ACCOMMODATION BAR RESTAURANT EVENTS VENUE THE The Old LARK Woolstore ASCENDING Apartment Hotel Saturday 9 December 7.30pm Federation Concert Hall PROUD PARTNER OF THE Hobart MASTER 12

Marko Letonja conductor BRAHMS Emma McGrath violin Symphony No 4 BEETHOVEN Allegro non troppo Symphony No 4 Andante moderato Adagio – Allegro vivace Allegro giocoso Adagio Allegro energico e passionato Menuetto (Allegro vivace) – Trio Duration 40 mins (Un poco meno allegro) This concert will end at Allegro ma non troppo approximately 9.30pm. Duration 34 mins

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending Duration 13 mins

INTERVAL Duration 20 mins

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64 65 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No 4 in B flat, Op 60 Sudden fortissimo chords accelerate toward Adagio – Allegro vivace it almost like a cavalry division being spurred Adagio into action. As this ebullient movement Menuetto (Allegro vivace) – Trio (Un poco proceeds there are some especially beautiful meno allegro) solos, notably for the flute and bassoon, and Marko Letonja Emma McGrath Allegro ma non troppo unexpectedly too for the kettledrums. Beethoven had begun composing the The Adagio encompasses a typically Symphony No 4, and possibly completed Beethovenian “dove and crocodile” mix Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and Heralded as a “first-magnitude star most of it, during the summer of 1806, while of moods: serene and sentimental one Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony in the making” by the Seattle Times, also working on his Fourth Piano Concerto moment, heroic and even bellicose the next. Orchestra and Music Director of the British violinist Emma McGrath became and revisions of his opera, Fidelio. He had The orchestral textures vary accordingly, been staying near the modern Czech-Polish Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Concertmaster of the Tasmanian Symphony from a standard Classical slow movement’s border at the summer residence of Prince Born in Slovenia, he studied at the Academy Orchestra at the start of 2016. She made soft strings, winds and a pair of horns, to full Karl Lichnowsky, when he and his host fanfares for trumpets and drums, instruments of Music in Ljubljana and the Vienna her London debut aged ten in the Purcell almost came to blows over the Prince’s which Beethoven had previously used to insistence that Beethoven (to whom he paid Academy of Music. He was Music Director Room at the Southbank Centre and at such dramatic effect in the Third Symphony’s a handsome annual retainer) play for some of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra age 14 performed Bruch’s Violin Concerto funeral march. visiting Napoleonic army officers. Whether in from 1991 to 2003 and Music Director and No 1 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall with the republican high dudgeon (as some suppose) The third movement looks backward again to Chief Conductor of both the Symphony London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted or simply to accept a welcome invitation, the minuet (still so-called in the first edition), Orchestra and the Opera in Basel from 2003 by Howard Shelley. Emma McGrath has Beethoven then left for the nearby castle of which it is a somewhat hyper-activated to 2006. He was Principal Guest Conductor performed as a soloist throughout the UK, of Lichnowksy’s cousin, Franz Oppersdorff. example; and forward to the scherzo of the of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and made Europe, South-East Asia, Russia, Israel Oppersdorff commissioned him to compose Fifth Symphony. An innovation is its five- two new symphonies, and Beethoven his debut with the TSO the following year. and the USA. From 2009 to 2016 she was section form, built out of two components: duly received full payment for dedicating He took up the post of Chief Conductor Associate Concertmaster of the Seattle the minuet proper (A), and a contrasting the Fourth to Oppersdorff in 1807, and slightly slower Trio (B) from the winds, with and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Opera part payment toward the Fifth a year later. a little help from the violins. These are Symphony Orchestra at the start of 2012. Orchestra, and was Concertmaster for Responding to Oppersdorff’s enthusiasm for played in the order A-B-A-B-A. He has worked with many orchestras in Seattle’s 2012 production of Wagner’s Der the Second Symphony, the Fourth retreats from the gravity and length of the Third. But Berlioz called the finale “an animated Europe including the Munich Philharmonic, Ring des Nibelungen. She was previously its orchestral brilliance, tonal energy and swarm of sparkling notes, a continual Vienna Symphony, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Assistant Concertmaster of the Colorado thematic focus also prepare for the Fifth. babble; interrupted only by occasional Mozarteum Orchestra and the Orchestra Symphony Orchestra and has also Instead of launching directly into the Allegro rough and uncouth chords”. That about Filarmonica della Scala, Milan. He has also performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony main theme, Beethoven begins with a sums it up, except to add that it also teems worked in many renowned opera houses Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony dramatic Adagio introduction. This in itself with unexpected sounds. There are short such as the Vienna State Opera, Berlin Orchestra and the Australian Chamber was nothing unusual but here Beethoven solo appearances for bassoon, clarinets State Opera, La Scala Milan, Semper Orchestra. She has also been a Guest was experimenting as he went. Insignificant (who also contribute a “babbling brook” Oper Dresden, and the Grand Théâtre de Concertmaster for the BBC Symphony as it may seem in retrospect, the novelty accompaniment), oboes and flute. At the of beginning an introduction (indeed, a very end, the music stops short, there is a Genève. Additionally, he has conducted Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic symphony) with a single pizzicato note for coy exchange between violins, bassoons, at the Arena di Verona. Recent and future Orchestra. Emma McGrath is a graduate of the strings, is sure to have registered with violas and cellos, and a rush to the end. engagements include the Mozarteum the Royal College of Music in London and his original audience. And, to 18th-century Graeme Skinner © 2014 Orchestra Salzburg, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh ears only recently graduated to the 19th, Bavarian State Opera in Munich and in the USA. In addition to her orchestral the meandering harmonies and Beethoven’s disinclination to find definite cadences The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen for the career, she is a professional singer, folk performed this work with conductor Henry Krips must have seemed wilfully perverse. in Hobart on 7 June 1952 and, most recently, Royal Swedish Opera with Nina Stemme as musician, and a published and recorded But there is nothing perverse or obfuscating with Sebastian Lang-Lessing in Hobart on Brünnhilde. composer. about the way the main Allegro breaks. 3 December 2011.

66 67 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The Lark Ascending – Romance for Violin from the poem are printed in the musical Symphony No 4 in E minor, Op 98 sounded in the orchestra’s tenor register, and and Orchestra score and the poetic content is used as a Allegro non troppo again based on sequences of a repeated point of stimulus for the composer’s lyrical The Lark Ascending has undoubtedly Andante moderato rhythmic cell (long, long, short, short, short). reverie. The solo violin clearly embodies the become Vaughan Williams’ most popular Allegro giocoso Fragmentary patterns of thirds provide the spirit of a bird singing and taking flight (with accompaniment. All of which is to say that work. It was fully drafted in 1914 as a work for Allegro energico e passionato violin and piano, but the composition had to occasional bird calls also provided by the Brahms was writing in, to the Viennese, a woodwind instruments), whilst the sustained be set aside due to the outbreak of the First In 1885 Brahms, as was his wont, convened disturbingly abstract and “modern” way. chords, played by the strings, could be World War. Vaughan Williams’ professional a group of trusted friends to listen to a Haydn, of course, and Beethoven – especially musical life ceased completely for the next understood as the aural depiction of a flat play-through of the Fourth Symphony, with pastoral landscape. in the Fifth Symphony – had worked in just four years, as he served as an ambulance the composer and his friend Ignaz Brüll at this way, and it is no accident that such driver during the war, shuttling wounded The form of the work is rhapsodic, with the piano. Feedback from knowledgeable rigorous design attracted the approval of and dying soldiers from the battlefront to lengthy ornamental solo cadenzas beginning people had been invaluable throughout his Schoenberg in his 1933 lecture, “Brahms the temporary field hospitals in France and and concluding the piece. These are notated career, and on this occasion the listeners Progressive”. But it put Brahms out of step Greece. It was only after the war ended that without bar lines and in no strict tempo, included the conductor Hans Richter and with current musical fashion in Vienna. he was able to return home to England and thus giving the interpreter considerable the critic Eduard Hanslick. But this time to his compositional work. freedom and liberty in interpretation. The the response was a baffled silence. Even The piece is frequently intensely contrapuntal floating quality of the harmony is partly due One of his first tasks was to revise The Lark Hanslick, Brahms’ greatest supporter in print, (and thus requires a “Classical” orchestra), to Vaughan Williams’ characteristic use of a Ascending. It was eventually premièred in its tried to joke that he felt like he had been reflecting Brahms’ lifelong love of the pentatonic (five-tone) mode, which weakens violin and piano form in December 1920 by “beaten up by two intelligent people” at the Baroque, but there are profoundly poetic the English violinist Marie Hall, to whom the the strong directional pull of conventional moments. The recapitulation of the first tonality. This modality continues in the central end of the first movement. Later, after the work is dedicated. The orchestration of the work’s politely-received Viennese première, a movement’s main theme should, by score was completed in early 1921, and Hall dance-like section, which is initiated by the less well-disposed wit composed a verse to convention, be a rhetorically powerful gave the first performance of this, the more woodwinds. Throughout his life, Vaughan the theme of the first movement to the effect moment of arrival; Brahms instead dwells on frequently played version, shortly afterwards Williams collected and studied English folk- music, and although no specific folk tune is that Brahms had run out of ideas. a distant but radiant C-major chord and then, in London’s Queen’s Hall with the British radically, continues to develop his themes. Symphony Orchestra under Adrian Boult. directly quoted here, its strong influence is The Third Symphony had, of course, enjoyed apparent. The second movement is in what has Despite the work’s lengthy gestation period an unqualified success and it says much sometimes been called Brahms’ “bardic” and the harrowing, life-changing experiences James Cuddeford © 2017 for Brahms’ artistic integrity that he was endured by the composer at the time, none prepared to take a quite different approach manner. The young Richard Strauss, who The Lark Ascending of the terror or anguish of war is evident in the new work; that the Fourth was written regarded the “gigantic work” as “new and in the music. It is, in fact, an ideal example He rises and begins to round, over not one but two summers suggests that original in its greatness of conception and of Vaughan Williams’ contemplative and He drops the silver chain of sound, Brahms had to work hard at it. invention, its genius in treatment of form”, nostalgic musical style. The solo violin spins Of many links without a break, captured the slow movement’s essence in his So, what baffled the listeners in the first unbroken arches of melody and swirling In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. image of a “funeral procession moving across movement? In fact the “run out of ideas” guy arabesques almost continually throughout, For singing till his heaven fills, moonlit heights”. and there is no contrasting material or 'Tis love of earth that he instils, was wrong, but nevertheless onto something, This movement, which relies heavily on abrupt formal changes to disturb the organic And ever winging up and up, in that a large chunk of Brahms’ first theme unfolding and rapturous atmosphere. The Our valley is his golden cup, consists of practically no material: two chains mysterious wind scoring and the occasional orchestration is restrained, gently supporting And he the wine which overflows of thirds (and sixths, their inversion) are archaic inflections of the Phrygian mode, the solo violin for most of the work’s duration. To lift us with him when he goes. sounded in a rhythm that consists entirely could not offer a greater contrast to the The “Romance” of the subtitle, perhaps Till lost on his aerial rings of a repeated short-long pattern. Eventually scherzo, with what Karl Geiringer calls its a reference to Beethoven’s two violin In light, and then the fancy sings. a more elaborate motif is sounded, but “sturdy gaiety”. In two, rather than three, Romances, alludes to Vaughan Williams’ then immediately repeated in sequence. beats to a bar, it has a rustic air, but its most George Meredith (1828-1909) long-standing love and adoration of nature. The thirds provide the basis for a fanfare- curious feature is the way in which Brahms, The Lark Ascending could be described as The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first like transition into the second theme, and again creating music out of nothing, offers performed this work with conductor Walter Stiasny here again Brahms goes against convention a serious of monolithic chords, octaves a musical reflection upon the poem of the and soloist Constantine Lavroff in December 1966 same name written by the English novelist and, most recently, with Marko Letonja and Tasmin with a melody that is not, as expected, apart, that interrupt the rhythmic drive George Meredith in 1881. Only selected lines Little in Hobart on 18 August 2012. “lyrical” but is much more assertive, of the movement towards its end.

68 69 Sharing the TSO with These chords, however, also pave the way In 1886, Vienna’s response was tepid, partly for the finale, in which Brahms abandons as Hans Richter’s rehearsals were inadequate. any vestige of classical precedent, instead But by then the work had enjoyed triumphant the next generation using the Baroque form of the passacaglia, success in 14 German and Dutch cities under in which a repeated harmonic pattern, or Hans von Bülow. Vienna finally embraced it, ground, serves as a vehicle for variations. and the mortally ill Brahms, at the last concert Brahms’ ground is a series of rhythmically the composer was able attend before his Support the TSO into the future equal chords (adumbrated at the end of death in 1897. the scherzo) over which he elaborates Gordon Kerry © 2015 Leaving a bequest to the TSO Foundation is If you are interested in learning more about a movement unlike anything heard in a simple and rewarding way to support the leaving a bequest to the TSO, please contact symphonic music before. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first TSO for years to come. Your legacy helps Ed Benyon, Director Development, on performed this work with conductor Tibor Paul in 03 6232 4430 or [email protected]. Hobart and Launceston on 30 and 31 July 1958 ensure that the TSO remains a part of the “THE PIECE IS FREQUENTLY INTENSELY and, most recently, with Sebastian Lang-Lessing in lives of future generations of Tasmanians. All enquiries are treated in confidence. CONTRAPUNTAL, REFLECTING BRAHMS’ Hobart and Launceston on 5 and 6 July 2013. LIFELONG LOVE OF THE BAROQUE, BUT THERE ARE ALSO PROFOUNDLY POETIC MOMENTS.”

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