Handel Messiah
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HANDEL MESSIAH 9–10 DECEMBER 2017 CONCERT PROGRAM Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Rinaldo Alessandrini conductor Sara Macliver soprano Joslyn Rechter mezzo-soprano Ed Lyon tenor Salvo Vitale bass Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus Warren Trevelyan-Jones chorus master Handel Messiah Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes, The MSO acknowledge the Traditional including a 20-minute interval after Act I Owners of the land on which we are performing. We pay our respects to In consideration of your fellow patrons, their Elders, past and present, and the the MSO thanks you for dimming the Elders from other communities who lighting on your mobile phone. may be in attendance. mso.com.au (03) 9929 9600 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY RINALDO ALESSANDRINI ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR Established in 1906, the Melbourne In addition to his activities as Founder- Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Director of Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo arts leader and Australia’s oldest Alessandrini is renowned as a recitalist professional orchestra. Chief on the harpsichord, fortepiano and Conductor, Sir Andrew Davis, has organ, and is considered one of the been at the helm of the MSO since most authoritative interpreters of 2013. Engaging more than 2.5 million Monteverdi worldwide. His profound people each year, and as a truly global knowledge and love of the Italian orchestra, the MSO collaborates with repertoire is naturally reflected in guest artists and arts organisations programmes in which he seeks to from across the world. reproduce the essential, but often elusive, expressive and cantabile The MSO performs a variety of elements so fundamental to Italian concerts ranging from core classical music in the 17th and 18th centuries. performances at its home, Hamer Hall at Arts Centre Melbourne, to its His recordings include not only annual free concerts at Melbourne’s Italian music, but Bach and his largest outdoor venue, the Sidney contemporaries as well. He has Myer Music Bowl. The MSO also garnered the highest critical delivers innovative and engaging plaudits including five Gramophone programs to audiences of all ages Awards, two Grand Prix du Disque, through its Education and Outreach three Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, initiatives. Prix Caecilia, the Premio Cini and four Midem Awards in Cannes. Image courtesy Daniel Aulsebrook He and Concerto Italiano appeared in Melbourne in February 2016 performing Monteverdi’s Vespers. Rinaldo has performed with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra of Lyon Opera House, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2010), Washington Symphony Orchestra. 3 SARA MACLIVER JOSLYN RECHTER SOPRANO MEZZO-SOPRANO Sara Macliver is one of Australia’s Australian mezzo-soprano Joslyn most popular and versatile artists, Rechter has worked extensively and is regarded as one of the leading as a stage, concert and recital exponents of Baroque repertoire. artist, and has been a soloist with Opera Australia, and the Cologne Sara is a regular performer with all and Wuppertal Opera companies. the Australian symphony orchestras Joslyn studied at the Sydney as well as the Perth, Melbourne and Conservatorium of Music, gaining Sydney Festivals, Pinchgut Opera, Bachelor of Music and a Diploma in the Australian Chamber Orchestra Operatic art. and Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Musica Viva, and a Joslyn's concert repertoire has number of international companies. included performances with the Melbourne, Tasmanian and In 2016, Sara sang the St John and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the the St Matthew Passions for WASO Orchestra of the Welsh National and TSO respectively, and with the Opera and with many orchestras and Adelaide String Quartet, Auckland chamber ensembles in Germany, Philharmonic, Australia Ensemble, including Hagen, Wuppertal and Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, the Cologne Philharmonic. Major Australian Haydn Ensemble, awards have included study and St George’s Cathedral, Sydney performance opportunities with the Philharmonia Choirs and ANAM. Royal Northern College of Music Earlier in 2017 she performed in Manchester, and a scholarship Mozart’s Requiem with the MSO and awarded by The Wager Society in Richard Egarr. Cologne to attend performances at the Bayreuth Festival. 4 ED LYON SALVO VITALE TENOR BASS Ed Lyon is one of Britain's most Born in Catania, Salvo Vitale began versatile and sought after young his vocal studies at the Civica Scuola tenors. Having studied History di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan, of Art at St John's, Cambridge, where he studied baroque repertoire he studied at the Royal Academy with Alan Curtis. of Music and the National Opera He has appeared at the Vienna Studio. As well as performing roles Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw at Royal Opera House, English Amsterdam, Concertgebouw National Opera, Opera North, Bruges, Tokyo Opera City Concert Glyndebourne and Welsh National Hall, Palau de la Música Catalana in Opera, his international career Barcelona, Royal Opera of Versailles, has included performances in and Teatro Regio Turin. Madrid, Paris (Châtelet and Opéra Comique), as well as at Netherlands Recent recordings include Agostino Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Steffani’s Stabat mater, Monteverdi’s Music, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Orfeo and The Return of Ulysses, and Lyon, Bordeaux, La Scala, Theater Davide Perez’s Mattutino de’ Morti. an der Wien, Lille and Opéra Recent performances have included National de Rhin. Monteverdi’s Orfeo at Belgium’s BOZAR, L'incoronazione di Poppea His busy concert schedule has in Schwetzingen and at Carnegie similarly taken him to some of Hall and Monteverdi’s Lamento della the greatest concerts halls in ninfa and Combattimento di Tancredi the world including Birmingham e Clorinda at the Utrecht Early Music Symphony Hall, the Royal Festival Festival. He has also performed Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Berlin Monteverdi’s Vespers with Concerto Philharmonie, Alice Tully Hall New Italiano and Rinaldo Alessandrini in York, Palau de la Musica Valencia, Melbourne. Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon. 5 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY WARREN TREVELYAN-JONES ORCHESTRA CHORUS CHORUS MASTER For more than 50 years the Warren Trevelyan-Jones is Chorus Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Master of the MSO Chorus and Chorus has been the unstinting voice Head of Music at St James’, King of the Orchestra’s choral repertoire. Street in Sydney and is regarded as In 2017 the Chorus joins forces with one of the leading choral conductors the Orchestra on more than 20 and choir trainers in Australia. different occasions to perform some Warren has had an extensive singing of the most moving and inspiring career as a soloist and ensemble repertoire from the canon, as well singer in Europe, including nine as once again presenting its own years in the Choir of Westminster a cappella performances. Abbey, and regular work with the Gabrieli Consort, Collegium Vocale The MSO Chorus sings with the (Ghent), the Taverner Consort, The finest conductors, including Sir Kings Consort, Dunedin Consort, Andrew Davis, Edward Gardner, The Sixteen and the Tallis Scholars. Mark Wigglesworth, Bernard Labadie, Stephen Layton, Vladimir Warren has appeared on more Ashkenazy, Masaaki Suzuki and than 60 CD recordings, numerous Manfred Honeck, and is committed television and radio broadcasts, and to developing and performing new in many of the worlds' leading music Australian and international choral festivals and concert halls. repertoire. 6 PROGRAM NOTES GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL English capital would have to live down (1685–1759) ever after the indignity of knowing that Dublin, instead, had been vouchsafed Messiah: An oratorio, HWV 56 the first performance of Handel’s Words selected from the Holy Bible magnum opus, Messiah. by Charles Jennens (1700–1773) Rinaldo Alessandrini conductor Handel had first turned his hand to Sara Macliver soprano oratorio in Rome. His La Resurrezione, Joslyn Rechter mezzo-soprano to a text in Italian, was a type of sacred Ed Lyon tenor music drama originally designed to fill in Salvo Vitale bass the gaps caused in public entertainment MSO Chorus by the church’s ban on opera In the English city of Chester one performances on certain days of the November morning in 1741, a schoolboy ecclesiastical calendar. Thus, on Easter observed a portly gentleman with a Day, 1708, Resurrezione’s brilliantly pronounced German accent smoking costumed cast enacted human a pipe at the Exchange Coffeehouse. and heavenly responses to Christ’s For the 15-year-old Charles Burney, miraculous rising-from-the-dead, in a later England’s great music historian, series of declamatory recitatives broken it was his first sighting of George up by arias, often overlaid with brilliant Frideric Handel, at 56 the embattled instrumental obbligati. Still following erstwhile dean of London’s cut-throat this musical schema, but now adapted opera world, and recently purveyor to English taste (and the English tongue), of a new and peculiarly English type Handel’s sacred oratorios had recently of oratorio. Burney watched Handel reached a peak of perfection in Israel ‘narrowly’ throughout his stay in in Egypt (1738), a retelling of the Exodus Chester, while he waited until better story that further expanded the form’s weather allowed him to embark musical resources with its sequences from Ellesmere Port for Dublin. of vivid, fugal and anthemic choruses. Even thus stranded, Handel was With this achievement only recently probably happy merely to be away behind him, Handel arrived in Dublin from London. Opera, his chief activity on 18 November 1741. He discovered no for 30 years, had brought him a share shortage of talented local musicians, of commercial unhappiness recently, and chose the best of them, including as a fickle public, following even more the violinist Matthew Dubourg, Master fickle patrons, effectively edged his of the State Music, to lead his orchestra. previously successful company out of Most of the chorus singers belonged to the market. By going to Dublin, Handel the choirs of Dublin’s two cathedrals, was denying London the premiere of St Patrick’s and Christ Church, to the not one new oratorio, Samson, but disapproval initially of St Patrick’s Dean, two. And in the case of the latter, the the redoubtable Jonathan Swift.