NORWEGIAN MOODS

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Your Friday 22 September 2.30pm Federation Concert Hall Hobart

Partner MATINEE 3 director & violin INTERVAL Sue-Ellen Paulsen cello Duration 20 mins in Print. GRIEG KRAGGERUD From Holberg’s Time Suite from Equinox Praeludium Postlude No 2 in D minor Sarabande Postlude No 18 in F-sharp minor Gavotte Postlude No 19 in A Air Duration 10 mins Rigaudon Duration 21 mins MASSENET “Meditation” from Thaïs SAINT-SAËNS Duration 5 mins La muse et le poète Duration 16 mins GRIEG (arr LUND & KRAGGERUD) Violin Concerto in G (arrangement of KRAGGERUD Violin Sonata No 2) Variation Suite for Violin and Cello Lento doloroso – Poco allegro – Allegro Tema vivace Scherzo Allegretto tranquillo Waltz Allegro animato Jig Duration 22 mins Stick Dance This concert will end at approximately Duration 4 mins 4.30pm.

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From Holberg’s Time – Suite, Op 40 The Praeludium contrasts a lively galloping Praeludium rhythm with a simple melody of sighing motif Sarabande from the violins. The minor-key Sarabande conforms to the Baroque model of a stately Gavotte triple-time dance, though the passionately Air nostalgic harmonies, and warmly divided Henning Kraggerud Sue-Ellen Paulsen Rigaudon lower strings, might remind us of other works of Grieg. The elegant duple-time Gavotte In 2003 the University of Bergen in is perhaps closer to the “source” with its Violinist and violist, Henning Kraggerud instituted a prize to commemorate one of Sue-Ellen Paulsen studied at the clear bass line and ornamental flourishes, the city’s most famous sons, Ludvig Holberg has played with many of the world’s finest Queensland Conservatorium of Music where and features lovely brief solos from the lower (1684-1754). The Holberg Prize honours orchestras. Recent performances include voices in the central section. The Air – the she had lessons with Richard Dedecius. As achievements in humanities, science, appearances with the Tonkünstler-Orchester most substantial of the five movements – is an undergraduate she appeared as soloist theology and law – all areas in which this of Lower Austria, the Danish National perhaps Grieg’s answer to the work known with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, extraordinary polymath excelled. Norway Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra popularly as Bach’s “Air on a G string”; its Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra was, at the time of his birth, still a part of the opening melody is constructed out of long Sinfónica Portuguesa (São Carlos), the Danish kingdom, and Holberg unsurprisingly and Queensland Youth Orchestra. In 1980 notes that often finish with an ornamental Toronto and Vancouver Symphony spent much of his adult life in the capital, figure while the orchestra provides a gently she won the ABC Concerto Competition Orchestras and the and Bergen where he held the Chairs of Metaphysics pulsating accompaniment, occasionally Philharmonics. Henning Kraggerud is also a (later the Young Performers Award) and and Logic, Latin Rhetoric and History at the building to an impassioned climax. A central composer. Works have been commissioned was awarded a scholarship enabling her University of Copenhagen. There he wrote section of fragments passed from one voice scholarly works that remained in use for a by the Brodsky Quartet and Finland’s to pursue postgraduate study in Vienna to another is punctuated by passages of century or more, and a number of successful ecstatic unison, before the opening melody Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. Recent with André Navarra. Her professional plays. He also spent considerable periods is stated in the cellos and finally by the full recordings include his performance with the career began in Armidale with the New abroad, notably in Rome and Oxford, and band. Malmö Symphony of the Violin Concerto of is credited as bringing the ideas of the England String Quartet. She assumed The finale, as in any Baroque suite, is a Carl Nielsen and that of Enlightenment back to Scandinavia. Holberg her current position with the Tasmanian charming, lightweight fast dance, often a never married, but out of the considerable (lost since its Netherlands première in gigue. Grieg offers a Rigaudon, whose outer Symphony Orchestra in 1986. Since then fortune he amassed he helped to transform 1909 but revived by Henning Kraggerud in sections offer a kind of cross between a she has been guest principal with the the Sorø Academy from an aristocratic riding 2016). His recording of Mozart’s concertos hornpipe and Norwegian Hardanger fiddle school into a new university. nos 3,4 and 5 includes his own cadenzas. Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony music; characteristically, there is a soulful, Currently International Chair of Violin at the and Australian Chamber Orchestra. An For the bicentenary of Holberg’s birth, Grieg melodic central section. Royal Northern College of Music, Henning experienced soloist, she has performed was commissioned to compose a cantata © Gordon Kerry 2015 to be sung at the unveiling of a monument Kraggerud is also Artistic Director of the concertos by Shostakovich, Walton, Mills to the great man in Bergen. The resulting The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. and Ligeti among many others and is Holberg Cantata for baritone and male performed this work with conductor Kenneth Born in Oslo in 1973, Henning Kraggerud featured as soloist on several of the TSO’s chorus, setting a text by Nordahl Rolfsen, was Murison Bourn on 24 November 1948 and, most recently, with Richard Gill in Latrobe, Stanley and is a recipient of Norway’s Grieg Prize and Australian Composer Series CDs. A strong an onerous duty for Grieg who claimed to Burnie on 13, 14 and 15 March 2015. in 2007 was awarded the Sibelius Prize advocate for contemporary music, she has be writing “poor music” but at least having for his interpretations and recording of some success fishing. But in a sudden jeu commissioned and premièred many new Sibelius’ music around the world. He is d’esprit, he composed a suite for piano Australian works including one written a professor at Oslo’s Barratt Due music of dances of the kind that Holberg might especially for her by Andrew Ford. She has have known, though they are far from neo- conservatoire, where he play/directs the recently recorded the Schumann piano Baroque pastiche. These were performed . Henning Kraggerud plays a at the time of the Holberg festivities in trios with the Kingfisher Trio (ABC Classics). 1744 Guarneri del Gesù, provided by Dextra Bergen, and shortly thereafter Grieg made Musica AS. This company is founded by She is Lecturer in Cello at the Tasmanian this version for string orchestra, which was Sparebankstiftelsen DNB. Conservatorium of Music. published in Leipzig the following year.

16 17 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Henning Kraggerud (born 1973)

La muse et le poète, Op 132, for Violin, and cello, and the attraction of a soloist Variation Suite for Violin and Cello lyrical theme in A minor, whose key, melodic Cello and Orchestra joining an orchestral colleague in an Tema shape and harmonic movement underpin the additional concerto-like work. subsequent variations. There is at first a lively The title of this piece reminds literate French Scherzo Scherzo, a slightly melancholy Waltz, a Jig speakers of a famous poem by Alfred de In Saint-Saëns’ case, the stimulus for his last Waltz Musset, La Nuit d’octobre, expressing the work featuring the cello as soloist seems to that recalls the “Playful Pizzicato” of Britten’s poet’s recovery from the heartache of his have come from his collaboration with the Jig Simple Symphony and, finally, an energetic relationship with George Sand (later to be cellist Hollmann, who trained in Brussels Stick Dance Stick Dance. the lover of Chopin). The poem is couched as under Servais, and who played the premières © Gordon Kerry 2017 One of Kraggerud’s most popular works a dialogue between the poet and his muse, of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 2 in 1903, in which she helps him to re-live and come to and of his second in 1905. The is his Variation Suite for violin and cello, This is the first performance of this work by the terms with his emotional distress. complexities of Hollmann’s own cello music composed in 1994. It consists of a simple Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. show that he was a virtuoso, and there is Don’t, however, expect Saint-Saëns’ music virtuosity for the soloists in La muse et le to convey these highly Romantic feelings. poète, yet it remains a dialogue of the two The title was added after the music was instruments rather than a contest, and the composed, at the request of the publisher, vocal character of some of the writing justifies Durand, who thought it would make the the title, with a bardic harp heralding the music more saleable. Durand thought he soloists’ first entry. could find in the music, as many writers have, that “the violin, as Muse, offers soothing The treatment of the material – short melodic answers to the complaints, sometimes ideas in a variety of moods – is rhapsodic melancholy, sometimes agitated, of the cello within a broadly lyrical context, harking back as poet.” to Romanticism’s invention of the free-form symphonic poem, which Saint-Saëns learnt The prosaic truth seems to be that Saint- from Liszt. Solo and orchestra are closely Saëns set out to write a concertante piece interwoven, and restatements of thematic with violin and cello as soloists. Eugène ideas hint at a cyclical structure. The many Ysaÿe and Joseph Hollmann played the tempi can be surveyed as an arch from slow première in London in an all-Saint-Saëns to fast and back to slow, then a fast coda. program with the composer at the piano, in The modestly-sized orchestra is deployed June 1910. The original version of this duo with Saint-Saëns’ typical transparency, for violin and cello was with piano, but when abetting the suggestion of a cool neo- he composed the music at Luxor in Egypt classicist handling Romantic forms and in 1909, Saint-Saëns was already planning material, the paradox of so much of a version with orchestra, which he thought Saint-Saëns’ music. would be much better. The accompaniment Abridged from a note by David Garrett is certainly orchestral, though very closely © 2002 based on the piano version. A critic wrote of the Paris première: The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra last What amazes me about this duet which performed this work with Fionnuala Hunt and Sue-Ellen Paulsen in Hobart and Launceston is accompanied by a symphony is that it on 25 and 26 July 2002. is full of conviction and feeling…A work of tenderness, which seems to me to be actually a bit painful, or at least sombre… the listener is caught up in the vibrant unity of an inner drama. The occasional appearances of La muse et le poète in concert are due to the limited repertoire of concertante works with violin

18 19 Henning Kraggerud Jules Massenet (1842-1912)

Suite from Equinox strings. The four concertos are, respectively, “Meditation” from Thaïs Afternoon, Evening, Night and Morning, and Postlude No 2 in D minor Adapted from Anatole France’s novel of the individual movements are described as Postlude No 18 in F-sharp minor 1890, Thaïs is a typical fin-de-siècle tale postludes; Kraggerud explains that “when Postlude No 19 in A of sex, desire and religion. Set in early the work is performed in its entirety – music Christian Egypt, it traces the story of Thaïs, Premièred in 2014, Kraggerud’s Equinox and text – each musical movement follows a renowned pagan courtesan who renounces is a monumental work that grew out of his a passage of text. I therefore modified my her wayward life and converts to Christianity, collaboration with celebrated Norwegian original idea of writing 24 ‘preludes’ to 24 dying in the bosom of the Church. But the author, Jostein Gaarder. Composer and ‘postludes’”. He also notes that the pieces man who converted her, the pious monk novelist had been discussing the intrinsic can be played individually as encores, for Athanaël, comes to realise that his mission to character and properties of individual musical which “postlude” is also an appropriate term. save Thaïs was driven by his suppressed lust keys – the subject of much theorising from And, as here, individual postludes may be for her. Wracked with torment, his decline the 17th century on – and their link to time performed in smaller “suites”. and fall is counterpointed with her vision of and space. Kraggerud describes how “we Each postlude reflects some aspect of Paradise. collaborated very closely from the start, Gaarder’s narrative, specifically its physical beginning with extensive discussions about Premièred at the Paris Opéra in 1894, Thaïs location, and Kraggerud’s use of local colour our feelings towards different keys and also was only moderately successful. A revised is lightly done. The Afternoon concerto’s how we could develop ancient ideas about version was unveiled in 1898, again at the movements take us from Greenwich via the keys artistically”. Like composers from JS Opéra, but this too failed to ignite much central Europe, Egypt and the Middle East Bach to Shostakovich, he undertook to write interest. It was not until it was staged at the to ; Evening covers East Asia and the a piece that would systematically explore Teatro Lirico in Milan, in 1903, that Thaïs Western Pacific; Night criss-crosses the the 12 possible major and minor keys, began to win a toehold in the repertory. Pacific; while Morning stretches across the while Gaarder wrote a 24-part narrative to It was first staged in Australia by the Melba- Atlantic from the Americas to Africa and accompany the music. As Kraggerud notes: Williamson Grand Opera Company in 1928. Europe. Jostein went to Greenwich on the day of “Meditation”, by far the most famous excerpt Today we hear Postlude No 2, which evokes the Equinox itself and at his hotel there from Thaïs, is first heard in the middle of Act Prague in the D minor of Mozart’s great he drafted the synopsis and recorded the II, the point at which Thaïs embraces the Prague triumph Don Giovanni as a slightly exact weather at each location around Christian faith. Massenet was hardly going dizzy 6/8 waltz that meets an unexpected the world at the moment of the Equinox. to let the melody go to waste so he brings sonic obstacle. No 18 depicts the resort of it back on a number of occasions later in the From this grew a story of a man awaiting the Puerto Vallarta on ’s Pacific coast in opera. In the key of D major (sympathetic diagnosis of a serious disease who spends a movement, also in 6/8, marked Allegretto to the violin as D is one of the open strings), the ensuing 24 hours travelling eastward grazioso doloroso. No 19 takes us to New “Meditation” is quietly rapturous. The great from the prime meridian in Greenwich, Orleans, characterised by bluesy scales and swooping arcs of the violin melody are near London, visiting one location in each driving syncopated rhythms. embellished with just the right amount of time zone. This is mapped out in the key © Gordon Kerry 2017 harmonic and melodic colourings – flattened relations between the pieces, which move chords, chromatic passing notes and progressively away from C major around This is the first performance of this work by the secondary dominants. The harp adds a touch the cycle of fifths, eventually returning to it. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. of the heavenly. The story and music are influenced by those theories of key properties, and as Kraggerud Robert Gibson © 2017 puts it,”‘as we move away from C major, theories about the keys get weirder and The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor Thomas weirder, and this is reflected both in the text Mayer in Hobart on 24 March 1972 and, most and music.” recently, with Graham Abbott in Hobart on 20 October 2010. The resulting work, then, consists of 24 relatively short movements grouped into four six-movement concertos for violin and

20 21 Edvard Grieg Orchestrated Henning Kraggerud and Bernt Simen Lund

Concerto for Violin and Chamber To orchestrate the three violin sonatas Orchestra is, of course, a major challenge, so I (after Violin Sonata No 2 in G, Op 13) put it off for years, waiting for a suitable Lento doloroso – Poco allegro – Allegro opportunity. Then, when I was asked vivace to become artistic director of Tromsø Chamber Orchestra [in 2012] and heard Allegretto tranquillo that they had an excellent arranger of Allegro animato music among their members, I aired the Grieg was, at heart, a miniaturist – idea of arranging these sonatas together notwithstanding his popular with him. Both Bernt Simen Lund and the or the incidental music for – but in orchestra embraced my suggestion. With his three violin sonatas showed himself well half the work for me, it was much more equipped to work out his material on a larger fun, and a much better result than if I had scale, and in later life he admitted that they done it alone. were among the pieces of which he was most We decided to reinforce the strings proud. There is one violin sonata in each of with a few wind instruments. When the three standard “periods” of Grieg’s life. the melodies in the original piece flow The G-major work was composed in 1867, between piano and violin in the same just after Grieg’s marriage and return to range, we needed a more contrasting Norway after living for a period in Denmark. sound than that of solo violin versus Back in his homeland, Grieg’s interest in string orchestra. We settled for flute, Norwegian folk material, inspired by violinist oboe, clarinet and bassoon to keep the , grew stronger through the 1860s, feel of chamber music. This also let us and the Sonata No 2 contains many of the keep the original solo violin part without hallmarks of Grieg’s nationalist style: there changing octaves or having it covered by is a “gapped” modal figure in the slow too heavy orchestration. introduction which recurs in numerous later Help the TSO to play on As part of our preparations we studied works; there are references to the Norwegian Grieg’s own orchestrations and the springar or springdans in the rhythm of different sources of the originals. Even the fast section. These do not, of course, though there are Urtext editions of the When you join the Conductor’s Circle with your gift of $1,000 or more, you support the preclude virtuosity or development in the sonatas, my best source has always classical sense. The “slow” movement is been Rolf Christian Erdahl’s excellent life-changing music, education and outreach of the orchestra. We invite you to become a based on long-breathed melodies that also dissertation from 1994, where he goes Patron and join an extraordinary community of supporters who share a special relationship echo folk motifs in their use of pentatonic through all the manuscripts, editions with the TSO and underpin the excellence for which the TSO is known and loved. figures and grace-note ornamentation. The and alterations by Grieg in a much more finale, derived, according to Anthony Burton, thorough way than the Urtext editions. from a work for cello and piano, refers to dance elements earlier in the sonata and in © Gordon Kerry 2017 other pieces by Grieg. Join like-minded supporters of the TSO This is the first performance of this work by the Grieg once mentioned a possible violin Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. by becoming a Conductor’s Circle member today. concerto but never composed one. Henning Kraggerud in association with Bernt Simen Lund, however, has made and recorded orchestral versions of the sonatas. He describes how this came about: www.tso.com.au/support [email protected] | 03 63232 4430

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