slava grigoryan and beethoven’s eroica · balance. the guitar’s strumming sets up the simple...

Slava Grigoryanand Beethoven’s Eroica21 MAY PORT MACQUARIE

22 MAY TAREE

23 MAY NEWCASTLE

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WELCOMEFrom the CEO

81 years ago, the musicians of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra embarked on their first tour of regional New South Wales, appearing in Wollongong, Katoomba, Orange and Bathurst. Since then, virtually every year has seen the Sydney Symphony Orchestra take to the road, bringing great music to audiences all over the state.

Over the past 81 years, we have performed the length and breadth of NSW, from Goulburn to Grafton, Broken Hill to Bowral and beyond. This year, we are thrilled to be visiting three great cities on the North Coast of New South Wales: Port Macquarie, Taree and Newcastle.

Making music accessible underpins everything that we do at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and I am grateful to the NSW Government through Create NSW, and to the Australia Council for the Arts for their support of our touring program. Thanks also to Rex Regional Express, our Tour Partner.

The program we’ve put together for you tonight features a suite from Bizet’s opera Carmen, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with renowned guitarist Slava Grigoyan, and Beethoven’s wonderful Eroica Symphony.

I am particularly pleased that our daytime schools concerts for primary and secondary students feature highlights from the same pieces, a reflection of the value we place on introducing young audiences to the excitement and beauty of orchestral music.

Touring cultivates a spirit of unity in each community we visit and makes us proud to be part of the wonderful State of New South Wales. The Sydney Symphony is for everybody and it is our great pleasure to be here making music with and for your community!

Emma DunchChief Executive Officer Sydney Symphony Orchestra

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Slava Grigoryan & Beethoven’s EroicaUmberto Clerici conductor Slava Grigoryan guitar

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

GEORGES BIZET (1838–1875)

Carmen: Suite No. 1Prélude Aragonaise Intermezzo Seguidille Les dragons d’Alcala Les Toréadors

JOAQUÍN RODRIGO (1901–1999)

Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestraAllegro con spirito Adagio Allegro gentile

INTERVAL

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 Eroica

Allegro con brio

Marcia funebre (Adagio assai)

Scherzo (Allegro vivace) – Trio – Scherzo

Finale (Allegro molto – Presto)

TOUR PARTNER

Estimated durations: 12 minutes, 21 minutes,

20 minute interval, 41 minutes

The concert will conclude at approximately 8.45pm (Port Macquarie) and 9.15pm (Taree, Newcastle).

Tuesday 21 May, 7pm The Glasshouse Theatre, Port Macquarie

Wednesday 22 May, 7.30pm Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree

Thursday 23 May, 7.30pm Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle

The Lowy Chair of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director

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ABOUT THE ARTISTSUmberto Clerici conductor

Umberto Clerici started studying the cello with the Suzuki method at the age of five and he continued his studies with Mario Brunello, David Géringas and Julius Berger.

Umberto has received several international prizes: at the Janigro Competition in Zagreb, at the Rostropovich in Paris and, in 2011, at the Čajkovskij in Moscow (this making him the second Italian cellist ever to be honoured in the history of the Čajkovskij Prize, after Mario Brunello).

As a soloist he debuted at the age of 17, playing Haydn’s D Major Cello Concerto in Japan, and has since played with an array of renowned orchestras internationally including St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Philharmonia Wien, Russian State Orchestra of Moscow, I Pomeriggi Musicali (Milan) and Zagreb Philharmonic.

Umberto has performed as soloist at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Musikverein in Vienna, the great Shostakovich Hall of St. Petersburg and Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. In 2003 he debuted at the Salzburg Festival and in 2012 he performed Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations conducted by Valery Gergiev.

In 2014 he was appointed as Principal Cello of the Sydney Symphony after he had been Principal Cello at the Royal Opera House in Turin for four years.

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Since 2017 he has explored conducting as a natural evolution of his multifaceted career and as a result of his collaborations with orchestras as principal cellist and soloist.

In 2018 Umberto made his conducting debut with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House and for the 2019/2020 season his main conducting appearances include: a series of concerts with Sydney Symphony, Canberra Symphony as Artist in Residence, State Orchestras of Izmir and Istanbul in Turkey, the Turin Philarmonic and Orchestra della Valle d’Aosta.

He is currently the Artistic Director of the Sydney Youth Orchestra Chamber Orchestra.

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Slava Grigoryan was born in 1976 in Kazakhstan and immigrated with his family to Australia in 1981. As a major prizewinner at the Tokyo International Classical Guitar Competition, Slava was signed by the Sony Classical Label in 1995 and has since released six solo albums and many collaborative recordings. At the age of 18, his first tour was with guitar legends Paco Peña and Leo Kottke. Slava Grigoryan has performed as a soloist at international festivals such as Brighton, City of London, Harrogate, Newbury, Salisbury, and Chelsea Arts Festivals in the UK, the Dresden Musikfestpiel, the Guitar Festival of Great Britain, the Darwin International Guitar Festival, the GFA Festival in La Jolla, California, the Wirral International Guitar Festival, the Al Bustan Festival in Beirut, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the New Zealand Arts Festival, the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth International Arts Festivals and WOMAD festivals in the UK, USA, Australia and South Africa.

He has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, BBC Concert Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Israel Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Radio Orchestra, the Klagenfurt Symphony Orchestra in Austria, the Halle Orchestra, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the New Zealand Symphony, the Sydney

Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He has also performed with many string quartets and chamber ensembles including the Goldner, Flinders and Australian String Quartets in Australia, the Endellion, Skampa, and Chillingirian quartets in the UK, and the Southern Cross Soloists. He was a founding member of Saffire – The Australian Guitar Quartet (featuring Karin Schaupp, Gareth Koch and Leonard Grigoryan) with whom he toured Europe, North America and Australia.

His debut classical album for ABC Classics, Sonatas and Fantasies, was released in March 2002 and was awarded Best Classical Album at the 2002 ARIA Awards. 2003 saw the release of two new albums on the ABC Classics label, Play (with Leonard Grigoryan) and Saffire (The Australian Guitar Quartet), which went on to win the 2003 Best Classical Album ARIA. Since then he has recorded a further two albums with Saffire, an album of music by Australian composer Shaun Rigney, a recording of the Rodrigo Concertos with his brother Leonard and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, an album of music composed by Nigel Westlake entitled Shadowdances, and an album of baroque guitar concertos with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Benjamin Northey.

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Slava Grigoryan guitar

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Georges Bizet (1838–1875) Carmen: Suite No. 1 Prélude Aragonaise Intermezzo SeguidilleLes dragons d’Alcala Les Toréadors

Set in Seville, Bizet’s opera Carmen tells the story of the gypsy girl who is arrested for causing a disturbance among the girls at the cigarette factory where she works. Corporal Don José aids Carmen’s escape from jail and in the process falls in love with her. When she eventually spurns him in favour of the bullfighter Escamillo, Don José stabs her to death in a fit of jealous passion.

At the time of its first production in 1875, Carmen caused the directors of the Opéra-Comique where it was to premiere, a good deal of nervous apprehension. Part of the work’s shock value lay in Carmen’s blatant sexuality and her ‘readiness to discard men like picked flowers’ (as the New Grove Dictionary of Opera puts it). During rehearsals the orchestral musicians also complained about the forthrightness of Bizet’s music. Carmen has since become one of the most popular operas. Audiences love its music and the earthy directness of its story.

Carmen is painted in strong and stark contrasts – Carmen’s sexuality and Escamillo’s vanity contrast with the purity of José and Micaëla. Micaëla is the sort of girl José was meant to marry. In Act III, she arrives at a smugglers’ camp with a letter from José’s mother imploring him to return to them.

Much of the appeal of Bizet’s score obtains from the variety of its preludes and linking interludes as well as his use of colourful Spanish dances. After Bizet’s death, his friend Ernest Guiraud created two suites from these highlights.

The first suite begins with the Act I prelude which introduces the ominous ‘fate’ motive that will recur at key points in the opera. This is followed by one of the traditional Spanish dances, the triple-metre Aragonaise which forms the interlude (or entr’acte) before Act IV. The Intermezzo from before Act III may seem odd music to preface an act set in a smugglers’ camp. It’s an exquisite solo principally for flute and harp which might sound more in keeping with Bizet’s music for L’Arlésienne. In the seductive Séguedille, Carmen taunts José by telling him that ‘near the ramparts of Seville’ there is a tavern where she will dance for him when released from prison. The interlude before Act II is based on ‘Les Dragons d’Alcala’, a song José sings offstage as he approaches the tavern. This song, in which he sings of pride in his military duty, is already nostalgic by this stage. The final number presents the famous ‘Toreador Song’.

Even in these short extracts, one can understand why Carmen soon became an audience favourite, notwithstanding the fears of its original producers, and why it is still probably the most famous French opera.

ABRIDGED FROM A NOTE BY GORDON KALTON WILLIAMS © 2012

Georges Bizet

Carmen is painted in strong and stark contrasts

ABOUT THE MUSIC

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Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–1999) Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra Allegro con spirito Adagio Allegro gentile

Slava Grigoryan guitar

The cliché is that the best Spanish music was written by French composers, but in 1939 a Spanish composer living in Paris wrote the most instantly recognisable Spanish work of the 20th century – and its single most popular concerto.

Blinded by diphtheria at the age of three, Joaquín Rodrigo showed an early and impressive talent for music as pianist and composer. After study at the Conservatory in Valencia he travelled to Paris where he studied with Paul Dukas from 1927, and then, after marrying the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi in Valencia in 1933, returned to Paris, and remained an expatriate until the end of the Spanish Civil War, returning in 1939. The Concierto de Aranjuez had its first performance in Barcelona in 1940, and it made Rodrigo’s name.

The piece takes its title from the summer palace of Spain’s Bourbon Kings, built by Philip II in the 16th century near Madrid, but given an extensive Baroque makeover in the 18th. For Rodrigo it became a mental image of an idealised Spain, evoking ‘the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds and the gushing of fountains’, which as Barbara Heninger notes, are ‘beauties that a blind man such as he could appreciate’. The work is neo-Baroque in form, suffused with a handful of the thousands of demotic dance-songs of Spanish folk music.

The first movement quickly establishes two things: Rodrigo’s essentially conservative but lively musical language and his mastery of orchestral colour and balance. The guitar’s strumming sets up the simple rhythmic engine of alternating 3/4 and 6/8 patterns derived from the fandango. Rodrigo is careful never to let the delicate timbre of the guitar become submerged in orchestral sounds: at first, for instance, the guitar is accompanied by a light woodwind texture, and even in larger tutti passages, he leaves gaps through which the guitar can be heard.

The central Adagio, nearly as long as the outer movements combined, has taken on a life of its own in a great many incarnations. The beautiful melody sung by the cor anglais has been ‘covered’ by performers as diverse as Miles Davis, Fairuz, Demis Roussos and the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Its deep melancholy led to a legend that it represented Rodrigo’s response to the destruction of Guernica as immortalised in Picasso’s painting, but Victoria Kamhi maintained that its origins were in the death of their first child. In any event it is based on an Andalusian lament sung during processions in Holy Week; it is even been used to set the Mourner’s Kaddish in some Sephardic synagogues.

The third movement returns to the genial world of the first, though with a rather more aristocratic edge in the heraldic writing for brass. Here again contrasting dance rhythms – this time 2/4 alternating with 3/4 – power the music along.

The composer liked to describe his work generally as neocasticista or ‘faithful to a tradition’; on his 90th birthday he was ennobled as Marquis of the Gardens of Aranjuez.

GORDON KERRY © 2010

‘the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds and the gushing of fountains’

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 EroicaAllegro con brio Marcia funebre (Adagio assai) Scherzo (Allegro vivace) – Trio – Scherzo Finale (Allegro molto – Presto)

It can be misleading to read too much into a composer’s music. (Does the exhilaration of Beethoven’s Second Symphony convey the feelings of a man struggling with encroaching deafness and despair?) Even so, the ‘heroic’ works of Beethoven’s middle period contain more than a little of the man, or at least our conception of him. From that viewpoint, who can the ‘hero’ of the Eroica be but Beethoven himself?

Beethoven was an unlikely hero – unattractive, quarrelsome and uncompromising – but the Viennese aristocracy recognised his musical genius. Beethoven’s various patrons encouraged him to disregard conservative criticism and foster the novel character and technical difficulties of his music. This he had already done to varying degrees. But the Eroica Symphony of 1803 represented a rapid development in style and a serious challenge.

The dedicatee of the Eroica, Prince Lobkowitz, presented several private performances before its public premiere on 7 April 1805. Even then, reception was polarised – on the one hand were listeners who judged the symphony a masterpiece, on the other listeners who heard only a wilful and unnecessary departure from the style that had pleased them so much in the first two symphonies.

With the Eroica the symphony as a genre ceased to be a diversion, it demanded serious attention. No longer was its motivation entirely musical, or even representational, despite the title. A symphony was now considered capable of expressing ideals, of speaking for as well as to humanity.

This was the first Beethoven symphony to carry an extra-musical association and an evocative title, ‘Sinfonia eroica’. The inspiration was Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, and Beethoven saw in the First Consul of the Republic an apostle of new ideas and perhaps a little of his own uncompromising will. But when Beethoven heard that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor the words ‘intitolato Bonaparte’ were scratched out and replaced by ‘Heroic Symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man’.

With this gesture the symphony was freed from any risk of petty pictorialism. The conflicts of the symphony became idealised; the Funeral March, supposedly prompted by the rumour of Nelson’s death in the Battle of Aboukir, grew in significance, ‘too big to lead to the tomb of a single man’. The hero is not Napoleon – he had shown himself to be ‘nothing but an ordinary man’ – or any other individual.

The inspiration was Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, and Beethoven saw in the First Consul of the Republic an apostle of new ideas and perhaps a little of his own uncompromising will.

Ludwig van Beethoven

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In one sense the Eroica’s battles are entirely musical and music is the hero. When asked what the Eroica ‘meant’ Beethoven went to the piano and played, by way of an answer, the first eight notes of the symphony’s main theme. It is a simple motif, outlining the key of the symphony by tracing the notes of an E flat major chord, and Beethoven introduces it not with his customary disorienting introduction but with two authoritative thunderclaps from the orchestra. This apparently meagre material is all the more powerful for its directness and Beethoven develops it into a vast but detailed movement. The second movement, a funeral march, draws on the rhetoric of revolutionary music and seemed to speak most directly to the first audiences.

Following this expression of intense grief, the third movement is blessedly playful and humorous, a Scherzo by name as well as by nature. The Finale is based on a passacaglia-like theme from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (1801) and the connection with another hero cannot be accidental. The theme had turned up again in a set of contredanses and is the theme of the Piano Variations Op.35, completed in 1802. It is simple and impulsive, as befits its origins in dance, but in this final, symphonic embodiment Beethoven transforms it into a hymn to the generous sentiments of the Revolution: freedom and equality.

In broadly musical terms the Eroica created a revolution of its own. Twice as long as any symphony composed by Haydn or Mozart, it expanded the classical forms to monumental proportions, filling them with an abundance of thematic ideas and subjecting them to an unprecedented complexity and density of working out.

The early reviews of the Eroica emphasised its unity of structure and material, a marked shift from the prevailing assessment of Beethoven’s music as fantastic, wild and unconstrained. It has been suggested that the Prometheus theme was also the primary source for the material of the other three movements, demonstrating that Beethoven had shifted the focus of his symphonic thinking from the first movement to the last. This shift was inevitable in a composer for whom beauty, purpose and truth could only be won through a struggle, and whose music is an expression of human experience.

YVONNE FRINDLE ©2001

Symphony’s No.3 Title Page

In broadly musical terms the Eroica created a revolution of its own.

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Founded in 1932 by the Australian Broadcasting

Commission, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has

evolved into one of the world’s finest orchestras as

Sydney has become one of the world’s great cities.

Resident at the iconic Sydney Opera House, the

Sydney Symphony Orchestra also performs in venues

throughout Sydney and regional New South Wales,

and international tours to Europe, Asia and the USA

have earned the Orchestra worldwide recognition for

artistic excellence.

Well on its way to becoming the premier orchestra

of the Asia Pacific region, the Sydney Symphony

Orchestra has toured China on five occasions, and in

2014 won the arts category in the Australian

Government’s inaugural Australia-China Achievement

Awards, recognising ground-breaking work in

nurturing the cultural and artistic relationship

between the two nations.

The Orchestra’s first chief conductor was Sir

Eugene Goossens, appointed in 1947; he was

followed by Nicolai Malko, Dean Dixon, Moshe Atzmon,

Willem van Otterloo, Louis Frémaux,

Sir Charles Mackerras, Zdeněk Mácal, Stuart

Challender, Edo de Waart and Gianluigi Gelmetti.

Vladimir Ashkenazy was Principal Conductor from

2009 to 2013. The Orchestra’s history also boasts

collaborations with legendary figures such as George

Szell, Sir Thomas Beecham, Otto Klemperer and Igor

Stravinsky.

The Sydney Symphony’s award-winning Learning

and Engagement program is central to its

commitment to the future of live symphonic music,

developing audiences and engaging the participation

of young people. The Orchestra promotes the work of

Australian composers through performances,

recordings and commissions. Recent premieres have

included major works by Ross Edwards, Lee

Bracegirdle, Gordon Kerry, Mary Finsterer, Nigel

Westlake, Paul Stanhope and Georges Lentz, and

recordings of music by Brett Dean have been

released on both the BIS and SSO Live labels.

Other releases on the SSO Live label, established

in 2006, include performances conducted by

Alexander Lazarev, Sir Charles Mackerras and David

Robertson, as well as the complete Mahler

symphonies conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

2019 is David Robertson’s sixth season as Chief

Conductor and Artistic Director.

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SYDNEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRADAVID ROBERTSON The Lowy Chair of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Patron PROFESSOR THE HON. DAME MARIE BASHIR ad cvo

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Visit www.sydneysymphony.com/SSO_musicians

for the full roster with biographies and photographs.

FIRST VIOLINS

Lerida DelbridgeAssistant Concertmaster

Sophie Cole

Georges Lentz

Nicola Lewis

Alexandra Mitchell

Alexander Norton

Anna Skálová

Léone Ziegler

Lachlan O’Donnell°

Jessica Oddie†

SECOND VIOLINS

Emma Jezek Assistant Principal

Alice Bartsch

Emma Hayes

Wendy Kong

Benjamin Li

Nicole Masters

Riikka Sintonen°

Tobias Aan†

VIOLASJustin WilliamsActing Associate Principal

Sandro Costantino

Graham Hennings

Amanda Verner

Leonid Volovelsky

Beth Condon†

CELLOS

Leah LynnActing Associate Principal

Kristy Conrau

Fenella Gill

David Wickham

Eliza Sdraulig†

DOUBLE BASSES

Jaan Pallandi

Benjamin Ward

David Barlow†

FLUTES

Joshua BattyPrincipal

Lisa Osmialowski*

OBOES

Shefali Pryor Associate Principal

Eve Osborn†

CLARINETS Francesco Celata Acting Principal

James Julian†

BASSOONS

Matthew WilkiePrincipal Emeritus

Jordy Meulenbroeks†

HORNSBen JacksPrincipal

Geoffrey O’Reilly Principal 3rd

Sebastian Dunn*

Aidan Gabriels†

TRUMPETS

Paul GoodchildAssociate Principal

David Johnson†

TROMBONESScott KinmontAssociate Principal

Dale Vail†

Brett Page* Bass Trombone

TIMPANIMark Robinson Acting Principal

PERCUSSION

Rebecca Lagos Principal

Tim Brigden*

Joshua Hill*

Adam Cooper-Stanbury†

HARP

Emily Granger*

° = CONTRACT MUSICIAN

* = GUEST MUSICIAN

† = SYDNEY SYMPHONY FELLOW

The Musicians

THE MUSICIANS

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PRINCIPAL PARTNER GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra is

assisted by the NSW Government through

Arts NSW.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra is assisted

by the Commonwealth Government through

the Australia Council, its arts funding and

advisory body.

REGIONAL TOURING PARTNERS

SALUTE


PRINCIPAL PARTNER

PREMIER PARTNER


GOVERNMENT PARTNERS







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slava grigoryan and beethoven’s eroica · balance. the guitar’s strumming sets up the simple...

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