NEW WORLD SYMPHONY 21–24 SEPTEMBER 2018 Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
CONCERT PROGRAM
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Xian Zhang conductor Tianyi Lu conductor Benjamin Grosvenor piano Smetana The Bartered Bride: Overture Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor INTERVAL
Dvořåk Symphony No.9 From the New World
Pre-concert talk (Friday & Saturday) Join Monica Curro, Assistant Principal 2nd Violin of the MSO, for a pre-concert conversation onstage at Hamer Hall from 6.15pm. Post-concert conversation (Monday) Join Andrew Aronowicz, composer and Limelight Magazine contributor, for a post-concert conversation inside the Stalls Foyer of Hamer Hall from 8.30pm. Running time: One hour and 45 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone. The MSO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which it is performing. MSO pays its respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be in attendance. 2
mso.com.au
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MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
XIAN ZHANG CONDUCTOR
Established in 1906, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an arts leader and Australia’s oldest professional orchestra. Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has been at the helm of MSO since 2013. Engaging more than 4 million people each year, the MSO reaches diverse audiences through live performances, recordings, TV and radio broadcasts and live streaming. Its international audiences include China, where MSO has performed in 2012, 2016 and most recently in May 2018, Europe (2014) and Indonesia, where in 2017 it performed at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Prambanan Temple.
Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Xian Zhang’s contract has recently been extended until 2023/24. In 2016, Zhang became Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra. She is Conductor Emeritus of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.
The MSO performs a variety of concerts ranging from symphonic performances at its home, Hamer Hall at Arts Centre Melbourne, to its annual free concerts at Melbourne’s largest outdoor venue, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. The MSO also delivers innovative and engaging programs and digital tools to audiences of all ages through its Education and Outreach initiatives.
Xian Zhang has recently appeared with orchestras such as the Orquesta Nacional de España, Academy of Saint Cecilia, and National Arts Center Orchestra, Ottawa. In the opera house, she has conducted La bohème, Traviata, and Otello in recent years. Born in Dandon, China, she champions Chinese composers such as Chen Yi, whose Antiphony she conducted in her 2017 Los Angeles Philharmonic debut.
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TIANYI LU CONDUCTOR
BENJAMIN GROSVENOR PIANO
Tianyi is the Cybec Assistant Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Bristol Metropolitan Orchestra, and regularly guest conducts orchestras around the United Kingdom and New Zealand. She is the Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where she is a member of the conducting faculty.
Benjamin Grosvenor first came to prominence when he was 11 as winner of the Keyboard Final of the 2004 BBC Young Musician Competition. He has appeared with orchestras such as the Boston Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala and New York Philharmonic. Conductors he has appeared with include Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jiří Bělohlávek, Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Jurowski, and Ludovic Morlot.
As a flautist and composer, Tianyi was the recipient of a number of awards, including First Prize in the New Zealand Woodwind Competition and top awards in the Douglas Lilburn and Llewellyn Jones composition competitions at the University of Auckland. Her broad musical interests have also led her to study the baroque flute, violada gamba, harpsichord and electronic music composition in her undergraduate studies.
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Recent recordings include Homages, the music of great composers paying homage to predecessors (including Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s Chaconne BWV 1004 and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin). Forthcoming performances include piano recitals in the UK and Madrid, performances with the London Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Schumann’s Piano Concerto in Slovakia.
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PROGRAM NOTES BEDŘICH SMETANA
(1824-1884)
The Bartered Bride: Overture In a breathless overture to the work that gave his long-suffering fellowcountrymen their own operatic identity, Smetana encapsulates the vitality and bustle, as well as the rustic charm, of a Czech village in festive mood. This was the first time Czech village life had been portrayed believably in opera. Although premiered inauspiciously in the shadow of a looming war with Bismarck’s Prussia, The Bartered Bride survived the fiasco of its truncated opening season in 1866 to win the undying affection of Czech people and, subsequently, audiences throughout the world. Smetana’s comedy is peopled with characters his audiences would recognise and empathise with, individuals experiencing the deep human emotions of hope and fear, venality and cunning, confusion and despair and, above all, unquenchable young love. In the ‘all’s fair’ context of love and war, not even a dubious device by which the happy outcome turns on a piece of shameless deception can arouse disquiet. Thus not only the bride is won but a questionable cash bonus as well. (The opera is literally ‘The Sold Bride’, not ‘bartered’.) While the overture essentially sets the scene of festivity on the village green, the three main motifs (bustling, suspenseful string figures in the opening, a polka-like subject which foreshadows the brilliant national 6
dances to come, and a winsome, contrasting oboe melody) will all be heard again at the climax of the second act as the bridal-sale contract is signed before the outraged village-folk as indignant witnesses. Smetana lived to resent the fact that the runaway success of this, the second of his eight completed operas, overshadowed later works he valued more highly. However The Bartered Bride was the means by which this expatriate composer, home at last from a youthful odyssey in Sweden, resoundingly fulfilled his determination to give his people a national music. Anthony Cane © 2005 The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed this work at a War Funds Concert on 3 August 1940 conducted by Georg Schnéevoigt. The Orchestra’s most recent performances took place on 1-2 October 2015 under the direction of Jakub Hrůša.
ROBERT SCHUMANN
(1810-1856)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54 Allegro affettuoso Intermezzo (Andantino grazioso) – Allegro vivace Following their wedding in September 1840, composer Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck, a prominent piano virtuoso, set up house in Leipzig. The couple soon had children, and finding money to support a growing family was a constant worry. Clara had no intention of abandoning her successful musical life. She took pride in earning money from her performances; she also helped popularise Robert’s piano works by including them in her concert programs. Robert revered his wife’s
extraordinary musicianship, but his pride struggled with the greater fame accorded Clara, especially when they travelled on concert tours together. Though a respected music journalist and an acclaimed composer of piano works, songs and chamber music, he had yet to write the symphonies and large-scale works that would later enhance his artistic reputation. A piano concerto by Robert that Clara could perform would thus serve several purposes. Before marrying, Robert had experimented with various ideas for piano concertos, none of which evolved beyond sketches. But during the newlyweds’ first year, he completed a Phantasie for Piano and Orchestra, conceived and orchestrated during 16 days in May 1841. A private performance led to the first of several revisions, but Robert could not find a publisher for his single-movement work. He set it aside for four years, during which time he wrote more chamber music (including his popular Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet) as well as the Spring Symphony, and moved his family to Dresden. From there he undertook a tour to Russia with Clara that left him exhausted and ill, triggering a severe nervous breakdown. He sought therapy by studying the works of Bach and writing fugues. Taking a break from counterpoint exercises, he added two movements – a final rondo and a connecting Intermezzo – to the reworked Phantasie, and thus created his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Ferdinand Hiller, a conductor to whom Robert dedicated the concerto (hoping to heal a rift in their friendship), led the premiere in his Dresden subscription
concert of 4 December 1845 with Clara as soloist. But the true dedicatee is Clara, for whom Robert characterised his devotion in the opening movement’s tempo indication of Allegro affettuoso, the Phantasie’s original title. Clara took pleasure in the results; she had long wanted a more brilliant vehicle for display of her virtuosity than the Phantasie. Felix Mendelssohn, the Schumanns’ great friend, who expressed highest regard for Clara’s playing and supported (with occasional private misgivings) Schumann’s work as a composer, organised and conducted the Leipzig premiere on New Year’s Day 1846. Thereafter, the concerto was performed in important cities, often with Robert conducting; it remained a central work in Clara’s repertoire, and is a lasting testament to the couple’s remarkable personal and artistic partnership, cut short by Robert’s death at age 46 in the Endenich asylum, where he recalled, in a letter to Clara, the concerto ‘that you played so splendidly’. With an abrupt, chromatic cascade of chords, the soloist’s opening entrance commands immediate attention, heralding the oboe’s statement of the primary theme, echoed by the piano. The theme’s three-note descending motif dominates deliberations between the orchestra and soloist. The opening key of A minor yields, via the second theme, to triumphant C major, then to an expressive reverie in A flat major, showcasing the piano accompanied by radiant strings and plaintive woodwind. A return to earlier debates interrupts this dream, restores the opening theme and launches the soloist into an extended cadenza, capped by a quick coda that ends emphatically. 7
The second-movement Intermezzo (Andantino grazioso) hosts a more congenial but equally passionate dialogue. Short musical ideas are exchanged politely between soloist and orchestra, but as they warm to their topic, an eloquent contrasting theme sings out richly from the cellos, ornamented expansively by the piano. As the conversation fades, clarinets and bassoons recall the opening movement’s three-note motif, first in A minor, then in A major. Without pause, the piano seizes the major motif and launches into a robust, triple-metre rondo marked Allegro vivace, driven by the soloist’s extensive bravura passagework. The third-movement theme (itself a transformation of the primary first-movement theme, subtly strengthening the concerto’s structural unity) surfaces buoyantly through harmonic sequences that build to an exhilarating conclusion. Samuel C. Dixon © 2003 The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed the Schumann Piano Concerto on 25 May 1939 with conductor George Szell and soloist Artur Schnabel, and most recently in October 2016 with Marcelo Lehninger and Nelson Freire.
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
(1841-1904)
Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op.95 From the New World Adagio – Allegro molto Largo Scherzo (Molto vivace) Allegro con fuoco Antonín Dvořák arrived in New York with his wife and two of his six children on 26 September 1892. At the invitation of the 8
wealthy and visionary philanthropist Mrs Jeannette Thurber, Dvořák had come to the New World to become Director of the National Conservatory of Music in Manhattan. Dvořák soon settled into a fairly light routine at the Conservatory. Three mornings a week he met a hand-picked group of twelve young composers; twice a week he rehearsed with the Conservatory’s orchestra for an annual schedule of ten concerts, four featuring student works, the remainder highlighting his own. At the Conservatory, Dvořák struck up a friendship with a young singing major from Erie, Pennsylvania. Although not far enough advanced to be a member of Dvořák’s classes, Harry T. Burleigh was invited on many occasions to sing the spirituals and worksongs of his people, music that caused Dvořák to write: In these Negro melodies, I have discovered all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay, or what you will…There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source. By early January 1893, Dvořák, always a fast worker, began to jot down sketches for a new symphony. By 24 May, it was complete. (Confusingly, he called this E minor symphony his ‘eighth’, but crossed that out, calling it his ‘seventh’. Initially published as his ‘fifth’, today we recognise it in its rightful chronological place as his ‘ninth’ – a fateful number for symphonic composers, post-Beethoven!) As the
score was rushed out of the house, Dvořák hastily scrawled the famous moniker on its title page: ‘from the New World’. With this New World Symphony, Dvořák sent greetings to his friends and colleagues in the Old World. Its first performance occurred on 16 December that year, with Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic Society in Carnegie Hall. The response was rapturous. Dvořák wrote to his publisher that ‘newspapers say no composer has ever before had such a triumph…I had to thank [the audience] from the box like a king!’ Virtually immediately, the debate over the work’s ‘American’ credentials began. Dvořák was at pains to repeat to his friends that this work was ‘essentially different from my earlier things – perhaps a little American – and it would never have been written just “so” had I never seen America’. He dismissed as ‘nonsense’ the notion that he had introduced Native American or African-American melodies. Even so, many commentators hear echoes of the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ in the first movement; others hear snippets of ‘Yankee Doodle’ in the finale. Whilst writing the New World Symphony, Dvořák was re-reading Longfellow’s epic poem Song of Hiawatha, which he had long admired in the Czech translation by J.V. Sládek. Mrs Thurber had often pressed him to write an opera on the subject. Dvořák noted that the Scherzo movement was written ‘under the impression of the burial festival in the forest where the Indians dance’. Presumably, he is referring to Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, some five years before the famous
oratorio written by the 22-year-old African-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). The haunting melody in the second movement poses many problems of identity. Miss Alice Fletcher, a prominent collector of Native American music, said that in 1893 Dvořák told her it sprang from an Osage Indian song he had heard during the several summer weeks he spent in the Bohemian village of Spillville, in north-east Iowa. (The argument was further muddied some years later, when William Arms Fisher, one of his Conservatory students, penned a text to the melody. From that moment, ‘Goin’ Home’ became a favourite ‘spiritual’ on Paul Robeson’s recitals and in the 1941 movie It Started with Eve, sung by Deanna Durbin. Thus a melody possibly inspired by spirituals has itself become a ‘spiritual’.) Harry Burleigh, who had helped copy parts for the new symphony, had no doubts about its origin. ‘It was my privilege to sing repeatedly some of the old plantation songs for Dvořák in his house,’ he recalled. ‘One in particular, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, greatly pleased him, and part of this old spiritual will be found in the second theme of the first movement.’ Indeed, Dvořák changed his orchestration of the Largo; he felt that the cor anglais, not the clarinet he originally used, ‘most closely resembled the quality of Burleigh’s voice’. Other aspects of Dvořák’s so-called ‘American identity’ need to be mentioned. Dvořák arrived in America at the outset of a welter of celebrations commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s so-called 9
‘discovery of the New World’. Before leaving Prague, Dvořák began work on his ‘patriotic cantata’, The American Flag, Op.102, whose jingoistic text was chosen for him by Mrs Thurber. For the Columbus Celebration Concert in Carnegie Hall on 21 October 1892, Dvořák conducted his new Te Deum, Op.103. For ‘Czech Day’at the Chicago Columbian Exhibition, 12 August 1893, he conducted some Slavonic Dances and his Symphony No.8, for an audience that included 30,000 Czechs and Moravians. For that same Exhibition he was also commissioned to compose music for a pageant celebrating Columbus; the project was scrapped, but the everresourceful Dvořák may have recycled some of its music in his new symphony. One can almost envisage the ‘heroic’ Columbus in the fanfare outbursts of the first and last movements.
Dvořák and his wife set sail from New York on 16 April 1895. He was due to return but decided to remain in his comfort-zone of Bohemia for the sake of his family and close-knit circle of friends. On 17 August, he sent his letter of resignation to Mrs Thurber.
In the tiny, desolate village of Spillville, where he composed his American String Quartet, Op.97, Dvořák saw a performance by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Show. He read Theodore Baker’s dissertation on the music of the North American Indian. On a side trip to Minnesota, he stood in awe at the beautiful Minnehaha Falls in St Paul. Without any paper, he wrote on his starched sleeve-cuff the theme of the Larghetto movement of his Violin Sonatina, Op.100. A train buff, he relished his journeys across the American hinterland and around the train-yards of Manhattan. Perhaps the oddest of Dvořák’s manifold Americanisms is his arrangement of Stephen Foster’s song ‘Old Folks at Home’, written for a benefit concert sponsored by the New York Herald in 1894, in which Harry Burleigh sang one of the vocal solo parts.
The first complete performance of Dvořák’s New World Symphony by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra took place on 8 September 1941, conducted by Sir Bernard Heinze; the Orchestra’s most recent performance was in March 2016, with Benjamin Northey.
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In inviting Dvořák to New York, Mrs Thurber had hoped he would not only help reverse the brain-drain to Europe but also that he might sow the seeds of a national school of composition in America. A decade later, Gustav Mahler was to arrive in New York to conduct. But no other European symphonic work was to imprint its American outlook and origins in the history of music as Dvořák’s New World Symphony. Indirectly, Mrs Thurber got her wish and her memorial to boot. Vincent Plush © 2002
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MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Sir Andrew Davis Chief Conductor
Benjamin Northey Associate Conductor Anthony Pratt#
Tianyi Lu
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# Position supported by * Guest Musician ** Timpani Chair position supported by Lady Potter AC CMRI
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^ Courtesy of Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra 13
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CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE Current Conductor’s Circle Members Jenny Anderson David Angelovich G C Bawden and L de Kievit Lesley Bawden Joyce Bown Mrs Jenny Brukner and the late Mr John Brukner Ken Bullen Peter A Caldwell Luci and Ron Chambers Beryl Dean Sandra Dent Lyn Edward Alan Egan JP Gunta Eglite Mr Derek Grantham Marguerite Garnon-Williams Drs Clem Gruen and Rhyl Wade Louis Hamon OAM Carol Hay Tony Howe Laurence O’Keefe and Christopher James Audrey M Jenkins John Jones George and Grace Kass
Mr Tam Vu Marian and Terry Wills Cooke Mark Young Anonymous (26) The MSO gratefully acknowledges the support of the following Estates: Angela Beagley Neilma Gantner The Hon Dr Alan Goldberg AO QC Gwen Hunt Audrey Jenkins Joan Jones Pauline Marie Johnston Joan Jones C P Kemp Peter Forbes MacLaren Joan Winsome Maslen Lorraine Maxine Meldrum Prof Andrew McCredie Miss Sheila Scotter AM MBE Marion A I H M Spence Molly Stephens Jennifer May Teague Jean Tweedie Herta and Fred B Vogel Dorothy Wood
Pauline and David Lawton
TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS
Cameron Mowat
Collier Charitable Fund
David Orr Rosia Pasteur
Crown Resorts Foundation and the Packer Family Foundation
Elizabeth Proust AO
The Cybec Foundation
Penny Rawlins
The Marian and E.H. Flack Trust
Joan P Robinson
Freemasons Foundation Victoria
Neil Roussac
Gandel Philanthropy
Anne Roussac-Hoyne
The International Music and Arts Foundation
Suzette Sherazee
The Scobie and Claire Mackinnon Trust
Michael Ryan and Wendy Mead
The Harold Mitchell Foundation
Anne Kieni-Serpell and Andrew Serpell
The Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund
Jennifer Shepherd
The Pratt Foundation
Profs. Gabriela and George Stephenson
The Robert Salzer Foundation
Pamela Swansson
Telematics Trust
Lillian Tarry
Anonymous
Mrs Sylvia Lavelle
Dr Cherilyn Tillman Mr and Mrs R P Trebilcock Michael Ullmer Ila Vanrenen The Hon. Rosemary Varty 18
Honorary Appointments Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO Life Members John Gandel AC and Pauline Gandel Life Members Sir Elton John CBE Life Member Lady Potter AC CMRI Life Member Mrs Jeanne Pratt AC Life Member
The MSO relies on your ongoing philanthropic support to sustain our artists, and support access, education, community engagement and more. We invite our suporters to get close to the MSO through a range of special events. The MSO welcomes your support at any level. Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible, and supporters are recognised as follows: $1,000+ (Player) $2,500+ (Associate) $5,000+ (Principal) $10,000+ (Maestro) $20,000+ (Impresario) $50,000+ (Virtuoso) $100,000+ (Platinum)
Geoffrey Rush AC Ambassador
The MSO Conductor’s Circle is our bequest program for members who have notified of a planned gift in their Will.
THE MSO HONOURS
Enquiries P (03) 8646 1551 E philanthropy@mso.com.au
THE MEMORY OF
John Brockman OAM Life Member The Honourable Alan Goldberg AO QC Life Member Ila Vanrenen Life Member
‘ We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.' – Arthur O’Shaughnessy
Come dream with us by adopting your own MSO musician! Support the music and the orchestra you love while getting to know your favourite player. Honour their talent, artistry and life-long commitment to music, and become part of the MSO family. Adopt Principal Harp, Yinuo Mu, or any of our wonderful musicians today.
CALENDAR
OF EVENTS
Final Symphony: Music from FINAL FANTASY® 28 & 29 September Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Experience the music of one of the world’s most renowned video games in full symphonic surrounds.
Buddha Passion 6 October Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Tan Dun conducts his own monumental opera in six acts telling of love, forgiveness, sacrifice and salvation.
Christopher Moore 11 October / 12 October Melbourne Recital Centre / Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University
An intimate program of Mozart, Brahms, and the world premiere of Iain Gradage’s All the World’s a Stage.
Chamber 4 21 October Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank
S OL D
OU T
Ears Wide Open: Debussy 22 October Melbourne Recital Centre Presenter Tianyi Lu leads a guided musical journey through Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.
Tickets for these shows and more at mso.com.au
Principal Partner
Government Partners
Premier Partners
Venue Partner
Major Partners
Education Partners
Supporting Partners
Quest Southbank
The CEO Institute
Ernst & Young
Bows for Strings
The Observership Program
Trusts And Foundations
Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund, The Gross Foundation, MS Newman Family Foundation, The Ullmer Family Foundation, Erica Foundation Pty Ltd
Media And Broadcast Partners