Mendelssohn and Brahms | Concert Program

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Sir Andrew Davis conductor

Christian Li violin Program

CARL VINE MicroSymphony MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto

BRAHMS Symphony No.4

Running time: approximately 2 hours including interval.

Our musical Acknowledgment of Country, Long Time Living Here by Deborah Cheetham AO, will be performed at this concert.

Pre-concert events

Pre-concert talk: 2 December at 6:45pm in Stalls Foyer, Level 2 at Hamer Hall. 3 December at 1:45pm in Stalls Foyer, Level 2 at Hamer Hall.

Learn more about the performance at a pre-concert presentation with Andrew Aronowicz.

These concerts may be recorded for future broadcast on MSO.LIVE

Please note audience members are strongly recommended to wear face masks where 1.5m distancing is not possible. In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone.

Acknowledging Country

In the first project of its kind in Australia, the MSO has developed a musical Acknowledgment of Country with music composed by Yorta Yorta composer Deborah Cheetham AO, featuring Indigenous languages from across Victoria. Generously supported by Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and the Commonwealth Government through the Australian National Commission for UNESCO, the MSO is working in partnership with Short Black Opera and Indigenous language custodians who are generously sharing their cultural knowledge.

The Acknowledgement of Country allows us to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we perform in the language of that country and in the orchestral language of music.

About Long Time Living Here

In all the world, only Australia can lay claim to the longest continuing cultures and we celebrate this more today than in any other time since our shared history began. We live each day drawing energy from a land which has been nurtured by the traditional owners for more than 2000 generations. When we acknowledge country we pay respect to the land and to the people in equal measure.

As a composer I have specialised in coupling the beauty and diversity of our Indigenous languages with the power and intensity of classical music. In order to compose the music for this Acknowledgement of Country Project I have had the great privilege of working with no fewer than eleven ancient languages from the state of Victoria, including the language of my late Grandmother, Yorta Yorta woman Frances McGee. I pay my deepest respects to the elders and ancestors who are represented in these songs of acknowledgement and to the language custodians who have shared their knowledge and expertise in providing each text.

I am so proud of the MSO for initiating this landmark project and grateful that they afforded me the opportunity to make this contribution to the ongoing quest of understanding our belonging in this land.

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Established in 1906, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is Australia’s pre-eminent orchestra and a cornerstone of Victoria’s rich, cultural heritage.

Each year, the MSO engages with more than 5 million people, presenting in excess of 180 public events across live performances, TV, radio and online broadcasts, and via its online concert hall, MSO.LIVE, with audiences in 56 countries.

With a reputation for excellence, versatility and innovation, the MSO works with culturally diverse and First Nations leaders to build community and deliver music to people across Melbourne, the state of Victoria and around the world.

In 2022, the MSO’s new Chief Conductor, Jaime Martín has ushered in an exciting new phase in the Orchestra’s history. Maestro Martín joins an Artistic Family that includes Principal Guest Conductor Xian Zhang, Principal Conductor in Residence, Benjamin Northey, Conductor Laureate, Sir Andrew Davis CBE, Composer in Residence, Paul Grabowsky and Young Artist in Association, Christian Li.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the people of the Eastern Kulin Nations, on whose un‑ceded lands we honour the continuation of the oldest music practice in the world.

Mendelssohn and Brahms

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One of today’s most recognized and acclaimed conductors, Sir Andrew Davis’s career spans more than 50 years during which he has been the musical and artistic leader at several of the world’s most distinguished opera and symphonic institutions including Lyric Opera of Chicago (Music Director and Principal Conductor, 2000–2021), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Conductor Laureate; Chief Conductor, 1989–2000), Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Music Director, 1988–2000), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (Conductor Laureate; Chief Conductor, 2013–2019), and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Conductor Laureate; Principal Conductor, 1975–1988). He also holds the honorary title of Conductor Emeritus from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Sir Andrew has conducted virtually all of the world’s major orchestras, opera companies, and festivals.

Born in 1944 in Hertfordshire, England, Maestro Davis studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was Organ Scholar before taking up conducting. His wideranging repertoire encompasses the Baroque to contemporary and spans the symphonic, operatic, and choral worlds. A vast and award-winning discography documents Sir Andrew’s artistry, with recent CDs including the works of Berg, Berlioz, Bliss, Elgar (winner of the 2018 Diapason d’Or de l’Année – Musique Symphonique), Finzi, Grainger, Delius, Ives, Holst, Handel (nominated for a 2018 GRAMMY® for Best Choral Performance), Vaughan Williams, Vine, and York Bowen (nominated for a 2012 GRAMMY® for Best Orchestral Performance). He currently records exclusively for Chandos Records.

In 1992, Maestro Davis was made a Commander of the British Empire, and in 1999 he was designated a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours List.

Sir Andrew Davis conductor

Mendelssohn and Brahms

Christian Li violin

MSO YOUNG ARTIST IN ASSOCIATION

Christian Li has captivated audiences around the world since he became the youngest-ever Junior 1st Prize-winner of the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition at the age of 10. Performing with the Geneva Chamber Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, he also received the Audience Prize and the Composer Award. In 2020 he became the youngest artist ever to sign with Decca Classics, and the youngest violinist to professionally record Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Born in Melbourne Australia in 2007, Christian began learning the violin at the age of 5 and made his solo debut at the age of 9 with the Australasian Orchestra and his professional concerto debut at 10, performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Orchestra Victoria. In 2019 he made acclaimed debuts with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and the China Philharmonic Orchestra and gave highly successful debut UK recitals at the Gower, Harrogate International and Cheltenham Music Festivals. Christian also performed at Festivals in Norway and Israel, including a televised performance at the Tel Aviv Opera House. In current and upcoming seasons, he makes orchestral debuts in Norway, Denmark and the UK, in addition to debut recital tours to Taiwan and the USA.

Christian performs on the 1737 ex-Paulsen Guarneri del Gesù violin, on loan from a generous benefactor and uses a bow by François Peccatte. He currently studies at Juilliard in the class of Prof. Li Lin and has previously been a student of Dr. Robin Wilson at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne.

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Program Notes

CARL VINE (born 1954)

MicroSymphony

The composer writes: MicroSymphony (1986) is one in a series of works of various durations and instrumental forces which are all concerned with the condensation of motif and gesture. Although symphonic in intent and instrumentation, the work’s compactness and overall duration demand the diminutive prefix ‘Micro’.

The principal ‘theme’ to MicroSymphony is a four-note duet that is first heard in the third bar of the work. This motif outlines two chords a tritone (or augmented fourth) apart that contain both major and minor thirds. The entire work, then, follows as a series of explorations of the symmetry and ambivalence of this one motif.

The work deals principally with transformation. Chords become major, minor or both, and then mutate completely. Rhythms become more or less complex against the prevailing pulse and then propel into new pulses and new rhythms.

MicroSymphony was commissioned by the Sydney Youth Orchestra with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council.

Carl Vine © 2003

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847)

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64

I. Allegro molto appassionato –II. Andante –III. Allegro non troppo – Allegro molto vivace

Christian Li violin

This concerto is one of the best-loved of all Mendelssohn’s works. Its main rival for top ranking among violin concertos is probably that of Beethoven, and even in Mendelssohn’s day the comparison was already being made. ‘There seems to me to be something essentially and exquisitely feminine about it, just as there is something essentially and heroically masculine in the Beethoven Violin Concerto,’ said English pianistcomposer William Sterndale Bennett.

Mendelssohn has a reputation in some quarters for facility, even for unthinking note-spinning. The Violin Concerto gives the impression of spontaneous invention, but only through the art which conceals art. Ferdinand David, the leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Mendelssohn, helped the composer with the technicalities of the solo part, and gave the premiere in 1845. As early as 1838 Mendelssohn wrote to David: ‘I should also like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs in my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.’ Over the next six years Mendelssohn peppered David with questions about technical difficulties, and finished, ‘“Thank God this fellow is through with his Concerto,” you will say. Excuse my bothering you, but what can I do?’

Mendelssohn’s thoughtful approach to the challenge of writing this concerto produced a number of structural innovations. The first was his solution to the problem of the opening orchestral tutti (already tackled by Beethoven in his

last two piano concertos). Mendelssohn abolishes it completely: the violin soars in with the impassioned and lyrical first subject after just a bar and a half of orchestral accompaniment. Another happy find is the single open G-string note which the soloist sustains as a bass to the beautifully contrasted second subject. The next formal innovation shows how the virtuosity of the writing for violin is subordinated to the overall musical purpose: the cadenza, fully written out, occurs in the middle of the movement, and concludes with the recapitulation –a magical moment, as the orchestra states the main theme while the violin continues with figuration from the cadenza.

The bassoon note sustained from the last chord of the first movement, linking it with the second, is usually explained as Mendelssohn’s attempt to persuade the audience not to applaud at this point. What it does do is make the music continuous, and emphasise the change of key to C major for the songful slow movement. Mendelssohn again shows his concern for overall unity in writing an introduction to the last movement, with a theme for violin and strings a little reminiscent of the first movement – the soloist leads the listener in a typically Romantic manner through the unfolding ‘story’ of the concerto.

The last movement has many affinities with Mendelssohn’s ‘fairy-scherzo’ vein, first proclaimed in his teenage masterpieces the Octet and the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture. It is a movement of entrancing contrasts: between the opening call-to-attention, the substantial second subject, and the violin’s curving lyrical theme while the orchestra plays with scraps of the main theme. The whole concerto reveals how completely Mendelssohn could recapture the fresh inspiration of his youth in his full musical maturity.

JOHANNES BRAHMS

(1833–1897)

Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op.98

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Andante moderato

III. Allegro giocoso

IV. Allegro energico e passionato

The remarkable fact about the Symphony in E minor is that although this work has come to be admired as one of the finest Romantic symphonies, Brahms initially had major reservations about it. He even considered withdrawing it, fearing audiences would find it incomprehensible and unpalatable. From the tiny alpine village of Mürzzuschlag, south west of Vienna, where he completed the score in the summer of 1885, he wrote to conductor Hans von Bülow: ‘I’m really afraid that it tastes like the climate here. The cherries don’t ripen in these parts; you wouldn’t eat them!’

Indeed, to Brahms’ great hurt, none of his most trusted friends took a liking to the new symphony. On hearing a two-piano arrangement played by Brahms and Ignaz Brüll in early October, an assembled gathering including conductor Hans Richter, Theodor Billroth and critics Eduard Hanslick and Max Kalbeck were dismayed and left in stony silence. Just as perplexed were Brahms’ closest confidantes, Clara Schumann and Elisabet von Herzogenberg. The latter, after being pressed for comment, replied that she felt the symphony was ‘designed too much with a view to microscopic inspection, just as if its beauties were not there for every simple music-lover to see.’

Although Brahms shared some of his friends’ particular concerns about the structural elaborateness of the finale, he believed the symphony needed trialling with full orchestra to properly assess

it. So it was that the most celebrated symphonist in Europe (his Second and Third Symphonies by now being enormously popular), incredibly, found himself submitting a new symphony for private orchestral trial to decide its fate.

As things happened, the trial with Bülow directing the Meiningen Orchestra went magnificently well. Bülow thought the work ‘stupendous, quite original, quite new, individual and rock-like. Incomparable strength from start to finish.’ His assistant, the 21-year-old Richard Strauss, was enrapt, remarking of the Andante that it was like ‘a funeral procession moving in silence across moonlit heights’. Brahms felt sufficiently steeled to press ahead with a premiere, which took place on 25 October 1885, followed by touring performances with the same orchestra across Germany and Holland, and to London. In every city other than Vienna, it was a resounding success.

What do we make of the Fourth today? It shares little of the external optimism of Brahms’ Second and Third Symphonies and rather sees a return to the introspective minor-key drama of the First. But where his final symphony breaks new ground is in fusing a new personal, questing lyricism with an even more powerful, compressive formal strength.

Unusually for Brahms, the opening Allegro dispenses with all preliminaries and opens straight-up with a main theme of quiet, almost song-like intimacy. (He toyed with having four introductory chordal bars but later abandoned this idea.) The theme is pensive and short-breathed, as if inspired by the composer’s daily treks in the chilly steeps around Mürzzuschlag. Entwining trails of melodic thirds, elaborated from the first subject, take prominence and add a caressing warmth, but they also create a growing searching quality

and mystery amid the development’s dramatic ferment. The movement culminates in a powerful chordal affirmation of the tonic minor.

Like a distant alphorn call, the Andante’s main theme is announced in the woodwinds, in the remote-sounding Phrygian mode. Mirroring the first movement, the idea of melodic thirds is ever-present, both in the outline of the theme itself and in the progressively warm harmonies supplied to it. A second, lyrical theme of strained expression in the strings shows Brahms at his most harmonically advanced, remarkably close in fact to his supposed rivals Wagner and Bruckner. (The latter’s Eighth was completed during the same summer.)

So boisterously does the third movement romp along, and so exhilarating is its bristling strength, that this scherzo might be mistaken for a finale. It was to quickly become one of Brahms’ most popular symphonic movements, even if Kalbeck did think its main theme ‘abrupt’ and its subsidiary themes ‘trite’. The mood is one of unaffected cheerfulness, with theatrically fun play-offs between the various sections of the orchestra and novel (for Brahms) use of the triangle.

The finale is the most extraordinary of all Brahms’ orchestral creations. Conceived in sonata form as a series of 30 variations on the chaconne subject in Bach’s Cantata No.150, Nach Dir, Herr, verlanget mich, it is his non plus ultra exposition on how archaic principles can be married to modern practice. It begins with an austere statement of the chaconne theme in the winds and brass and unfolds with wave upon wave of melodic and harmonic invention founded on the theme’s slow, stepwise ascent. The movement wears the face of opposites, of terse conciseness and expansive lyricism, of inexorable

forward momentum and roaming, ‘free floating’ harmony.

As Walter Frisch has remarked, the Fourth ‘is not a work that unlocks its secrets easily.’ One might say though, that born of Mürzzuschlag’s alpine realm and representing the pinnacle of Brahms’ work as an orchestral composer, it is an Alpensinfonie even before Richard Strauss thought of the idea.

Graham Strahle © 2003

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The Hon. Rosemary Varty Terry Wills Cooke OAM and the late Marian Wills Cooke Mark Young

Anonymous (19)

The MSO gratefully acknowledges the support of the following Estates: Norma Ruth Atwell

Angela Beagley

Christine Mary Bridgart The Cuming Bequest Margaret Davies Neilma Gantner

The Hon Dr Alan Goldberg AO QC Enid Florence Hookey Gwen Hunt

Family and Friends of James Jacoby Audrey Jenkins Joan Jones Pauline Marie Johnston C P Kemp

Peter Forbes MacLaren Joan Winsome Maslen Lorraine Maxine Meldrum Prof Andrew McCredie Jean Moore

Maxwell Schultz Miss Sheila Scotter AM MBE Marion A I H M Spence Molly Stephens Halinka Tarczynska-Fiddian

Jennifer May Teague Albert Henry Ullin Jean Tweedie Herta and Fred B Vogel Dorothy Wood

COMMISSIONING CIRCLE

Mary Armour

The late Hon Michael Watt KC and Cecilie Hall

Tim and Lyn Edward Kim Williams AM Weis Family

FIRST NATIONS CIRCLE

John and Lorraine Bates

Colin Golvan AM KC and Dr Deborah Golvan Sascha O. Becker

Maestro Jaime Martín

Elizabeth Proust AO and Brian Lawrence

The Kate and Stephen Shelmerdine Family Foundation

Michael Ullmer AO and Jenny Ullmer Jason Yeap OAM – Mering Management Corporation

ADOPT A MUSICIAN

Mr Marc Besen AC and the late Mrs Eva Besen AO Chief Conductor Jaime Martín

Shane Buggle and Rosie Callanan Roger Young

Andrew Dudgeon AM Rohan de Korte, Philippa West Tim and Lyn Edward John Arcaro

Dr John and Diana Frew Rosie Turner

Sophie Galaise and Clarence Fraser Stephen Newton Geelong Friends of the MSO Miranda Brockman

The Gross Foundation Matthew Tomkins

Dr Clem Gruen and Dr Rhyl Wade Robert Cossom

Danny Gorog and Lindy Susskind Monica Curro

Cecilie Hall and the late Hon Michael Watt KC Saul Lewis

Nereda Hanlon and Michael Hanlon AM Abbey Edlin

Margaret Jackson AC

Nicolas Fleury

Di Jameson and Frank Mercurio

Benjamin Hanlon, Tair Khisambee, Christopher Moore

Dr Elizabeth A Lewis AM Anthony Chataway

David Li AM and Angela Li Dale Barltrop

Gary McPherson Rachel Shaw Anne Neil Trevor Jones

Hyon-Ju Newman Patrick Wong

Newton Family in memory of Rae Rothfield Cong Gu

The Rosemary Norman Foundation

Ann Blackburn

Andrew and Judy Rogers Michelle Wood Glenn Sedgwick Tiffany Cheng, Shane Hooton Dr Martin Tymms and Patricia Nilsson Natasha Thomas Anonymous Prudence Davis

HONORARY APPOINTMENTS

Life Members

Mr Marc Besen AC

John Gandel AC and Pauline Gandel AC

Sir Elton John CBE

Harold Mitchell AC Lady Potter AC CMRI

Jeanne Pratt AC

Michael Ullmer AO and Jenny Ullmer Anonymous

MSO Ambassador Geoffrey Rush AC

The MSO honours the memory of Life Members

Mrs Eva Besen AO

John Brockman OAM

The Honourable Alan Goldberg AO QC Roger Riordan AM Ila Vanrenen

MSO ARTISTIC FAMILY

Jaime Martín

Chief Conductor

Xian Zhang

Principal Guest Conductor

Benjamin Northey

Principal Conductor in Residence

Carlo Antonioli

Cybec Assistant Conductor Fellow

Sir Andrew Davis Conductor Laureate

Hiroyuki Iwaki †

Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)

Warren Trevelyan-Jones

MSO Chorus Director

Siobhan Stagg 2023 Soloist in Residence

Gondwana Voices 2023 Ensemble in Residence

Christian Li Young Artist in Association

Mary Finsterer

2023 Composer in Residence

Melissa Douglas 2023 Cybec Young Composer in Residence

Christopher Moore Creative Producer, MSO Chamber

Deborah Cheetham AO

MSO First Nations Creative Chair

Dr Anita Collins Creative Chair for Learning and Engagement Artistic Ambassadors

Tan Dun Lu Siqing

MSO BOARD

Chairman

David Li AM

Co-Deputy Chairs Di Jameson

Helen Silver AO Managing Director

Sophie Galaise Board Directors

Shane Buggle

Andrew Dudgeon AM Danny Gorog

Lorraine Hook

Margaret Jackson AC David Krasnostein AM Gary McPherson Hyon-Ju Newman Glenn Sedgwick Company Secretary Oliver Carton

The MSO relies on your ongoing philanthropic support to sustain our artists, and support access, education, community engagement and more. We invite our supporters 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:

$500+ (Overture)

$1,000+ (Player)

$2,500+ (Associate)

$5,000+ (Principal)

$10,000+ (Maestro)

$20,000+ (Impresario)

$50,000+ (Virtuoso)

$100,000+ (Platinum)

Trusts and Foundations

Freemasons Foundation Victoria

Erica Foundation Pty Ltd, The Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation, John T Reid Charitable Trusts, Scobie & Claire Mackinnon Trust, Perpetual Foundation – Alan (AGL) Shaw Endowment, Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund, The Ullmer Family Foundation

East meets West

Program Supporters

Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Melbourne

Ministry of Culture and Tourism China

Concert Partners Supporting Partners Prestigious Partner

Consortium Partners

Supporters

Ken Ong OAM