2012 TarraWarra concert program

AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA FESTIVAL AT TARRAWARRA MUSEUM OF ART

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ACO GENERAL MANAGER’S MESSAGE The Australian Chamber Orchestra is thrilled to present the inaugural ACO Festival at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, in which music and art converse in this unique setting.

Two years ago, Richard Tognetti and the Orchestra had the opportunity to perform at TarraWarra Museum of Art for the first time, in a concert which was a gift to the local community, following the devastating Victorian bushfires. The unforgettable atmosphere of that concert inspired a conversation between Richard and our generous, warm-hearted hosts Marc and Eva Besen, which has resulted in this new event in the musical calendar of Victoria.

In typical ACO style, the programs juxtapose the familiar with the unexpected and reflect the sophistication and curiosity of the TarraWarra Museum of Art’s extraordinary art collection.

We are delighted that TarraWarra Museum of Art is presenting this magical weekend of music and are deeply grateful to Marc and Eva Besen for their tremendous support of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Timothy Calnin General Manager Australian Chamber Orchestra

To keep up to date with ACO events, request a brochure or sign-up for the enewsletter at aco.com.au or follow us on facebook or twitter.

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Tarrawarra Museum of Art Saturday 3 March, 12pm Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director and Lead Violin Program to be performed without interval

GRIEG BACH SCULTHORPE GRIEG (arr. Tognetti)

Holberg Suite (From Holberg’s Time), Op.40 Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, BWV1041 Lament for Strings String Quartet in G minor, Op.27

Saturday 3 March, 6pm Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director and Lead Violin Timo-Veikko Valve, Cello JS BACH PACHELBEL PAGANINI / TOGNETTI ELGAR INTERVAL CPE BACH MOZART

The Musical Offering, BWV1079 (excerpts) Canon in D Caprice on Caprices (DEVA) Serenade for strings in E minor, Op.20 Cello Concerto in A Minor, Wq170 Violin Concerto No.4 in D major, K.218

Sunday 4 March, 11am Masterclass with Richard Tognetti

Sunday 4 March, 3PM Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director and Lead Violin Satu Vänskä, Violin Program to be performed without interval

VIVALDI VASKS MENDELSSOHN

Violin Concerto in A minor, RV358 (from “La cetra”) Vox amoris: fantasy for violin and strings Octet for strings in E flat major, Op.20

The Australian Chamber Orchestra reserves the right to alter scheduled programs or artists as necessary.

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SATURDAY 3 MARCH, 12PM Edvard Grieg

Johann Sebastian Bach

(b.1843 – d.1907)

(b.1685 – d.1750)

Holberg Suite, Op. 40

Violin Concerto in A minor BWV 1041

(Composed 1884/5)

(Composed ca. 1730)

Praeludium: Allegro Vivace Sarabande: Andante Gavotte and Musette: Allegretto Air: Andante religioso Rigaudon: Allegro con brio

Allegro Andante Allegro assai

Ludvig Holberg is not necessarily a familiar name to anglophones, but in the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Denmark his literary status resembles that of Shakespeare or Moliere in their respective countries. Indeed, with his sophisticated, satirical dramas inspired by the French Enlightenment, this undisputed founder of modern Danish literature became known as the ‘Moliere of the North’. Like Grieg, he was born in Bergen but in 1684 and subsequently settled in Copenhagen, where he died in 1754 – giving him a lifespan very similar to that of Bach and Handel.

Grieg’s suite for piano From Holbergs Time (Fra Holbergs tid), with its sequence of dance movements closely allied to the 18th century baroque suite – though omitting ‘standards’ such as the Allemande, Courante and Gigue – was Grieg’s musical homage to Holberg’s age. He claimed they were nothing more than ‘costume pieces’, where his own musical personality was ‘somewhat concealed’. But apart from the occasional turn of phrase, of pleasant baroquery, the language is essentially of Grieg’s own time.

As with Tchaikovsky’s almost-contemporary Serenade for Strings – a homage to Mozart – it is the spirit of that other age, together with structural elements, that is being observed more than specific musical details.

As with a number of other piano works and songs – notably a selection of the Lyric Pieces – Grieg arranged this set of Holberg pieces for strings.

It is this version, premiered in Bergen on 12 March 1885, that has become the best known vehicle for his homage to the Norwegian dramatist. © Meurig Bowen

From Bach’s time at the Cöthen court as Kapellmeister and Director of the Royal Chamber Music (1717-23) come the six Brandenburg concertos, the E major and A minor violin concertos, and the D minor concerto for two violins. In all certainty Bach wrote many more concertos during this time; ones which have been lost in their original version, but which exist – or some of them at least – through his Leipzig arrangements for one or more harpsichords. In this conventionally three movement, Venetian-type concerto, the central slow movement is flanked by two fast outer movements. In these, between the sharply defined orchestral ritornellos (those passages which return, but each time in a different key) come the solo episodes – opportunities not only for key modulation and virtuosic display, but presentation of contrasting material and dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The firm, opening Allegro, with its diversity of articulation and rhythmic character, contrasts with the flowing nature of the closing 9/8 Allegro assai. And, maintaining a close relation with the E major concerto, the central movement is defined by its distinctive, motif-driven bass line and the freeflowing invention of the solo line that weaves on top of it. © ACO

Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929)

Lament for strings (Composed 1976) Allegro Andante Allegro molto

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From his student days in Melbourne in the 1950s, Peter Sculthorpe has written fluently and evocatively for strings. Four quartets and a trio, works of apprenticeship, led to the composer’s first major work in 1961, Irkanda IV, following his return to Tasmania after two years’ study at Oxford University (‘Irkanda’ is an aboriginal word for ‘scrub country’). There are 18 string quartets now, some more recent ones written for Kronos; and the composer’s association with the Australian Chamber Orchestra has been fruitful from the mid-1970s onwards, with the composition of four Sonatas for Strings, Port Essington and, first of all, the Lament.

Like much of Sculthorpe’s work, this is a strongly defined response to the Australian landscape – and in this context, its particularly melancholic effect on (white) humankind. In his original note on the work he quoted the recollections of H.M.Hyndman, who travelled around Australia in the 1870s: ‘To this day I can never look upon a blue gum-tree without a mournful feeling coming over me…the most dissipated-looking trees I ever beheld. Dante could well have represented them in his Inferno, in the shape of drunken men, as trees, standing around in sempiternal penitence of their orgies of the past. And the wretched things with their blotchy trunks and bare foliage give no shade…’

In a swathe of touching neo-romanticism, Sculthorpe firmly evokes the more desolate, uncomfortable aspects of the Australian bush; and in so doing, he regarded this work as ‘probably my farewell to this melancholia.’ © Meurig Bowen

Edvard Grieg (b.1843 – d.1907)

String Quartet in G minor, Op.27 Arranged by Richard Tognetti (Composed 1877 – 8) I Un poco Andante – Allegro molto ed agitato II Romanze III Intermezzo IV Finale

1873 he attempted to write a fully Norwegian opera, and a year later he was invited by Ibsen to provide the music for the epic Peer Gynt. In 1876, Grieg visited Bayreuth and witnessed the première of Wagner’s Ring cycle. In the following winter, Grieg added a second piano part to four of Mozart’s piano sonatas, an act which might now be considered both tasteless and arrogant, but which became an important landmark for Grieg’s self-discipline as a composer. In the summer of 1877, when Grieg was in his mid-thirties, he rented a house in Lofthus on the Hardanger Fjord. There he erected a ‘composing hut’, and the breathtaking scenery of Western Norway was the backdrop against which the G-minor String Quartet was sketched.

There is something that I must do for the sake of my art. Day by day I am becoming more dissatisfied with myself. It is enough to make one lose one’s mind – but I know well enough what the problem is. It’s lack of practice, because I have never got beyond composing by fits and starts. But that is going to end. I am going to fight my way through the large musical forms, cost what it may. If I go mad in the process, now you know why.

Far from driving Grieg mad, the composition of the G-minor String Quartet announced the arrival of the composer’s artistic maturity. There is an autobiographical element that runs throughout Grieg’s only surviving complete string quartet.

Grieg had in mind a poem by Ibsen, which describes the lovelorn musings of a musician as he walks beside a stream on a summer evening. The theme that represents the musician of the poem is heard at the very start of the quartet, first slowly and with great portent, and thereafter as the quartet’s dreamier second subject.

Certainly the quartet is in no way trivial. And certainly it has breadth: its gestures soar, and it is instrumentally resonant. These full textures proved problematic, in that Grieg’s normally supportive publisher regarded the piece as too orchestral and initially refused to publish the work. This concert’s solution is to make a virtue out of that supposed defect by scoring the work for string orchestra, in which version the rich textures become more credibly part of a larger ensemble. © Jeremy Summerly

The 1870s were a musical melting-pot for Grieg. In

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SATURDAY 3 MARCH, 6PM Johann Sebastian Bach (b.1685 – d.1750)

The Musical Offering, BWV1079, Excerpts (Composed 1747)

In May of 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach paid a visit to his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel at his workplace, the Potsdam court of Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712–1786). Frederick was a model philosopher king, possessing a brilliant, if merciless, military mind (annexing much of Poland), and a deep interest in music and ideas.

He played host to Enlightenment luminaries such as Voltaire and the mathematicians Lagrange and Euler, he was a talented flautist and maintained an orchestra to accompany him in CPE’s or Joachim Quantz’s flute concertos, and even his own compositions (which are rather pedestrian, but probably better than anything composed by royalty since). He was responsible for bringing Germany, and his capital Berlin, into the gloriously modern 18th century. Accordingly, his Potsdam palace was decked-out with the latest inventions, including fifteen experimental pianofortes built

by Gottfried Silbermann. Frederick dropped hints to CPE that he’d very much like to meet Johann Sebastian and hear what he thought of the pianoforte but nothing had come of it, until he discovered the name of JS Bach in a list of strangers who had arrived at the palace for the evening’s concert.

After the necessary protocols, the King ushered Bach around the palace as he improvised on this or that piano. Bach asked Frederick for the subject of a fugue for Bach to work out, extempore. The King, perhaps cruelly, provided an especially knotty theme and requested that Bach attempt to improvise in six parts, but here the composer demurred because the subject wouldn’t work, and instead played a six-part fugue on a theme he’d prepared earlier. The next day, Bach was taken to all the organs in Potsdam so that Frederick could enjoy his performance on them.

Bach returned to Leipzig and worked on the theme that Frederick had supplied, including

a three- and a six-part treatment, plus assorted canons and a sonata for flute, violin and continuo and sent them to the King in a set he called The Musical Offering. © Robert Wesley Murray

Johann Pachelbel (b.1653 – d.1706)

Canon in D (Composed ca. 1695)

Born in Nuremberg Germany to a middle class family, the young Johann Pachelbel demonstrated a hungry intellect coupled with remarkable musical talent, and was nurtured with access to the finest local musical instruction and public lectures, above and beyond requisite studies. It was Pachelbel’s talent, both musical and academic, that granted him very early entry into university study in Altdorf in 1669 alongside his first appointment as a church organist. Following an abrupt withdrawal from Altdorf due to financial hardship, Pachelbel was subsequently awarded scholarship study at the Gymnasium Poeticum at Regensburg, with private music study taking place beyond the school’s walls.

Pachelbel departed Regensberg for the cultural capital of Vienna when he was no older than 20.

An introduction to Italian and Catholic musical traditions must have greatly influenced the young Lutheran organist from southern Germany, and in Vienna he made a name for himself as an organist and composer of the first rate. Pachelbel eventually returned to Germany, contributing to the musical and pedagogical landscape of the region around Erfurt and Eisenach (notably with the Bach family), as well as his native southern Germany including Stuttgart. Eventually, his career came full circle with a prestigious organ post back home in Nuremberg, where he settled during his final eleven years.

Pachelbel’s prolific output includes hundreds of works for organ and keyboard as well as voice, and he may very well have written numerous instrumental works during his years

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of employment in the courts of Stuttgart and Eisenach. Only a handful of these instrumental works have survived, and Pachelbel’s simple, yet elegant three-part Canon in D, the only Canon he wrote, has become his most recognized and remembered. © A.J. Benson

PAGANINI/TOGNETTI Caprice on Caprices (DEVA) (Composed 1801/2012)

Long before Caruso and Pavarotti, Paganini was being hailed by fellow Italians as a super-star, a divo (a male diva), meaning god-like. Divo, one of the most ancient of all European words, was in turn derived from the Sanskrit DEVA, divinity.

A cult figure, Paganini was suspected of being an occult figure as well. Divo, or diabolo? How, listeners wondered, could a mere mortal play with such god-like assurance, unless—like the legendary Faust—he’d sold his soul to the Devil?

If so, his performances might be not merely astonishing to hear, on account of their dazzling difficulty, but dangerous. Merely witnessing such diabolical virtuosity was risking damnation!

Even after his passing in 1840, Paganini continued to wield his most powerful magic through his 24 caprices. For violinists a byword for virtuosity, they have also challenged composers and other instrumentalists. The fiendishly difficult Caprice No 24 in A minor is instantly recognisable thanks to later treatments by pianists Liszt and Rachmaninov, and—most widely known of all—Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s 1977 Variations for his cellist brother Julian.

Twenty years ago now, in 1992, Richard Tognetti turned the ACO’s attention to reworking the Caprice No 24, in a techno-metal-chamberorchestra treatment called Deviance (with a backward glance then, too, toward the band Devo). This new Caprice on Caprices (DEVA) is Richard’s “take two”, this time based on Caprices Nos 17 and 20. © Graeme Skinner

SIR EDWARD ELGAR (b.1857 – d.1934)

Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20 (Composed 1892) I Allegro piacevole II Larghetto III Allegretto

Like Vaughan Williams and Tippett, Elgar’s compositional maturity and subsequent success didn’t reveal itself until well into his thirties – this showing a very different kind of development to that of other, quick-out-of-the-blocks British composers this century (like Walton, Britten, Knussen, Adés…). Elgar was thirty-four when he wrote the Serenade between March and May 1892, and it was to be the first of his works to be printed in full score the following January. This was, significantly, by the German publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel. However easy it is to regard his music now as quintessentially English – dignified, grand, sometimes charmingly pompous – Elgar was more enamoured by teutonic culture at the time.

In the year of the Serenade’s composition, he heard Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal (twice) at the Bayreuth Festival, and in a vocal score of Tristan that he wrote: “This Book contains the Height, - the Depth, - the Breadth, - the Sweetness, - the Sorrow, - the Best and the whole of the Best of This world and the Next.”

The scale of the Serenade’s three movements is distinctly un-Wagnerian, but the expressive control and harmonic nuance in the exquisite Larghetto do indicate both an acquaintance with the sophistication of late-romantic harmony and a leaning towards the sweeping grandeur of his later works. In other respects it is very much a work of the pre-modern age. There is nothing in the way of special string effects, and the spatial possibilities of divided strings, as explored in the later Introduction and Allegro and by Vaughan Williams and Tippett, are not apparent. Just as Elgar thanked his wife Alice for making “these little tunes” what they are, it seems appropriate simply to describe this compact work as “small but perfectly formed”. © Meurig Bowen

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Carl Philipp Emanuel BACH

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(b.1714 – d.1788)

(b.1756 – d.1791)

Cello Concerto in A minor, Wq170

Violin Concerto No.4 in D major, K.218

(Composed 1750)

(Composed 1775)

Allegro assai Andante Allegro assai

I Allegro II Andante cantabile III Rondeau; Andante grazioso – Allegro ma non troppo

The second surviving son of J.S. Bach and the godson of Telemann, C.P.E. Bach was born into music, and became the most prolific and famous member of the Bach family after “the old wig” (as he referred to J.S.B.). As a child he followed his father’s work to Cöthen and Leipzig, then did as several other eminent German composers (including Handel, Heinichen and Schütz) had done before him, temporarily forsaking music for studies in the law. It was J.S. Bach’s ambition that his sons should attend university if possible, to give them greater intellectual insulation than he had enjoyed from the vagaries of freelance employment. After his graduation in 1738, though, C.P.E. Bach returned to music, and passed the next fifty years in only two positions: first as court harpsichordist and personal accompanist to Frederick the Great in Berlin; then, from 1768, as Kantor at the Johanneum in Hamburg, where he succeeded Telemann.

Keyboard music dominates C.P.E. Bach’s compositional output. The Berlin court held regular chamber music evenings centred around Frederick the Great’s own flute playing, and although J.J. Quantz (Frederick’s flute tutor) was in charge, Emanuel wrote a large amount of music for these evenings as well, often with himself as soloist.

Hugely practical, though, his work-list contains masses of re-writings, revisions and adaptations, both of his own music and that of others. An example of this are three harpsichord concertos from around 1750–53, catalogued as Wq170, 171 and 172, which emerged first (it is thought) as harpsichord concertos, before being adapted both as flute concertos – for either Frederick or Quantz to perform – and lastly as cello concertos.

Although played by cellists and flautists alike, with the comparative paucity of cello music of the period the three concertos have become greatly beloved of cellists in particular.

1756 had been a noteworthy year in the Mozart household. Not only did it witness Wolfgang’s birth, but it was also the year in which Mozart’s father, Leopold, published his celebrated violin tutor (A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing). Although the young Mozart is indelibly associated with the piano – because of our image of the child prodigy touring Europe at the keyboard, and the existence of over twenty piano concertos – the violin was Mozart’s father’s instrument and the instrument to which Mozart first turned in earnest when writing concertos. (Of the five piano concertos that pre-date the violin concertos, four are arrangements of solo keyboard works by other composers, and the fifth was conceived as an organ concerto.)

Mozart had played the violin well since he was very young indeed, as an observation from Mozart’s eighth year illustrates.

One or two days later, I came to see him again, and found him amusing himself with his own violin. He thought a moment, and said to me: ‘Herr Schachtner, your violin is tuned an eighth of a tone lower than mine, if you left it tuned as it was last time I played it’.

Needless to say, the seven-year old proved to be correct, and went on to be appointed leader of the Salzburg Court Orchestra by the time that he was fourteen. Mozart did not shrink from boasting about his excellence as a violinist (‘I played as if I was the finest fiddler in all Europe’), egged on by the approval of his doting father (‘You yourself do not know how well you play the violin’). In a typically manic burst of creativity, Mozart wrote four violin concertos between June and December 1775; these four concertos (K211, 216, 218, and 219) were the main musical output of the closing months of the composer’s teenage years and were designed primarily to show off Mozart’s technique as a player. © Jeremy Summerly

© Michael Stevens

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SUNDAY 4 MARCH, 11am Masterclass with Richard Tognetti Students: Alana Guerin and Paige Harvey from the Victorian State Schools Spectacular Orchestra.

The string section of the Victorian Schools Spectacular Orchestra also worked with ACO musicians in a String Workshop at TarraWarra on Friday 2 March. This workshop culminated in a community concert for local school students, and parents and friends of the young musicians. These events mark the beginning of an exciting partnership between the ACO and the Victorian State Schools Spectacular.

ACO Š Jon Frank

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SUNDAY 4 MARCH, 3PM Antonio Vivaldi (b.1678 – d.1741)

Violin Concerto in A minor, Op.9 No.5, RV 358 from “La cetra”

barber turned violinist, knighthood in the Hapsburg Empire. © A.J. Benson

(Published 1727) Adagio - Presto Largo Allegro

Peteris Vasks

The 1720s were particularly prolific, expansive, and flush times for the industrious Antonio Vivaldi. Less than a decade prior the native Venetian had followed his father into the heady world of opera, and by the 20s he was fully ensconced as the impresario in the Teatro San Angelo, one of Venice’s numerous commerciallydriven opera theatres. Vivaldi began to establish his reputation abroad, with performances of his operas in Rome during several Carnival seasons (he also claimed to have given private performances for the Pope), as well as publication, in Amsterdam, of his instrumental works which introduced his music beyond Italy, including Paris.

Concurrently, Vivaldi maintained his association with the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, the orphanage for girls where he took his first post in 1703, and was commissioned in 1723 to provide his hometown Pietà two concertos per month. It is remarkable that between the years of 1723 and 1729 he composed over 140 concertos for the Pietà alone, and it was also during this period that Vivaldi penned his famous Four Seasons as well as his opus No.9 ‘La cetra’, the set of concertos from which this program’s work is drawn.

As it turns out, two sets of twelve violin concertos titled “La cetra” exist, and both were dedicated to the Austrian Emperor Charles VI. However, only opus No.9 was published.

The second set was a manuscript presented

by Vivaldi to the Emperor after their first meeting in 1728, in which the Emperor notably provided the composer with a significant sum of money, a “gold chain and a medal,” as well as bestowing upon Vivaldi, the son of a Venetian

(Composed 2008/2009)

(b.1946)

Vox amoris: fantasy for violin and strings Allegro Adagio Allegro

The composer writes: I started composing the fantasy for violin and orchestra Vox amoris in autumn 2008 and finished the score in early spring 2009. What is the message I wanted to deliver? It is about the greatest power in the whole world – love.

Love is, was, and will be as long as we will be. I believe that the solo violin and string orchestra is the best combination for a ‘love story’. The composition, consisting of one single movement, starts with a muted string tremolo. Then the solo violin appears – searching, asking – until it blossoms into a broad melody which is supported by a gentle orchestral accompaniment.

The solo violin ‘Cadenza I’ links the introductory part with the central episode. The central part of the composition is built up from two sound waves. The first wave starts softly, slowly, then the intensity increases and becomes stronger, and then decreases. The second wave is broader, more dramatic. The solo violin part becomes more challenging; the string orchestra plays an active role here. ‘Cadenza II’ emphasizes the way to culmination – the highest point is reached when the solo violin and orchestra meet – in a high register, in the highest intensity. A quiet organ point is then the background for images from the beginning. The solo violin once again sings a cantilena of the glory of love.

The piece ends in a sadly light mood.

Vox amoris was created by the initiative of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and its leader

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Richard Tognetti. I hope this work will reach the listeners, making the world a little brighter and more open to love.

(Translated from the Latvian by Gundega Vaska)

Felix MENDELSSOHN (b.1809 – d.1847)

Ottetto (octet) in E flat major for strings, Op.20 (Composed 1825) 1 Allegro moderato ma con fuoco 2 Andante 3 Allegro leggierissimo 4 Presto

In Paris in 1832, young Clara Wieck (later Schumann) first heard Chopin himself play his E-minor Piano Concerto, accompanied by an ensemble of strings alone. Completing that Paris program, those same strings then performed this work, Mendelssohn’s Octet.

The Ottetto, as it first became known even in English speaking countries, was published the same year, and was being played in England in 1834. However, for most of the composer’s short life, it was his sacred choral music—including the oratorios Elijah and St Paul, that chimed most harmoniously with tastes of the emerging middle-classes.

Public appreciation for his chamber music grew more slowly. In Boston, USA, in 1853, when a dedicated Mendelssohn Quartette Club gave the first local performance of the Ottetto, it was greeted in the press as: “… a large and noble composition, full of fine and vigorous ideas, admirably wrought out, and never suffering the interest to flag” In Australia, where a fully professional music scene first emerged on the back of Gold Rush prosperity, there were massed performances of Elijah in Melbourne in 1858 and Sydney in 1859. The first Australian performance of the Octet was in Melbourne on 20 October 1879, under the leadership of the French émigré violinist Leon Caron (1850-1915).

Part of the Victorian fascination with the Octet is the fact that it was composed by a highly-intelligent 16-year-old. Over the

previous few years, this son of a rich and wellconnected Berlin banker enjoyed extraordinary opportunities to hear his compositions performed. Works especially written for and performed in household concerts included his series of 13 apprentice “symphonies” for strings (now a staple of chamber-orchestra repertory).

But though he then graduated to his first official symphony in 1824, even a rich teenager could not reasonably expect to have a full concert orchestra at his disposal all the time.

So the problem of how to compose genuinely symphonic music for a small easily assembled group was still uppermost in Mendelssohn’s mind when, in the autumn of 1825, he composed the Ottetto. As he later confirmed in his introductory note to the printed edition of 1832: “The Ottetto must be played by all the instruments in symphonic orchestral style. Pianos (softs) and fortes (louds) must be strictly observed and more strongly emphasised than is usual in pieces of this character.” © Graeme Skinner

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MUSICIANS ON STAGE

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RICHARD TOGNETTI AO Artistic Director and Lead Violin

HELENA RATHBONE Principal Second Violin

SATU VÄNSKÄ Assistant Leader Violin

Chair sponsored by Michael Ball AM & Daria Ball, Joan Clemenger, Wendy Edwards, and Prudence McLeod

Chair sponsored by Hunter Hall Investment Management Limited

Chair sponsored by Robert & Kay Bryan

REBECCA CHAN Violin

AIKO GOTO Violin

Mark Ingwersen Violin

Chair sponsored by Ian Wallace & Kay Freedman

Chair sponsored by Andrew & Hiroko Gwinnett

Chair sponsored by Runge

Ilya Isakovich Violin

CHRISTOPHER MOORE Principal Viola

NICOLE DIVALL Viola

Chair sponsored by Australian Communities Foundation – Connie & Craig Kimberley Fund

Chair sponsored by Tony Shepherd

Chair sponsored by Ian Landsdown

Timo-Veikko Valve Principal Cello

JULIAN THOMPSON Cello

MAXIME BIBEAU Principal Bass

Chair sponsored by Peter Weiss AM

Chair sponsored by the Clayton Family

Chair sponsored by John Taberner & Grant Lang

Photos © Paul Henderson-Kelly & Helen White

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RICHARD TOGNETTI AO Artistic Director and Leader Australian violinist, conductor and composer, Richard Tognetti has established an international reputation for compelling performances and artistic individualism. He studied with William Primrose, Alice Waten at Sydney Conservatorium and Igor Ozim at Berne Conservatory.

In 1989, he was appointed Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and subsequently became Artistic Director. He is also Artistic Director of the Maribor Festival in Slovenia.

Tognetti has appeared with the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Nordic Chamber Orchestra and the Australian symphony orchestras. He conducted Mozart’s Mitridate for the Sydney Festival and gave the Australian premiere of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony.

Tognetti’s arrangements, compositions and transcriptions have expanded the chamber orchestra repertoire and been performed throughout the world. He co-composed The Red Tree and the soundtracks for Master and Commander and Horrorscopes.

His documentary Musica Surfica won best film awards in the USA, Brazil, France and South Africa.

As well as directing numerous recordings by the ACO, Tognetti has recorded Bach’s solo violin works, winning three ARIA awards, and the Dvorak and Mozart Violin Concertos.

Tognetti was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 2010. He holds honorary doctorates from three universities and was made a National Living Treasure in 1999.

He performs on a 1743 Guarneri del Gesù violin, lent to him by an anonymous Australian benefactor.

Photo © Paul Henderson-Kelly

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AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Internationally renowned for inspired programming and the rapturous response of audiences and critics, the Australian Chamber Orchestra is a product of our country’s vibrant, adventurous and enquiring spirit. In performances around Australia, around the world and on many recordings, the ACO moves hearts and stimulates minds with repertoire spanning six centuries and a vitality and virtuosity unmatched by other ensembles.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1975 and Richard Tognetti was appointed Artistic Director and Lead Violin in 1989. Every year, this ensemble presents performances of the highest standard to audiences around the world, including 10,000 subscribers across Australia. The ACO’s unique artistic style encompasses not only the masterworks of the classical repertoire, but innovative cross-artform projects and a vigorous commissioning program.

Several of the ACO’s musicians perform with spectacularly fine instruments.

Tognetti plays a 1743 Guarneri del Gesù violin, on loan from an anonymous Australian benefactor. Principal Cello Timo-Veikko Valve plays a 1729 Giuseppe Guarneri Filius Andreae cello, on loan from patron Peter Weiss AM. Principal 2nd Violin Helena Rathbone plays a 1759 Guadagnini violin on loan from the Commonwealth Bank Group. Assistant Leader Satu Vänskä plays a 1728/29 Stradivarius violin owned by the ACO Instrument Fund, through which investors participate in the ownership of historic instruments.

Fifty-one international tours across Asia, Europe and the USA have drawn outstanding reviews for the ACO’s performances at many of the world’s prestigious concert halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Musikverein.

The ACO has made acclaimed recordings for labels including ABC Classics, BIS, Sony, Channel Classics, Hyperion, EMI and Chandos. A full list of available recordings can be found at aco.com.au/shop.

In 2005, the ACO inaugurated an ambitious national education program, which includes outreach activities and mentoring of outstanding young musicians, including the formation of ACO2, an elite training orchestra which tours regional centres.

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TWMA logotype can appear in 2 ways.

1. Black only (shown below) 2. matched to PMS 7505 (swatch attached)

TarraWarra Museum of Art Sponsors

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AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA ABN 45 001 335 182 Australian Chamber Orchestra Pty Ltd is a not for profit company registered in NSW. In Person: Opera Quays, 2 East Circular Quay, Sydney NSW 2000

By Mail: PO Box R21, Royal Exchange NSW 1225 Telephone: (02) 8274 3800 / Facsimile: (02) 8274 3801 / Box Office: 1800 444 444 Email: aco@aco.com.au / Website: aco.com.au

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