Carmina Burana
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CARMINA BURANA 21–24 APRIL 2017 CONCERT PROGRAM ARTISTS Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Conductor Long Yu Soprano Eva Kong Tenor John Longmuir Baritone Warwick Fyfe Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus Guest Chorus Master Marilyn Phillips National Boys Choir of Australia National Boys Choir Chorus Master Peter Casey REPERTOIRE Ravel Daphnis and Chloé: Suite No.2 INTERVAL Orff Carmina Burana Running time 1 hour 50 minutes including 20-minute interval These performances of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty. Ltd. exclusive agent for Schott Music Ltd of Mainz. LONG YU EVA KONG CONDUCTOR SOPRANO Long Yu is Artistic Director and Chief Born in Korea, Eva attained her Conductor of the China Philharmonic, Bachelor of Music at Hanyang Music Director of the Shanghai University, South Korea, Symphony Orchestra and of the continuing her studies at Sydney Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and Conservatorium of Music. Principal Guest Conductor of the Hong A member of the Moffat Oxenbould Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He is Young Artist Program, Eva has also the founding Artistic Director of been the recipient of many awards the Beijing Music Festival, which will including First Prize in the Giacomo celebrate its twentieth year in 2017. Lauri-Volpi International Competition Long Yu conducts leading orchestras (2002). Eva has performed the and opera companies around the roles of Gilda (Rigoletto) for Opera world, including the New York Australia, and Pamina, Gretel, and Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Amina (La Sonnambula) for Pacific Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre Opera. More recently she received a de Paris, Munich Philharmonic, BBC Helpmann Award Nomination and was Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo a Green Room Award Winner for Best Philharmonic. He has created China’s Female in a Supporting Role, for her first orchestral academy in Shanghai 2014 appearance as Madam Mao in - a partnership between the Shanghai Victorian Opera’s Nixon in China. Symphony, the Shanghai Conservatory In 2016, Eva Kong sang Liù (Turandot) and the New York Philharmonic – and for Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, has also launched Youth Music Culture Laura (Luisa Miller) and Princess Guangdong, a partnership with Yo-Yo Linetta (The Love for Three Oranges) Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, which for Opera Australia. In concert, Eva will investigate the role of the musician has sung in Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s as a cultural citizen. He has recorded Great Mass in C Minor and Saint for Deutsche Grammophon. Saëns’ Requiem. 3 JOHN LONGMUIR WARWICK FYFE TENOR BARITONE Born in Edinburgh, Scotland John Warwick Fyfe is a Helpmann Award- Longmuir’s operatic studies took place winning Australian singer and Churchill at the Australian Opera Studio. His Fellow. An alumnus of the Victoria awards encompass all of Australia’s College of the Arts, he has since major Eisteddfods and competitions, worked with most major Australian having won the Herald Sun Aria and and New Zealand opera companies the inaugural Joan Sutherland and (notably Opera Australia) and with the Richard Bonynge Bel Canto award, major Australian orchestras, Auckland among others. Philharmonia, Warsaw Symphony and Singapore Symphony Orchestras. In 2011, John was invited to join Opera Australia’s young artists program Warwick Fyfe was recently seen making his debut as Almaviva in The in Opera Australia’s Ring Cycle as Barber of Seville. Since finishing the Alberich, a role for which he won program John has sung all the major a Helpmann Award after the 2013 leggiero repertoire for Opera Australia production. Other awards include the including Tamino in The Magic Bayreuth Scholarship, first prize in Flute. On the concert platform, his the McDonald’s Aria, a Green Room appearances have included Rossini’s Award and the Dame Mabel Brookes Stabat mater with the West Australian Memorial Fellowship. Symphony Orchestra, Carmina Burana Since 2014, Warwick has expanded at Tokyo’s New National Theatre, and his international freelance career, Fauré’s La Naissance de Vénus at the and he has worked with English Konzerthaus Berlin. In 2012 and 2014 Touring Opera, Welsh National he was invited by Richard Bonynge Opera, and in concert not only in to appear at Grimoaldo in concert Australia, but the UK, New Zealand, performances of Handel’s Rodelinda, Singapore and Vietnam. He will the first of which is available as a perform Alberich on his forthcoming commercial recording. first appearances in Japan. 4 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY NATIONAL BOYS CHOIR ORCHESTRA CHORUS OF AUSTRALIA For more than 50 years the Melbourne Founded in 1964 by Kevin Casey, the Symphony Orchestra Chorus has been National Boys Choir of Australia has the unstinting voice of the Orchestra’s established itself as one of Australia’s choral repertoire. In 2017 the Chorus finest treble choirs. The Choir is often joins forces with the Orchestra on called on to sing with the Melbourne more than 20 different occasions to Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia perform some of the most moving and and Victorian Opera. Conductors with inspiring repertoire from the canon, whom the Choir has appeared include as well as once again presenting its Oleg Caetani, Philippe Herreweghe, own a cappella performances. Neeme Järvi, Markus Stenz, and Yan Pascal Tortelier, as well as Australians The MSO Chorus sings with the Graham Abbott and Richard Gill. finest conductors, including Sir Andrew Davis, Edward Gardner, Mark The Choir’s schedule also includes Wigglesworth, Bernard Labadie, regular television, recording and Stephen Layton, Vladimir Ashkenazy, major event appearances such as Masaaki Suzuki and Manfred Honeck, the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and is committed to developing opening ceremony, 2006 Melbourne and performing new Australian Commonwealth Games, and Carols by and international choral repertoire. Candlelight at the Myer Music Bowl Commissions include Brett Dean’s Katz since 1988. und Spatz, Ross Edwards’ Mountain The Choir has toured internationally Chant, and Paul Stanhope’s Exile with destinations including the UK, Lamentations, and the Chorus has also France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Japan, premiered works by such composers USA, Taiwan, the Philippines and as James MacMillan, Arvo Pärt, Hans China, giving performances in venues Werner Henze, Alfred Schnittke, Gavin ranging from Disneyland to St Peter’s Bryars, and Pēteris Vasks. in Rome. The Choir is well-known Recordings by the MSO Chorus for through Qantas’ I Still Call Australia Chandos and ABC Classics have Home campaign. received critical acclaim. It has performed across Brazil and at the Cultura Inglese Festival in Sao Paolo, in Kuala Lumpur with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, with The Australian Ballet, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Barbra Streisand, at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the AFL Grand Final, the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, and Anzac Day commemorative ceremonies. 5 PROGRAM NOTES MAURICE RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé was first presented (1875–1937) at the Théâtre du Châtelet on 8 June 1912, with Pierre Monteux conducting, Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No.2 but it was not a success. However Daybreak its score has become a staple of the Pantomime concert hall where it is usually heard General Dance (Bacchanale) in the form of two suites, or ‘fragments symphoniques’. Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus The ballet opens with the idyll in which Daphnis and Chloé fall in love. Chloé is The Russian impresario Sergei abducted by pirates, and three nymphs Diaghilev commissioned many of invoke the god Pan to come to Daphnis’ the orchestral scores which have aid. Now ‘Suite 2’ begins, one of the become modern classics. In 1909, most graphic portrayals of sunrise he brought his Ballets Russes to in the orchestral literature. Imitation Paris, and commissioned Ravel birdsong and the piping of shepherds to write a ballet to a scenario by unite Daphnis with Chloé. In tribute to Michel Fokine based on the tale of Pan, Daphnis and Chloé mime Pan’s Daphnis and Chloé, a romance by courtship of Syrinx, accompanied by the Ancient Greek writer Longus. a florid solo flute (Pantomime). The concluding General Dance represents Ravel lingered over this, one of his the joyful celebration of the lovers and greatest and largest scores, and it was shepherds. not completed until April 1912, shortly Adapted from a note by Gordon Kalton Williams before the scheduled first performance Symphony Australia © 1997/2008 date. Diaghilev had wanted a score The Melbourne Symphony was the first of the Australian which would be important but not state symphony orchestras to perform either of the suites dominant. Ravel, on the other hand, from Daphnis et Chloé, on 4 May 1940 under conductor Antal Dorati. The Orchestra most recently performed Suite felt that his score should be supreme. 2 in February 2015 with Benjamin Northey. He also had contrasting views of Ancient Greece, saying, ‘My intention was to compose a vast musical fresco, in which I was less concerned with archaism than with reproducing faithfully the Greece of my dreams, which is very similar to that imagined and painted by French artists at the end of the 18th century.’ 6 PROGRAM NOTES CARL ORFF Fortune smiled on me when she (1895–1982) put into my hands a Würzburg secondhand books catalogue, in Carmina Burana: cantiones profanae which I found a title that exercised (worldly songs) on me an attraction of magical force: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi Carmina Burana: Latin and German I – Primo Vere songs and poems of a 13th-century Uf dem anger manuscript from Benediktbeuern, II – In Taberna edited by J.A. Schmeller. III – Cours d’amours Orff spoke more truly than he knew: Blanziflor et Helena certainly Carmina Burana (Songs of Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi Beuern) would make his fortune, at least artistically. But its success put Eva Kong soprano much of his subsequent achievement John Longmuir tenor in the shade. Warwick Fyfe baritone Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Orff studied music from an early Chorus age including, significantly, research National Boys Choir of Australia into non-European music.