Li-Wei Qin Cello

PLAYS SCHUMANN 3 18–21 AUGUST 2017 CONCERT PROGRAM ON SALE NOW! SEASON 2018 GREAT PASSIONS Featuring Anne-Sophie Mutter | Maxim Vengerov Thomas Hampson | Eva-Maria Westbroek mso.com.au Image Michelle Wood, cello Anne-Sophie Mutter supported by Mr Marc Besen AC and Mrs Eva Besen AO Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Johannes Fritzsch conductor Li-Wei Qin cello Dvořák Cello Concerto INTERVAL Trojahn Cinque sogni per Eusebius Schumann Symphony No.3 Rhenish Running time: 2 hours, In consideration of your fellow patrons, including 20-minute interval the MSO thanks you for dimming the lighting on your mobile phone. Please note, Saturday’s pre-concert talk by MSO violinist, Monica Curro The MSO acknowledge the Traditional will be recorded for podcast by Owners of the land on which we are 3MBS Fine Music Melbourne. performing. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be in attendance. mso.com.au (03) 9929 9600 3 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Established in 1906, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an arts leader and Australia’s oldest professional orchestra. Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has been at the helm of MSO since 2013. Engaging more than 2.5 million people each year, and as a truly global LI-WEI QIN orchestra, the MSO collaborates with CELLO guest artists and arts organisations from across the world. An exclusive Universal Music China Artist, Li-Wei Qin has appeared all over the world as a soloist and chamber musician. After being awarded the Silver Medal at the 11th Tchaikovsky International Competition, Li-Wei won the First Prize in the prestigious 2001 Naumburg Competition in New York. ‘A superbly stylish, raptly intuitive performer’ (Gramophone Magazine, January 2015) was the description JOHANNES FRIZTSCH of the cellist’s Elgar and Walton CONDUCTOR concertos recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2015/2016, Johannes Fritzsch conducted the Queensland, Sydney, During the 17/18 season, Li-Wei West Australian, Adelaide and Tasmanian makes his debut with the London Symphony Orchestras, led performances Symphony Orchestra and the Russian of La traviata and Madama Butterfly Philharmonic Orchestra and also for Opera Queensland and Luisa Miller, appears with the Melbourne Symphony Il barbiere di Siviglia and Der fliegende Orchestra and China National Holländer for Hamburg Oper. In 2017, he Symphony Orchestra (North American conducts Die Entführung aus dem Serail tour). Other engagements include a and Madama Butterfly for Hamburg Oper return to the Finnish Radio Orchestra, and makes major appearances with the WASO and ASO, China Philharmonic Melbourne, Queensland and Tasmanian and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestras. Symphony Orchestras. He has recordings on Universal Music/ Mo. Fritzsch recently held the position Decca with Singapore Symphony, of Chief Conductor of the Grazer Oper on Sony Classical with the Shanghai and Grazer Philharmonisches Orchester, Symphony, and ABC Classics with Austria; from 2008-2014, he was Chief the London Philharmonic. Li-Wei Conductor of the Queensland Symphony plays a 1780 Joseph Guadagnini cello, Orchestra and was recently appointed generously loaned by Dr and Mrs Conductor Laureate. Wilson Goh. Image courtesy Dong Wang 4 PROGRAM NOTES ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK no more about writing such a piece (1841–1904) until many years later, though he did orchestrate the four-hand piano piece Cello Concerto in B minor, B.191 Klid (Silent Woods) and the Rondo Op.104 B.171 Op.94 (originally for cello and Allegro piano) with solo parts for Wihan. Adagio ma non troppo Allegro moderato In 1894 Dvořák was living in New York, having accepted the invitation Li-Wei Qin cello of Jeannette Thurber to head the National Conservatory of Music Brahms was impressed. ‘If only I’d that she had founded there in 1885. known,’ he said, ‘that one could write a In March 1894, Dvořák attended cello concerto like that, I’d have written a performance by Victor Herbert one long ago!’ And he wasn’t just of his Second Cello Concerto. The being polite. Brahms had recognised Irish-born American composer and Dvořák’s talents early on, ensuring cellist is now best remembered for that the young composer received shows like Naughty Marietta and from the Imperial Government in Babes in Toyland, but his concerto, Vienna the Austrian State Stipendium, modelled on Saint-Saëns’ first, made an annual grant, for five years, and a huge impact on Dvořák, who re- persuading his own publisher, Simrock examined the idea of such a work of Berlin, to publish Dvořák’s music. for Wihan. The work was sketched But Brahms’ admiration aside, the between 8 November 1894 and New composition of what Dvořák scholar Year’s Day, and Dvořák completed John Clapham has called simply ‘the the full score early in February. greatest of all cello concertos’ was no Much to Dvořák’s annoyance, the first easy matter. In fact, it was his second performance of the concerto was attempt at the medium – the first, in not given by its dedicatee, Wihan. A major, was composed in 1865, but The London Philharmonic Society, appears only to have been written who premiered it at the Queen’s out in a cello and piano score. This Hall in March 1896, mistakenly work was rediscovered by the German believed Wihan to be unavailable, composer Günther Raphael in 1929. and engaged Leo Stern. Despite He made an orchestral version at Dvořák’s embarrassment, Stern must the time, as did Jarmil Burghauser in have delivered the goods, as Dvořák 1977, but the versions are significantly engaged him for the subsequent New different. That Dvořák left the work York, Prague and Vienna premieres unorchestrated suggests that he of the work. Wihan did, however, was dissatisfied with this first effort. perform the work often, and insisted Despite the urgings of his friend, the on making some ‘improvements’ to cellist Hanuš Wihan, Dvořák thought 5 PROGRAM NOTES Dvořák’s score so that the cello part was sketching the slow movement at would be more virtuosic. Wihan also the time. The outer sections of this insisted on interpolating a cadenza movement are calm and serene, but in the third movement, which the Dvořák expresses his distress in an composer vehemently opposed. For impassioned gesture that ushers in an some reason Simrock was on the point emotionally unstable central section of publishing the work with Wihan’s in G minor, based on his song Kéž amendments, and only a stiff letter duch můj sám (Leave me alone) which from Dvořák persuaded the publisher was one of Josefina’s favourites. to leave out the cadenza. Brahms, Josefina died in the spring of incidentally, had by this time taken 1895, and Dvořák, by this time on the job of correcting the proofs of back in Bohemia, made significant Dvořák’s music before publication, alterations to the concluding coda to save the time of sending them of the third movement, adding some to and from the United States. 60 bars of music. The movement Despite being an ‘American’ work, the begins almost ominously with concerto is much more a reflection contrasting lyrical writing for the of Dvořák’s nostalgia for his native soloist. Dvořák’s additions to the Bohemia, and perhaps for the movement, and his determination composer’s father who died in 1894. not to diffuse its emotional power As scholar Robert Battey has noted, with a cadenza, allowed him, as ‘two characteristic Bohemian traits Battey notes, to revisit ‘not only the can be found throughout the work, first movement’s main theme, but namely pentatonic [‘black note’] scales also a hidden reference to Josefina’s and an aab phrase pattern, where a song in the slow movement. Thus, melody begins with a repeated phrase the concerto becomes something followed by a two bar ‘answer’.’ The of a shrine, or memorial.’ work is full of some of Dvořák’s most Gordon Kerry, Symphony Australia © 2004 inspired moments, such as the heroic The first performance of this concerto by the Melbourne first theme in the first movement, Symphony Orchestra took place on 3 June 1950 with and the complementary melody conductor Alceo Galliera and soloist Edmund Kurtz. The Orchestra’s most recent performance was in November for horn which adds immeasurably 2016 with Andrew Litton and Alban Gerhardt. to its Romantic ambience. The Bohemian connection became even stronger and more personal when Dvořák, working on the piece in December 1894, heard that his sister- in-law Josefina (with whom he had been in love during their youth) was seriously, perhaps mortally ill. Dvořák 6 MANFRED TROJAHN sogni per Eusebius, a principle lives on (born 1949) which Schumann invented: that of the sharply-contoured musical short form Cinque sogni per Eusebius which he featured in his conception of (Five Dreams for Eusebius) a “characteristic music” in precise form. Andante The first of the pieces, Andante, comes Vivace to life in the combination of the smallest, Molto adagio heterogenous elements and short tempo Moderato, leggiero developments at measured walking pace, Allegro assai whilst the second, Vivace, is characterised by a major break: out of a violent Harking back to the Romantic-era genre development of the tempo, the action of the character piece (a short work suddenly changes completely into a designed to evoke a specific mood), Moderato cantabile. The third piece is an German composer Manfred Trojahn’s expansively structured Adagio with great Cinque sogni per Eusebius is a homage intensification, whilst the fourth remains to Robert Schumann, or rather, to delicate throughout, with a melodic his literary and musical alter ego, the development: movement which at the reflective and dreamy Eusebius who, end leads to a steadily moving. In the last together with his counterpart Florestan movement, in a swirling three-eight time, (who represented Schumann’s more larger opposites are again juxtaposed.

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