Colours of the East

COLOURS MASTERPIECES OF THE PRESENT, OF THE SURROUNDED BY THE PAST. EAST Scheherazade by Sophie Gengembre Anderson Friday 4 August 7.30pm Federation Concert Hall Hobart MASTER 6 MASTER Marko Letonja conductor RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Alina Ibragimova violin Scheherazade Largo e maestoso – Lento – Allegro SCULTHORPE non troppo (The Sea and Sinbad’s Sun Music II Ship) Duration 6 mins Lento (The Story of the Kalender Prince) BARTÓK Andantino quasi allegretto (The Violin Concerto No 2 Young Prince and the Young Princess) Allegro non troppo Allegro molto – Vivo – Allegro non Andante tranquillo troppo e maestoso – Lento (Festival in Allegro molto Baghdad – The Sea – The Ship Goes Duration 36 mins to Pieces on a Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior – Conclusion) INTERVAL Duration 47 mins Duration 20 mins This concert will end at approximately 9.40pm. 28120 Sponsored by Imaginative art in historic spaces. Unforgettable waterfront wining and dining. A gateway to southern Tasmania’s finest experiences. thehenryjones.com Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout Only at The Henry Jones Art Hotel. 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. 25 Hunter St Hobart Tasmania. (03) 6210 7700 STEPH HOUSTEIN 42 43 28120 HJAH_TSO_Ad_A5.indd 1 11/04/2016 4:52 pm Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014) Sun Music II for the 1968 Australian Ballet production of the Sun Music ballet, with choreography by “A sun in me Robert Helpmann. When premièred later And a sun in heaven as a separate work, at a Sydney Symphony And beyond that, the immense sun behind Orchestra Prom concert on 22 February the sun” 1969, conducted by John Hopkins, it bore Marko Letonja Alina Ibragimova DH Lawrence Sun in Me the name Ketjak. In Balinese music, Kecak In coining the title, “Sun Music”, in 1965, (or Ketjak) is the “Monkey Dance” which Peter Sculthorpe charted a new territory accompanies part of the Ramayana, during Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and Performing music from the baroque era for Australian music and claimed it as his which the dancers fall into a kind of trance. to new commissions on both modern Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony own. Critic Roger Covell noted that the first The prominent passages for bongos and Orchestra and Music Director of the and period instruments, Alina Ibragimova Sun Music was “not in any sense bronzed, timbales represent this type of music, characterised by interlocking ostinato Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. is one of the most accomplished and swaggering holiday music…it has more versatile violinists of her generation. She to say about the mystery, fear and lonely patterns, and its strict rhythmic pulse creates Born in Slovenia, he studied at the Academy has performed with orchestras such as the glare of the sun than about the pleasures the framework for the disparate, and even of Music in Ljubljana and the Vienna more percussive sounds produced by the London Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, of warmth. This is sun music written by a Academy of Music. He was Music Director composer living in a country where the sun pitched instruments of what Sculthorpe Philadelphia Orchestra, West German Radio reminds us is “a normal Western orchestra”! of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra can be as much an enemy as a friend”. Orchestra Cologne, Bamberg Symphony, Without denying the structural function of the from 1991 to 2003 and Music Director and Seattle Symphony, Orchestra of the Age of In December 1960, while studying in Oxford, kecak music, Sculthorpe insists: “The music Chief Conductor of both the Symphony Enlightenment and all the BBC orchestras. Sculthorpe received news of his father’s isn’t oriental…but without Asia the work terminal illness, and returned to Tasmania Orchestra and the Opera in Basel from 2003 Conductors with whom she has worked wouldn’t have existed”. where he composed the work that “marked to 2006. He was Principal Guest Conductor include Haitink, Gergiev, Jurowski, Elder, my real emergence as a fully-fledged Graeme Skinner © 2007 of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and made Mackerras, Paavo Järvi and Nézet-Séguin. composer”. That work, Irkanda IV, is a The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first his debut with the TSO the following year. She has appeared at festivals such as “ritual lamentation” for his father, but also performed this work with conductor John Verbier, Mostly Mozart New York and a reflection on the remote, sun-drenched Hopkins in Hobart on 7 October 1969 and, He took up the post of Chief Conductor Aldeburgh. As a recitalist she has appeared “scrub country” to which its Aboriginal most recently, with Graham Abbott in Hobart and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian on 15 October 1991. at the Concertgebouw, Mozarteum, title gestures. It was in this contemplation Symphony Orchestra at the start of 2012. of Outback loneliness that Sculthorpe Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Musikverein. He has worked with many orchestras in discovered the “affirmation of life and living” With Cédric Tiberghien she has given presented in the work’s coda, conceived as Europe including the Munich Philharmonic, complete cycles of Mozart and Beethoven an “instrumental setting” of DH Lawrence’s Vienna Symphony, Berlin Radio Orchestra, violin sonatas at Wigmore Hall. As soloist/ poem Sun in Me. Mozarteum Orchestra and the Orchestra director she has toured with the Australian In 1968 Sculthorpe described Lawrence’s Filarmonica della Scala, Milan. He has also Chamber Orchestra, among others. The sun as “the symbol of the giving of life, worked in many renowned opera houses 2016/17 season includes residencies at destroying of life, good and God”. By then, such as the Vienna State Opera, Berlin Portugal’s Fundação Casa da Música and Lawrence’s writings had inspired several new compositions. In due course, other “suns” State Opera, La Scala Milan, Semper Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Alina Ibragimova was born in Russia and suggested themselves to Sculthorpe, and Oper Dresden, and the Grand Théâtre de in the series of four Sun Musics as it stands studied at Moscow’s Gnesin School before Genève. Additionally, he has conducted at today, “the sun of DH Lawrence, the Mexican moving with her family to the UK where she the Arena di Verona. Future engagements sun, the Japanese, the Asian and Australian – studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School and and my own sun – are ever present”. include the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Royal College of Music. Honours include What is now called Sun Music II was in fact Berlin Radio Orchestra, Bavarian State an MBE in the New Years’ list, 2016. Alina the very last of the series to be composed, Opera in Munich and Wagner’s Der Ring des Ibragimova performs on a c1775 Anselmo derived from a new movement Sculthorpe Nibelungen for the Royal Swedish Opera Bellioso violin generously provided by devised to add to the three other Sun with Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde. Georg von Opel. Musics (and one other vocal movement) 44 45 Béla Bartók (1881-1945) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) Violin Concerto No 2 Mengelberg in March the following year. Scheherazade – Symphonic Suite, Op 35 other and composed on the basis of themes Allegro non troppo When he eventually did hear a performance Largo e maestoso – Lento – Allegro non common to all the four movements. Why Andante tranquillo in 1943 after his emigration to America, he troppo (The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship) then, if that be so, does my suite bear the expressed relief about the balance and rich Lento (The Story of the Kalender Prince) name, precisely, of Scheherazade? Because Allegro molto scoring, remarking that “there was no trouble this name and the title The Arabian Nights Andantino quasi allegretto (The Young When the great Hungarian composer Béla with regard to the instrumentation”. connote in everybody’s mind the East and Prince and the Young Princess) Bartók’s new work for violin and orchestra fairytale wonders; besides, certain details of A newfound diatonic openness and Allegro molto – Vivo – Allegro non troppo was premièred in early 1939, it was titled harmonic clarity in Bartók’s musical language the musical exposition hint at the fact that simply “Violin Concerto”. Only in 1956, after e maestoso – Lento (Festival in Baghdad all of these are various tales of some one is evident in the Violin Concerto No 2. – The Sea – The Ship Goes to Pieces on a the manuscript of an early, unperformed The outer movements are unmistakably person (who happens to be Scheherazade) violin concerto from around 1908 resurfaced, Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior – entertaining therewith her stern husband.” based in the key of B major, though Conclusion) was the composer’s catalogue of works meandering chromatic elements (for Along with the Capriccio espagnol and the posthumously revised, and the two concertos example in the first movement’s cascading The Sultan Shahriyar, convinced of the Russian Easter Overture, Scheherazade were assigned specific numbers. Whilst the 12-tone second theme) are also prominent. duplicity and infidelity of all women, had displays Rimsky-Korsakov’s formidable First Concerto is a compact and private Symmetrical constructive procedures are vowed to slay each of his wives after the instinct for brilliant orchestration – an work (dedicated to the violinist Stefi Geyer, found on a number of levels, a feature that first night. The Sultana Scheherazade, instinct that can be heard in the music of with whom Bartók was in love), the Second is characteristic of many of Bartók’s works however, saved her life by the expedient his students, Respighi and Stravinsky, and Concerto is an unashamedly open and of recounting to the Sultan a succession of the 1930s.

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