ACO SOLOISTS — 2010 NATIONAL CONCERT SEASON NATIONAL TOUR PARTNER PRINCIPAL INNOVATION PARTNER TOUR TWO ACO SOLOISTS HELENA RATHBONE Guest Director and Lead Violin CHRISTOPHER MOORE Viola TIMO-VEIKKO VALVE Cello MAXIME BIBEAU Double Bass SPEED READ DIANA DOHERTY Oboe Schreker’s Intermezzo won the New Musical Press composition SCHREKER award in 1901, setting him on his path as a composer and Scherzo introducing his sinewy melodies and scrunchy harmonies to VAUGHAN WILLIAMS audiences for the fi rst time. His Oboe Concerto Scherzo of the same period, however, languished unheard and CPE BACH unpublished for over a century. Cello Concerto in A minor Wq170 Vaughan Williams’ Oboe Concerto, written during the Second World War, hints at an idyllic, pastoral INTERVAL world all but lost. As a purely nostalgic work, though, the SCHREKER Concerto is refreshingly free from the angst of some of the Intermezzo composer’s symphonies. HINDSON C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concerto started life as a harpsichord Crime and Punishment concerto and was re-arranged [2010 Barbara Blackman Commission: world premiere] by the composer fi rst for fl ute and then for cello. Such re- BRITTEN arrangement and borrowing from Lachrymae one’s own work has been a tool of composers from earliest times JS BACH to now. Concerto for Violin and Oboe BWV1060 Hindson’s Crime and Punishment is the much-anticipated 2010 Approximate durations (minutes): Barbara Blackman commission. 6 • 18 • 19 • INTERVAL • 6 • 10 • 14 • 13 This is the fi rst time the ACO has commissioned this composer — Th e concert will last approximately one and three-quarter hours one of Australia’s best-known — including interval. and is a celebration of our Principal Double Bass Maxime Bibeau. NEWCASTLE ADELAIDE BRISBANE City Hall Town Hall QPAC Britten’s Lachrymae is an Th u 11 Mar 7.30pm Tue 16 Mar 8pm Mon 22 Mar 8pm example of his indebtedness to music of earlier times, in this case CANBERRA PERTH SYDNEY the lute songs of the Elizabethan Llewellyn Hall Concert Hall Opera House John Dowland, but also of his Sat 13 Mar 8pm Wed 17 Mar 8pm Sun 21 Mar 2.30pm startling compositional originality in dealing with such material. MELBOURNE SYDNEY Bach’s Oboe and Violin Concerto Th e Arts Centre City Recital Hall is known only to us in an Sun 14 Mar 2.30pm Angel Place arrangement Bach made of Mon 15 Mar 8pm Sat 20 Mar 8pm the work for two harpsichords, Tue 23 Mar 8pm but its original form has been Wed 24 Mar 7pm reconstructed by scholars, and is now one of Bach’s best-loved Th e Australian Chamber Orchestra reserves the right to alter scheduled instrumental works. programs or artists as necessary. AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 3 MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL MANAGER FREE PROGRAMS Welcome to this concert in which our Principal musicians To save trees and money, we Helena Rathbone, Christopher Moore, Timo-Veikko Valve ask that you share one program and Maxime Bibeau shine like the stars they are. We between two people where possible. are fortunate to have so many outstanding soloists in the Orchestra, today sharing with us some of the masterpieces for their instruments. Welcome also to guest oboist PREPARE IN ADVANCE Diana Doherty. Read the program before the concert. A PDF version of the Th is is Helena Rathbone’s fi nal tour for a little while as program will be available at her fi rst child is due in May. I’m sure you will join me in aco.com.au one week before each tour begins. congratulating her and wishing her all the best. Barbara Blackman’s support for the ACO over many years ACO COMMUNITY has facilitated the creation of some remarkable music. Visit aco.com.au/community Th e 2010 Barbara Blackman commission is a new work to read ACO news and blog, chat by one of Australia’s most exciting composers, Matthew to other fans, listen to music and see behind-the-scenes videos Hindson, for Maxime Bibeau and the ACO. Th ank you to and photos. Barbara for her ongoing support. It gives us great pleasure to acknowledge our Principal HAVE YOUR SAY Innovation Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, as our We invite your feedback about National Tour Partner for this second tour of the 2010 this concert at aco.com.au/yoursay. season. Th is year marks the sixth in a highly successful partnership, and I thank PricewaterhouseCoopers sincerely for their ongoing and highly valued support. FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER Th is is my fi nal tour with the Orchestra as I retire as For news, special offers and General Manager after nearly eight years in the position. priority booking, sign up for the During that time, the ACO has doubled its turnover, ACO’s e-newsletter at aco.com.au. gained a record number of national subscribers, C established our second orchestra, A O2, and made ten ACO ON THE RADIO international tours. It has been a privilege to work with ABC CLASSIC FM Richard, the musicians, the Board, the staff and all our Fri 26 Mar stakeholders, sponsors and donors. Richard Tognetti conducts the ASO Many thanks and, as always, enjoy the concert! 2MBS FM Wed 7 Apr 12pm Interview with a musician from the Bach and Beyond tour. BILL GILLESPIE OAM GENERAL MANAGER, ACO NEXT TOUR BACH AND BEYOND 10–21 April AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 5 ABOUT THE MUSIC SCHREKER Scherzo (Composed 1900) Intermezzo for strings, Op.8 (Composed 1900) Schreker was a champion of Schoenberg and Hindemith, a friend of Berg and Webern, a teacher of Krenek and Brand, and described in his lifetime as the most noteworthy operatic composer after Wagner. An Austrian Jew whose Franz Schreker livelihood was eradicated by the Nazi regime, he died two (born Monaco, 1878 — died days short of his 56th birthday following a career which Berlin, 1934) burst into fl ame in the fi rst decade of the 20th century and fl ickered out in the 1930s. Th e Intermezzo and The missing link between Strauss and Schoenberg, Schreker was Scherzo are among the earliest extant of his compositions. greatly esteemed in his time but Originally fêted, with Schoenberg, as a champion of the is nearly forgotten now. Works New Music, later he found himself derided by modernists such as his Chamber Symphony as a Romantic throwback. But even Adorno, who and various song cycles are essentially disliked Schreker’s “garishness”, could not help leading the way in his gradual rehabilitation as a composer. but be captivated by his famous sound, which he described as “mellifl uous…seductive…iridescent”. His pieces “shimmer: the individual detail lights up for an instant Literally meaning “in and then subsides into the mass where it can no longer the middle” (Italian), the be distinguished, and barely even felt… Consonance and Intermezzo for many years dissonance are interwoven. Melodious sounds are enriched was simply an interlude; during the 19th century it was by searing pain.” After decades of unjust neglect, Schreker’s frequently a pithy (often slower) music is beginning to return to the concert hall and opera movement in a symphony or house stage. concerto, but increasingly also a short, stand-alone piano piece. Of those composers who contributed to the golden age of Schreker’s use of the term is in mainstream German opera in the 1910s and 1920s, only this vein, although here for an Richard Strauss could today be considered a repertoire independent orchestral work. staple of the world’s leading houses. Although this is not Although accurately translated just an unwitting side-eff ect of Nazi cultural policy, it is a as joke, or jest, the Scherzo has come to be associated fact that most of the other leading fi gures in that milieu – with vigorous rapidity, and a Schoenberg, Berg, Korngold, Zemlinsky, Krenek, Schreker, rhythmic, dance-like (usually and, to a lesser extent, Hindemith – fell foul of the Nazi in 3/4 time) character. Often regime in one way or another. For those unable to resurrect inserted into a symphony or their careers elsewhere, the ignominy was terminal: like string quartet as a lively middle movement, from Chopin on Berg, who died in poverty at age 50 after being blacklisted the scherzo has also become a by the Nazis, Schreker was targeted by Fascists in the early concert form in its own right. 1930s. His premieres were greeted by riots, he was forced AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 7 to resign his position as Director of the Musikhochschule in Berlin and, on 11 December 1933, was stripped of his membership of the Prussian Academy of the Arts. Later that month he suff ered a stroke, and he died the following March. …his operas had garnered In the previous decade, though, his operas had garnered more performances than more performances than those of Strauss, and he was those of Strauss, and he pivotal in the musical and social milieu of the time. He was pivotal in the musical conducted the premiere performance of Gurrelieder and social milieu of the in 1913, thereby making Schoenberg’s reputation, and time. he was an infl uential teacher of composition at the Musikhochschule. Nonetheless, as his composition style failed to keep pace with musical modernism through the late 1920s and early 1930s his reputation fell to the extent that when he tried, like Schoenberg, to attract overseas employment which would enable him to leave Germany, his eff orts failed. But there is his sound, described by Adorno as containing “a subliminal seething, sulphurous quality… and, in its supreme moments, a sweetness of the kind which thrives where tears are as little repressed as exultation.” A master of the expressive use of tonal colour, Schreker melds sinewy, erotic melodies with harmonies that seem an individual amalgam of Strauss and Debussy, even in these very early works.