Respighi, Britten & Vasks
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RESPIGHI, BRITTEN & VASKS Directed by Richard Tognetti JUNE 2019 Program in Short Your five-minute read before lights down p.6 Guiding Lights Bernard Rofe discusses the art of homage in music p.12 PRINCIPAL PARTNER BUILD YOUR 2019 SEASON Indies & Idols Music by Szymanowski, Sufjan Stevens and Jonny Greenwood 14–29 JUNE Luminous Our ground-breaking collaboration with artist Bill Henson 10–23 AUGUST Celebrating Mozart With pianist Dejan Lazic´ 5–17 SEPTEMBER Intimate Bach With Richard Tognetti, Erin Helyard and Brett Dean 19–30 OCTOBER Brahms & Dvořák The Double Concerto and Eighth Symphony 9–22 NOVEMBER *Prices vary according to state, venue, concert and reserve. Booking fees apply. Full terms and conditions at aco.com.au/terms-and-conditions Richard Tognetti – Artistic Director & Lead Violin Three concert flexi-packs from $147* EXPLORE & BOOK GOVERNMENT PARTNERS PRINCIPAL PARTNER aco.com.au/flexi 1 Inside you’ll find features and interviews that shine a spotlight on our players and the music you are about to hear. Enjoy the read. INSIDE: Welcome Program Program in Short From the ACO’s Managing Listing and Your five-minute read Director Richard Evans concert timings before lights down p.2 p.5 p.6 Musicians Guiding Lights Acknowledgments Players on stage for Bernard Rofe discusses the The ACO thanks our this performance art of homage in music generous supporters p.10 p.12 p.28 Printed by Playbill Pty Ltd. Cover photo by Nic Walker. NATIONAL CONCERT SEASON 2019 2 WELCOME Respighi, Britten ^ Vasks marks our first concert at the Melbourne Recital Centre for 2019. We are delighted to return to this most magnificent of recital venues to present this striking program of string music, directed by Richard Tognetti. Following this performance, the Orchestra will embark on our fourth national tour for the year, Indies ^ Idols. This bold, energising program sees string orchestral music by contemporary indie icons paired alongside breathtaking works from the great Polish classical composers who inspired them. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to tour our orchestra and education programs around Australia each year. The ACO earns 90% of its own revenue, and ticket sales only make up 40% of what it takes to bring our work to stages and classrooms around the country. News Donations from the public are vital to our existence. I encourage you to consider making a tax-deductable donation to the ACO before 30 June. Thank you for your support and for joining us in the concert hall this evening. I hope you enjoy the performance. Play a role in our future DONATE BEFORE 30 JUNE ACO Patrons are our lifeblood. With only 12% of our funding provided from government sources, you play a vital role in helping us to shape the musical landscape through bringing the Orchestra’s artistic Richard Evans vision to life. A tax-deductible Managing Director donation will help us maintain Join the conversation #ACO19 our position as one of the world’s great chamber orchestras. AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 3 Coming up Indies & Idols 14–29 JUNE Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney SEP Music by Sufjan Stevens and the creative forces behind Celebrating Mozart Radiohead and The National, 5–17 SEPTEMBER presented alongside their shared Wollongong, Canberra, Melbourne, classical musical influences. Adelaide and Sydney Directed by Richard Tognetti. Pianist Dejan Lazic� reunites with Richard Tognetti and the Orchestra for a celebration of Mozart’s symphonies and concertos. AUG Luminous JUL 10–23 AUGUST Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, ACO Academy Melbourne, Perth and Sydney 7–12 JULY Ten years since its last performance, OCT Sydney we bring back our ground-breaking musical and visual collaboration Barbican Residency Our program for talented school with photographer Bill Henson, 3–5 OCTOBER aged string players, led by ACO revived and refreshed, and violinist Aiko Goto. Participants London featuring singer-songwriter Lior. spend an inspirational week in We return to London for the second Bill Henson rehearsal with ACO musicians, Untitled, 2000/2003 of our three seasons in residence as culminating in a public LMO SH177 N2A International Associate Ensemble at Courtesy of the artist, Tolarno Galleries performance at City Recital Hall. and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Milton Court at the Barbican Centre. NATIONAL CONCERT SEASON 2019 ACO Foundations participants performing with Artistic Director Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Photo by Fiora Sacco. Play a role in our future Help us to bring music education to communities around Australia by making a tax-deductible donation before 30 June. DONATE GOVERNMENT PARTNERS PRINCIPAL PARTNER aco.com.au/donate 5 PROGRAM Richard Tognetti Director and Violin Australian Chamber Orchestra PRE-CONCERT TALK From 6.45pm by Pat Miller mins HANDEL Alcina, HWV34: Overture and Dances 11 Ouverture Musette Menuet Gavotte Sarabande Menuet Gavotte Tamburino MEALE Cantilena Pacifica 8 RESPIGHI Ancient Airs and Dances: Suite III 17 I. Italiana II. Arie di corte III. Siciliana IV. Passacaglia INTERVAL 20 PE�TERIS VASKS Viatore for 11 solo strings Australian premiere 15 BRITTEN Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op.10 25 I. Introduction and Theme ACO Foundations participants II. Adagio performing with Artistic Director III. March Richard Tognetti and the IV. Romance Australian Chamber Orchestra. Photo by Fiora Sacco. V. Aria Italiana VI. Bourrée Classique VII. Wiener Waltzer VIII. Moto Perpetuo IX. Funeral March Play a role in our future X. Chant XI. Fugue and Finale Help us to bring music education to communities around Australia by making a tax-deductible donation before 30 June. The concert will last approximately one hour and 40 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. The Australian Chamber Orchestra reserves the right to alter scheduled artists and programs as necessary. DONATE GOVERNMENT PARTNERS PRINCIPAL PARTNER ACO concerts are regularly broadcast on ABC Classic. aco.com.au/donate NATIONAL CONCERT SEASON 2019 6 PROGRAM IN SHORT Your five-minute read before lights down. AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 7 George Frideric Handel’s Alcina, which premiered at Covent Garden in Handel 1735, was described as “an opera with which Handel (1685–1759) seems to have vanquished his opponents”. A deeply ironic tale of chivalry and heroism based on Ludovico Ariosto’s Alcina, HWV34: epic poem Orlando Furioso, a group of heroes sets out to Overture and Dances vanquish a mighty sorceress who lures knights onto her island and turns them into plants, animals and rocks when she tires of them. One admirer of Handel’s new opera wrote: “I think it is the best he has ever made … ’tis so fine I have not words to describe it.” The opera opens with an instrumental overture and a suite of dances composed especially for the French dancer Marie Sallé, and closes with an ebullient tamburino, which the full company joins in jubilant chorus. Richard Meale Cantilena Pacifica, which is frequently performed today as (1932–2009) a standalone work for violin and strings, originated as the final movement of Richard Meale’s second string quartet. Cantilena Pacifica The quartet emerged out of a dilemma for the composer – that his devotion to hard-edged modernism had begun to overshadow honest artistic expression. “The problem that I was encountering was brought to a head in 1979 … Sadly, my best friend, Stephen Wilson, died after a sudden onset of cancer. It now became a matter of necessity to write a piece that would be a memorial to him. So it became clear that the work could not be based on any artifice; its existence had to lie in its emotional truth.” Cantilena Pacifica became that memorial. It is an extended outpouring of elegiac melody that seems, at times, to meander aimlessly in its grief as the solo violin sings in heartbreak above the gentle undulations of the strings. NATIONAL CONCERT SEASON 2019 8 Ottorino Respighi It may seem surprising, but for much of the 19th and (1879–1936) 20th centuries, the music of pre-Classical composers was largely unknown to the general concert-going public. Ancient Airs and As a student, Ottorino Respighi became exposed to a Dances: Suite III significant amount of this music – works that had long been forgotten or dismissed as old fashioned. His three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances are based on pieces he re-discovered in Italian libraries and wanted to bring to life once again. The ‘Italiana’ that opens Suite III combines an anonymous late-16th-century galliard (a lively dance) with another, La Cesarina, by Santino Garsi da Parma. The ‘Arie di corte’ is based on Airs de Cour – six court airs published in 1603. The ‘Siciliana’ is based on a tune better known in the 17th century as Spagnoletta. And the ‘Passacaglia’ (variations on a ground bass) is based on a 1692 guitar publication called Capricci armonici. These suites have since become extremely popular with modern audiences, and while the original composers would never have imagined hearing their music in Respighi’s modern settings, they surely would have been delighted to know their music was being enjoyed once again. Above. The pier with the library and the column of San Theodoro, Venice. Oil on canvas, c1735. AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Photo. Granger Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo 9 “Viatore tells the story of a wanderer who arrives in this world, grows up in it, develops, falls in love, fills himself up and then departs. The journey is illuminated by the endless and starry universe.” Peˉteris Vasks Latvian composer Peˉteris Vasks’ music pursues themes (1946–) such as the complex interaction between humans and nature, and the beauty of life pitted against the ecological Viatore and moral destruction of the world. Vasks writes that Arranged for 11 solo strings by Viatore “tells the story of a wanderer who arrives in this Stefan Vanselow world, grows up in it, develops, falls in love, fills himself up and then departs.