MATINEE 3 MASTERPIECES OF THE PRESENT, Viva SURROUNDED BY THE PAST. España SATURDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2.30PM FEDERATION CONCERT HALL HOBART Richard Mills conductor RAVEL Sue-Ellen Paulsen cello Don Quichotte à Dulcinée Nathan Lay baritone Chanson romanesque DELIBES Chanson épique Sylvia – Suite Chanson à boire Prelude – Les Chasseresses Duration 7 mins Intermezzo et Escarpolette (Valse lente) FALLA Pizzicato The Three-Cornered Hat, Suites 1 and 2 Marche et Cortège de Bacchus Suite No 1 Duration 17 mins Introduction Afternoon LALO Dance of the Miller’s Wife Cello Concerto The Magistrate Prelude (Lento – Allegro maestoso) The Grapes Intermezzo (Andantino con moto – Suite No 2 Allegro presto) 28120 The Neighbours’ Dance Introduction (Andante) – Allegro vivace The Miller’s Dance Duration 24 mins Final Dance Imaginative art in historic spaces. Duration 24 mins INTERVAL Unforgettable waterfront wining and dining. Duration 20 mins This concert will end at approximately 4.30pm. A gateway to southern Tasmania’s finest experiences. thehenryjones.com Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout Only at The Henry Jones Art Hotel. Australia and around the world by ABC Classic FM. We would appreciate your cooperation in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off. 25 Hunter St Hobart Tasmania. (03) 6210 7700 STEPH HOUSTEIN 18 19 28120 HJAH_TSO_Ad_A5.indd 1 11/04/2016 4:52 pm RICHARD MILLS SUE-ELLEN PAULSEN NATHAN LAY Richard Mills has pursued a diverse career Sue-Ellen Paulsen studied at the Queensland Nathan Lay has recently been named the as a composer, conductor and artistic Conservatorium of Music where she had 2016 recipient of the Australian International director which has seen him working lessons with Richard Dedecius. As an Opera Award. Since graduating from the Melba Conservatorium of Music, he has with almost all of the nation’s music undergraduate she appeared as soloist established his career in the Melbourne organisations. Currently Artistic Director with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, of Victorian Opera, he has been Artistic opera and oratorio scene. He has won Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra Director of the West Australian Opera and the National Liederfest, Australian Music and Queensland Youth Orchestra. In 1980 Director of the Australian Music Program Events’ Opera Scholar of the Year, the she won the ABC Concerto Competition for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Aria, and (now the Young Performers Award) and He has received Helpmann Awards for was placed 3rd in the Herald-Sun Aria. was awarded a scholarship enabling her to his work as a composer (Batavia) and During his time at Melba Conservatorium, he was awarded the Melba Conservatorium conductor (Tristan und Isolde and The Love pursue postgraduate study in Vienna with Scholarship and was awarded the Robert of the Nightingale). Other awards include André Navarra. Her professional career Salzer Scholarship a number of times. the Sir Bernard Heinze Award, Don Banks began in Armidale with the New England With a Gertrude Johnson Scholarship he Fellowship and the Ian Potter Foundation String Quartet. She assumed her current attended The Opera Studio Melbourne in Award for Established Composers. He was position with the Tasmanian Symphony 2010, where he performed Polypheme in Musica Viva’s Composer of the Year in 2008. Orchestra in 1986. Since then she has been Acis and Galatea, Masetto in Don Giovanni, In 2009 he conducted the world première guest principal with the Sydney Symphony, Peter in Hansel and Gretel, Pluto in Orpheus of his Passion According to St Mark with Adelaide Symphony and Australian Chamber in the Underworld and Don Parmenione in the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra. An experienced soloist, she L’occasione fa il ladro. He has performed TSO Chorus, and in 2010 his song cycle has performed concertos by Shostakovich, with Opera Australia (A Masked Ball, Songlines of the Heart’s Desire received Walton, Mills and Ligeti among many others Aida, Falstaff, Tosca), Melbourne Opera its European première at the Edinburgh and is featured as soloist on several of the (Schaunard in La bohème and Guglielmo Festival. Many of his works have been TSO’s Australian Composer Series CDs. in Così fan tutte), and has just completed recorded and released on ABC Classics and A strong advocate for contemporary music, the Developing Artist Program at Victorian other labels, and he has made a significant Opera, having performed The Baker/Billy she has commissioned and premièred many contribution as a composer and conductor Webster in Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park new Australian works including one written of recordings in the TSO’s Australian Music with George, The King in Puss in Boots, especially for her by Andrew Ford. She has Series, including Concertos for Strings Barone Douphol in La traviata, Peter in (featuring his own music), Quamby (Peter recently recorded the Schumann piano Hansel and Gretel, Bunyip Bluegum in Sculthorpe) and Etruscan Concerto (Peggy trios with the Kingfisher Trio (ABC Classics). The Magic Pudding – The Opera, and Glanville-Hicks). He was made a Member She is lecturer in cello at the Tasmanian Young Recruit in Richard Mills’ of the Order of Australia in 1999. Conservatorium of Music. Remembrance. 20 21 LÉO DELIBES (1836–1891) EDOUARD LALO (1823-1892) Sylvia – Suite Cello Concerto in D minor explores a kind of Romantic neo-classicism, Prelude – Les Chasseresses Prelude (Lento – Allegro maestoso) as did colleagues like César Franck and Intermezzo et Escarpolette (Valse lente) Intermezzo (Andantino con moto – Allegro Camille Saint-Saëns, or even Brahms (whose music Lalo detested). Pizzicato presto) Marche et Cortège de Bacchus Introduction (Andante) – Allegro vivace The concerto is in three substantial movements. The first begins with a slowish The ballet Sylvia counts among those staged Writing in 1903, Claude Debussy looked introduction with a mildly louring orchestral works that have survived only in the exquisite back on an incident in his youth when, at a theme in unison that is illuminated by music that accompanied them. (The play performance of music by Lalo, he “showed terse flashes of brass and wind colour. Rosamunde, with music by Schubert, is a noisy but forgivable enthusiasm” and was (A feature of Lalo’s orchestration is that it another.) Even then, it is probably only the escorted out of the theatre. Debussy loved never overwhelms the cello: the soloist famous Pizzicato that would prompt a smile to remember the incident, explaining that speaks against quiet backgrounds, with of instant recognition. time had not diminished his admiration for powerful tutti effects used as punctuation.) Lalo at all. Sadly, posterity has not been so The plot – after Tasso’s pastoral drama LÉO DELIBES The soloist enters soon after, offering kind to Lalo, who these days is most often Aminta – dredges up a world in which the ruminative glimpses of the themes to come; represented on concert programs by his the subsequent Allegro pits a strongly nymphs and shepherds of Greek mythology The score for Sylvia is a mix of music to Symphonie espagnole and sometimes the profiled first theme against a more lyrical cavort in woodland glades and indulge in accompany dramatic mime – the most overture to his opera Le Roi d’Ys that tells second subject, which is often accompanied riotous bacchanals. The principal characters emotional and musically adventurous of the submerged city of Breton legend. by winds in simple hymn-like harmony. are chaste Sylvia and courting Amyntas, while sections – and diverting dances suited to the During Lalo’s lifetime the opera was his Diana, Eros, the Black Hunter Orion, and stylised plot. The Prelude introduces the first The second movement continues the use of greatest, if belated, success, but he was also Bacchus each play their parts. of the three acts, warning us with a simple structural contrast, with alternating episodes highly respected for his instrumental music, horn motif of the huntress Diana’s presence of traditional lyrical slow-movement and The ballet was conceived on a grander scale especially with the premières of several in the story. More elaborate hunting music faster, dance-like scherzo material. It is in than perhaps its banal libretto could support, concertos in the 1870s. and in the end only Delibes’ “charming and from the horns signals the entry of Sylvia – the lyrical section that the music reaches supple” music was deemed a success. a nymph of Diana and vowed to chastity – Lalo, who was born in Lille, was descended a majestic climax, but the movement “M Léo Delibes has written a score which and her companions as they dance in honour from a Spanish family that settled in the concludes with a diaphanous reprise of the reveals the hand of a master symphonist,” of the chase (Les Chasseresses). Netherlands in the 16th century. He studied faster music. Like the first movement, the finale begins with a ruminative introduction, declared L’Opinion after the première in 1876. A wistful Intermezzo leads to a slow waltz, violin and cello, first at the Lille Conservatoire for solo cello, before a rondo whose main “The picturesque choice of themes, the highly- whose melody captures the typically French and then, despite his military father’s strong material gives ample opportunity for the coloured orchestration make this ballet to my characteristics of aristocratic distinction opposition, in Paris, where he supported soloist to shine. Again, there are powerful mind an exquisite work, perhaps too refined and popular appeal. Imagine, if you will, himself by teaching and as a freelance player. full-orchestral effects but these throw the and delicate for the glare of the footlights.” Sylvia swinging in the vines above a cooling In the 1850s he was founding member (as sparsely accompanied cello episodes into stream, dipping her toes in the water.