Seeking Peace of Mind About Your Estate and Family?
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MATINEE 4 Seeking peace of mind about your estate and family? FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2.30PM FEDERATION CONCERT HALL HOBART Marko Letonja conductor GERSHWIN Andrew Seymour clarinet Catfish Row: Symphonic Suite from ADAMS Porgy and Bess The Chairman Dances Catfish Row Duration 12 mins Porgy Sings Fugue COPLAND Hurricane Clarinet Concerto Good Morning, Sistuh Slowly and expressively – Duration 24 mins Cadenza – Rather fast This concert will end at approximately 4.30pm. Duration 17 mins INTERVAL Expert advice Duration 20 mins and solutions. MUNRO Blue Rags Bad Girl Rag Tromba Blues Sponsored by China Rag Duration 12 mins Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout Australia and around the world by ABC Classic FM. We would appreciate your cooperation in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off. 48 49 JOHN ADAMS (born 1947) The Chairman Dances – Foxtrot for In the surreal final scene of the opera, Orchestra she interrupts the tired formalities of a state banquet, disrupts the slow moving American John Adams is one of the most protocol and invites the Chairman, who successful composers working today. He first is present only as a gigantic 40-foot came to prominence in the early 1980s with portrait on the wall, to “come down, works such as Harmonium, Grand Pianola MARKO LETONJA ANDREW SEYMOUR old man, and dance”. The music takes Music and Harmonielehre, and achieved full cognisance of her past as a movie even greater success with the opera Nixon actress. Themes, sometimes slinky and in China, which he wrote in collaboration Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor Principal Clarinet with the Tasmanian sentimental, at other times bravura and with poet Alice Goodman and stage director and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra since 2012, Andrew bounding, ride above in bustling fabric Peter Sellars. It was premièred by Houston of energised motives. Some of these Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Seymour studied with Robert Schubert at Grand Opera in 1987 and received its first themes make a dreamy reappearance of the Orchestre Philharmonique de the Victorian College of the Arts where he Australian performance at the 1992 Adelaide in Act III of the actual opera, as both the Festival. Since then, Adams has consolidated Strasbourg. Born in Slovenia, he studied at completed a Bachelor of Music Performance Nixons and Maos reminisce over their his reputation as a composer for the stage, the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and the in 2001. His early orchestral training was with distant pasts. A scenario by Peter Sellars with works such as The Death of Klinghoffer, and Alice Goodman, somewhat altered Vienna Academy of Music. He was Music the VCA Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne El Niño and Doctor Atomic. from the final one in Nixon in China, is as Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Geminiani Chamber Early in his career, Adams was frequently follows: Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and Music Orchestra. He is also a former member of labelled a “Minimalist composer” as his Chiang Ch’ing, aka Madame Mao, Director and Chief Conductor of both the the Australian Youth Orchestra and first music typically involves the extensive has gatecrashed the Presidential Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in repetition of small-scale motifs and, performed with the TSO as part of the Banquet. She is first seen standing superficially, bore a stylistic resemblance to Basel from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal TSO-AYO Orchestral Development Program where she is most in the way of the the music of fellow Americans Philip Glass Guest Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in waiters. After a few minutes, she in 2005. He was active as a freelance and Steve Reich, also labelled “Minimalists”. brings out a box of paper lanterns 2008 and made his debut with the TSO musician in Melbourne, having performed But in more recent years, the label as tended and hangs them around the hall, then the following year. He took up the post to fall out of use, possibly because Adams’s with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic strips down to a cheongsam, skin- of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director music has become so recognisable in its own Orchestra, Australian Classical Players and tight from neck to ankle and slit up right and is able to be appreciated without of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra the hip. She signals the orchestra to the Lyric Opera of Melbourne, as well as recourse to categorization. at the start of 2012. He has worked with play and begins dancing by herself. The Phantom of the Opera and Dr Zhivago. many orchestras in Europe including the The composer writes: Mao is becoming excited. He steps He has also performed with the Adelaide Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, The Chairman Dances was an “out-take” down from his portrait on the wall, Symphony Orchestra. Between 2009 and and they begin to foxtrot together. Berlin Radio Orchestra, Mozarteum of Act III of Nixon in China. Neither an 2011 he toured nationally as a member of “excerpt” nor a “fantasy on themes They are back in Yenan, dancing to Orchestra and the Orchestra Filarmonica the gramophone… the orchestra for OzOpera, Opera Australia’s from”, it was in fact a kind of warm-up della Scala, Milan. He has also worked in for embarking on the creation of the full touring company. In 2010 he performed John Adams © 1999, reprinted with many renowned opera houses such as the opera. At the time, 1985, I was obliged to permission. Vienna State Opera, Berlin State Opera, Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock fulfil a long-delayed commission for the La Scala Milan, Semper Oper Dresden, with Sara Macliver and Amir Farid at the Milwaukee Symphony, but having already The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra has seen the scenario to Act III of Nixon in performed this work once before, with conductor and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. Melbourne Recital Centre. In 2014 Andrew Luke Dollman in Hobart on 15 May 2004. China, I couldn’t wait to begin work on was featured in recital on ABC Classic FM’s Additionally, he has conducted at the Arena that piece. So The Chairman Dances di Verona. Future engagements include Sunday Live program and was also a featured began as a “foxtrot” for Chairman Mao the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Berlin performer at MONA’s Synaesthsesia+. and his bride, Chiang Ch’ing, the fabled Radio Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera Recently, Andrew has performed as guest “Madame Mao”, firebrand, revolutionary executioner, architect of China’s in Munich and Wagner’s Der Ring des principal Clarinet with the Australian calamitous Cultural Revolution, and (a Nibelungen for the Royal Swedish Opera Chamber Orchestra and the Auckland fact not universally realised) a former with Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde. Philharmonia Orchestra. Shanghai movie actress. 50 51 AARON COPLAND (1900-1990) IAN MUNRO (born 1963) Concerto for Clarinet and String waters, restless for new collaborations, new Blue Rags Arthur Benjamin. Orchestra, with Harp and Piano ways to communicate. Now Goodman Bad Girl Rag My own rags began as a contribution to Slowly and expressively – plays with great ensembles and conductors, Tromba Blues Russell Gilmour’s Whitlam Rags project, which Cadenza – premières major new works. His current aimed to follow up on the Keating Tangos commission, for a clarinet concerto from a China Rag Rather fast with a musical tribute to former Prime Minister gawky, earnest New Yorker, will become his The syncopated, pre-jazz march-like style Gough Whitlam. China Rag is a comment on A sweetly rocking lullaby wafts as if from lasting gift to the classical world. known as “ragtime” was well on its way to Whitlam’s diplomatic forays into China, for an open window. Floating, the solo clarinet The fast second movement begins with a becoming a big international piano fad by which he was lambasted by critics at the time. sighs serenely. In his sketches for this prickly apparition in the orchestra, marked the turn of the 20th century. Introduced peaceful opening, Copland writes, “night to New York by the dance-hall pianist Ben Bad Girl is the only true ragtime number in “wraith-like”. It terrifies the clarinettist into the set and pays homage to William Bolcom, music…lonely”. Nostalgia fills the evening silence, setting the scene for an unpredictable Harney in 1896, it was probably born in the air, gentle music originally written for a US southern states of the USA and was perfected the American composer whose piano rags soloist/ensemble relationship: sometimes of the late 1960s and early 70s are easily the Government film made to build pride and tentative, occasionally supportive, usually in St Louis by the gifted, self-taught African- hope in new migrants. American composer Scott Joplin, whose most beautiful and fascinating in the entire adversarial. Seesawing unpredictably, the music literature. Tromba Blues was written after In 1947 two artists, seeking new directions, veers from spiky to suave, crude to vigorous, Maple Leaf Rag of 1899 secured both his livelihood and his reputation. Sadly, the returning home from a tour to Italy with the stumble upon one another. Both second- good-humoured to wild, an entertainingly Sydney Youth Orchestra in 2004. During that generation Americans, the children of poor rollercoaster ride held together by the fights, failure of his opera Treemonisha to receive a performance precipitated his mental collapse tour, Respighi’s arrangements of Rossini were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Both games and dances of antagonists. played as encores and the tarantella was a reserved, uncommunicative, physically 18 years later. The phenomenon of ragtime Goodman and Copland had reason to seemed to have burned itself out, like the favourite with everyone.