SIBELIUS’ VIOLIN LAUNCESTON CONCERTO EMBER V NO SATURDAY 22 November 7.30pm Federation Concert Hall, Hobart Marko Letonja conductor BARTÓK Alina Ibragimova violin Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Andante tranquillo MOZART Allegro Symphony No 35, Haffner Adagio Allegro con spirito Allegro molto Local knowledge. Andante National experience. Menuetto – Trio Duration 26 mins Finale (Presto) SIBELIUS Duration 19 mins Violin Concerto Allegro moderato – Allegro molto INTERVAL Adagio di molto Duration 20 mins Just like the TSO, Page Seager brings together a group of talented individuals who Allegro ma non tanto have a common objective. For Page Seager it is about delivering premium legal Duration 32 mins services to our clients, whilst for the TSO it is about performing world class music. SPONSORED BY This concert will end at approximately 9.30pm. As Tasmania’s largest group of specialist lawyers, Page Seager builds long term relationships with its clients by working closely with them to develop solutions to their legal and business issues. Page Seager is a proud supporter and partner of the TSO. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout Australia and around the world by ABC Classic FM. We would appreciate your cooperation www.pageseager.com.au in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off. 37 5506 PAG TSO Ad Aug14.indd 1 14/08/14 2:14 PM WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZart (1756-1791) LES Symphony No 35 in D, K385 Haffner As in many of the first movements of Haydn, FI which we know Mozart was studying at the Allegro con spirito time, there is no contrasting second theme, Andante yet the tonal drama of the form is not any Menuetto – Trio the less for that. MARKO LETONJA ALINA IBRAGIMOVA Finale (Presto) ST PRO I The grace of the Andante has been related This symphony began life as music composed Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and Performing music from Baroque to new by many commentators to its serenade in 1782 for festivities associated with the commissions on modern and period origins, but this is an unnecessary Artistic Director of the Tasmanian ennoblement of Siegmund Haffner the ART Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director instruments, Alina Ibragimova has performed explanation: a symphony, in Vienna’s Younger, a friend of the Mozart family in PROGRAM NOTES under many distinguished conductors with concert life at this time, was not expected of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Salzburg. For that occasion Mozart composed such orchestras as the London Symphony to be the main work of the evening. Strasbourg. Born in Slovenia, he studied at a work in six movements, including two Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Mozart’s own performance of a piano minuets and a march. This was the standard the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, concerto would have taken a higher place. form of an orchestral serenade. Vienna Academy of Music. He was Music WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Relaxation was just what was needed after Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Radio France Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic Later in the same year, 1782, when planning an unusually tightly written first movement Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and Music with so much imitative counterpoint. Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Philharmonia, one of his ‘academies’ or subscription Director and Chief Conductor of both the concerts in Vienna, Mozart asked his father Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Menuetto is grand without being to return to him from Salzburg the ‘Haffner Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in Basel Hallé, and all the BBC orchestras. She has pompous – this is certainly a minuet music’. When he received it, he wrote back, from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal Guest appeared in recital in many of the world’s which asks to be listened to, not merely ‘I was quite surprised by the new Haffner Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and leading venues and festivals, and as soloist/ background music for dancing. The delicate director she has toured with the Kremerata symphony, for I had forgotten every single made his debut with the TSO the following subtleties of the Trio, then, will not be Baltica, Britten Sinfonia, Academy of note of it; it must certainly be very effective.’ year. His many opera engagements have overlooked by the audience. Ancient Music and the Australian Chamber For the concert on 22 March 1783 Mozart included Pique Dame at the Grand Théâtre Orchestra. Forthcoming highlights include adapted his score by adding flutes and In the Finale, which Mozart said should de Genève, Nabucco at the Semperoper debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, clarinets to the first and last movements, go ‘as fast as possible’, we are in the world Dresden, Il dissoluto assolto/Sancta Susanna Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, and deleting the march and the first minuet. of comic opera. Mozart had been exploring Hungarian National Philharmonic, Bamberg and The Makropulos Case at La Scala Milan, (It was common for elaborate multi- how to write opera in a new way in Symphony and the Scottish Chamber movement serenades to be ‘reduced’ to The Abduction from the Seraglio, a comic La traviata for Opera Australia, Rigoletto Orchestra. She makes her debut at the three or four movement symphonies in opera in German which was written shortly for the West Australian Opera, Madama Lucerne Festival, and with regular recital this way. In Mozart’s case, at least, there before this work. The Finale takes the Butterfly at the Staatsoper Berlin, partner Cédric Tiberghien she performs a is little distinction between ‘symphonic’ quicksilver patter of Italian musical comedy Die Walküre at the Opéra du Rhin, and Die complete Mozart sonata cycle at Wigmore Hall and Tokyo’s Oji Hall. Born in Russia writing and the grand festive style of his and hands it back to the Italians, enriched. Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung at most ambitious serenades.) in 1985, Alina Ibragimova studied at the Adapted from a note by David Garrett © 1999 the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon. He returned Moscow Gnessin School before moving to The first movement of the Haffner Symphony, to La Scala in 2012 for a season of Les the UK where she studied at the Yehudi an imposing call to attention, begins with the The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first contes d’Hoffmann. Recent engagements Menuhin School and Royal College of Music. kind of striking gesture which would make a performed this work with conductor Bernard include Romeo ét Juliette at the Arena di Her awards include the Royal Philharmonic Heinze in Hobart and Launceston on 28 Society Young Artist Award 2010, the talkative audience sit up and pay attention. February and 2 March 1951 and, most Verona and Pique Dame at the Vienna State Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2008, and Mozart asked for it to be played ‘with great recently, with Sebastian Lang-Lessing in Opera. He will return to the Vienna State the Classical BRIT Young Performer of the fire’. It turns out that these two leaps of an Launceston and Sydney on 27 September and 4 October 2008. Opera in coming seasons for Pique Dame, Year Award 2009. She performs on a c1775 octave followed by a rhythmic flourish are Boris Godunov and Les contes d’Hoffmann. Anselmo Bellosio violin. the main substance of the first movement. 38 39 BÉLA BartÓK (1881-1945) JEAN SIBELIUS (1865-1957) Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta the second theme we hear; it acts as a bridge Violin Concerto in D minor, Op 47 overall expressive intent. In other words, its between episodes in the third movement’s technical demands emerge from its artistic Andante tranquillo Allegro moderato – Allegro molto mysterious and characteristically Bartókian purpose. Allegro ‘night music’ (the eerie and scattered sounds Adagio di molto Adagio one might hear at night). In the final movement, Allegro ma non tanto Undoubtedly the concerto had been inspired Allegro molto the theme appears in a striking passage, by Willy Burmester, former leader of the By his very nature, Sibelius was not the sort its intervals adjusted to produce a sense of Helsinki Orchestra, a disciple of the great The second half of the 1930s saw Bartók’s most of composer one would expect to compose a productive years as a composer: orchestral spacious, stable consonance. And therein lies Joachim and a long-time admirer of concerto. The conception of a concerto as a works alone from this time include the Second one key to this extraordinary piece: it traces a Sibelius’ music. As early as 1902 Burmester ‘show-off’ work for the soloist was anathema Violin Concerto, Divertimento and, arguably his simple journey, via sound worlds of amazing had been enquiring by letter as to the to Sibelius, who increasingly throughout PROGRAM NOTES masterpiece, the Music for Strings, Percussion variety, from instability to radiant concord. concerto’s progress, and he made various his compositional career sought to employ and Celesta. The Music for Strings, Percussion Symmetry is only half the story. offers of technical assistance and advice. and Celesta was commissioned by Paul Sacher the purest, most unselfconscious forms of Indeed this music thrives also on asymmetry, In September 1903 Sibelius sent Burmester for the tenth anniversary of his Basle Chamber musical expression, eventually resulting in not just in its overall trajectory but in certain a short score, to which Burmester replied, Orchestra, which gave the work’s première in the astonishing economy of utterance and details. Bartók was a pioneer in recording and ‘I can only say one thing: wonderful! January 1937. It rapidly established itself as a organic structure of the last two symphonies notating the fast disappearing folk musics of Masterly! Only once before have I spoken modern classic.