From Viennato Hollywood MASTER 11 FRIDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 7.30PM FEDERATION CONCERT HALL Giordano Bellincampi conductor INTERVAL Jun Yi Ma violin Duration 20 mins SUPPÉ Light Cavalry – Overture BRAHMS Symphony No 3 Duration 8 mins Allegro con brio Andante MAHLER Poco allegretto Blumine Allegro Duration 8 mins Duration 33 mins KORNGOLD This concert will end at approximately Violin Concerto 9.30pm. Moderato nobile Romance (Andante) Finale (Allegro assai vivace) Duration 24 mins Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout 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. 37 FRANZ VON SUPPÉ (1819-1895) Light Cavalry – Overture section of a Hungarian dance (Hungary would have been on the minds of many Possibly the first piece of classical music I Viennese just prior to the formation of the heard was this overture in a Combined Brass Austro-Hungarian Empire). Then the canter Bands concert in the Melbourne Town Hall in returns and finally the fanfares, with thrilling the 1960s. At the time, the music of Suppé drum-roll accompaniment. This is real “sit was popularly thought of as “classical”. But GIORDANO BELLINCAMPI JUN YI MA up and take notice” music, fulfilling perfectly was he too lightweight? It is still fairly safe the function of an overture. to say that Suppé’s music is rarely found Giordano Bellincampi is General Music Shanghai-born Jun Yi Ma began violin in major subscriptions programs, as it is tonight. AS A CONDUCTOR, SUPPÉ WAS FAMOUS Director of the Duisburg Philharmonic studies at the age of six, gave his first IN VIENNA FOR A GIMMICK IN WHICH HE and Chief Conductor of the Kristiansand televised performance three years later and But maybe Suppé is worthy of more serious TOOK SNUFF BEFORE CONDUCTING EACH consideration. He was one of those brilliant Symphony Orchestra. Previously he was the was soloist with the Shanghai and Beijing OF HIS FAMOUS OVERTURES SO THEY’D Principal Conductor of I Pomeriggi Musicali, musicians often to be found in theatres in BEGIN WITH A BIG SNEEZE! Symphony Orchestras at the age of ten. In General Music Director of the Danish the German-speaking world in the 19th 1989 he was appointed Concertmaster of century. Born to Austrian parents of Belgian, National Opera, Music Director of the But “overtures to what?” asks Richard the Asian Youth Orchestra. He studied at Italian and Czech descent in Split on the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra and Traubner in his book, Operetta: A Theatrical Dalmatian coast, Suppé was raised as an the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music History. Should Suppé’s operettas be better Chief Conductor of the Denmark’s leading Italian. He studied law at Padua University with Jan Sedivka, and at the Sydney known? Perhaps Traubner is right. Suppé’s avant-garde ensemble, Athelas Sinfonietta but after his father’s death, moved with his Die schöne Galathée (a setting of the Copenhagen. He is a regular guest to many Conservatorium with Charmian Gadd and family to Vienna where he studied music Pygmalion story) still has some currency on orchestras around the world including John Harding. He has performed before with, among others, Ignaz von Seyfried, the German-language stage, and Fatinitza who claimed (spuriously, it seems) to have the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, three US presidents: Ronald Reagan, and Boccacio have entries in Gänzl’s Book been a former pupil of Mozart. Suppé was Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, George H W Bush and Bill Clinton. He of the Musical Theatre. Suppé was more an all-rounder. Even after his first conducting Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Malmö than a musical lightweight or, rather, no less became Concertmaster of the Tasmanian appointment (at the Josefstadt Theater in Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony important for being entertaining. As one of Symphony Orchestra in 2002 and has Vienna in 1840), he sang in The Elixir of Love Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, the composers who achieved a successful been a regular Guest Concertmaster with in Ödenburg in 1842. And as a conductor, Viennese response to the operettas of Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Suppé was famous in Vienna for a gimmick the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra Offenbach and ended up composing Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra, Saint in which he took snuff before conducting (AOBO), Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide operettas that often rivalled those of Johann Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the each of his famous overtures so they’d begin Strauss II, Suppé could rightly be called, as Orchestra della Toscana. Highlights of this Symphony, Orchestra Victoria and the San with a big sneeze! But it is as a composer he is by Traubner, “the father of Viennese Antonio Symphony. He appears regularly that he is best remembered. season include return visits to the Toledo operetta”. Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony as a soloist with the TSO and was co- And as a composer of superb, attention- Gordon Kalton Williams © 2015 Orchestra and Auckland Philharmonia soloist in 2006 alongside Nigel Kennedy. getting overtures. The introduction to Orchestra. He has excelled in the field In 2009 he was soloist with the Hong Kong Light Cavalry, an operetta composed in of opera since making his debut with the Sinfonietta and played in the Worldwide 1866, is a case in point. It is an example of the sort of overture often classified as Royal Danish Opera with La bohème, and Chinese Festival Orchestra in Beijing. In pot-pourri, a collection of distinct themes as Music Director of the Danish National 2010 he was Assistant Concertmaster of bridged by short connecting passages. Opera he conducted works such as Der the Asia-Pacific United Orchestra in New The different ideas occur one after the other: Rosenkavalier, The Flying Dutchman, Tristan York. In 2011 he was appointed Professor a sequence of stirring fanfares in military und Isolde, Don Giovanni and The Magic of Violin at the Tasmanian Conservatorium band orchestration is followed by a dramatic Flute. Giordano Bellincampi was born in whirling dance-like segment, before the Italy and moved to Copenhagen at a young and is Music Advisor to the Australian overture’s most famous “quote” – the age, beginning his career as a trombonist International Symphony Orchestra Institute. cantering theme announced by trumpets. with the Royal Danish Orchestra before More recently, he has been appointed This canter is developed slightly and leads making his professional conducting debut Artistic Advisor of Opera Australia and to a brief clarinet cadenza, after which is heard a more doleful segment, like the slow in 1994. Concertmaster of the AOBO. 38 39 GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911) ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897-1957) Blumine: Symphonic movement Violin Concerto in D major, Op 35 (originally Andante from Symphony No 1) Moderato nobile The première of Mahler’s First Symphony, Romance (Andante) conducted by the composer in Budapest Finale (Allegro assai vivace) in 1889, was a mixed success. This was partly the result of a fraught political As a child, Austrian composer Erich situation in the Hungarian capital, where Wolfgang Korngold was mentored by the performing arts provided an arena for Gustav Mahler and took lessons from the conflict between Hungarian nationalists Alexander Zemlinsky. He was only 13 and those more oriented towards German- years old when his Piano Trio received its speaking parts of the Empire. Partisans first Vienna performance by an eminent of the two conductors, Mahler and Erkel, group that included Bruno Walter on volubly expressed their differences, and piano. Mature success came with the reviews ranged from damning to perplexed. operas Violanta (1916) and, above all, Mahler didn’t help things by calling his the psychodrama Die tote Stadt (1920) First Symphony a “Symphonic Poem in which, within a year of its simultaneous Two Parts”. This signalled that this was première in Hamburg and Cologne, had not “absolute music” but had some been performed at the Vienna State Opera literary pretensions, and peppering it with and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, quotations from his Songs of a Wayfarer, GUSTAV MAHLER winning the admiration of two notable bird calls and rustic dances attracted composer colleagues, Puccini and Berg. accusations of “colour without design”. Scheffel’s play The Trumpeter of Säkkingen. Largely due to Die tote Stadt, by the early The original score has been lost, so it is 1930s, Korngold was being described as Friends persuaded Mahler to give the ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD impossible to know how much of it was the “Viennese Puccini”, and by some as a work a program “to make it easier to recomposed, but it seems clear that the “great hope of German music”. understand”, so in its second and third trumpet melody represents the play’s hero, Almost inevitably, his American movie outings he gave the movements explicit But Korngold was Jewish, and Die tote Werner, serenading his beloved, Margareta, scores did little to further Korngold’s titles, and nicknamed it the Titan in Stadt, along with the rest of his music, from across the Rhine. One Budapest critic reputation as a serious German composer reference to a sprawling Romantic novel would be banned by the Nazi regime. instinctively noted that in the alternation and conductor, a point of particular conflict by the philosopher Jean-Paul Richter. Perhaps unwittingly, Korngold’s personal of trumpet and oboe “it is not hard to with his father, Julius (a high profile and The work, originally in five movements, salvation came early on when, in 1934, recognise the lovers exchanging their somewhat irascible Viennese music critic), became a narrative of “Endless Spring”, director Max Reinhardt lured him to tender feelings in the silence of night”.