SIMONE YOUNG AND KOLJA BLACHER 5 & 7 JULY 2018 Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall 6 JULY 2018 Costa Hall, Geelong CONCERT PROGRAM Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Simone Young conductor Kolja Blacher violin Britten Violin Concerto INTERVAL Bruckner Symphony No.6 Pre-Concert conversation Join us for a pre-concert talk from MSO's Education Manager, Lucy Rash from stage. Thursday 6.15pm, Friday 6.30pm, Saturday 12.45pm. Running time: Two hours, including a 20-minute interval In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone. The MSO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which it is performing. MSO pays its respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other mso.com.au communities who may be in attendance. (03) 9929 9600 2 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY SIMONE YOUNG AM ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR Established in 1906, the Melbourne Simone Young was General Manager Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an and Music Director of the Hamburg arts leader and Australia’s oldest State Opera and Music Director of the professional orchestra. Chief Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has (2005-2015). Currently Principal Guest been at the helm of MSO since 2013. Conductor of the Lausanne Chamber Engaging more than 4 million people Orchestra, Simone Young has been each year, the MSO reaches diverse Music Director of Opera Australia, audiences through live performances, Chief Conductor of the Bergen recordings, TV and radio broadcasts Philharmonic, and Principal Guest and live streaming. Its international Conductor of Lisbon’s Gulbenkian audiences include China, where MSO Orchestra. She has led the Vienna, has performed in 2012, 2016 and Munich, Berlin, New York and London most recently in May 2018, Europe Philharmonic Orchestras, Staatskapelle (2014) and Indonesia, where in 2017 Dresden, BBC and City of Birmingham it performed at the UNESCO World Symphony Orchestras, and Wiener Heritage Site, Prambanan Temple. Symphoniker, and conducts at the Vienna, Berlin and Bavarian State The MSO performs a variety of Operas, Semper Oper Dresden, Zurich, concerts ranging from symphonic Opéra National de Paris, Royal Opera performances at its home, Hamer Hall House Covent Garden, Metropolitan at Arts Centre Melbourne, to its annual Opera, and Los Angeles Opera. free concerts at Melbourne’s largest outdoor venue, the Sidney Myer Music She holds a Professorship at the Bowl. The MSO also delivers innovative Musikhochschule, Hamburg, Honorary and engaging programs and digital Doctorates from Griffith and Monash tools to audiences of all ages through Universities and UNSW, and the its Education and Outreach initiatives. Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France. 3 KOLJA BLACHER VIOLIN Kolja Blacher has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia and Baltimore Symphony. He has worked with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, Simone Young, and Asher Fish, and with Claudio Abbado (a close association dating from their time at the Berlin Philharmonic and Lucerne Festival). Kolya Blacher’s repertoire ranges from Bach to Berio, covering the classical-romantic core repertoire and contemporary works. He gave the German premiere of Brett Dean’s Electric Preludes for the six-string e-violin. Recent recordings include the Nielsen Violin Concerto with Giordano Bellincampi and the Duisburg Philhamonic and the Schoenberg Violin Concerto with Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne. 4 PROGRAM NOTES young as 14 were routinely facing firing squads. The work which appears immediately before the concerto in BENJAMIN BRITTEN Britten’s list of opus numbers is Ballad (1913-1976) of Heroes, Op.14, a work for tenor solo, Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.15 massed choirs and orchestra which I Moderato con moto – Agitato – pays tribute to those Britons who fought Tempo primo – and died for the republican cause. II Vivace – Animando – Largamente In April 1936, Britten had flown to – Cadenza – Barcelona with the violinist Antonio III Passacaglia Brosa for an International Society for Contemporary Music festival and it Kolja Blacher violin was here that Britten had an experience which was to leave an indelible imprint In September 1939 Britten wrote to a on his work: he heard for the first time friend, ‘I have just finished the score of the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg, my Violin Concerto. It is times like these which he described as ‘just shattering that work is so important – that humans – very simple, & touching’. With Brosa can think of other things than blowing in mind he began work on his own each other up!…I try not to listen to the concerto, completing the composition Radio more than I can help.’ sketch in Canada in 1939. Britten was writing from the USA. He By the time the work was ready for and the singer Peter Pears, his lifelong performance, however, Britten found partner, muse and interpreter, had left that his stocks at home in the UK were England for a long-planned recital tour very low; the premiere was accordingly of Canada in May of that year. With given at Carnegie Hall by the New the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in York Philharmonic under Sir John September, Britten and Pears decided, Barbirolli with Brosa as soloist in 1940. as committed pacifists, to remain in When the work was premiered in the North America. A number of prominent UK its reception was mixed, notably British literati, such as Christopher because of Britten’s decision to leave Isherwood and W.H. Auden, had his country in her hour of need. In New already travelled to the USA where York, however, the work found favour they would settle for good, so the two with its audience and even with the musicians crossed the border and New York Times’ critic Olin Downes, settled for a time in the orbit of New who observed drily, ‘There is modern York City. But while the concerto was employment of percussion instruments.’ written in the immediate build-up to the outbreak of World War II, its emotional He referred, no doubt, to the opening core is Britten’s response to the Spanish motif for timpani and percussion Civil War. Britten had been particularly which acts as a structural pivot for the appalled by events in Spain, especially first movement and imparts a vague the atrocities in which soldiers as sense of impending doom. Between appearances of this motto, however, 5 Britten canvasses a variety of different ANTON BRUCKNER moods. The central movement, which (1824-1896) follows without a break, has that kind Symphony No.6 in A, WAB 106 of fevered energy found in other works Maestoso of Britten’s from this time, notably Our Hunting Fathers and the Dies Adagio: Sehr feierlich irae from the Sinfonia da requiem. It Scherzo: Nicht schnell – Trio: Langsam is also notable for very Brittenesque Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell textures, such as a passage scored for two piccolos and tuba. The cadenza Bruckner, who must have grown concludes this movement, leading into used to rejection, only ever heard the the finale which is in one of Britten’s middle two movements of his Sixth favourite forms: the passacaglia. He Symphony when they were played in introduces the theme on the trombones Vienna in 1883. (Gustav Mahler gave that have been silent, à la Brahms, up the whole work after the composer’s until now. A passacaglia in a concerto death, but only did so after making presents any composer with a challenge significant cuts.) It is a shame, as the – the repetition of a phrase which Viennese public might have formed forms the basis of the form may work a slightly more sophisticated view of against the expectation of a concerto Bruckner’s music had this work become to become more expansive and more familiar, and they might have virtuosic in its final movement. Britten, been encouraged to reconsider some of course, carries it off with great flair of the simplistic myths that cluster over the considerable 15-minute span around it. These include: that Bruckner of the movement. This is not about was an untutored, provincial peasant merely scoring points, however. The whose music is the product of ‘rough music in the finale takes on the kind carpentry’ (assuming a lack of formal of Mahlerian/Bergian intensity which technique); that the music is ‘organists’ Britten’s compassion called forth in him music’, unsuccessfully translating the in the face of ‘humans…blowing each techniques of contrasting mass and other up’. colour from the organ console to the orchestra; or that, by contrast, he was Gordon Kerry © 2005 simply replicating the orchestral sound The only previous performance of the Britten of his idol Wagner; and that he wrote Violin Concerto by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra took place on 6-8 July 2006 with one symphony nine times. conductor Mark Wigglesworth and Midori as soloist. Bruckner’s world-view was naturally informed by the conservative, Catholic, village society of which he was a product, but despite his quaintly rustic manners and seeming naiveté, he was, like his father (and, indeed, like Schubert), a trained schoolmaster; his musical schooling, too, was considerable – not merely in what was 6 required for a village organist – and of all things. By another paradox, it is he had the wisdom and humility to the atheist, urbane sophisticate Brahms take lessons well into adulthood. The whose music is so deeply rooted in 30-something Bruckner even imposed the religious music of the past, namely seven years’ silence on himself while Bach. Bruckner’s is much closer to he submitted to Simon Sechter’s strict the Romantic ideal of spontaneous regime in harmony and counterpoint.