CONDUCTOR & MUSIC DIRECTOR: SADAHARU MURAMATSU PROGRAM SERGEI PROKOFIEV CINDERELLA – SUITE NO.1 AMILCARE PONCHIELLI LA GIOCONDA: DANCE OF THE HOURS INTERVAL MANUEL DE FALLA THE THREE CORNERED HAT – SUITE NO.1 LÉO DELIBES COPPÉLIA – SUITE NO.1 The concert will last approximately one hour and 40 minutes, including a 20 minute interval. CINDERELLA – SUITE NO 1 Cinderella begins with the wicked step-sisters heading for the ball, while Cinderella remains at home. A group of fairies appear to transform her meagre outfit and household objects, with the warning that all will return to normal at midnight. At the ball, Cinderella radiates kindness and beauty; on first sight, the Prince falls madly in love. The pair dance until the clock begins to strike twelve and Cinderella rushes away, leaving only her slipper which the Prince, giving chase, discovers. He sets out to find his beloved, searching far and wide until he finally reaches Cinderella’s house. Her step-mother attempts to keep the pair apart, but the Prince spies his beloved. As in all fairytale endings, a wonderful wedding ensues. Sergei Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka. Inspired by his mother’s piano playing, he wrote his first piano composition at the age of five. Prokofiev studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, initially making his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist. His greatest interest was opera and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. His one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed in Europe and Russia. After the Revolution, Prokofiev left Russia and resided in the United States, Germany and Paris, working as a composer, pianist and conductor. The Great Depression in the early 1930s limited stagings of Prokofiev’s ballets and operas in America and western Europe; he eventually returned to his homeland in 1936. Prokofiev died suddenly in 1953 and subsequent years saw his popularity grow rapidly around the world. In 1957, he was posthumously awarded the Soviet Union’s highest honour, the Lenin Prize, for his Symphony No. 7. SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) LA GIOCONDA: DANCE OF THE HOURS Dance of the Hours is a short ballet and the Act 3 finale of the opera La Gioconda, composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. Through solo and ensemble dances, it depicts the hours of the day as the character Alvise, who heads the Inquisition, receives guests in an elegant ballroom adjoining the death chamber. The music and choreography represent dawn, day, twilight and night to symbolise the eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Born in Paderno Fasolaro, Amilcare Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory. He wrote his first symphony by age ten. His early career, however, was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship at the Milan Conservatory that he’d won in a competition, he took minor jobs in small cities and composed several operas, none of which were successful at the time. The success of the revised version of I promessi sposi in 1872 was a turning point, bringing Ponchielli a contract with the music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. and the musical establishment at the Conservatory and La Scala. The role of Lina in the revised version was sung by Teresina Brambilla, whom he married in 1874. Ponchielli started working on I Mori di Valenza in 1876, a piece he never completed. In 1881, he was appointed maestro di cappella of the Bergamo Cathedral and became a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where his students included Puccini, Mascagni and Emilio Pizzi. Ponchielli died of pneumonia in Milan in 1886. AMILCARE PONCHIELLIAMILCARE (1834–1886) THE THREE CORNERED HAT – SUITE NO 1 THE DANCERS Ignite Dance Co. is The Three Cornered Hat opens with a steadily growing an honest miller – happily married to dance studio based a good wife – falsely arrested by the in Padstow, focusing local governor (in a three-cornered on creating talented hat), so the governor can pursue the dancers who share miller’s wife. The miller escapes and, a passion and love finding the governor in bed with his wife, for performance. plots revenge. He swaps clothes with his persecutor and visits the governor’s Grade 1 wife. The governor, now in the miller’s Mina Dousdebes clothes, is re-arrested. A crowd gathers, Emelya Kececi the miller is reunited with his wife, and Lucy Lloyd the governor mocked. Caitlin Ridgwell Manuel de Falla began his musical Estelle Nader life taking piano lessons from his mother and composition with Felipe Pedrell in Grade 2 Madrid. In 1905, de Falla won two prizes: Ava Gemmell one for piano playing, the other for a Imogen Meilak national opera, La vida breve. Isabella Ware In 1907, he moved to Paris where he Grade 3 met Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas and Natalia Costa Maurice Ravel (whose orchestration Amelia Hastilow influenced his own) and published his first piano pieces and songs. In 1914, Sienna Merlo de Falla returned to Madrid and wrote Tahlia Lioudakis music for a ballet, El amor brujo, and Bianca Nader then El corregidor y la molinera. He Alicia Stortenbeker was persuaded to rescore this work Audrey Veleski for a ballet by Léonide Massine called El sombrero de tres picos (The Three- Cornered Hat). These works established Falla as the leading Spanish composer of the time. He retired to Granada and composed very little in later life. MANUEL DE FALLA (1876–1946) FALLA DE MANUEL COPPÉLIA – SUITE NO 1 Coppélia is a comic ballet to the music of Léo Delibes. Set in three acts, it begins with the villagers preparing for Harvest Festival. The evening’s celebrations are interrupted by Dr Coppélius, whose mysterious “daughter” (a mechanical doll) causes a quarrel between Swanilda and her fiancé Franz. The villagers, concluding their celebrations, disperse to await the Festival the following day. Meanwhile, Swanilda and her friends search the strange home of Coppélius, seeking the girl they saw earlier on the balcony. Coppélius returns and chases them away, but fails to spot Swanilda, hidden out of sight. Franz arrives and Coppélius attempts to take his spirit to place in the body of his “daughter.” Fooled by Swanilda, Coppélius believes the doll has come to life. The lovers are reunited and Coppélius left broken-hearted. On the day of the Harvest Festival, the couples are married and celebrated by the villagers. Clément Philibert Léo Delibes was born in Saint-Germain- du-Val, into a musical family: his mother was a talented amateur musician and his grandfather an opera singer. Delibes studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire and held positions as a rehearsal accompanist, chorus master and organist at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris Opéra and Saint- Pierre-de-Chaillot, among others. He was brought to public attention through a collaboration with Ludwig Minkus, producing music for the ballet La Source, which encouraged Delibes to place greater attention on composing for ballet. The divertissement Le Jardin Animé followed in 1867 and a revival of the Mazilier/Adam ballet Le Corsaire, before he gained notoriety with the success of Coppélia. Never in the best of health, Delibes died shortly before his 55th birthday. O DELIBES (1836–1891) É L SADAHARU MURAMATSU WWW.SADAHARU.NET Dr. Sadaharu Muramatsu (Sada) is the music director of Strathfield Symphony Orchestra, guest conductor of Penrith Symphony Orchestra, lecturer of conducting at Excelsia College (formerly Wesley Institute), conductor of Suzuki Cello Ensemble and music director of Sydney Sakura Choir. Sada has conducted the Penrith Symphony Orchestra, Rockdale Opera Company, Sydney Camerata and many others. He has also been choirmaster of Willoughby Symphony Choir and Eastern Sydney Chamber Choir. Recently, he also conducted the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra and Central Aichi Symphony Orchestra in Japan, where he has concerts planned for 2019. Sada completed a Masters of Music in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK. He was granted a fellowship to study conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program. Sada resides in Australia under a Distinguished Talent visa granted for his achievements as a conductor. His accomplishments include an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, 2011); second prize in the Vienna Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival (2011); finalist and awarded Special Prize of the Jury at the Emmerich Kalman International Conductor’s Competition (Budapest, 2007); semi-finalist in the 2nd Bella Bartok International Opera-Conducting Competition (Romania, 2007); Mortimer Furber Prize for Conducting (Manchester, 2005); and First prize - ISIS Conducting Competition (Cambridge, 2001). Sada studied conducting under Imre Pallo, Kurt Masur, Sir Mark Elder CBE, Hirofumi Misawa and Kazuki Sawa. MUSIC DIRECTOR OUR PLAYERS Violin 1 Cello Clarinet Paul Pokorny*# Alicea Gedz* Regina Lucena-Tam * Dorothy Sercombe^ Kiera Bird Stephen Davies Garth Andrews Anna Bray Jason Kok (Bass) Madeleina Hanrahan-Tan Vanessa Chalker Bassoon Camille Hanrahan-Tan Kagan Dokumcu John Fletcher* Michel Kharrat Craig Giles Alex Thorburn Ye Ri Lee An Wen Tao Lo Alex Mountain Nazli Sendurgut Contrabassoon Chantal Nguyen Justin Couch Double Bass Melissa Ong Vince Angeloni French Horn * Richard Willgoss Carol Jeon Neil O’Donnell Victoria Beyer Violin 2 Harp * Kevin Jones Philip Hazel Verna Lee-Brown Henry Yao Cliffton Chan Rachel Hamilton Rosslyn Irvine Trumpet Piano Laura Jarimba Zac Saric Kyungoak Kim Helen Jones David Young Jeffrey Lee Piccolo Janette Vardy Simonil Mehta Dennis Dorwick Trombone Rohini Mulford Rebecca Brown Lindsay Smartt* Aimee Palfreeman Flute David Kimpton Alana Pretty Lyndon Swasbrook* Tuba Viola Rebecca Brown Charlse Mann Danielle Norton* Oboe Andrew Heike * Timpani/Percussion Adele Haythornthwaite * Laura Jamieson Steve Machamer Josh Ning Vossco Nguyen Stephen Clifford Peter Vickery Harriet O’Donnell Patricia Santoso Cor Anglais Josh Ning * Principal ** Acting Principal # Concertmaster ^ Deputy Concertmaster OUR 2018 SEASON WOULDN’T BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT..