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39 38 zoo}-zoo} Features listed are standard on Atenza model shown. 86744 m{zd{6. life without compromise. Too often we must compromise in order to achieve excellence. In building the Mazda6 we chose to do it without compromise. While SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY offers exceptional fuel efficiency it never fails to provide a thrilling and powerful performance. In addition, the advanced technology of i-ACTIVSENSE safety features and the connectivity of MZD Connect never compromise the character and elegance of KODO Design. Experience life without compromise for yourself. Mazda6.com.au Efficiency without sacrificing power BAROQUE 1 & BURNIE Baroque Pops Graham Abbott conductor G GABRIELI Canzona on the 12th tone à 10 Duration 4 mins VEJVANOVSKÝ Sonata La posta Duration 3 mins VIVALDI Concerto in D, RV 121 [Allegro] Adagio Allegro Duration 6 mins PACHELBEL Canon and Gigue in D Duration 5 mins J H SCHMELTZER Balletto in C Intrada Balletto Borea (Bourrée) Sarabande Duration 8 mins THURSDAY 21 APRIL 7.30PM FEDERATION CONCERT HALL, HOBART & SPONSORED BY 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. TELEMANN Sonata in D, Sinfonia spirituosa Spirituoso Largo Vivace Duration 8 mins INTERVAL Duration 20 mins HANDEL Water Music, Suites 1, 2 and 3 1 Ouverture 2 Adagio e staccato 3 [Allegro] - 4 Andante 5 [Allegro] da capo 6 Air 7 Minuet 8 Bourrée 9 Hornpipe 10 [Air] 11 [Ouverture] 12 Alla Hornpipe 16 Minuet in G major 17 Rigaudon 18 Rigaudon in G minor 17 Rigaudon da capo 14 Lentement 15 Bourrée 19 Minuet in G minor 20 Minuet in G minor [with flauto piccolo] 21 Country Dance in G minor 22 Country Dance in G major 23 Minuet in D major Duration 50 mins This concert will end at approximately 9.30pm. FRIDAY 22 APRIL 7.30PM BURNIE TOWN HALL

& BURNIE Baroque Pops - Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra · PDF filePACHELBEL Canon and Gigue in D Duration 5 mins ... TSO BAROQUE POPS ... The celebrated Canon by Johann Pachelbel

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zoo}-zoo}

Features listed are standard on Atenza model shown. 86744

m{zd{6. life without compromise. Too often we must compromise in order to achieve excellence. In building the Mazda6 we chose to do it without compromise. While SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY offers exceptional fuel efficiency it never fails to provide a thrilling and powerful performance. In addition, the advanced technology of i-ACTIVSENSE safety features and the connectivity of MZD Connect never compromise the character and elegance of KODO Design. Experience life without compromise for yourself. Mazda6.com.au

Efficiency without sacrificing power

BAROQUE 1 & BURNIE

Baroque Pops

Graham Abbott conductor

G GABRIELICanzona on the 12th tone à 10Duration 4 mins

VEJVANOVSKÝSonata La postaDuration 3 mins

VIVALDIConcerto in D, RV 121[Allegro]AdagioAllegroDuration 6 mins

PACHELBELCanon and Gigue in DDuration 5 mins

J H SCHMELTZERBalletto in CIntradaBallettoBorea (Bourrée)SarabandeDuration 8 mins

THURSDAY 21 APRIL 7.30PMFEDERATION CONCERT HALL, HOBART

&

SPONSORED BY

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.

TELEMANNSonata in D, Sinfonia spirituosaSpirituosoLargoVivaceDuration 8 mins

INTERVAL

Duration 20 mins

HANDELWater Music, Suites 1, 2 and 31 Ouverture 2 Adagio e staccato 3 [Allegro] -4 Andante 5 [Allegro] da capo 6 Air 7 Minuet 8 Bourrée 9 Hornpipe 10 [Air]11 [Ouverture]12 Alla Hornpipe16 Minuet in G major17 Rigaudon18 Rigaudon in G minor17 Rigaudon da capo14 Lentement15 Bourrée19 Minuet in G minor20 Minuet in G minor [with flauto piccolo]21 Country Dance in G minor22 Country Dance in G major 23 Minuet in D majorDuration 50 mins

This concert will end at approximately 9.30pm.

FRIDAY 22 APRIL 7.30PMBURNIE TOWN HALL

Graham Abbott has been Conductor-in-Residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, Musical Director of Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus, Associate Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Musical Director of Melbourne Chorale and, in 1997, was Guest Chorus Master of the Chorus of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

He is a frequent guest conductor with all of the major Australian orchestras and opera companies, leading choral societies and numerous new and early music ensembles. While his repertoire in orchestral, choral and operatic fields spans almost all periods and styles, Graham Abbott is most respected as a conductor of, and enthusiast for, the music of Handel. He has conducted Messiah more than seventy times, with all the major Australian orchestras and many other organisations, and has given first Australian performances of major Handel works such as Athalia, Ariodante, Agrippina and La resurrezione, as well as conducting the Australian première of Handel’s complete Carmelite Music for the Adelaide Chamber Singers. Graham is a Life Member of the American Handel Society.

An experienced conductor of opera, Graham’s repertoire includes Fidelio, Aida, L’elisir d’amore, Julius Caesar, Orlando, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, La traviata, Il trovatore, Don Pasquale, Un ballo in maschera and Pelléas et Mélisande. He was also Assistant Conductor for the Australian première season of John Adams’ Nixon in China at the 1992 Adelaide Festival and in 2001-2002 was Music Advisor to Chamber Made Opera in Melbourne.

The Portuguese word barocco describes a misshapen pearl, but what we now call Baroque music was born in Florence in the late 16th century, when the Florentine Camerata, a group of artists led by Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer), sought to recreate the sung dramas of ancient Greece and accidentally invented opera.

The music of the late Renaissance was dominated by the vocal polyphony of church music, the stylised fanfares and dances of aristocratic or royal court, and the more domestic forms of the solo song or the ensemble form of the madrigal. The liturgical music represents the triumph of polyphony, where each of the individual lines in a piece have more or less equal roles to play, weaving elaborate textures as thematic material is passed from one voice to another. But this democratic texture didn’t suit the requirements of the Florentine Camerata; out of the need to differentiate character came monody, where a single melodic line carries the musical argument, supported by a strong bass part and coloured by emotionally affecting harmony. The bass part would soon evolve into what was termed basso continuo, where the line was reinforced by a keyboard instrument that helped to fill out the texture.

Baroque music was, therefore, flexible and capable of sudden contrasts between solo introspection and choral affirmation, between song and dance; it was, in a word, dramatic. The visual arts of the Baroque created breathtaking effects from the manipulation (and sometimes distortion) of light and colour, perspective and proportion, and through the use of a welter of ornamental detail, such as we see in the architecture of Bernini or Wren, or the paintings of Caravaggio or Velazquez. In literature something similar happens in the powerful rhythm and sometimes tortuous syntax of Milton’s poetry. In the period between Galilei and Monteverdi and the generation of Bach, Vivaldi and Rameau,

music dramatically embodied the religious mysteries of ascendant Protestantism and the equally assertive Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, as well as the ritualised life in the courts of Versailles and Westminster.

“BAROQUE MUSIC WAS FLEXIBLE AND CAPABLE OF SUDDEN CONTRASTS BETWEEN SOLO INTROSPECTION AND CHORAL AFFIRMATION, BETWEEN SONG AND DANCE; IT WAS, IN A WORD, DRAMATIC.”

Baroque music frequently responded to the physical environment in which it was to be performed. In Venice, for instance, composers like Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli (1554–1612), and Monteverdi at one time, employed at the basilica of San Marco, were inspired by the building’s space and shape to develop a distinctive polychoral style, where groups of voices and/or instruments were placed in different parts of the church to create antiphonal, or stereophonic, effects. Often, as in the work we hear today, the composer creates the effect of echoes in a vast space. Gabrieli’s canzone generally don’t specify orchestration so much as the numbers of players, and are usually based on “recitation tones” – melodic fragments to which certain parts of the Mass were routinely chanted.

Aristocratic courts, like churches, were the major employers of composers and trained musicians during the Baroque period, especially during the middle of the 17th century. They could be called upon to create music for religious observance, secular ceremonies and courtly or public entertainment. Not surprisingly, Italian composers dominated, though Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (?1620–1680) made history as the first Austrian-born Kapellmeister, or head of music, at the Imperial Court in Vienna in 1679. He had of course worked under the previous Kapellmeister for many years, producing,

TSO BAROQUE POPS

A respected speaker and broadcaster, Graham has been producer and presenter of Keys To Music on ABC Classic FM since 2003.

Most recently Graham conducted Don Giovanni for State Opera of South Australia, Messiah for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Canberra Choral Society, Bach’s St Matthew Passion for Opera Queensland, Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 for Camerata of St John’s and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, as well as concerts with the Adelaide and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras. International highlights have included presenting and conducting Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s Unwrap the Music series, Dvorák’s Stabat Mater with the Prague Chamber Orchestra, concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and with the Ulster Orchestra in Northern Ireland.

2016 will see Graham return to the Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

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GRAHAM ABBOTT

among other things, numerous suites of dance music. Vienna always had a thing for dance, and not just for humans – among Schmelzer’s many balletti is a horse-ballet with a series of dances to accompany the formal movement of the horses and saltatori, or acrobats.

Schmelzer’s music was also appreciated in other cities, notably by the Bishop of Olmütz (now Olomouc in the Czech Republic), Karl Lichtenstein-Castelcorn. Schmelzer sent numerous copies of works to the Bishop, who also employed several composers such as Pavel Josef Vejvanovský (?1633–1693). Moravian-born Vejvanovský contributed to the growing genre of the instrumental sonata, that is, an abstract composition to be “sounded” (as against sung).

The celebrated Canon by Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) and its accompanying Gigue are also examples of the vogue for abstract ensemble music. The success of this piece since its relatively recent discovery has sadly obscured Pachelbel’s large and fascinating output. The Canon demonstrates a quintessential aspect of Baroque music, with a strong bass line that propels the music forward, while creating a complex texture from the simple

staggered, or imitative, entries and layering of the melody in the upper parts. The Gigue provides a conventional contrast of metre and character, but it too uses elegant counterpoint to create a rich texture.

Towards the end of the Baroque period, there was an explosion of instrumental music for court– or city-based orchestras down to intimate chamber groupings; a growing middle class provided a market, which was serviced by advances in printing technology. In the early 18th century, Amsterdam-based printer Estienne Roger hit on the solution of engraving plates (rather than using a “block” for each individual note), and using beams to link shorter notes like quavers and semiquavers. Music could be reprinted at will – and as Roger published the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), this was quite an advantage to both. Vivaldi had enjoyed early success as a violin virtuoso, entrepreneur and composer. His works include some 500 concertos as well as many operas, instrumental sonatas and a large body of sacred music. His playing was clearly prodigious. Vivaldi effectively standardised the concerto, usually casting his in three movements (fast-slow-fast). The first and third movements are structured around the alternation of a ritornello (or refrain) from the orchestra interspersed with virtuosic episodes, while the central slow movement is usually simple in form. A number of his concertos, known as “ripieno concertos”, have no soloist, but adhere otherwise to this model. The D-major work performed in this concert juxtaposes a unison ritornello with more elaborate episodes, the slow movement is a quiet hymnal interlude in B minor, and the finale gains energy from repeated figures and contrapuntal passages.

The ripieno concerto and the sinfonia are effectively one and the same, the latter having its origins as a kind of overture. The last generation of Baroque composers largely followed the Vivaldian model in such works and in chamber pieces of a similar scale written for concert performance. The Sinfonia spirituosa by Georg Philipp

Telemann (1681-1767) is one such piece. In three movements, the first contrasts an elegant 3/4 melody with more martial repeated-note figures, and looks forward to Haydn (and, in fact, back to Renaissance music) in giving the bass part some of this material towards the movement’s end. The slow movement has a sinuous D-minor melody that contrasts with the bright major material of the Vivace finale.

Telemann, as American writer Sam Morgenstern has pointed out, “founded or revived the Collegia Musica in Leipzig, Frankfurt and Hamburg, thereby inaugurating concert life as we know it”. While his sinfonias and sonatas adhere to the Italian model developed by Vivaldi, Telemann is also credited with popularising the French-style orchestral suite – an overture followed by around five dance movements, all in the same key – among German-speaking composers. This was encouraged, in the case of Handel, by an avidly Francophile employer.

The Water Music by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) inhabits a grey area

between ceremonial and popular music. Handel had taken up a post in 1710 at the court of Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover (the Electors were several princes who nominally elected the Holy Roman Emperor) and twice took advantage of a generous travel allowance to go to London. Enjoying some success there on his second trip in 1712, Handel stayed on, but in 1714 the Elector, as the closest Protestant relation to British royalty, was proclaimed King George on the death of Queen Anne and crowned at Westminster. It might have been awkward, and an early biographer did indeed put about the story that king and composer were estranged over the latter’s long absence from Hanover. The story goes that the King’s Master of the Horse, Baron Johann von Kielmansegg, wanted to effect a reconciliation and so arranged, without the King’s knowledge, for an entertainment involving a barge cruise on the Thames. In fact, as Jonathan Keates points out, while Kielmansegg paid for it, it was the King’s idea – as Elector he had enjoyed similar events on the lake at his summer palace, Herrenhausen, and the family, moreover,

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ANTONIO VIVALDI

AN IDEALISED PAINTING OF HANDEL AND KING GEORGE I LISTENING TO THE WATER MUSIC, BY EDOUARD JEAN CONRAD HAMMAN

had on several occasions witnessed aquatic pageants in Venice. Such events, in any case, were not uncommon in London.

Handel was demonstrably in good favour with the King by 1717, having travelled in the royal retinue back to Hanover the previous year. The King was keen to raise his own public profile in London, especially given the bitter rivalry that had broken out between him and his son, the Prince of Wales, and Handel would have been wise to display his loyalty. The pageant, held on 17 July 1717, was essentially a party on a series of barges that “drove with the Tide without Rowing” from Whitehall up-river to Chelsea, where the King dined, and then back. Contemporary reports assure us that “His Majesty liked [the music] so well, that he had it plaid over three times in going and returning”.

“FOR THIS PERFORMANCE, CONDUCTOR GRAHAM ABBOTT IS USING THE ORDER FOUND IN A RECENTLY DISCOVERED MANUSCRIPT COPY DATING FROM 1719, WHICH MAY REFLECT HOW THE MUSIC WAS FIRST PERFORMED.”

“Handel’s Celebrated Water Musick” was only published in full score after the composer’s death, with the now-customary division into three separate suites in F, D and G. Sadly, no autograph manuscript has survived, so it is not possible to say definitively which movements were played and in what order. It may be, as Keates notes, that certain movements were intended for specific points of the journey. The ordering by key reflects the traditional disposition of the “French suite” and the suites’ different orchestrations, which reflect that some early instruments were restricted in the choice of keys that they could use. In fact, the score is the first English piece to use “crooked” horns, which allows them to play in more than one key. The movements in F feature oboes, bassoon, horns, strings and basso continuo, while those in D add trumpets. The movements in G offer the gentle contrast of a palette of flutes and strings.

For this performance, however, conductor Graham Abbott is using the order found in a recently discovered manuscript copy dating from 1719, which may reflect how the music was first performed. It conflates the suites in D and G, providing dramatic contrasts of key, timbre and mood, and juxtaposing examples of the same dance form in different keys.

Much of the music, using the carrying power of reed and brass instruments, is clearly designed to be heard from a distance, though without, of course, today’s ambient sounds of cars, trains and motor-boats. The Suite in F begins with the expected French ouverture, that is, a slow opening section full of “ceremonial” dotted rhythms and trills that is succeeded by a faster section in formal fugal counterpoint. The movements that follow offer a study in Handel’s brilliant orchestration. Not all have identifying dance titles or tempo markings but, as Beethoven noted approvingly of Handel’s music generally, they make great effects with the simplest of means. This includes contrasts of solo and tutti writing, and antiphonal effects (as in the D major “Ouverture” and the celebrated hornpipe) that remind us of the Venetian heritage of Baroque instrumental music. This performance brings the Water Music to a close with the bright strains of the “trumpet” minuet from the Suite in D.

© Gordon Kerry 2016

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