2020 SEASON
MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) gave its inaugural performance at Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) on 17 August 1998. With the initial search for outstanding musicians involving a worldwide audition tour, the result was a symphony orchestra made up of musicians from 25 nations, including Malaysians, a remarkable example of harmony among different cultures and nationalities. A host of internationally-acclaimed musicians have performed with the MPO including Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Yehudi Menuhin, Joshua Bell, Harry Connick Jr., JosĂŠ Carreras, Andrea Bocelli, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Chris Botti and Branford Marsalis, many of whom have praised the MPO for its fine musical qualities and vitality. With each new season, the MPO continues to present an exciting programme of orchestral music drawn from over three centuries, as well as the crowd-pleasing concert series. Its versatility transcends genres, from classical masterpieces to film music, pop, jazz, traditional, contemporary and commissioned works.
The MPO regularly performs in major cities of Malaysia. Internationally, it has toured Singapore (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2018), Japan (2001, 2009 and 2017), Korea (2001), Australia (2004), China (2006 and 2019), Taiwan (2007) and Vietnam (2013). The MPO has also released 21 commercial CDs. Its Education and Outreach Programme (ENCOUNTER) reaches beyond the concert platform to develop musical awareness and appreciation through dedicated activities at such diverse venues as schools, colleges, hospitals and community centres. The MPO’s commitment to furthering musical interest in the nation has been the creation of the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO); its debut concert at DFP in 2007 was followed by a Peninsula Malaysia tour. The MPYO has also performed in Sabah and Sarawak, Singapore, Brisbane, Hong Kong and Jakarta. The MPO remains steadfast in its mission to share the depth, power and beauty of great music. Its main benefactor is PETRONAS and its patron is YABhg. Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Haji Mohd Ali.
BEETHOVEN
PASTORALE
Fri 4 Dec 2020 Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra Naohisa Furusawa, conductor PROGRAMME HONEGGER BEETHOVEN
Pastorale d’été 8 mins Symphony No. 6 40 mins
All details are correct at time of publishing. Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS reserves the right to vary without notice the artists and/or repertoire as necessary. Copyright © 2020 by Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (Co. No. 462692-X). All rights reserved. No part of this programme may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright owners.
NAOHISA FURUSAWA conductor
Naohisa Furusawa has been a member of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) double bass section since 2003. Born in Tokyo in 1973, he started to play the violin when he was 4 and joined his junior high school orchestra as a double bass player at 12; his first conducting experience was with this orchestra. Later, he studied double bass with Prof. Nobuo Shiga and conducting with Prof. Kazue Kamiya at Tokyo’s Toho Gakuen School of Music, and with Prof. Frank Reinecke at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Furusawa has performed as a double bass player with the NHK Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and other orchestras, under the direction of conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Lorin Maazel, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez and Valery Gergiev. He conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony eight times with Tokyo’s MAX Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2015, he conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony with the MAX Philharmonic to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of Second World War. Furusawa was Resident Conductor of the MPO from 2016 - 2019. He also serves as conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and cover conductor for Mark Wigglesworth, Roberto Abbado, Stéphane Denève, Jun Märkl and Vladimir Ashkenazy. He conducted the MPO in Tokyo for the Asia Orchestra Week 2017, a festival under Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. He also conducted the MPO and Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra at Iwaki Performing Arts Center. He has conducted many youth ensembles including the MPO’s Encounter Training Ensemble and the Miri Tutti Project in East Malaysia as part of the MPO’s Education and Outreach Programme.
“Pastoral” is the keynote to this programme. The word has several meanings, including reference to the simplicity and serenity associated with rural regions, or pertaining to the countryside and rustic life. Both works on this programme include the word in their titles (pastorale in French), and they are just a sampling of the hundreds of compositions that either depict nature directly or evoke it in general terms. Both Honegger’s and Beethoven’s examples belong to the latter category for the most part, though Beethoven’s storm is about as vividly descriptive as any musical storm could be. In any case though, it is really the imagination of each listener that matters most; the music only provides a stimulus to thought. ARTHUR HONEGGER (1892-1955) Pastorale d’été (1920) The Background Anyone switching on the radio in the midst of a performance of Honegger’s Pastorale d’été could be forgiven for not guessing the composer, for it is quite atypical of him ̶ stylistically more attuned to Delius or Debussy than to a composer known for the austere grandeur of large-scale orchestral and choral works, for muscular rhythms, astringent harmonies and more often than not a grave tone. The Pastorale d’été has none of these qualities. wikipedia.org Rather, this exquisite miniature is a simple nature piece, evocative of the quiet, early morning hours of a new dawn on a beautiful summer’s day. A line of Rimbaud’s poetry heads the score: “J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été”. (I embraced the summer’s dawn). Pastorale d’été was written in August of 1920 when Honegger was 28 and about to embark on his big oratorio, Le roi David, which would make him famous. It was first performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 17 February, 1920, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann.
The Music The work is laid out in a simple, clearly recognisable ternary design (ABA). Over a softly murmuring ostinato figure the solo horn sings a languid melody. Other instruments take up the theme, which is softly inflected with flickers of woodwind instruments like the glinting of sunlight off the dewdrops of the newborn day. The central section, marked “Lively and Cheerful”, is set in motion by the clarinet and the return of the opening reverie is again announced by the horn, now as if from the distance.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 - Pastoral (1808)
I. Awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country: Allegro ma non troppo II. Scene by the Brook: Andante molto mosso III. Merry gathering of country folk: Allegro IV. Thunderstorm: Allegro V. Shepherd’s song ̶ Happy and thankful feelings after the storm: Allegretto
The Background The dividing line between programme music and absolute music is a thin one, but Beethoven proved himself a master of both in his Sixth Symphony. Nevertheless, he took care to advise that the symphony is “more an expression of feeling than painting”. The Pastoral Symphony is “no picture, but something in which the emotions aroused by the pleasures of the country are expressed, or something in which some feelings of country life are set forth”. Beethoven’s own love for the pleasures of the country is well-known. In a life of almost constant turmoil, anxiety and stormy relationships, the periods he spent in the woods outside Vienna offered his tortured soul precious solace and peace of mind. To quote the composer again: “How glad I am to be able to roam in wood and thicket, among
the trees and flowers and rocks. No one can love the country as I do … My bad hearing does not trouble me here. … In the woods there is enchantment which expresses all things”. The idea of depicting nature in tone was not new with Beethoven, of course. Many composers both before and especially after him were inspired to create some of their best music in such fashion, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons being one of the most popular examples. The repertory of Pastoral Symphonies alone is quite impressive, including one by Vaughan Williams (No. 3), Wilfred Josephs (No. 5), Gretchaninov (No. 2), Glazunov (No. 7) and Don Freund. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony received its first performance in Vienna as part of that incredible marathon concert of 22 December, 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, an all-Beethoven concert that also included the Fifth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy and some vocal and choral music. It is dedicated to two of Beethoven’s most ardent patrons, Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky. The Music The symphony’s opening places us immediately in relaxed, beatific surroundings. The day is sunny, warm and abounding in nature’s fragrances and gentle breezes. But aside from conjuring nature imagery, the music is remarkable for its motivic writing ̶ virtually the entire movement is built from tiny musical cells found in the first two bars. Phrases and sentences are often formed from these motivic ideas repeated again and again. “Fragments keep repeating themselves in a sort of naive joy at their own beauty and charm, with subtle variations of tonality and instrumental colour, like the play of light and shade in nature itself”, writes Edward Downes. The second movement invites contemplation. To Sir Donald Francis Tovey, this is “a slow movement in full sonata form which at every point asserts its deliberate intention to be lazy and to say whatever occurs to it twice in succession, and which in doing so never loses flow or falls out of proportion. The brook goes on forever; the importance of that fact lies in its effect upon the poetic mind of the listener basking in the sun on its banks”. Near the end of the movement we hear instrumental effects simulating the calls of the nightingale (flute), quail (oboe) and cuckoo (clarinet). The Sixth is the only symphony in which Beethoven departed from the traditional four-movement format. The remaining three movements are played without interruption. Rough, peasant merry-making and dancing are portrayed, but the boisterous festivities suddenly stop when intimations of an approaching storm are heard. There is not much time to take cover; a few isolated raindrops fall and then the heavens burst open. Storms have appeared frequently in musical compositions (in Verdi’s Otello and Rigoletto, Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, Berlioz’ “Royal Hunt and Storm” from The Trojans, etc.), but few have surpassed Beethoven’s in power and
greenqueen.com Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 was chosen especially for the environmental-musical celebration, because it is a piece that expressed his love for nature and symbolises his call to protect it.
fury. Timpani, piccolo and trombones, all hitherto silent in the symphony, now make their entrances. With the tempest over, a shepherd’s pipe is heard in a song of thanksgiving for the renewed freshness and beauty of nature. Timpani and piccolo withdraw, but the trombones, whose sonority was traditionally associated with sacred music until well after Beethoven’s era, are retained. The joyous hymn is taken up by the full orchestra as if, to quote Edward Downes again, “in thanks to some pantheistic god, to Nature, to the sun, to whatever beneficent power one can perceive in a universe that seemed as dark and terrifyingly irrational in Beethoven’s day as it can in ours. That a man of sorrows and self-centered miseries like Beethoven could glimpse such glory and, by the incomparable alchemy of his art, lift us to share his vision ̶ even if only for a few moments ̶ is a miracle that remains as fresh as tomorrow’s sunrise”.
Formerly a horn player in the Montreal Symphony, Robert Markow now writes programme notes for that orchestra and for many other musical organizations in North America and Asia. He taught at Montreal's McGill University for many years, has led music tours abroad, and writes for many leading classical music journals, including American Record Guide, Fanfare, Opera, Opera News, The Strad and Symphony. He travels regularly to Europe, Asia and Australia in search of musical stimulation.
MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR LAUREATE Kees Bakels
VIOLA Co-Principal Gábor Mokány
RESIDENT CONDUCTOR Gerard Salonga
Ong Lin Kern Sun Yuan Fan Ran Thian Ai Wen Celina Baran
FIRST VIOLIN Co-Concertmaster Peter Daniš Principal Ming Goh Co-Principal Zhenzhen Liang Maho Daniš Martijn Noomen Sherwin Thia Runa Baagöe Miroslav Daniš Evgeny Kaplan Marcel Andriesii Tan Ka Ming Petia Davies SECOND VIOLIN Section Principal Timothy Peters Assistant Principal Luisa Theis Stefan Kocsis Anastasia Kiseleva Catalina Alvarez Ionuț Mazareanu Chia-Nan Hung Yanbo Zhao Ling Yunzhi Robert Kopelman
FLUTE Co-Principal Yukako Yamamoto Sub-Principal Rachel Jenkyns PICCOLO Principal Sonia Croucher
CELLO Co-Principal Csaba Körös Assistant Principal Steven Retallick Sub-Principal Mátyás Major
OBOE Section Principal Simon Emes
Gerald Davis Laurențiu Gherman Julie Dessureault Elizabeth Tan Suyin Sejla Simon Lee Seulki
CLARINET Section Principal Gonzalo Esteban Co-Principal David Dias da Silva Sub-Principal Matthew Larsen
DOUBLE BASS Section Principal Wolfgang Steike Jun-Hee Chae Naohisa Furusawa Raffael Bietenhader Andreas Dehner
COR ANGLAIS Principal Niels Dittmann
BASS CLARINET Principal Chris Bosco BASSOON Section Principal Alexandar Lenkov Sub-Principal Denis Plangger CONTRABASSOON Principal Vladimir Stoyanov
HORN Section Principal Grzegorz Curyła Co-Principal James Schumacher Sub-Principals Laurence Davies Kartik Alan Jairamin Assistant Principal Sim Chee Ghee TRUMPET Section Principal Sérgio Pacheco Co-Principal William Theis Sub-Principal Jeffrey Missal Assistant Principal Matthew Dempsey TROMBONE Section Principal Marques Young Co-Principal Fernando Borja TIMPANI Section Principal Matthew Thomas PERCUSSION Section Principal Matthew Prendergast Sub-Principals Joshua Vonderheide Tan Su Yin HARP Principals Tan Keng Hong
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DEWAN FILHARMONIK PETRONAS Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) is Malaysia’s first concert hall dedicated to classical music and home to the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO). Located at the PETRONAS Twin Towers, it was officially opened on 17 August 1998 by the Patron of the MPO, YABhg. Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Haji Mohd Ali and Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Designed by Cesar Pelli, the hall takes its inspiration from the traditional shoe-box shape of the great 19th century European concert halls with the magnificent Klais Pipe Organ providing a spectacular backdrop to the stage. The hall seats 920 people at one time which includes box seats, corporate suites and a royal suite. Acoustics experts Kirkegaard & Associates have incorporated unique acoustical devices into its design to maximize the hall’s natural qualities. DFP plays an integral part in the music and cultural landscape of the city of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia. It continues to enthral audiences since the day it first opened its doors. World renowned orchestras that have performed here include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, BBC Symphony and Vienna Symphony.
Beyond classical music, DFP has hosted ensembles of jazz and world music genres such as the Count Basie Orchestra, Yellowjackets, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mezzoforte, Igudesman & Joo, Pink Martini and Gotan Project. International superstars who have graced the stage are Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall, Anoushka Shankar, Laura Fygi, Zakir Hussain, Larry Carlton, Harvey Malaihollo, Ruth Sahanaya and Judika. Among renowned Malaysian artists who have mesmerized audiences at DFP include SM Salim, Sheila Majid, M Nasir, Siti Nurhaliza, Jamal Abdillah, Khadijah Ibrahim, Ramli Sarip, Ella, Yuna, Faizal Tahir, Dayang Nurfaizah and Misha Omar. It also provides the platform for the talents of young Malaysians from the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO). DFP’s success is attributed to its exceptional architectural design, superior acoustics and recording studio modelled after the legendary Abbey Road Studios. As the first purpose-built concert hall in Malaysia, DFP will continue to provide Malaysians with world-class music experiences through innovative programmes and repertoire every season.
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