at the Philharmonie Berlin conducting the Hauptstadt Symphony Orchestra.

Influenced by his own education as part of El Sistema, Rodolfo Barráez is committed to music education, including, in 2019, founding the Falcón Conducting Workshop to support the development of emerging conductors.

Nicholas McCarthy piano

One of the world’s most inspiring pianists, Nicholas McCarthy was born in 1989 without his right hand and in 2012 became the only one-handed pianist to graduate from the Royal College of Music in its 130-year history. In 2018 he was awarded honorary membership of the RCM by its President, HRH the former The Prince of Wales.

He is a champion of music for piano left-hand, a repertoire that first came into being in the early 19th century and which developed rapidly following World War I as a result of the many injuries suffered on the battlefield.

An early career highlight saw him performing with the British Paraorchestra at the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic games. Since then he has performed worldwide, and last year his Queen Elizabeth Hall debut recital drew the Sunday Times headline: ‘So dazzling with one hand, he doesn’t need another.’

At the 2022 Hong Kong Arts Festival he performed both Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Britten’s Diversions for left hand and orchestra in the same concert – the first time this had been accomplished since Paul Wittgenstein in 1951. He repeated this feat with the Ulster Orchestra at the 2023 Belfast International Festival.

The 2024–25 season saw debut performances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and a Vienna recital debut at the Vienna Musikverein, where his hero Paul Wittgenstein made his concert debut in 1914. This is his MSO debut.

Nicholas McCarthy is also in demand as a corporate speaker and has given three TEDx talks to date. He has presented for the BBC Proms and the Leeds Piano Competition, (both on BBC4), and a music program, Zichy, Wittgenstein and Me, for BBC Radio 3.

PHOTO: PAUL MARC MITCHELL (WARNER CLASSICS)

James Henry (born 1979)

Newport Lakes

The composer writes…

Program Notes

For my piece Newport Lakes I wanted to offer an impressionistic perspective of a place that holds deep meaning for me, my family and our wider neighbourhood. To begin, I set out on foot, walking the lakeside trails to see what might speak to me musically. The moments that stayed with me were the grand vistas, whether glimpsed from elevated lookouts or revealed suddenly as the trees opened to uninterrupted stretches of water. Those striking views became the heart of the composition, shaping the main theme that returns throughout the work.

I also aimed to capture the experience of the trails themselves. Much of the music moves at a calm, steady tempo, echoing the natural pace of a long walk or gentle exercise. At times the path forks, prompting a pause to choose a direction. Each choice offers a fresh perspective: a subtle change of light, a new sound carried on the breeze. The music reflects these shifts, along with the sensation of climbing gentle rises and descending soft slopes. You may even hear suggestions of birds calling overhead or the quiet rhythm of footsteps on gravel.

The history of the lakes gives the place a powerful resonance. Once a natural landscape, it became a bluestone quarry and later an abandoned wasteland. After years of debate, the community chose to restore it to something close to its original form. For me, this renewal echoes the revival of Indigenous language and culture, work I have been fortunate and honoured to be part of.

About the composer:

Yuwaalaraay/Yorta Yorta composer James Henry is known for his fusion of traditional Aboriginal and contemporary musical genres. He is the MSO’s First Nations Composer in Residence and in 2023 was an inaugural participant in the MSO’s First Voices program as well as First Nations Composer in Residence for Ensemble Offspring (2023–24).

He has composed for the Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestras, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Melbourne String Ensemble and Derwent Valley Concert Band, and has been musical director for the Dreamtime at the G and Melbourne Festival ‘Tanderrum’ opening ceremonies. Recent stage credits as composer-sound designer include The Black Woman of Gippsland and Jacky (Melbourne Theatre Company), 37 (MTC and Queensland Theatre), Blak in the Room (MTC/Ilbijerri Theatre Company), Guuranda (Insite Arts/ Adelaide Festival), In Place (Na Djinang Circus/Footscray Arts Centre), Tracker (Australian Dance Theatre/Ilbijerri) and Heart is a Wasteland (Ilbijerri), for which he earned his first Green Room Award for Sound Design in 2023.

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

Lento – Andante –Allegro – Tempo primo

Nicholas McCarthy piano

Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is of such ferocious technical difficulty that its dedicatee and first performer, Paul Wittgenstein, begged the composer for some simplification. Ravel, however, was a little too fond of his ‘neat and nice labours’, according to the London Musical Times, and refused outright.

The first performance occurred not with the composer at the helm, but with Robert Heger conducting, in Vienna, prompting much speculation about ‘artistic personalities’. It was not until 1933 that the concerto was heard in Paris. All differences apparently resolved, Ravel conducted the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, while Wittgenstein performed.

We can be glad today of Ravel’s pride in his ‘neat and nice labours’, as the Concerto for the Left Hand occupies a unique place in the repertoire. But Wittgenstein can hardly be accused of faint-heartedness. Brother of the philosopher Ludwig, he lost his right arm at the Russian front in 1914, but resolved to continue his career as concert pianist. He commissioned works for left hand alone from Prokofiev, Hindemith and Britten. Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto was published in 1931, as Wittgenstein’s ‘exclusive property’.

Compositions for the left hand were not without precedent – pianists, it seems, had been losing their arms or hands or disabling themselves since time immemorial. And for some reason the right hand was always the first to go. Schumann famously ruined his right hand through ‘overdone technical studies’, perhaps involving the use of a mechanical

device; in the 19th century a Count Geza Zichy contributed a concerto for left hand after losing his right arm hunting. Leopold Godowsky, who lost the use of his right hand in a stroke, had by good fortune previously composed 22 studies on Chopin etudes for left hand alone.

Ravel studied Saint-Saëns’ Six Studies for the Left Hand in his preparation for this concerto, and may have been exposed to Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne for Left Hand Alone. Ravel’s solutions to the problem of ‘half a pianist’, however, are entirely his own. The difficulty, he claimed, was ‘to avoid the impressions of insufficient weight in the sound-texture,’ something he addressed by reverting to the ‘imposing style of the traditional concerto.’

The Left Hand concerto and Ravel’s G major concerto for both hands were composed simultaneously, in the years 1929 to 1931, but the two works could scarcely be more different. The Concerto in G is a popular and enduring work, but essentially a divertissement – a goodhearted rollick. Perversely, the composer saves his deepest statements, and his greatest virtuosity, for his ‘lame’ work. It unfolds almost as a concerto grosso, with the pianist responding to the orchestra in

dazzling cadenzas. Here the soloist really is tragic hero, triumphing against orchestra and handicap.

Listening Guide

The concerto begins with cellos and double bass in their lowest register, creating less a sound than a feeling of darkness. A contrabassoon in its lowest range introduces fragments of the theme. (This passage, incidentally, was originally scored for the historical curiosity of the sarrusophone – a bizarre hybrid of saxophone and bassoon, designed for use in military bands.) Other instruments gradually enter the fray until the texture builds to an enormous climax, and the piano enters, in a cadenza of extraordinary virtuosity. The orchestra responds and builds to an even greater plane, before the piano returns, and surprises us with transparent lyricism. This introduces the central section, of distinct jazz influence. Parallel triads skid downwards through the piano; a tarantella recalls the opening melody. Finally, Ravel returns to his opening material, and a yet more dazzling piano cadenza. The piece ends almost too abruptly, with what the composer described as a ‘brutal peroration’.

Musically probably the supreme work for left hand alone, the concerto is also one of the most difficult. Ravel makes few concessions to single-handedness, and the piano part is expressed in virtuosic, stereo sound. The pianist Alfred Cortot suggested that a two-handed arrangement would do nothing to diminish the music, but would rather allow it a more permanent place in the repertory. The Ravel family refused. The concerto exists as unique piece of musical illusion, and perhaps they wished to preserve this. The first performances received an excited audience and critical response, not least because of the work’s outpouring of sentiment. The concerto’s overt

emotionalism refutes Stravinsky’s dismissal of the composer as ‘the Swiss watch-maker’. Henry Prunières noted wistfully that he should have liked Ravel to have ‘been able to let us observe more frequently what he was guarding in his heart, instead of accrediting the legend that his brain alone invented these admirable sonorous fantasmagorias. From the opening [bars of the concerto], we are plunged into a world to which Ravel has but rarely introduced us.’

It was to be short-lived introduction. Ravel soon exhibited symptoms of the debilitating brain disease that was to end his life. He composed three songs for a projected film about Don Quixote which, along with the two piano concertos, became his unexpected swansong.

When Left is Right

For two-handed pianists, it is almost always the right hand that is ‘the first to go’ –through overuse at the piano itself or through unrelated accidents – but that in itself doesn’t explain the relative profusion and astonishing success of piano works composed for left hand alone.

As it turns out, the right hand, although the dominant hand for many, is not well-suited to performing alone. In most music, the melody is found at the ‘top’ of the texture (or at the right-hand side of the keyboard) and the accompaniment figures – chords, arpeggios and so on – at the ‘bottom’ (or left-hand side). The right hand doesn’t find this easy at all, the pinky finger being weak and unsuited to sustaining a melody. But the shape of the left hand is perfect for the task: the strong thumb is able to bring out a treble melody line, while the four fingers are wellplaced to grapple with the bass line and accompaniment.

César Franck (1822–1890)

Symphony in D minor

I. Lento – Allegro non troppo

II. Allegretto

III. Allegro non troppo

In France in the 1860s and 1870s, composers seemed compelled to respond to the challenges of the ‘New German School’ of Wagner and Liszt, but, for the most part, were equally compelled not to ‘sound German’. These responses are heard in the later operas of Massenet, where systems of leitmotif come into play; in Saint-Saëns’ tone poems, which owe their vivid pictorialism to Liszt; and even in the ballet music of Delibes, where the Wagner of Tannhäuser sometimes peeps through. But perhaps the most striking and original response was contained in the small but distinct output of the Belgianborn composer César Franck.

Although Franck’s Symphony is now regarded as one of the cornerstones of symphonic expression, it has been in and out of fashion many times over since its first performance, in Paris in 1889. Franck was 65 when he finished the piece, yet he was anything but an established composer in the eyes (and ears) of the musical establishment. He had spent most of his career as an organist and teacher, and he did not write a major instrumental work until the 1877 symphonic poem Les Eolides.

The Symphony in D minor is one of a handful of works from the last years of Franck’s life on which his reputation rests, the others including his Violin Sonata and the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra. The personality this music reveals is one influenced by Beethoven’s concentration of expression, Wagner’s orchestral texture and harmonic colours, and the time scale of Wagner’s music dramas. It is also influenced by years in the organ loft, and by the freedom from

formal sonata procedures Liszt had advocated in his symphonic poems, in particular Liszt’s method of structural development: ‘transformation of themes’, in which a work’s overall structure is determined by the major points of change to its principal themes.

Franck welds these potentially contradictory elements into something unique and big-hearted in this symphony. Like Beethoven, his principal motifs are often short, and he is able to transform these germ-like ideas with power and success. Like Beethoven, he has no time for elaborate introductions – in each movement he plunges almost straight into the argument at hand – and his codas do not meander. But the results are not at all Beethovenian, because Franck’s sense of scale is so spacious. He parades his good ideas in emphatic review so that, for example, the slow introduction to the symphony becomes a kind of motto theme for the first movement as it progresses. And his final, elaborate recapitulation in the finale is not the work of a man in a hurry. This epic style of utterance was also a result of his re-examination of traditional formal procedures, by which process he took Beethoven’s notion of ‘the symphony as personal testament’ further into the heart of Romantic feeling.

In effect, this symphony’s dark first three notes are the basis of all that follows. They are the first movement’s main, anchoring theme, and they establish the movement of the semitone as a governing factor in the whole work. To note just two longterm implications of this theme: First, the big chorale tune of this opening movement, which is in effect the first climax of the piece, is really the shining side of the opening’s darkness. This tune, in turn, becomes the generative force for the final movement’s main syncopated figure. Second, the cor anglais melody which dominates the second movement is clearly a creature of the same cast as the theme which opens the symphony.

The notion of thematic inter-relatedness is more closely observed in this work than in any of Liszt’s symphonic poems, where ‘transformation of themes’ had its birthplace. It is one of the symphony’s most innovative characteristics, and while it enraged some of César Franck’s contemporaries, it delighted others. The young Claude Debussy responded: ‘[The symphony] is amazing. I should prefer a less four-square structure. But what smart ideas!’

One of the smartest manifestations of the work’s concentration of thought is the combination of slow movement and scherzo into one movement. As the English music scholar and critic Donald Tovey wrote of the Allegretto, ‘it has the allure of a slow minuet; but by using the harmony of the cor anglais tune and –simplest of all means – halving its note values, Franck creates a contrasting, quicker set of themes that eventually coalesce with the stately tune that opened the movement.’

Franck presents his ideas with, for the most part, such skill that it is easy to miss the ease with which he moves between keys. By the time we arrive at the Allegro non troppo (two-and-a-half minutes into the first movement), Franck has shifted from his home key of D minor through F sharp minor to E flat. When the work was new, this was another aspect of it that offended conservative taste. His melodic ideas, as already noted, are not so freewheeling, and are often dependent on the movement upwards or downwards of the semitone, a characteristic which, in the words of French music specialist Martin Cooper: ‘suggests the action of the organist’s fingers or feet executing a sliding semi-tonal descent on the keys or pedals. The undulating dotted semiquaver theme which sits in the centre of the second movement is a good example.’

Franck’s symphony was influential: the language of Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun was clearly informed by the lusciousness of Franck’s juicier moments. But after World War I, when the European avant-garde had no taste for expressions of Romantic aspiration, the work receded from view. It only established its modern reputation gradually, from the 1940s, and was restored to favour with the help of the long-playing record.

Artists

Franck’s Symphony

Monday 27 October at 6:30pm

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Rodolfo Barráez conductor

Program

Franck Symphony in D minor [42’]

Introduced by Rodolfo Barráez and Nicholas Bochner

The artist biography and program note for this performance can be found on pages 18 and 23.

CONCERT EVENTS

Tonight’s onstage introduction will be Auslan interpreted.

Running time: 1 hour. Timings listed are approximate.

Quick Fix at Half Six is supported by City of Melbourne. Auslan interpreted performances are supported by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.

Artists

A Celebration of Sibelius

Thursday 30 October at 7:30pm

Melbourne Town Hall

Friday 31 October at 7:30pm Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Benjamin Northey conductor

Edward Walton violin

Program

Sibelius Finlandia [8’]

Sibelius Violin Concerto [32’]

Interval [20’]

Sibelius Valse triste [7’]

Sibelius Symphony No. 3 [30’]

CONCERT EVENTS

Organ recital: Calvin Bowman performs a free recital on the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ at 6:30pm on 30 October

Pre-concert talk: Learn more about the music at 6:45pm on 31 October at Robert Blackwood Hall

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

Benjamin Northey conductor

PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR AND ARTISTIC ADVISOR – LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT

Benjamin Northey is the Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor – Learning and Engagement of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. This year he took up the position of Conductor in Residence with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

He studied conducting at Finland’s Sibelius Academy with Leif Segerstam and Atso Almila, completing his studies at the Stockholm Royal College of Music with Jorma Panula in 2006. He previously studied with John Hopkins at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (2000–02).

He appears regularly as a guest conductor with all the major Australian symphony orchestras, Opera Australia (La bohème, Turandot, L’elisir d’amore, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Carmen), New Zealand Opera (Sweeney Todd) and State Opera South Australia (La sonnambula, L’elisir d’amore and Les Contes d’Hoffmann). He is also active in the performance of new Australian orchestral music, having premiered dozens of new works by Australian composers, and is a driving force in the performance of orchestral music by Australian First Nations composers and performers.

His international appearances include concerts with the London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Malaysian philharmonic orchestras, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, and the New Zealand and Christchurch symphony orchestras.

An Aria, Air Music and APRA–AMCOS Art Music awards winner, Benjamin Northey was voted Limelight magazine’s Australian Artist of the Year in 2018. His many recordings can be found on ABC Classic.

PHOTO: LAURA MANARITI

Edward Walton violin

Edward Walton grew up in Melbourne, studying violin with Robin Wilson of the Australian National Academy of Music. He was a scholarship recipient in the pre-college program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and was selected for the 2017 and 2018 Australian Chamber Orchestra Academy. He has also studied with Boris Kuschnir.

He made his international orchestral debut at the age of 11, performing the Khachaturian concerto with the West-Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in the Czech Republic, and has since performed as a concerto soloist and in solo recitals and chamber music in Europe and the United States as well as in Australia.

In September 2022 he played Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the MSO in Hamer Hall. Later that year, he was a finalist and prize winner in the Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards – at 16 years old the youngest competitor.

Other notable accomplishments include second place in the Junior Division of the 2021 Menuhin International Violin Competition, and the Hans Reiner Storz Memorial Award at the Melbourne International Violin Competition in 2018. He has also won first prize in such competitions as Il Piccolo Violino Magico (Italy), the Grand Prize Virtuoso Competition (UK), the Medallion International Concerto Competition (USA), the under-19 competition of the Jeunes Artistes musicals du Centre (France) and the International London Grand Prize Virtuoso competition, culminating in an invitation to perform at the Royal Albert Hall.

Edward Walton plays on a Gennaro Gagliano violin, generously on loan through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

Program Notes

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)

Finlandia, Op. 26

If you listen to orchestral music with any frequency, Finlandia will have been inescapable. Given its ubiquity, it’s important to note that Finlandia is to Sibelius’s work what the 1812 Overture is to Tchaikovsky’s: very much a ceremonial piece, written for a specific occasion, that somehow took on a life of its own.

Finland’s Press Pension Celebrations of November 1899 were a thinly disguised attempt to create a fighting fund in support of a free press, at a time when the country’s Russian rulers were vigilantly watchful of expressions of nationalist sentiment. Yet in Finland, nationalism was in the air – and as the dawn of a new century was near, an air of optimism too.

The three-day celebrations culminated in a gala performance including a series of historical tableaux, staged to Sibelius’s music. There were six scenes, tracing Finnish history from ancient times to the late 19th century. And it was for the final

tableau, ‘Finland Awakes!’, that the piece we now know as Finlandia was composed. As a newspaper report described it:

The powers of darkness menacing Finland had not succeeded in their terrible threats. Finland awakes.…the great men of the time…the beginnings of elementary education and the first steam locomotive are all recorded.

It’s not difficult to hear the snarling brass fanfares that open Finlandia as ‘powers of darkness’ (which to the audience would have been Russia under Nicholas II); the contrasting hymn-like woodwind figure as a prayer for better times, and the rumbustious, cymbal-clashing Allegro –which forms the bulk of the work – as the march of progress towards more enlightened times and, although this word could hardly be used for fear of censorship, independence.

Revised for concert performance, the success of Finlandia was assured. It made a tremendous impact wherever it was played, and remains the composer’s bestknown piece. Years later, Sibelius was moved to comment: ‘Why does this tonepoem catch on with the public? I suppose because of its plain air style. The themes on which it is based came to me directly. Pure inspiration.’

1899, 1900 1903

Finlandia is heard for the first time in November 1899 with a concert premiere on 2 July 1900, Robert Kajanus conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic. Kuolema (Valse triste) is first staged 2 December 1903.

I. Allegro moderato – Allegro molto

II. Adagio di molto

III. Allegro ma non tanto

Edward Walton violin

Sibelius was not the sort of composer to write a concerto. The conception of a ‘show-off’ work for soloist was anathema to Sibelius, who increasingly throughout his compositional career sought to employ the purest, most unselfconscious forms of musical expression.

And yet for all his aversion to merely ‘gestural’ instrumental effects, Sibelius maintained a love of the violin. As a young man he had harboured ambitions of becoming a virtuoso violinist himself, but a comparatively late start to his training, together with a shoulder injury and severe stage fright, meant that this career option was not viable. Instead, he had to content himself with his famous improvisation sessions as he sat high on a rock overlooking a lake, and occasional appearances as the second violinist in a string quartet at the Helsinki Conservatory.

But his frustrated ambitions must have been compensated at least in part by his composition in 1903 of his only concerto of any kind, the Violin Concerto, which is now acknowledged alongside the Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky concertos as one of the greatest works in the form.

Written between the second and third symphonies, the Violin Concerto demonstrates just how successfully Sibelius managed to adapt the virtuoso vehicle to his own expressive needs. For the listener, the concerto is not so much a demonstration of fiendish virtuosity, but rather an organic musical whole in which every note – even the most fleeting –contributes to the overall expressive intent. In other words, its technical demands emerge from its artistic purpose.

The concerto had been inspired by Willy Burmester, former leader of the Helsinki Orchestra, a disciple of the great violinist Joseph Joachim and long-time admirer of Sibelius’s music. As early as 1902, he had been enquiring as to the concerto’s progress, and he made various offers of technical assistance and advice. In September 1903 Sibelius sent him a short score, to which Burmester replied: ‘I can only say one thing: wonderful! Masterly! Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.’

But when Sibelius finished the work, his anxiety to arrange a first performance as soon as possible and Burmester’s unavailability in the short term, meant that he offered the first performance to Viktor Nováček, an unexceptional Helsinki musician who was so slow to learn it that the concert had to be delayed. When, on 8 February 1904, the flushed and perspiring Nováček premiered the concerto with Sibelius conducting, it was

“I can only say one thing: wonderful! Masterly! Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.”

Willy Burmester, the concerto’s dedicatee

1904, 1905

The Violin Concerto is premiered on 8 February 1904, in Helsinki, with soloist Viktor Nováčèk. The revised version is premiered in Berlin in June 1905 by Karel Halíř with Richard Strauss conducting.

not a success, despite some favourable reviews. ‘The public here is shallow and full of bile,’ wrote Sibelius soon afterwards, and he threatened to withdraw the work.

Burmester had heard of the critical reactions, but was still offering to perform the concerto, promising the composer: ‘I shall play the Concerto in Helsinki in such a way that the city will be at your feet.’ Sibelius set about revising it, completely reworking the first movement and pruning many of the more ornamental and virtuosic elements.

The new version was completed in June 1905, just in time to be included in Richard Strauss’s concert series in Berlin. But again, Burmester’s schedule was already fully booked and he was once more passed over, with the solo part going to Karl Haliř, leader of the Berlin Orchestra. Amidst the general wrangling and bitterness, Burmester vowed never to perform the concerto, while Joachim, on hearing the Berlin premiere, damned it. ‘Joachim seems no longer in tune with the spirit of our time,’ wrote Sibelius in response. Fortunately the Berlin press was rather more enthusiastic, but even so, the work didn’t really establish itself in the repertoire until the 1930s, when Jascha Heifetz began to perform it. Since then it has been regarded as a yardstick by which violinists are measured.

The opening of the first movement is one of the most unmistakable in all music. Over the murmur of muted violins, the

1907

soloist enters immediately with an unforgettable, intense and brooding first subject, soon echoed and developed in the woodwind. This Allegro moderato theme is set against a series of fragmentary figures which form a kind of second subject emerging out of the depths of the cellos and bassoons. The movement itself doesn’t sit well with standard sonata principles, however. The traditional development and recapitulation sections are combined, and the cadenza precedes them both, effectively taking the place of the development. And yet there is a clear organic structure, with the soloist dominating and the rhythm driving on through a series of orchestral climaxes.

The mood of the Adagio is more restrained, but the characteristic intensity remains, as does the poignancy and sense of regret. After a more agitated middle section, the movement ends with a return of the main thematic material, intensified now and with an apparent reluctance to conclude the proceedings.

The finale is a polonaise in all but name. (We owe to Donald Tovey the unbeatable description: a polonaise for polar bears!) It’s a bravura showpiece for the soloist and Sibelius noted: ‘It must be played with absolute mastery. Fast, of course, but no faster than it can be played perfectly.’

It begins with a stamping figure low down in the timpani and strings and the solo part then shoots up heavenwards, with amazingly difficult passages of thirds, harmonics, arpeggios,

Sibelius “dreams horns, breathes divided violins, goes to bed and wakes up with clarinets…”

Critic Karl Flodin

Although the premiere was promised to the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, the first performance of Sibelius’s Third Symphony took place in Helsinki on 25 September, the composer conducting

double-stops – indeed all the pyrotechnics available to the soloist, but at the same time without any sense of self-indulgence or self-conscious display. The wild dance gathers momentum until a series of majestic flourishes from the violin leads to the final, sharp decisive chords from the full orchestra.

Valse triste, Op. 44 No. 1

Sibelius worked at a time when major theatres still supported permanent orchestras and many notable composers wrote incidental music for the theatre. Yet Scandinavia was something of a special case in the years of Sibelius’s composing life: the theatre was an important forum for new ideas about the nature of drama. The work of Ibsen and Strindberg tells something of this vitality, as does the pervasiveness of the Symbolist movement. The work of Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck was performed in translation, and such Finnish painters as Magnus Enckell [see image on page 30] and Axel Gallen-Kallela were prominent Symbolists.

A case in point is the 1903 play Kuolema (Death) by Sibelius’s brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt. It tells of the life of a virtuous man, Paavali, in episodes ranging from the death of his mother through to his

marriage, his family life, his charitable deeds and, finally, his passing.

Sibelius wrote six numbers in all for Kuolema, creating two more when the play was revived in 1911. Unlike his music for the plays King Christian II, Pelleas and Melisande and The Tempest, he did not make a concert suite from the Kuolema music. He did, however, extract some numbers from the score for independent performance, including Scene With Cranes (Op. 44 No. 2) in 1906. And not long after Kuolema was first performed, he re-scored and re-shaped the play’s very first number into a piece that would cross almost all the musical boundaries of the day, making its presence felt all over the Western world.

In the opening scene of Kuolema, Paavali is at the bedside of his dying mother. She tells him she has dreamed she has gone to a ball. Then, as Paavali falls asleep during his vigil, Death comes to his mother; she mistakes him for her late husband, and dances with him. When Paavali awakens, his mother is dead.

The music which accompanies this scene is marked simply Temp di valse lente (in the tempo of a slow waltz). In modifying it to become Valse triste (Sad Waltz), Sibelius joined together the two sections which, in the play, are broken by the mother’s leaning, exhausted, again the wall, while the other phantom dancers withdraw from the scene. He also created a new, gentler ending and streamlined the accompaniment to the main theme.

Schnéevoigt “demonstrated that the Valse Triste…is a masterpiece of atmosphere and macabre evocation” The Herald (13 Apr 1940)

1940

The MSO performs Finlandia and Valse triste in a wartime Finnish Relief Fund concert on 12 April, conducted by Georg Schnéevoigt

Along with Finlandia, another work which originated as music to accompany theatrical performance, Valse triste is among Sibelius’s most popular creations. When cinemas had orchestras and radio stations had light music ensembles, it was arguably his most widely played. And its air of gentle melancholy seems resilient to the many instrumental combinations for which the piece has been scored.

Ironically, Sibelius sold the rights to Valse triste outright to its publisher and was never paid royalties. He would subsequently write many pieces of light music, but none that matched the pervasive popularity of Valse triste.

Abridged from a note © Phillip Sametz

Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 52

I. Allegro moderato

II. Andantino con moto, quasi allegretto

III. Moderato – Allegro, ma non tanto

‘While other composers serve gaudy cocktails,’ Sibelius once said, ‘I offer the world cold, clear water.’ He could not have made this remark when he was creating the Lemminkäinen Suite, the first two symphonies or the Violin Concerto. These are pieces which have, to use Sibelius’s analogy, a recognisable amount of colour and spirit. It would be fair to say that they are big-gestured and rhetorical, although they do not call for lavish forces.

1947

With the Third Symphony of 1907 we enter a different world and a new creative phase in Sibelius’s life. A quick look at the printed score might suggest the word ‘Classical’, for the orchestra is modest – double woodwind and timpani but no further percussion, no tuba, no third trumpet, no harp. The work lasts barely 30 minutes, and by creating a portmanteau finale, Sibelius reduces the standard four movements to three. But this is no ‘homage’ symphony, bringing the gestures of the Classical period up to date. It is not ‘neo’-classical. Rather, it takes the Classical symphony as a point of departure for a study in the creation of unity from fragmentary elements.

Looking backwards to the Third Symphony from the end of Sibelius’s creative life, we can follow its implications clearly. It portends an ever-greater economy of gesture, an increasingly intense quest to pare away musical ideas down to their essentials. In the Fourth Symphony, the Third’s relatively robust world-view gave way to its nihilistic dark side, but the point is still clear: the Symphony in C announced that Sibelius was no longer interested in creating symphonies that were abstract narratives. As Michael Steinberg wrote of Sibelius’s mature symphonic style: ‘There is no imagery and no drama for you to lose yourself in except that of the musical events themselves.’

The Third Symphony’s lithe textures and compactness of ideas and time scale were

Farnsworth Hall “made his orchestra glisten…and obtained really exquisite results from the haunting melodic persistency of [the] Andantino” The Sun News–Pictorial (24 Nov 1947)

First MSO performance of Sibelius’s Third Symphony, conducted by John Farnsworth Hall on 22 November

severely at odds with the richly-scored, expansive music by most of his famous contemporaries – La Mer by Debussy, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Mahler’s Sixth Symphony were some of the novelties of the day. It is possible to see the piece as Sibelius’s reaction to perceived excess on the part of his fellow composers, an antidote to all that colour and scale. But Sibelius was a composer who developed according to his own internal dictates; the strength of the Third Symphony’s musical language speaks of more than a desire to write a corrective. While its Classical demeanour puzzled many of its first listeners, and while it can still seem a private and somewhat aloof piece, its sense of clear purpose, its seemingly artless beauty, is enormously rewarding to the patient listener.

Three main themes set the first movement in motion: a march tune, announced at the outset by cellos and basses; a swinging response first given to the violins; and then an idea that resembles a shepherd’s call, which we first hear high on the woodwinds. The second group of themes begins on the cellos, with one of those sustained initial notes so characteristic of Sibelius’s more lyrical writing. The movement is littered with semiquavers and gives a tremendous impression of movement. The themes intermingle and

1948

refer back and forth to one another in shape and outline, in a process of cumulative renewal. The coda is short and tranquil. There are fewer than six bars marked fortissimo in the whole movement. There is no real slow movement, the Andantino con moto being in the spirit of the ‘slow movement’ of Beethoven’s Seventh. In other words, its power derives from the gentle forward motion created by the main theme’s rhythmic characteristics. Its waltz-like idea undergoes subtle and numerous changes of key and texture, and so dominates the proceedings that it takes on the aspect of a world unto itself.

The finale is really two movements in one: first a bustling scherzo in which a propulsively rocking musical landscape is peopled with short themes given, in turn, to the oboes, clarinets and cellos. The scherzo gathers pace, power and a sense of line until an imposing climax, after which the movement’s themes scatter and re-form with extraordinary rapidity; this is some of the most fragmentary music in all of Sibelius. But then, with a hymn-like main theme first played by violas and cellos, we are in the presence of an entirely different musical entity, the increasingly powerful tread of which seems to gather up all the scherzo material in its wake, until the short, emphatic coda.

Neveu’s “performance served to justify the high place with which she is credited by Sibelius as an interpreter of his music” —The Age (13 Sep 1948)

The MSO performs the Sibelius Violin Concerto on 11 September, with Ginette Neveu as soloist and conductor Eugene Goossens.

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The Aranday Foundation Q

Mrs Jennifer Brukner OAM Q

Tim and Lyn Edward ♡ ♫

Dr Harry Imber ♡

Margaret Jackson AC ♡

Lady Marigold Southey AC Q

The Yulgilbar Foundation Q

Anonymous (1)

Impresario Patrons ($20,000+)

Christine and Mark Armour

Ren Barlow

Shane Buggle and Rosie Callanan ♡ Q

Debbie Dadon AM Q

Catherine and Fred Gerardson

The Hogan Family Foundation

Pauline and David Lawton ♡

Maestro Jaime Martín

Paul Noonan

Elizabeth Proust AO and Brian Lawrence ☼

Sage Foundation ☼

The Sun Foundation

Maestro Patrons ($10,000+)

John and Lorraine Bates ☼

Margaret Billson and the late Ted Billson ♡

John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones AO Q

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM

Jolene S Coultas Q ♡

The Cuming Bequest

Miss Ann Darby in memory of Leslie J. Darby

Anthony and Marina Darling Q

Andrew Dudgeon AM ♡

Andrew and Theresa Dyer Q ♡

Val Dyke ♡

The Finkel Foundation Q

Kim and Robert Gearon ♡

The Glenholme Foundation Q

Charles & Cornelia Goode Foundation Q

Cecilie Hall and the late Hon Michael Watt KC ♡ ♫

Hanlon Foundation ♡

Michael Heine Q

David Horowicz ♡ Q

Peter T Kempen AM ♡ Q

Owen and Georgia Kerr Q

Suzanne Kirkham

Peter Lovell

Janet Matton AM & Robin Rowe Q

Rosemary and the late Douglas Meagher ♡

Dr Justin O’Day and Sally O’Day Q

Ian and Jeannie Paterson

Quin and Lina Scalzo Q

Glenn Sedgwick ♡ Q

Cathy Simpson and John Simpson AM Q

David Smorgon OAM and Kathie Smorgon Q

Straight Bat Private Equity Q

Athalie Williams and Tim Danielson

Lyn Williams AC Q

The Wingate Group Q

Anonymous (2)

Principal Patrons ($5,000+)

Arnold Bloch Leibler Q

Mary Armour

Philip Bacon AO Q

Alexandra Baker

Barbara Bell in memory of Elsa Bell

Julia and Jim Breen

Nigel and Sheena Broughton

Jannie Brown

Chasam Foundation Q

Janet Chauvel and the late Dr Richard Chauvel

John Coppock OAM and Lyn Coppock

David and Kathy Danziger

Mary Davidson and the late Frederick Davidson AM

Carol des Cognets

George and Laila Embelton Q

Equity Trustees ☼

Bill Fleming Q

John and Diana Frew ♡

Carrillo Gantner AC and Ziyin Gantner

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

Geelong Friends of the MSO

The Glavas Family

Louise Gourlay AM Q

Dr Rhyl Wade and Dr Clem Gruen ♡

Louis J Hamon OAM

Dr Keith Higgins and Dr Jane Joshi

Jo Horgan AM & Peter Wetenhall Q

Geoff and Denise Illing

Dr Alastair Jackson AM Q

John Jones

Konfir Kabo

Merv Keehn and Sue Harlow

Mr Ian Kennedy AM & Dr Sandra Hacker AO

Liza Lim AM ♫

Lucas Family Foundation ♡

Morris and Helen Margolis ♡

Samantha Mark

Allan and Evelyn McLaren

Dr Isabel McLean

Gary McPherson ♡

The Mercer Family Foundation

Myer Family Foundation

Suzie and Edgar Myer

Rupert Myer AO and Annabel Myer

Anne Neil in memory of Murray A. Neil ♡

Patricia Nilsson ♡

Sophie Oh

Phillip Prendergast Q

Ralph and Ruth Renard

Jan and Keith Richards

Dr Rosemary Ayton and Professor Sam Ricketson AM

Gillian Ruan Q

The Kate and Stephen Shelmerdine Family Foundation Q

Helen Silver AO and Harrison Young

Brian Snape AM

Dr Michael Soon

Gai and David Taylor

P & E Turner

The Upotipotpon Foundation Q

Mary Waldron

Janet Whiting AM and Phil Lukies Q

Kee Wong and Wai Tang Q

Dawna Wright and Peter Riedel ♡

Peter Yunghanns Q

Igor Zambelli

Shirley and Jeffrey Zajac

Anonymous (4)

Associate Patrons ($2,500+)

Barry and Margaret Amond

Carolyn Baker

Marlyn Bancroft and Peter Bancroft OAM

Janet H Bell

Allen and Kathryn Bloom

Drs Alan and Jennifer Breschkin

Stuart Brown

Lynne Burgess

Dr Lynda Campbell

Oliver Carton

Caroline Davies

Leo de Lange

Sandra Dent

Rodney Dux

Diane and Stephen Fisher

Martin Foley Q

Barry Fradkin OAM and Dr Pam Fradkin

Anthony Garvey and Estelle O’Callaghan

Janette Gill

R Goldberg and Family

Goldschlager Family Charitable Foundation

Colin Golvan AM KC and Dr Deborah Golvan

Miss Catherine Gray

Marshall Grosby and Margie Bromilow

Susan and Gary Hearst

Amy and Paul Jasper

Sandy Jenkins

Sue Johnston

Melissa Tonkin & George Kokkinos

Dr Jenny Lewis

David R Lloyd

Andrew Lockwood

Margaret and John Mason OAM

Lisa and Brad Matthews

Dr Paul Nisselle AM

Simon O’Brien

Roger Parker and Ruth Parker

Alan and Dorothy Pattison

Liz and Graham Pratt

James Ring

Tom and Elizabeth Romanowski

Dr Ronald and Elizabeth Rosanove

Christopher Menz and Peter Rose

Meredith Schilling SC

Marshall Segan in memory of Berek Segan OBE AM and Marysia Segan

Steinicke Family

Jenny Tatchell

Christina Turner

Timothy Walker CBE AM

Bob Weis

Anonymous (5)

Player Patrons ($1,000+)

Dr Sally Adams

Don Adamson

Jessica Agoston Cleary ∞

Don Adamson

Helena Anderson

Applebay Pty Ltd

Margaret Astbury

Geoffrey and Vivienne Baker

Mr Robin Batterham

Peter Berry and Amanda Quirk

Rick Berry

William Birch

Richard Bolitho

Boncal Family Foundation

Michael Bowles and Alma Gill

Joyce Bown

Drs John D L Brookes and Lucy V Hanlon

Elizabeth Brown

Roger and Coll Buckle

Jill and Christopher Buckley

Ronald Burnstein

Daniel Bushaway and Tess Hamilton

Alexandra Champion de Crespigny ∞

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

Jane Edmanson OAM

Christopher R Fraser

Miles George

David I Gibbs AM and Susie O’Neill

Sonia Gilderdale

Dr Celia Godfrey

Dr Marged Goode

Fred and Alexandra Grimwade Q

Hilary Hall, in memory of Wilma Collie

David Hardy

Cathy Henry

Gwenda Henry

Anthony and Karen Ho

In Memory of Rosemary Hodgson

Anna Holdsworth

Rod Home

Lorraine Hook

Doug Hooley

Katherine Horwood

Penelope Hughes

Shyama Jayaswal

Basil and Rita Jenkins

Jane Jenkins

Wendy Johnson

Dr Gint Kalpokas and Dr Michael Upson

Angela Kayser

Drs Bruce and Natalie Kellett

Dr Anne Kennedy

Akira Kikkawa ∞

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

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

Phillip Brown

Patricia Buchanan

Marc Buchholz and Stephan Duchesne

Ian Carson AM

Jungpin Chen

Alan and Wendy Chuck

Robert and Katherine Coco

Dr John Collins

Gregory Crew

Sue Cummings

Dr Catherine Duncan

Dr Matthew Dunn

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

Halina Lewenberg Charitable Foundation

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

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 25 September 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

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

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

Dylan Stewart Director of Marketing & Sales

Shannon Toyne Head of Marketing & Sales

Sally Hern Senior Manager, Campaign Marketing

Claudia Biaggini Senior Marketing Coordinator

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

Lynn Tejano 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