Melbourne Symphony Orchestra & Melbourne Recital Centre present Metropolis New Music Festival 2018 19 & 21 APRIL 2018 CONCERT PROGRAM Presented in association with Melbourne Recital Centre and Monash University, the MSO’s Metropolis New Music Festival Education Partner. MEET THE ARTISTS METROPOLIS 1 THURSDAY 19 APRIL Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Clark Rundell conductor Wu Wei sheng Australian String Quartet Ligeti String Quartet No.1 Métamorphoses nocturnes Chin Šu – Australian premiere MELBOURNE SYMPHONY UNSUK CHIN ORCHESTRA COMPOSER INTERVAL Established in 1906, the Melbourne Unsuk Chin’s music has been performed by Vincent Hood Yourself In Stars – world premiere Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an arts ensembles such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Chin ParaMetaString leader and Australia’s longest-running Boston Symphony, Deutsches professional orchestra. Chief Conductor Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ensemble Sir Andrew Davis has been at the helm intercontemporain, Kronos Quartet, ___ of MSO since 2013. Engaging more than Hilliard Ensemble, and Klangforum Wien, 3 million people each year, the MSO and conducted by Kent Nagano, Simon METROPOLIS 2 reaches a variety of audiences through Rattle, and Neeme Järvi, among others. live performances, recordings, TV and Awards include the 2004 Grawemeyer for SATURDAY 21 APRIL radio broadcasts and live streaming. her Violin Concerto and last year’s Wihuri Melbourne Symphony Orchestra The MSO also works with Associate Sibelius Prize. The Bavarian State Opera Clark Rundell conductor Conductor Benjamin Northey and Cybec production of Alice in Wonderland was Assistant Conductor Tianyi Lu, as well as selected ‘Premiere of the Year’ in 2007 by Jennifer Koh violin with such eminent recent guest conductors the German opera magazine Opernwelt. Allison Bell soprano as Tan Dun, John Adams, Jakub Hrůša and Since 2006, she has overseen the Jukka-Pekka Saraste. It also collaborates contemporary music series of the Seoul Chin Rocaná – Australian premiere with non-classical musicians such as Elton Philharmonic, and, since 2011, served as Chin Puzzles and Games from Alice in Wonderland – Australian premiere John, Nick Cave and Flight Facilities. Artistic Director of the Philharmonia’s ‘Music of Today’ series. Forthcoming performances include the UK premiere of INTERVAL cosmigimmicks, and Japanese premieres of the cello concerto, clarinet concerto, Ligeti Atmosphères and Mannequin. Chin Violin Concerto – Australian premiere Running time for each concert is approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a 20-minute interval 3 Courtesy Jacqui Way ADE VINCENT CLARK RUNDELL AUSTRALIAN WU WEI COMPOSER CONDUCTOR STRING QUARTET SHENG Ade Vincent is a prolific and diverse Clark Rundell’s repertoire ranges from Dale Barltrop violin Master of the sheng, Wu Wei has helped composer. His music has been heard on 18th century music to the present day. Francesca Hiew violin develop this 4,000 year-old instrument television, radio, digital media and film, Recent appearances have included the Stephen King viola into a force for contemporary music. as well as performed in a range of venues: BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Sharon Grigoryan cello Wu Wei studied at Shanghai Conservatory from intimate bars to major music festivals Residency Orchestra of The Hague, Dedicated to musical excellence with a before attending the Hanns Eisler and concert halls. Ensemble 10/10 and BBC Philharmonic. distinctly Australian flavour, the Australian Academy in Germany. He has won He fronts and writes music for indie-pop In June 2017, he conducted the European String Quartet creates unforgettable numerous competitions for traditional quartet The Tiger & Me who have toured premiere of Daniel Snyder’s opera Charlie experiences for audiences worldwide. Chinese music as well as Musica Vitale Australia extensively, signed to the ABC Parker’s Yardbird. He has premiered operas Competitions in Germany and the Global The Quartet’s transcendent sound is label Four|Four. by James MacMillan and Orlando Gough. Root folk prize in 2011. enhanced by a matched set of 18th century Other operas he has conducted include In 2015 he co-founded Kaleidoscope Guadagnini instruments, handcrafted by Wu Wei has appeared at festivals Albert Herring, Carmen, and The Cunning Audio, specialising in music and sound Giovanni Battista Guadagnini between including the Berliner Festspiele, Munich Little Vixen. He has recorded works by for videogames. c.1743 and 1784 in Turin and Piacenza, Italy. Biennale, Edinburgh Festival, and composers such as Peter Dickinson, The instruments are on loan to the ASQ for Donaueschingen Music Days, as well Soon after obtaining his Masters in arranged suites from Louis Andriessen’s their exclusive use through the generosity as with orchestras such as the Berlin Composition he became the Melbourne operas, and presented cross-genre of UKARIA. Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Seoul Symphony Orchestra's Young Composer collaborations with Elvis Costello and the Philharmonic. He has premiered over in Residence and is now working on three Wayne Shorter Quartet, among others. In 2018, the ASQ embarks on national and 150 works by composers such as John new works for the orchestra. international tours, delivers exhilarating Raised in Minnesota, he now lives in Cage, Jörg Widmann, and Tan Dun, and concerts, festivals, regional and metro- He is currently completing a PhD in Manchester where he heads Conducting recorded Unsuk Chin’s Šu. He is also a politan residencies, new Australian Composition at The University of at the Royal Northern College of Music. prolific composer for sheng. recording initiatives, as well as ground- Melbourne where he also teaches. breaking live digital experiences. 4 5 PROGRAM NOTES METROPOLIS 1 he could now write Bartók’s Seventh and Eighth quartets, and the thematic motif GYÖRGY LIGETI that is the germ of the piece is, as scholar (1923-2006) David Mitchell observes, borrowed from String Quartet No.1 Bartók’s Fourth Quartet. It is that motif Métamorphoses nocturnes that undergoes the metamorphoses of the title; the adjective ‘nocturnal’ inevitably Australian String Quartet reminds us of the numerous ‘night-pieces’ Courtesy Juergen Frank in Bartók’s work, and as Richard Toop Allegro grazioso writes, ‘seems rather appropriate to the Vivace, capriccioso clandestine circumstance’ of the work’s ALLISON BELL JENNIFER KOH Adagio, mesto origin. Toop also points out, however, that SOPRANO VIOLIN Presto Ligeti’s choice of variation form here is in Andante tranquillo sharp contrast to Bartók’s preference for Allison Bell is one of the leading Jennifer Koh made her debut with the Tempo di valse symmetrical structures such as sonata performers of 20th and 21st century music Chicago Symphony Orchestra, aged 11. Allegretto, un poco gioviale or ‘arch’ form. Variation, unlike those, is of her generation. Awards include the She won the International Tchaikovsky Prestissimo La Scala Prize at the Viñas Competition Competition in Moscow in 1994 and has (theoretically at least) infinitely extensible, in Barcelona and an Orphée d'Or from the since recorded Tchaikovsky with the Like many artists in totalitarian societies, though Ligeti chooses to restate his Académie du Disque Lyrique in Paris for Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted Ligeti created a number of works ‘for the thematic cell at the end. the CD Ensemble Linea plays Eötvös. by Alexander Vedernikov. bottom drawer’. In the early 1950s, the This cell is made up of two major seconds Hungarian regime’s attitude to the arts Her recent recording of Brett Dean's Jennifer Koh believes strongly in music’s linked by a semitone, not unlike the shape was, as Ligeti put it, ‘insane’: the Budapest Second String Quartet "And once I played continuity from past to present. This belief of the BACH signature, or Shostakovich’s Museum of Art was obliged to put its Ophelia", received wide critical acclaim. underlies several of her commissioning DSCH motto. Ligeti’s metamorphoses considerable collection of Impressionist In 2018 Allison joins Vladimir Jurowski projects, such as Bach and Beyond which take the form of the gradual opening out paintings into storage, and while Bartók and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin explores the solo violin repertoire from of these intervals in a sequence of eight, was regarded as the great national to sing works by Shostakovich, Berg and Bach’s sonatas and partitas to the present- short, contrasting sections. The second composer and anti-Fascist hero…most of Dean at the Berlin Philharmonie, Ensemble day. Other projects include New American section, vivace, for instance, gives way to his works fell victim to censorship, as would United Berlin/Jurowski for Claude Vivier's Concerto which was launched mid-2017 a Bartókian adagio, mesto (slow and sad) this piece had it been performed. Bouchara, the Auckland Philharmonia and with her premiere of Vijay Iyer’s Trouble, that explores the effect of minor thirds on BBC Symphony Orchestras for the World a co-commission of the Ojai Festival, Ligeti wrote his first quartet in 1953-54, the theme. Despite an overall rhythm of and UK premieres of Face by Ross Harris. Berkeley’s Cal Performances and the before the brief experiment in liberalisation slow movements alternating with fast ones, Further 2018 highlights include her WDR Boston Symphony. Recent performances that was so comprehensively crushed each slow movement, and each fast one, is Sinfonieorchester debut at the Cologne include Limitless, a project in which she by Moscow in 1956 and his flight from relatively faster than the one that precedes Philharmonie under Emilio Pomerico to brings composers onstage to perform Hungary soon after, and it is his response – it, and within and between sections there sing the role of Marie in Zimmerman’s their commissioned works with her. part homage, part assimilation – to Bartók’s is a huge range of variation of speed, Soldaten-Sinfonie, create the role of Lei quartets (particularly the Third and Fourth, dynamics and colour – the tempo di valse for the UK premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s which Ligeti, of course, had never heard, has a decidedly Balkan ‘trio section’. opera, Passion, with the London but studied in score).