Dvořák's Eighth Symphony
MONDAY 3 JUNE 2024 / 6.30pm
Melbourne Recital Centre
City
Melbourne,
Ears Wide Open is supported by
of
Crown Resorts and Packer Family Foundation
DVOŘÁK Symphony No.8 (excerpts)
Duration: 75 minutes with no interval
LEONARD WEISS CF*^ CONDUCTOR
*CYBEC ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR
^CHURCHILL FELLOW
Leonard Weiss CF is an Australian conductor and educator. He is proud to be the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Cybec Assistant Conductor. Leonard previously held the position of 2022 New Zealand Assistant Conductor in Residence, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 2020-21 BSO-Peabody Fellow.
Highlights of Leonard’s past season include Riccardo Muti’s Italian Opera Academy in Tokyo, the Tanglewood Conducting Seminar with Andris Nelsons, observing Salzburg Festival rehearsals at the selection of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra musicians, and return engagements with the Auckland Philharmonia.
In addition to a busy MSO schedule this year, Leonard returns to National Opera for Suor Angelica. He also conducts all Australian symphony orchestras as part of the 2023–24 Australian Conducting Academy.
Leonard studied conducting with Marin Alsop at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. There he was acclaimed as Peabody’s “rising star” and conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in a masterclass with Gianandrea Noseda.
Leonard’s recent awards include the Mr and Mrs Gerald Frank New Churchill Fellowship, an Australia Council Career Development Grant, and an Ars Musica Australis Arts Fellowship. Leonard was a finalist for 2016 Young Australian of the Year, and was named 2016 Young Canberra Citizen of the Year for Youth Arts and Multimedia.
PROGRAM
NICHOLAS BOCHNER PRESENTER
Nicholas joined the MSO in 1998 as Assistant Principal Cello, and always having had a strong commitment to music education and community engagement, was appointed the Cybec Assistant Conductor for Learning and Engagement for 2020–2021. In this role he explored classical favourites in the Ears Wide Open series, conducted MSO for Schools performances, and hosted a number of live-streamed events. He has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and recitalist and has also taught cello and improvisation at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
After training in Adelaide and London, Nicholas spent 3 years as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Queensland as part of the ensemble Perihelion, forging a strong reputation as an exponent of contemporary music.
In 2010 Nicholas was awarded the Dame Roma Mitchell Churchill Fellowship to spend 2 months looking in depth at the LSO’s iconic Discovery program and at the use of improvisation in training classical musicians at the Guildhall School of Music.
In 2016, Nicholas’ considerable experience as an orchestral musician and his passion for communication led him to undertake a fellowship at ANAM where he developed, conducted and presented educational concerts for primary school children. During the fellowship he was mentored by Paul Rissmann, Graham Abbott and the legendary Richard Gill AO.
Since then he has presented educational concerts for children and adults for MSO, ANAM and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. He also conducts the Melbourne University Biomedical Students’ Orchestra.
In support of his work as an education presenter, Nicholas has studied conducting with Benjamin Northey and won a coveted place at the TSO’s 2019 Australian Conducting Academy.
QUICK FACTS
• Symphony No.8 was composed and orchestrated during a 10-week summer holiday in 1889, and later premiered on 2 February 1890 with the composer conducting.
• In 1887 Dvořák stopped accepting commissions, claiming that he was writing only for himself. His Symphony No.8 was written upon his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts.
• Dvořák was fond of Czech and Slavonic folk music, and the symphony's key of G Major had long been associated with joyful folk music. This was the first notable symphony in G Major since Haydn, and remained as such until Mahler’s Symphony No.4 a decade later.
• Dvořák’s normal publisher, Simrock, had paid 3,000 marks for Dvořák’s Symphony No.7, but only offered 1,000 for the Eighth Symphony. In turn, Symphony No.8 was published by Novello.
• Dvořák loved trains; he catalogued them obsessively and walked by the train station each morning. He once said that “I’d give all my symphonies if I could have invented the locomotive!”
GLOSSARY
Folk music
The traditional music of the people in a country or region passed down from generation to generation.
Pentatonic scale
A musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave.
Romanticism
An era of Western classical music beginning in the early 19th century marked by imagination, emotional expression, individualism, and experimentation.
Diatonic
One of the main types of Western scales, comprising seven notes made up of five whole tones and two semitones. Diatonic scales are either major or natural minor.
Chromatic
The use of notes that are outside the diatonic scale on which a composition is based. Chromaticism was a central part of Romantic harmony.
Episodic construction
A type of form in which sections, or ‘episodes’, are created with new thematic material rather than by developing existing material.
Sonata form
A key structure of Western art music since the mid-18th century comprising three main sections: an exposition, development and recapitulation. The first movements of symphonies usually follow sonata form.