2012 Subscription series

The Americas - Subscription Concert 1

Saturday 17th March, 8.00pm
Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
Paul Terracini | conductor

Jenny Liu | soprano
Robert McDougall | baritone

Many strands of North and South American musical tradition are brought together in this rich and varied program. Aaron Copland, often described as the quintessential American composer, is heard in two orchestral works derived from ballet scores originally for much smaller forces. Stravinsky, on the other hand (a Russian émigré who adopted the United States as his homeland), wrote his Circus Polka for a circus ballet performance involving 50 elephants and 50 ballerinas! No musical overview of the Americas would be

complete without tribute to the jazz and popular song traditions of the 1930s, as heard here in Gershwin standards including Summertime and songs by Johnny Green, Sammy Fain and Gordon Jenkins. The ballet suite Estancia by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (a student of Copland), exemplifies the composer’s integration of Argentinian folk idiom into his modern classical style.

STRAVINSKY
COPLAND

COPLAND

GERSHWIN, GREEN,
FAIN and JENKINS
GINASTERA

Circus Polka
Variations on a Shaker Melody
(from Appalachian Spring)
Billy the Kid Suite
Classic songs from the
1930s
Suite Estancia

Music for Eternity - Subscription Concert 2

Four great composers, four vastly different perspectives on eternity. Drawing on melodies from Russian Orthodox liturgical chant, Rimsky-Korsakov (himself a non-believer) portrays a transition from the solemnity of Passion Saturday to the celebration of Easter morning. In Danse Macabre, Death (represented by a diabolical fiddle) calls the dead from their graves at midnight each Halloween to dance their nocturnal dance of death. Totentanz is one of many works inspired by Liszt’s morbid fascination with death, an obsession which is said to have led him to frequent hospitals and prisons to observe those condemned to die. Fauré’s setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, with its sublime “Pie Jesu”, concludes the concert with an altogether more serene and uplifting view of eternity.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
SAINT-SAËNS
LISZT
FAURÉ

Russian Easter Festival Overture
Danse Macabre
Totentanz
Requiem

Orchestral Masterworks - Subscription Concert 3

Saturday 1 September, 8.00pm
Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
Cristian Cimei | guest conductor
David Pereira | cello

Beethoven’s Egmont overture was composed as part of incidental music for Goethe’s play of the same name, commemorating the heroic sacrifice of a sixteenth-century Flemish nobleman whose execution for opposing political oppression sparked the national uprising that eventually led to the independence of the Netherlands. The first cello concerto of Saint-Saëns also defied convention (albeit with much less cataclysmic consequences!) when the composer eschewed traditional three-movement concerto form in favour of a continuous structure and playful dialogue between soloist and orchestra. Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, despite his lifelong dissatisfaction with the score, is one of his liveliest and most popular works, eloquently evoking the sunlight, jubilance and dance rhythms of Italy that he so enjoyed during his Grand Tour of Europe.

BEETHOVEN
SAINT-SAËNS
MENDELSSOHN

Egmont Overture
Cello Concerto No 1 in A minor
Symphony No 4 in A major (Italian)

The Elixir of Youth - Subscription Concert 4

Saturday 10 November,
8.00pm Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
Paul Terracini | conductor
Michael Kieran Harvey | piano

Precocious compositional talent is to the fore in a program featuring three works conceived by composers under 26. In Soirées Musicales, based on piano pieces by Rossini, Britten already gives a glimpse of the masterly orchestration that would become his hallmark. Rhapsody in Blue, originally written for solo piano and jazz band almost 20 years before the version most often performed today, was controversial in its fusion of classical and jazz elements but has become an enduring favourite in the symphonic repertoire. Andrew Howes, the inaugural recipient of a commission under the Penrith Symphony Orchestra Support for Young Composers Scheme, is attracting attention as one of Australia’s most gifted young composers. Alongside these three striking, youthful works, Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony stands as one of the mighty pillars of the nineteenthcentury orchestral literature.

BRITTEN
HOWES
GERSHWIN
TCHAIKOVSKY

Soirées Musicales
New work
Rhapsody in Blue
Symphony No 4 in F minor