Midwinter Tales Programme 2 Hamilton | Tauranga | Rotorua 27-29 July 2018
Welcome from the Music Director
Kia ora, Welcome to this quite special Opus Orchestra concert. We planned it for young people - but we hope that they will bring along their parents and, maybe, grandparents. Speaking as a grandad myself, I can tell you that I love all the music in this programme. Philip Norman's setting of Margaret Mahy's classic Lion in the Meadow is quite delightful. So, too, are the little Mozart German Dances - each one lasting less than two minutes. Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is recognized as a masterpiece of musical storytelling - and it is. Last but not least, Stravinsky's music for his ballet, Pulcinella conjures up a colourful, funny world of the Italian commedia dell'arte. I am grateful to David Groves for bringing the ballet story to life with his lively narrative. What a privilege and a pleasure it is to work with Mark Hadlow on this. You all know Mark, of course, from his appearances on stage and screen. He is quite brilliant and I'm delighted that he accepted the invitation to animate this Opus concert. I really hope you enjoy this concert and that we'll see you again in September when we shall be giving the world premiere of a new marimba concerto by Gareth Farr with our very own Principal Timpanist, Yoshiko Tsurata as soloist. Peter Walls Mark Hadlow - Narrator
Mark Hadlow, ONZM, is one of New Zealand's best known actors. He is driven by a passion for performance and has performed in over 150 theatre shows. Mark has made dozens of film appearances, several television series, commercials and radio voice-overs in the thousands. Playing 'Dori' in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, is Mark's third Peter Jackson movie. In Meet the Feebles he voiced Heidi the Hippo and Robert the Hedgehog, and sang many of the songs. King Kong saw him rehearsing and performing the role of Harry in the vaudeville scenes opposite Naomi Watts. He played alongside New Zealand comedian, Billy T James in "The Billy T James Show" - a 26 episode sitcom. Mark has been nominated for and won several awards, including Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy Series for “Willy Nilly”, playing the role of the challenged brother Harry in the three-season, top-rating sitcom. He won Best Theatrical Performance of the Year in 1993 for the hugely successful one-man show "SNAG", and ultimately went on to win Entertainer of the Year in 1995. He won Best Character Voice Over Artist in the 2010 New Zealand Radio Awards. His latest one man show "MAMIL" written by Greg Cooper opened in 2014 and has played to over 30,000 people throughout NZ. Mark also released an audio CD called "Tall Tales" classic children's stories with a Kiwi twist. He voiced the narration on the award winning Australian short film "The Story of Percival Pilts on Stills". Mark was awarded the ONZM for services to Arts and entertainment in March 2017.
Lara Hall - Concertmaster
Dr Lara Hall is Lecturer in Violin and Viola at the University of Waikato, and has performed in the US, UK, Europe, South America, and Asia as a member of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists. Lara has taught master classes at prestigious institutions such as the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (Singapore), Interlochen Arts Academy (US), Shanghai Central Conservatory, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She has also recorded for the Atoll label on modern and baroque violin, covering a wide range of genres including chamber music, solo, and concerto music. Lara has been Concertmaster of Opus Orchestra since 2006. Peter Walls - Music Director
Peter Walls has been Music Director of Opus Orchestra since 2004. He is currently also Music Director of Nota Bene, a Wellington chamber choir. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, and various other choirs including the Civic Choirs in Hamilton, Tauranga and Rotorua. Peter was Music Director of The Tudor Consort from 1993-1999, a position he resigned to take up a Visiting Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. His CD with that choir of motets by Peter Philips was listed by Neue Musik Zeitung as one of the top early music CDs released in 2002 and received a CHOC award from Le Monde de la Musique (the highest award from one of the leading French magazines for Classical music). Classics Today wrote “Conductor Peter Walls understands the overall period style and he obviously cares a lot about ensemble balance and uniformity of tone and colour.” He has conducted many opera productions including Jack Body’s Alley in the New Zealand Arts Festival in 1998, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for Southern Opera in 2009, Verdi’s La Traviata for the Gisborne Opera Festival and Leoncavallo’s Cavalleria Rusticana for Opera Wanganui (these last two productions with a young Simon O’Neill as Alfredo and Turridu respectively). Peter is Emeritus Professor of Music at Victoria University of Wellington. He was Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2002 until 2011 and now holds that same role with Chamber Music New Zealand. He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music in 2012.
Programme Notes
Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953) Peter and the Wolf Script by David Groves After 18 years touring in Europe and the USA, latterly based in Paris, Prokofiev decided to return to Moscow in 1936. This was a difficult time to be a composer in Russia: in January 1936, an anonymous article in Pravda viciously denounced Shostakovich and his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, calling it ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ and the penalties for composing music that failed adequately to espouse the glories of ‘socialist realism’ were harsh. Lina Prokofiev often reminded her husband not to antagonise the bureaucratic ‘bukashki’ (‘little insects’) with his music. Prokofiev decided to demonstrate his commitment to Soviet education. He consulted Nataliya Sats of the Moscow Children’s Theater, and the poet Antonina Sakonskya, about creating a piece to educate children about the orchestra. After rejecting Sakonskya’s proposed text, Prokofiev decided to write his own, ‘How Pioneer Peter Caught the Wolf’. Prokofiev’s text drew upon traditional Russian folktales but had a specific Soviet slant. The ‘Young Pioneers’, established in 1922, were Russia’s equivalent of the Scouting movement for children aged 9 – 14; by 1940 the number of Young Pioneers grew to 13.9 million. One of the duties of the Young Pioneers was to educate those of their elders who harboured resistance to Soviet ideology, even if it meant disobeying their parents or grandparents. This idea emerges in Peter and the Wolf, when young Peter flouts his wary grandfather’s instruction not to go into the meadow, instead demonstrating his Pioneer qualities of preparedness and self-reliance to capture the marauding wolf. Prokofiev’s own note for Peter and the Wolf explains that: ‘Each character of this tale is represented by a corresponding instrument in the orchestra: the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the cat by a clarinet playing staccato in a low register, the grandfather by a bassoon, the wolf by three horns, Peter by the string quartet, the shooting of the hunters by the kettle drums and bass drum. Before an orchestral performance it is desirable to show these instruments to the children and to play on them the corresponding leitmotivs. Thereby, the children learn to distinguish the sonorities of the instruments during the performance of this tale.’ These ‘leitmotivs’ are the short musical mottoes that represent the characters, and throughout the piece Prokofiev manipulates these themes to add more colour to the characters. As the liveliest and most complex character, Peter’s music is played by the strings, granting him a kaleidoscopic array of musical colour. The premiere of Peter and the Wolf on 2 May 1936 with the Moscow Philharmonic garnered a lukewarm reception. However, a subsequent performance for the Moscow Central Children’s Theatre proved far more successful and marked the beginning of the piece’s long concert life. The story of a child whose courage and ‘good heart’ permits him to beat a savage wolf has never lost its appeal. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Pulcinella Suite 1. Sinfonia 5. Toccata 6. Gavotta (con due variazioni) 2. Serenata 7. Vivo 3. Scherzino – Allegro – Andantino 8. Minuetto – Finale 4. Tarantella Between 1909 and 1910, Igor Stravinsky, Sergey Diaghilev, and the Ballets Russes staged their own Russian Revolution in Paris. Three ballets – Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring – redefined the union of dance, music, and art, provoking a riot in the process.
With the outbreak of the 1914-1918 War, the Ballets Russes hit hard times. Stravinsky exiled himself in Switzerland because of its neutrality and the healthy air for his wife’s lungs. He could devote himself to composition with few external distractions. Diaghilev embarked upon a peripatetic existence with the Ballets Russes, moving between Monte Carlo, Switzerland, Paris, the USA, London, and Spain. In 1919, keen to reignite the fortunes of the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev offered Stravinsky a manuscript he had found in Italy, containing music by Pergolesi (although more was by Domenico Gallo and Wilhelm von Wassenaer). Diagilev suggested a collaboration between Stravinsky, and Pablo Picasso on a new ballet inspired by the commedia dell’arte story of Pulcinella and choreographed by Léonide Massine. The prospect of working with Picasso proved irresistible to Stravinsky, who embarked upon a transformation of the music, concentrating on manipulating its metre, electrifying the harmony, and employing imaginative instrumentation to colour the witty score. Inspired by Picasso, Stravinsky aimed at a dazzling collision of cubism and commedia dell’arte: ‘I began by composing on the Pergolesi manuscripts themselves, as though I were correcting an old work of my own. I began without preconceptions or aesthetic attitudes, and I could not have predicted anything about the result. I knew I could not produce a “forgery” of Pergolesi because my own motor habits are so different; at best, I could repeat him in my own accent.’ Stravinsky preserved the melodic material of Pergolesi, Gallo, and Wassenaer, utilising concerto grosso textures (in which a small group of soloists – the concertino – emerge from the larger ensemble, or ripieno); he also introduced a duet between the trombone and double bass, and demanded ricochet bowing from the strings (a technique involving throwing or bouncing the bow). The premiere of the Pulcinella ballet took place in Paris in May 1920, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the first performance of the Suite in December 1922. Stravinsky later recounted that he was attacked for ‘being a pasticheur, chided for composing “simple” music, blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused of renouncing my “true Russian heritage”'. In fact, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella had sent modernism along an entirely new path. Philip Norman (1953 – ) A Lion in the Meadow Text by Margaret Mahy (1926–2012) In 2006 Margaret Mahy won the Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the world’s most prestigious literary award for authors of children’s books, but her writing career had begun many years earlier. Mahy’s first published writing appeared in the Bay of Plenty Beacon when she was just seven years old. Mahy would not become a full-time author until 1980, when she gave up her job as Children’s Librarian at Canterbury Library. Librarianship had given Mahy unique insights into literature that excited children’s imaginations, and she had published a number of stories in the School Journal, which is where A Lion in the Meadow began life. However, in 1968/1969, an American publisher called Sarah Chockla Ross discovered the story, which was then published by Franklin Watts in 1969. A Lion in the Meadow has since established a unique position among children’s books in New Zealand and abroad. In 2009, Philip Norman set A Lion in the Meadow to music. Norman’s exuberant orchestration of A Lion in the Meadow captures perfectly the atmosphere of Mahy’s book, evoking the inimitable characters of a little boy and New Zealand’s most famous lion.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Deutsche Tänze (German Dances), K. 586 No. 4 in F major No. 7 in G major No. 5 in A major No. 10 in F major Mozart began composing dances when he just was five years old: his first six minuets appear in a book of music that Leopold Mozart assembled for Nannerl, Mozart’s sister, dated 1761 and 1762. This was around the same time that Mozart also made his first public appearance as a dancer, in a play called Sigismundus Hungariae Rex, performed in Salzburg in September 1761. Throughout Mozart’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, he continued to compose increasingly sophisticated dance music: stylised minuets in the symphonies, ballet music in his opera Idomeneo, and a marvellously tangled combination of dances in the extended Act I finale of Don Giovanni. In December 1787, Emperor Joseph II appointed Mozart Kammermusicus to the Habsburg Court in Vienna. Mozart’s duties were not especially exalted, only requiring that he produce dance music for the public balls held in the Redoutensaal of the Imperial Palace. Mozart composed several collections of excellent Deutsche Tänze in his Kammermusicus capacity, including the twelve German Dances of K. 586 dated December 1789. The Deutsche is typically a short dance, in triple time, related to both the minuet and the Ländler, and a precursor to the most ubiquitous Viennese dance, the waltz. Mozart’s Deutsche follow the traditional pattern of a main dance and trio, each consisting of two eight-bar phrases. The four Deutsche we hear today demonstrate how imaginatively Mozart imbued each dance with humour, energy, and elegance
The vitality of these Deutsche also reflect Mozart’s own love of dancing. His friend, the singer Michael Kelly, recalled that Mozart ‘passionately loved dancing, and missed neither the public masked balls in the theatre, nor his friends’ domestic balls. And he danced very well indeed, particularly the minuet.’ However, Mozart was fussy about his dance partners, writing to his father from Munich that there ‘was dancing, but I only danced four minuets, and by 11pm I was back in my room; because, with all those girls there, there was only one who could dance in time, and that was Mademoiselle Käser.’ Programme note © Corrina Connor 2018
You will be invited to take part in the German dances watch for the conductors signal to start clapping! SAVE THE DATE
Player List
Conductor Peter Walls Concertmaster Lara Hall* + P.Walls, H Fairburn Violin 1 Sharon Stephens + A & N Hooper Luana Leupolu Harris Leung Melody Gumbley Jackie McCaughan Alex Geary Amber Read Violin 2 Kerry Langdon* Lucy Gardiner Shelby Maples Shirley Shang Rebecka Beetz Rebecca Whalley Brigid Eady + A & N Hooper Beverley Oliver Viola Lisa Lynch* Chris Nation + C Polglase Jill Wilson Sylvia Neild Hector Fitzsimmons Annette Milson Cello Martin Griffiths * + M & M Carr Ros Oliver Elena Morgan Judith Williams Olivia Fletcher Joanna Dann
Double Bass Madeleine Lie* Marija Durdevic Flute Agnes Harmath* Anita Macdonald + Martin Hampson Oboe Joy Liu* + K Mayes Felicity Than Clarinet Ashley Hopkins* Bassoon Philip Sumner* + H Goodman Jacqui Hopkins Horn John Ure* Jill Ferrabee Jennifer Hsu Trumpet Bill Stoneham* Trombone Roberta Hickman* Timpani Yoshiko Tsuruta* + Steve Chou * Section Principal + Sponsored Seat
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Additional thanks to: National Library of New Zealand (music) Ashley Hopkins (photography) Christine Polglase Sharon Stephens Bill Taylor Marion Townend Michele Wahrlich Peter Walls
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