Ahead of the Game

Ahead of the Game Programme 3 Hamilton | Tauranga | Rotorua 28-30 September 2018

Welcome from the Music Director

Kia ora Welcome to this very special concert with Opus Orchestra. We are proud to be giving the world premiere of a spectacular new marimba concerto by Gareth Farr with our own Yoshiko Tsurata (principal timpani for Opus) as soloist. Yoshi, as you will hear, is an extraordinary marimba virtuoso.

Often the term "world premiere" means New Zealand premiere. Sadly, many excellent works by our own composers never get heard beyond these shores. In this case, however, that is not to be the case. When I first approached Gareth about writing the piece he told me that Dame Evelyn Glennie (internationally, the best known of all percussionists) had also asked him to write a concerto for her. Thanks to that, we get to give the world premiere and Dame Evelyn gets the privilege of introducing this marvelous new work to audiences in the Northern hemisphere.

Creative New Zealand have supported this commission (encouraged by a letter from Dame Evelyn underling the esteem in which Gareth is held around the world). But CNZ were joined in their support by a consortium of Opus supporters who wanted to make sure this could happen. I wish to thank all of these very sincerely.

As it turns out, this programme is one in which the orchestra moves around a lot. I hope you enjoy the acoustic/spatial variations as we work our way through four wonderfully varied orchestral masterpieces. I adore Bach. I love Haydn's "Farewell" - and not just for its ending.

And Copland's little "Quiet City" is beautifully evocative. Together they are very eclectic but satisfying - companions for the newest (and the best!) marimba concerto on the planet.

Peter Walls ONZM Music Director Yoshiko Tsuruta - Soloist

Starting at the age of 9, Yoshiko Tsuruta learned marimba privately from Yukiko Sano in Japan.

After relocating to New Zealand in 2004, she graduated from the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington in music performance in 2010, having studied under Bruce McKinnon, Laurence Reese, Bud Jones and Jeremy Fitzsimons. She moved to Austria in 2010 and has completed her Master’s Degree (1st Class) at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz. There she studied marimba with Bogdan Bacanu and percussion with Leonhard Schmidinger.

Yoshiko has won several prizes both in Japan and New Zealand, including the 1st prizes in both the New Zealand School of Music Concerto Competition and the New Zealand National Concerto Competition, and the Brass/Percussion Prize in Gisborne Competition. She reached the semi-final of the International Marimba Competition in Salzburg in 2012. Most recently, she received the 2nd prize and all the extra prizes at the International Australian Marimba Competition in 2016.

As a soloist, Yoshiko has performed in several concertos on marimba with different orchestras, including Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra (Auckland). She was the principal percussionist of the National Youth Orchestra in 2008 and is currently the principal timpanist of Opus Orchestra.

Since returning from Europe Yoshiko endeavours to promote the Marimba and other orchestral Percussion in New Zealand, especially in solo and chamber music performance, while giving focus on arranging new repertoire for marimba. She gives solo performances as well as chamber music with various artists, including ‘Rata Trio’, consists of saxophone, bass clarinet and marimba. Yoshiko also teaches privately and gives master classes/workshops on different occasions, such as the National Brass Band Championships, where she was the jury for the percussion solo/ensemble section (2013).

Peter Walls - Music Director

Peter Walls has been Music Director of Opus Orchestra since 2004. He is currently also Music Director of Nota Bene, a Wellington chamber choir. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, and various other choirs including the Civic Choirs in Hamilton, Tauranga and Rotorua.

Peter was Music Director of The Tudor Consort from 1993-1999, a position he resigned to take up a Visiting Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. His CD with that choir of motets

by Peter Philips was listed by Neue Musik Zeitung as one of the top early music CDs released in 2002 and received a CHOC award from Le Monde de la Musique (the highest award from one of the leading French magazines for Classical music). Classics Today wrote “Conductor Peter Walls understands the overall period style and he obviously cares a lot about ensemble balance and uniformity of tone and colour.”

He has conducted many opera productions including Jack Body’s Alley in the New Zealand Arts Festival in 1998, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for Southern Opera in 2009, Verdi’s La Traviata for the Gisborne Opera Festival and Leoncavallo’s Cavalleria Rusticana for Opera Wanganui (these last two productions with a young Simon O’Neill as Alfredo and Turridu respectively).

Peter is Emeritus Professor of Music at Victoria University of Wellington. He was Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2002 until 2011 and now holds that same role with Chamber Music New Zealand.

He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music in 2012.

Lara Hall - Concertmaster

Dr Lara Hall is Lecturer in Violin and Viola at the University of Waikato, and has performed in the US, UK, Europe, South America, and Asia as a member of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists.

Lara has taught master classes at prestigious institutions such as the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (Singapore), Interlochen Arts Academy (US), Shanghai Central Conservatory, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She has also recorded for the Atoll label on modern and baroque violin, covering a wide range of genres including chamber music, solo, and concerto music.

Lara has been Concertmaster of Opus Orchestra since 2006.

Gareth Farr - Composer

Gareth Farr was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He began his studies in composition and percussion at the University of Auckland in 1986.

The experience of hearing a visiting gamelan orchestra in 1988 prompted his return to Wellington to attend Victoria University, where the characteristic rhythms and textures of the Indonesian gamelan rapidly became the hallmarks of his own composition.

Farr continued with postgraduate study in composition and percussion at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where his teachers included Samuel Adler and Christopher Rouse. In 1993, at the age of 25, Farr was appointed composer-in-residence by Chamber Music NZ, the youngest ever composer to hold that position.

The inclusion of four of his works at the 1996 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts kick-started his career as a dedicated freelance composer. Since then, his music has been commissioned for high-profile events including the 50th anniversary of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the opening of the Museum of New Zealand, the 2000 and 2008 Olympic Games, the Rugby World Cup opening ceremony in 2011, and the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival. In April 2015, his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was performed and broadcast by the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, UK, and in 2017 his Cello Concerto was performed in France by the Orchestre National de Lorraine.

In 2006 Gareth was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music and entertainment, in 2010 he was awarded the prestigious NZ Arts Laureate Award, and in 2014 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland.

Programme Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Ouverture (Suite) No. 1 in C Major, BWV1066 1. Ouverture 2. Courante 3. Gavotte I & II 4. Forlane 5. Menuet I & II 6. Bourrée I & II 7. Passepied I & II In 1729, Bach became director of Leipzig’s Telemannische Collegium Musicum, continuing his tenure with this ensemble of capable university musicians until 1737, and then returning for a shorter stint from 1739 until the early 1740s. The group’s name refers to its founder, G. Ph. Telemann, who, as a law student at Leipzig University, assembled an ensemble comprised ‘entirely of students, up to 40 of them meeting together’. Telemann’s Collegium played in Leipzig’s coffee-houses, at its theatre, and in the Neue-Kirche. The Collegium Musicum helped foster the talents of some distinguished musicians – including Pisendel, Heinichen, and Graupner – and found its most illustrious intendant in Bach.

Bach’s Orchestral Suite in C major, dating from c. 1720, precedes Bach’s directorship of the Collegium, but likely formed part of the repertoire for its ‘Ordinaire’ concerts performed in front of the Grimmisches Thor during the summer months, or at Zimmermann’s coffee house in winter. In CPE Bach’s memoir of his father, he recalled that ‘it was seldom that a musician passed through [Leipzig] without getting to know my father and playing for him’, and the Ordinaire concerts presented opportunities for this. Directing the Collegium Musicum gave Bach enjoyable respite from the bureaucratic cavilling of Leipzig’s town officials. Instead, using his family members to copy the instrumental parts, Bach could develop what one author called ‘his own praxis’, revising older compositions and writing brand new ones for the Collegium to perform.

Bach composed many suites, some for solo instruments (e.g. the ‘French’ Suites for keyboard, the six Suites for cello, and the partitas for violin), and his orchestral suites – which he called ‘Ouvertures’ – follow similar patterns: an introductory movement, followed by a set of dances. Bach’s dance movements employ stylistic conventions of the allemande, minuet, or forlane, but Bach approaches each dance not as a ‘form’, but as a genre in its own right. Although retaining some of the crucial necessities – e.g. metre, and phrase structure – of the Allemande or the Gigue, Bach achieved far more than the ‘facile aping of new fashion.

Music, in the hands of a devotee like Bach, demanded a solemn dedication to its honour and cultivation.’ No gavotte was trivial to Bach: every note served an aesthetic purpose and provided a solution to the challenges of musical invention. His C major Suite exemplifies this elevation of purpose and art.

Gareth Farr (1968-) Marimba Concerto Commissioned by friends of Opus Orchestra for Yoshiko Tsuruta AND Commissioned by friends of Opus Orchestra for Dame Evelyn Glennie with assistance from Creative New Zealand The composer comments: “In addition to being a composer, I am also a percussionist. In the 1990's I spent a lot of my time performing new pieces for solo percussion - and in particular I focused on the marimba as my instrument. Since those days I have wanted to write a concerto for marimba, and was so excited by this opportunity to finally do that.

The marimba has its origins in African and South American prototypes, and throughout the 20th Century, has not only become a standard instrument in the symphony orchestra percussion section, but an instrument that percussionists focus on as a solo instrument. Yoshiko is one of New Zealand’s most talented percussionists, and it has been a joy to collaborate on this piece with her.

I have exploited the many contrasting tones of the marimba, and linked them to various orchestral colours - in the opening, the low warm tones of the marimba’s bass notes intertwine with the bass clarinet, and in the middle slow section, the strings play complex dissonant chords with the marimba, playing tremolo with soft mallets. The higher register of the instrument features at the end of the piece - the high woodwind and brass clashing with the bright tone of the top marimba notes.”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Quiet City Irwin Shaw’s play Quiet City ran for just three performances at New York City’s Belasco Theatre in April 1939. Quiet City concerns the struggles of Gabriel Mellon, a businessman, who – despite his success and political preferment – regrets abandoning his ‘liberal Jewish background and his youthful dream of becoming a poet’. As Gabriel wrestles with guilt at the financial comfort he has achieved at the expense of his workers and family, a young alter-ego, David, who plays the trumpet, represents the idealism that Gabriel left behind.

Aaron Copland wrote the incidental music for Quiet City. Scored for two clarinets (doubling bass clarinet and saxophone), trumpet, and piano, Copland’s original conception was for small musical fragments evocative of ‘the night thoughts of many different people in a great city’. He associated the characters and their emotions closely with individual instruments. The solo trumpet represents both David, and Gabriel’s unease: sometimes he cannot tell whether he really hears the trumpet, or whether it is a hallucination.

Because the play closed so precipitously (prompting the composer to write to Virgil Thompson, ‘My career in the theater has been a flop.’) the score of Copland’s incidental music remained unpublished.

However, Copland reworked the score into an orchestral piece for strings, cor anglais, and trumpet, and on 28 January 1941 the Saidenberg Little Symphony performed its premiere.

The extent to which the music still conveys Gabriel Mellon’s inner torment or represents the oppression of the proletariat becomes ambiguous in the orchestral version of Quiet City.

Nevertheless, its intensity, and musical evocations of isolation proved potent for audiences and orchestras alike, inspiring many performances, recordings, and a ballet for New York City Ballet by Jerome Robbin (1986). Copland, meanwhile, downplayed the popularity of Quiet City, writing ‘Since it is mostly quiet, it fills a niche in concert programmes’, but his modesty is belied by the expressive power of this short piece.

Josef Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony No. 45 in F# minor (the Farewell) 1. Allegro assai 2. Adagio (A maj) 3. Menuet e Trio: Allegretto 4. Finale: Presto – Adagio The fame of Haydn’s F# minor Symphony results partially from its story: in 1772 the musicians of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy had been kept for too long at Esterháza, the summer palace, where the Prince preferred to spend much of his time, with his orchestra and Kapellmeister standing by. But, the musicians wanted to return to Eisenstadt, where their wives were. Haydn therefore gave Nikolaus a subtle musical hint in the finale of this dramatic symphony: one by one, the musicians snuffed their candles and departed, leaving just Haydn and Luigi Tomasini playing a duet. Haydn’s hint worked.

The legend is evocative, but the music is more powerful still. This Symphony has often been said to exemplify Haydn’s command of the Sturm und Drang style – the ‘storm and stress’ aesthetic emphasising individual subjective emotions – which had literary roots in the work of Schiller and Goethe. Conversely, others maintain that the Symphony is a superb late example of the Empfindsamer Stil, a musical style emphasising extreme emotional sensibility and flux, moving rapidly between such states as tenderness, fear, joy, or rage.

Haydn’s Symphony begins tumultuously. The key of F# minor was an unusual, possibly unique, choice for a symphony at this time: the key’s characteristics were thought harsh, distressful, bitter, melancholy, ‘tugging at passion as a dog biting a dress.’ Haydn united the key with various forms of musical agitation in the first movement, including wide melodic leaps, syncopated figures, and propulsive basslines. In contrast, the Adagio second movement, where Haydn instructs the strings to use their mutes is extremely delicate. In A major – a tonality associated by eighteenth-century theorists with ‘merriment’, ‘amorous passion’, and ‘a refreshing aroma of lemons’ – Haydn accompanies the upper strings’ exquisite melodies with a ‘tick tock’ figure played by the violas and celli perhaps hints to his princely employer that time was passing. The Menuet and Trio explore rustic territory but concludes enigmatically. Haydn’s Finale is initially rhetorically forceful and uncompromising. The contrast between scurrying string figurations and larger musical gestures draws the ear to different sections of the orchestra, before Haydn moves to A major for the Adagio. After the gentle horn calls evoke the posthorn, signalling the departure of a stagecoach, the string writing becomes increasingly crystalline, tempering loneliness with sublime tenderness.

Programme note © Corrina Connor 2018

Player List

Conductor Peter Walls Concertmaster Lara Hall* + P.Walls, H Fairburn Violin 1 Trudi Miles Sharon Stephens + A & N Hooper Charmian Keay Harris Leung Alex Geary Melody Gumbley Katie Mayes Violin 2 Kerry Langdon* Lucy Gardiner Brigid Eady + A & N Hooper Michele Wahrlich + M & M Carr Rebecka Beetz Helen Yang Yukha Nagai Beverley Oliver Viola Lisa Lynch* Chris Nation + C Polglase Emily Allen Edith Klostermann Jill Wilson Hector Fitzsimmons

Cello Yotam Levy* Ros Oliver Joanna Dann Judith Williams Fiona Rouse Anne-Marie Simpson

OUR MUSICIANS ARE NOURISHED BY

Double Bass Marija Durdevic* John Moon

Flute Agnes Harmath* Anita Macdonald + M Hampson Oboe Joy Liu* + K Mayes Felicity Than

Clarinet Justus Rozemond* Harim Oh

Bassoon Philip Sumner* + H Goodman

Horn John Ure* Jill Ferrabee

Trumpet Bill Stoneham*

* Section Principal + Sponsored Seat

We gratefully acknowledge our family of generous donors

Rotorua Roger Brewster Mary Burdon Steve Chou Mayor Steve Chadwick Stewart & Waiki Edward Hanno Fairburn Catriona Gordon Martin Hampson Alan & Nadine Hooper Genevieve Joyce Judy Keaney QSM Ann Larkin Joanne La Grouw Tom & Sidney Louisson Judy O'Sullivan Lyall & Gabrielle Thurston

Life members

Doug Arcus Robert Blair Andrew Buchanan-Smart Brigid Eady Bob Hudson Kathryn Orbell Rita Paczian

Hamilton M & M Carr Bernie and Kaye Crosbie G & J Gallagher T Miles K Mayes and H Goodman C Polglase Tauranga FAME Trust NZ (Regional) B Eady J & L Lengenhagger J & B Russenberger Hugh and Marion Townend Peter Walls ONZM

Additional thanks to: National Library of New Zealand (music) Ashley Hopkins (photography) Debbie Rawson - photographs of Yoshiko Tsuruta Christine Polglase Sharon Stephens Bill Taylor Marion Townend Michele Wahrlich Peter Walls

PATRON - James Judd

Become a Friend and receive concert updates and ticket discounts.

Membership is free.

Email friends@orchestras.org.nz or sign up at our Friends Desk in the lobby

Find out more: www.orchestras.org.nz

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY: