HAYDN’S DREAM & THE GOLDBERG
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HAYDN’S DREAM & THE GOLDBERG
HAYDN String Quartet in F major Op. 50 No. 5 The Dream Allegro moderato Poco adagio Tempo di Menuetto: Allegretto Finale: Vivace BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F major Op. 18 No. 1 Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato J.S. BACH Goldberg Variations BWV 988 arr. for string quartet (selections)
The concert duration is approximately 1 hr, no interval
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Sydney Friday 6th November, 7pm Cell Block Theatre, National Art School ___________________________________________
Skye McIntosh Founder & Artistic Director, Violin Matthew Greco Violin Karina Schmitz Viola Daniel Yeadon Cello
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ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE I am absolutely thrilled that the Ensemble is performing in person and presenting this particular program of beautiful works drawing together music on the theme of sleep and dreams. We have all missed performing face to face so much, and are excited to make our return to live performance in the stunning Cell Block Theatre with its beautiful acoustics. 4
I am particularly pleased that we have the chance to perform our Haydn’s Dream and Bach’s Goldberg program, with a live audience, that explores three ideas connecting music to the concepts of sleep and dreaming. The program begins with a work that relates to the idea of falling to sleep - Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This is followed by a much more dramatic Beethoven work that explores the notion as sleep as a metaphor for death. We finish with Haydn’s Dream quartet, representing the state of dreaming itself. The version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations we perform today is an arrangement for string quartet. The original aria and 30 variations were written by Bach for keyboard and take their name from Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, thought to have been the first performer of the work. Evidently Goldberg was requested to perform each night for Count Kaiserling (who had insomnia) to help lull him to sleep. Along with the opening aria - we present a selection of 7 variations. Beethoven wrote a letter to a friend explaining
that whilst writing the slow movement of his string quartet Op. 18 No. 1, he was thinking of the tomb scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet - where sleep is a metaphor for Death. It’s a powerful and passionate movement and one of my most favourite pieces of music. We all know the tragic scene - set in a churchyard, the tomb of the Capulets - Romeo, finding Juliet (who is asleep) appearing to be dead, takes his own life in vain. Juliet wakes to discover Romeo’s death, and tragically takes her own life. Haydn’s Dream string quartet takes its name from the rather dreamy second movement. Of course, Haydn himself did not give the quartet this name, but it isn’t difficult to see how it came about. Haydn creates an ethereal texture where he layers the four voices of the group, often with a gently rocking chord.
Skye McIntosh Artistic Director & Violin
THE ENSEMBLE Under the artistic direction of violinist Skye McIntosh, the Australian Haydn Ensemble (AHE) is one of Australia’s leading historically informed performance groups. It brings together world-class specialists in period instrument performance, backed up by the latest research into interpretation and style. The name pays tribute to the great Papa Haydn – a central figure of late eighteenth century European music and culture. AHE introduces listeners to many long-forgotten Classical era composers as well as chamber arrangements of the well-known larger works, often made by the composers themselves. Audiences relish hearing this music with fresh ears, and the period instruments add to this by highlighting aspects of the sound that listeners may not have heard before. Bursting onto the Australian music scene in 2012, AHE responds to a growing global trend of audiences seeking a more intimate and distinctive classical music concert experience. The group’s flexible instrumentation means that it can tour and perform in almost any venue from live to virtual, city to regional, and classroom to festival. It has appeared at Canada’s Banff Centre, The Juilliard School, Bundanon Trust, Australian National
University, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Peninsula Summer Music Festival, Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival, Tyalgum Festival, Newcastle Music Festival, Eastside Sydney Music Festival, and Music by the Sea. AHE’s most recent CD release – Beethoven Piano Concertos No. 1 & 3 – is a collaboration with leading Australian historical keyboardist Neal Peres Da Costa. Renowned music scholar Clive Brown wrote that “this recording by the Australian Haydn Ensemble marks a new and exciting development in period instrument performance of Beethoven’s music. It offers a highly persuasive combination of impressive musicianship and convincing historical research.”
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THE PERFORMERS Violin & Artistic Director Skye McIntosh Skye is the founder and Artistic Director of the Australian Haydn Ensemble. She has appeared as principal 2nd violin for Pinchgut Opera, as principal 2nd violin with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, and as a regular member of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra since 2010. Skye completed her Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours at the Queensland Conservatorium in 1999. In 2004 she travelled to the UK to study at The Royal Academy of Music, was a regular member of the Britten Pears young artist program, and performed at several UK Festivals. Skye completed a Master of Music degree, at the Sydney Conservatorium in 2011. Skye has made many concert appearances as soloist and director, and in 2013 attended the Banff Centre with the Australian Haydn Quartet for a Winter Residency, and also performed at The Julliard School. Skye is playing a violin by Tomaso Eberle, 1770, Naples Violin Matthew Greco
Matthew began learning violin at the age of 12 and studied with Professor Janet Davies and Neal Peres Da Costa at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. At the age of 19 he was
engaged by Australia’s leading period orchestras - the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Orchestra of the Antipodes. He later undertook further study in historical performance at the Royale Conservatoire of The Hague, with Professor Ryo Terakado and Professor Enrico Gatti, graduating in 2013. Matthew performs as a soloist, concertmaster and core member of some of the world’s leading period instrument ensembles, including the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Orchestra of the Antipodes (Pinchgut Opera), Australian Haydn Ensemble, Salut! Baroque, De Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Netherlands Bach Society), Les Talens Lyriques (Paris), Festival D’Aix en Provence, Opera Nationale de Paris, L’Académie baroque européenne d’Ambronay, Capella Mediterranea (Switzerland) and Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Canada). He is a founding member of the Sydney-based, baroque ensemble The Muffat Collective. Matthew is playing a violin by David Christian Hope, 1760, Quittenbach Viola Karina Schmitz
Karina is principal violist of Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, and the Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra. She is also a founding member of 17th century ensemble ACRONYM, and violinist/violist of Duo Corbetta. For eleven years she served as principal second violinist with Philadelphia based Tempesta di Mare. Hailing from the USA, Karina holds degrees from New England Conservatory and the Cleveland
THE PERFORMERS Institute of Music, and studied early music at Oberlin Conservatory and in the Apollo’s Fire Apprentice Program. Karina has collaborated with many ensembles including Van Diemen’s Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Boston Camerata, and the American Opera Theater in Washington, D.C.
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and the exuberant period instrument ensemble Florilegium. He has made many award-winning recordings. Daniel is playing a Cello by William Forster II, 1781, London
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
Karina is playing a Viola by Francis Beaulieu, 2011, Montreal after Pietro Giovanni Mantegazza, Milan, 1793
Cello Daniel Yeadon Dr Daniel Yeadon is a Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, where he teaches cello and viola da gamba, coaches chamber music, and engages in research into learning, teaching and historical performance practices. Daniel has a love of a wide range of musical genres and is an exceptionally versatile cellist and viola da gamba player, performing repertoire from the Renaissance through to Contemporary. Daniel is a passionate chamber musician, playing regularly with Australian Haydn Ensemble, Ironwood, Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO), Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, and Bach Akademie Australia. Originally from the UK, Daniel read physics at Oxford University and then completed his postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music in London. For many years Daniel was a member of the renowned Fitzwilliam String Quartet
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ABOUT THE MUSIC HAYDN’S DREAM & BACH’S GOLDBERG
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From ancient cultures and places to the present moment, dreams are a source of fascination and inspiration for artists, writers, filmmakers, psychologists and composers alike. The Australian Haydn Ensemble invites the audience on an exploration of dreams as imagined by Haydn, Beethoven and Bach. Hear how sound can so beautifully make sense of the many images, recollections, characters, stories and colours of dreams – current and past, distinct or faded. Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732–1809) String Quartet No. 40 in F major Op. 50 No. 5 The Dream Allegro moderato Poco adagio Tempo di Menuetto: Allegretto Finale: Vivace King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia was an enthusiastic patron of the arts and avid cellist, and many composers – including C. P. E. Bach, Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – wrote chamber works for him. The king was particularly impressed with the compositions of Haydn, and showed this by sending him a letter of praise with a golden ring enclosed. Haydn in turn dedicated the six Op. 50 quartets to him, and proudly wore the ring while composing. As with many of the nicknames associated with Haydn’s works, most often these did not stem from the composer but emerged from the reviews or other anecdotes following performances. The Dream subtitle originated from listeners’ reactions to the Poco adagio second movement, in particular the gentle and rolling chordal accompaniment
beneath the peaceful song-like voice of the violin. Along with bursts of triplet activity from the whole ensemble, Haydn introduces occasional dissonant tones as pinpricks of light in an otherwise darkened room. This follows a spry first movement recalling an earlier light-hearted Haydn persona, and the viola and cello pop up throughout with cheeky interjections of scripted wrong notes. The Menuetto that follows the second movement is also laced with deliberate harmonic and rhythmic ambiguities, and these are brought into the foreground by Haydn’s economical thematic material. The whole movement grows outward from its initiating motif, and shows Haydn’s mastery of extracting full value from a single theme. The Finale is also sparse with its thematic content, and charges along and barely catches its breath. Haydn introduces colourisation into the quartet sound by indicating that the first violin’s melody be played on a single string – una corda – drawing extra attention to the shifts and changes between some of the more widely spaced notes. Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in F major Op. 18 No. 1 – 2nd Movement Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato A message that was never delivered and the deepest of sleeps marks the final scene of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with a dream of love ending in tragedy. Beethoven wrote to his close friend Carl Amenda, that he was imagining Romeo and Juliet while composing the second movement of the Op. 18 String Quartet No. 1. However, in a similar way to his Pastoral Symphony, he is not creating a painting of the story through music, but rather evoking an overall mood.
The D minor second movement certainly exhibits a gravity that is enhanced by the lush and refined string textures. After being already completed, the quartet as we now know it underwent major revisions and rebuilding, and musicians and musicologists have gained many insights into Beethoven’s compositional process and skill by comparing the first and final versions. One important difference in the second movement is that Beethoven tempered many of the extreme dynamic changes which had already become his trademark. It is possible that he did this to draw greater attention to the dramatic ascending passages in the final few minutes of the 11-minute movement. These are punctuated by heartwrenching chasms of silence – within a mere second an entire world seems to reverberate. Johann Sebastian BACH (1685–1750) transcr. François MEÏMOUN (1979–) Goldberg Variations BWV 988 – selections In 1802, musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote one of the first biographies of Bach. In it, he relates a story of how the Goldberg Variations came to be, over 60 years earlier. According to Forkel, Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling – a Russian diplomat in Saxony – commissioned Bach to write the variations to lift his spirits during insomnia. They were reportedly played in the next room by Johann Gottlieb Goldberg – a talented 14-year-old harpsichordist employed by Keyserling. Some aspects of this story may not withstand the rigours of modern-day fact-checking, but there is no doubt that the Goldberg Variations are the stuff of dreams. They belong to that rare breed of music that somehow transcends categorisation – often being the solitary piece of classical music in vast CD or record libraries of, for example, rock or jazz purists. The popularity of the Goldberg Variations owes much to the recordings made by mercurial
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, but they have also been recorded, arranged, reworked and reimagined by a huge number of musicians including for many different combinations of instruments. Bach’s music appears to be indestructible, and springs to life whether set for any variety of keyboard, brass, strings, guitar, jazz improvisers, voices or electronics. With repeated listenings, new shapes and relationships seem to come in and out of focus – one day an M. C. Escher tessellation morphs into a moon orbiting a faraway planet. Or in the blink of an eye, a mathematical equation appears but then shimmers and turns into the patterns on a pebble. Bach, of course, knew precisely what he was doing – the 30 short variations are developed from the bass line and chord progression of the initial aria rather than its melody. This provides a solid foundation to the work, but at the same time opens up great potential for elaboration and change. Bach’s astute inventiveness, adaption and recycling are superbly rendered in the 2018 transcription for string quartet by French composer and musicologist François Meïmoun. The Australian Haydn Ensemble presents a selection of the variations, and as in a dream itself, the delicate blend of individual voices and timbral homogeneity feels both reassuringly familiar and refreshingly new. Program notes by Charles MacInnes.
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HISTORICALLY INFORMED PERFORMANCE 10
The Australian Haydn Ensemble is one of Australia’s leading ensembles performing on period instruments and specialising in what has come to be known as Historically Informed Performance (HIP). What does historically informed performance mean? Historically Informed Performance means taking an approach to music-making that is close to what the composers might have intended when they were alive. The players achieve this by performing on instruments of the time when a piece was written, with reference also to musical sources of the day. This approach is becoming much more commonplace in Australia. Historically Informed Performance as we know it today emerged in Europe in the 1960s when some performers of baroque and classical works began to question how these pieces might have been performed when written. They began to examine historical sources such as composers’ original manuscripts and instrumental treatises written by performers and composers during the late seventeenth century through to the late eighteenth
century. This research led to the discovery of ‘new’ ways of interpreting old works that are drawn from these sources, and there is still much to be discovered. AHE and Historically Informed Performance The Ensemble’s focus is on music written during the late baroque and early classical period when compositional styles of chamber music and orchestral writing had reached a new height in their development. Composers of this period were not only extending musical forms but also the virtuosic demands on instruments and performers. An Historically Informed Performance approach brings the music to life by providing a context to both the performer and listener. Period or original instruments often make it technically more difficult for the performer, but they also allow greater freedom to colour the sound in a way that is not possible on modern instruments.
SUPPORT AHE Your support is greatly appreciated and makes it possible for the AHE to continue to grow. All donations over $2 are tax deductible. DONATE ONLINE www.australianhaydn.com.au/ how-to-support DIRECT DEPOSIT Pay direct from your account into: The Australian Haydn Ensemble Inc. Public Fund BSB: 082 088 Account: 845262651 Please include your name and mark it as a donation in your transaction, and email us at info@australianhaydn.com.au to let us know you have donated. Thank you to everyone who has so generously donated to AHE during a year of uncertaintity. For a full list of donors, please visit www.australianhaydn.com.au/patrons 11
BACKSTAGE Administration Alicia Gibbons - General Manager Stephen Bydder - Administrator Marguerite Foxon - Front of House and Administrator Vi King Lim – Score Services Patron Professor the Honourable Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO Board Marco Belgiorno-Zegna AM (Chair) Jan Bowen AM Carolyn Fletcher AM Harriet Lenigas Adrian Maroya Skye McIntosh Peter Young AM
Australian Haydn Ensemble is a not for profit organisation ABN 26 202 621 166 Level 1/16-18 Oxford Square Darlinghurst NSW 2010 1800 334 388 (Freecall) australianhaydn.com.au admin@australianhaydn.com.au Details in this program are correct at time of publication. Australian Haydn Ensemble reserves the right to add, withdraw or substitute artists and to vary the program and other details without notice. Full terms and conditions of sale available at our website australianhaydn.com.au or on request.
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