The Old Woolstore are proud partners.

ACCOMMODATION | EVENTS | BAR | RESTAURANT oldwoolstore.com.au49

Andrew Gourlay conductorEmma McGrath violin

MENDELSSOHNRuy BlasDuration 7 mins

BRITTENViolin ConcertoModerato con moto – Agitato – Tempo primo –Vivace – Animando – Largamente – Cadenza –PassacagliaDuration 31 mins

Saturday 11 May 2.30pmFederation Concert Hall Hobart

INTERVAL

Duration 20 mins

MENDELSSOHNSymphony No 3, ScottishAndante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato – Andante con moto –Vivace non troppo –Adagio – Allegro vivacissimo – Allegro, maestoso assaiDuration 43 mins

This concert will end at approximately 4.30pm.

M A T I N E E 1

Britten Violin Concerto

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout Australia and around the world by ABC Classic. We would appreciate your cooperation in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off.

5150

Heralded as a ‘first-magnitude star in the

making’ by the Seattle Times, British violinist

Emma McGrath became Concertmaster

of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at

the start of 2016. She made her London

debut aged ten in the Purcell Room at the

Southbank Centre and at age 14 performed

Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 in the Queen

Elizabeth Hall with the London Philharmonic

Orchestra conducted by Howard Shelley.

Emma has performed as a soloist throughout

the UK, Europe, South-East Asia, Russia,

Israel and the USA. From 2009 to 2016 she

was Associate Concertmaster of the Seattle

Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Opera

Orchestra, and was Concertmaster for

Seattle’s 2012 production of Wagner’s Der

Ring des Nibelungen. She was previously

Assistant Concertmaster of the Colorado

Symphony Orchestra and has also performed

with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra,

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the

Australian Chamber Orchestra. She has

also been a Guest Concertmaster for the

BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC

Philharmonic Orchestra. Emma is a graduate

of the Royal College of Music in London and

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in

the USA. In addition to her orchestral career,

she is a professional singer, folk musician,

and a published and recorded composer.

Andrew Gourlay’s contract as Music Director

of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León

(OSCyL) has recently been extended until

summer 2020. He became Music Director

in January 2016, having been the OSCyL’s

Principal Guest Conductor since the 2014-

15 season. Other features of the 2019

season include his Finnish debut with the

Tampere Philharmonic last month and his

Romanian debut with the Britten Sinfonia

in September. There are return visits to the

London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic,

Bremen Philharmonic, City of Birmingham

Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and London

Sinfonietta. The year also sees publication by

Schott of his Parsifal Suite. In opera Andrew

Gourlay has conducted the UK première of

Francesoni’s Quartett for the Royal Opera

House, Covent Garden, and La Tragédie de

Carmen and Dvorák’s Rusalka for English

Touring Opera. In 2016 he conducted a

new production of Tippett’s The Ice Break

for Birmingham Opera Company and the

CBSO. Recordings include Wieniawski and

Bruch violin concertos with Charlie Siem

and the London Symphony. The music of

Edmund Finnis has recently been recorded.

Of Russian ancestry, Andrew Gourlay was

born in Jamaica and grew up in the Bahamas,

Philippines, Japan and England. He was a

professional trombonist until his mid-20s.

In 2010 he won First Prize in the Cadaques

International Conducting Competition.

Ruy Blas, Overture, Op 95

Mendelssohn, like several other Romantic composers, used the title ‘Overture’ for a short piece of orchestral music, whether it prefaced a stage work or not. Thus, of his two best-known overtures, that to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was originally composed to stand alone, and only much later gained a sequel in his music for a production of the play. The Hebrides or Fingal’s Cave, on the other hand, was inspired in general outline by Mendelssohn’s visit to a tourist attraction off the coast of Scotland. We should be wary, in any case, of reading too detailed a program into the overtures of the classically-minded Mendelssohn, a warning underlined by the case of Ruy Blas.

In the spring of 1839 Mendelssohn was approached by the committee of the Leipzig Theatrical Pension Fund, which was mounting a special charity performance of Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas. Mendelssohn was asked to compose an overture and music for a song which occurs in the drama. With his usual affability and public spirit, he accepted, then read the play for the first time. He was appalled, finding Hugo’s work ‘detestable, and more utterly beneath contempt than you could believe’.

The play is set in 17th-century Spain. The ‘iron-minded’ minister, Don Salluste, the Queen’s lover, intrigues to avenge himself for her neglect of him by advancing his lackey Ruy Blas to high state office, so that he may win the Queen’s affection, and she be ‘disgraced by the exposure of her lowly passion’. Ruy Blas, secretly in love with the Queen, saves her honour by assassinating Don Salluste, then poisons himself. Ruy Blas dies in the Queen’s arms, and she, loving him, is left to lifelong remorse.

Mendelssohn wrote the song, and excused himself from composing the

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)overture, pleading pressure of time. The committee, thanking him for the song, expressed the hope that he might agree to compose the overture for the next year’s performance, when they would be sure to give him longer notice. Whether intentional or not, this was a very effective gambit: Mendelssohn immediately set to work, and completed the overture in two days! He never overcame his distaste for the play, and always referred to this piece as ‘The Overture to the Pension Fund’.

Under the circumstances, it would be unwise to look for correlations between the play and the music. And yet, this Overture is a dramatically conceived piece, with an introduction full of ominous portent, an unsettled first subject, a violent transition to a singing cello theme weaving through a staccato accompaniment, and a third assertive and finally triumphant theme which brings the Overture to a close after all the material has been manipulated with Mendelssohn’s customary deftness and poised energy.

© David Garrett

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor John Farnsworth Hall in Hobart, Burnie, Devonport and Launceston in November 1950 and, most recently, with Peter McCoppin in Hobart on 5 May 2001.

5352

Violin Concerto, Op 15Moderato con moto – Agitato – Tempo primo –Vivace – Animando – Largamente – Cadenza –Passacaglia

In September 1939 Britten wrote to a friend, ‘I have just finished the score of my Violin Concerto. It is times like these that work is so important – that humans can think of other things than blowing each other up!...’ Britten was writing from the USA. He and singer Peter Pears, his life-long partner, had left England for a recital tour of Canada in May of that year. With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Britten and Pears decided, as committed pacifists, to remain in North America. But while the concerto was written in the immediate build-up to World War II, its emotional core is Britten’s response to the Spanish Civil War. Britten had been particularly appalled by atrocities in which soldiers as young as 14 were routinely facing firing squads. The Ballad of Heroes, Britten’s previous opus, pays tribute to those Britons who fought and died for the republican cause.

In April 1936, Britten had flown to Barcelona with the violinist Antonio Brosa for an International Society for Contemporary Music Festival and it was here that Britten heard for the first time the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg, which he described as ‘just shattering – very simple, & touching.’ With Brosa in mind he began work on his own concerto.

By the time the work was ready for performance, however, Britten found that his stocks at home in the UK were very low; the première was accordingly given at Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic under Sir John Barbirolli with Brosa as soloist in 1940. When the work was premièred in the UK its reception was mixed, notably because of Britten’s decision to leave his country in

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)her hour of need. In New York, however, the work found favour with its audience and even with the New York Times’ critic Olin Downes, who observed drily, ‘There is modern employment of percussion instruments.’

He referred, no doubt, to the opening motif for timpani and percussion which acts as a structural pivot for the first movement and imparts a vague sense of impending doom. Between appearances of this motto Britten canvasses a variety of different moods. The central movement, which follows without a break, has that kind of fevered energy found in other work of Britten’s from this time, notably Our Hunting Fathers and the ‘Dies Irae’ from the Sinfonia da requiem. The cadenza concludes this movement, leading into the finale which is in one of Britten’s favourite forms: the passacaglia.

A passacaglia in a concerto presents any composer with a challenge – the repetition of a phrase which forms the basis of the form may work against the expectation of a concerto to become more expansive and virtuosic in its final movement. Britten, of course, carries it off with great flair over the considerable 15-minute span of the movement. This is not about merely scoring points, however. The finale takes on the kind of Mahlerian/Bergian intensity which Britten’s compassion called forth in him in the face of ‘humans…blowing each other up’.

Adapted from a note by Gordon Kerry © 2005

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor Arvo Volmer and soloist Boris Brovtsyn in Hobart on 22 June 2005 and, most recently, with Marko Letonja and Baiba Skride in Hobart and Burnie on 16 and 17 August 2013.

Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 56, ScottishAndante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato – Andante con moto –Vivace non troppo –Adagio – Allegro vivacissimo – Allegro, maestoso assai

Like the Piano Concerto No 1, the Italian Symphony and the Hebrides Overture, this work dates from the period of what we may call Mendelssohn’s ‘Grand Tour’ – a period of roughly four years during which Mendelssohn, entering his twenties, toured the British Isles and Europe.

At some point during the summer of 1828, Mendelssohn’s parents decided that their young man needed to travel to broaden his mind. Unlike so many 19th-century composers, Mendelssohn was born into middle-class comfort. His home was a cultural hub, and it could be asked how much more broadening was needed by someone whose family home buzzed with the company of people such as the scientist Alexander von Humboldt, the philosopher Hegel, the actor Eduard Devrient, and music critic and theorist Adolph Bernhard Marx, among others. In any case Felix left Berlin on 10 April 1829 bound for England, Scotland and Wales. There in the British Isles, Mendelssohn was enthusiastically received as a concert and salon pianist, but he also spent time touring and observing, soaking up the sights and sounds of fascinating new environments. Mendelssohn’s correspondence from the time includes some beautifully descriptive travel writing. He said vividly of London, for example, that it was ‘the most grandiose and complicated monster that the world has to offer’.

In the summer of 1829 Mendelssohn and Carl Klingemann, with whom he had roomed on arrival in London, set off for Scotland. There he was taken in by the

Felix Mendelssohn

wild atmosphere of the country. He wrote home from Blair Atholl (3 August), for example:

A wild affair. The storm is howling, blustering, and whistling around outside causing doors to slam shut down below and blowing the shutters open, but one can’t tell whether the sounds of water are from the rain or from the blowing spray, since both are raging. We’re sitting here around the burning hearth which I poke a bit from time to time making it flare up. Otherwise, the room is large and empty, water is dripping down along one of the walls; the floor is thin, and conversation from the servants’ quarters can be heard echoing up from below; they’re singing drunken songs and laughing – dogs are barking as well.

A few days later, undaunted by the weather, Mendelssohn set sail for the Hebrides, where he visited Fingal’s Cave and made a sketch for what later became the Hebrides Overture. The Third Symphony can also be traced to a sightseeing visit, this time to Holyrood House, Edinburgh, about which Mendelssohn wrote:

The chapel beside it has now lost its roof. It is overgrown with grass and ivy, and at the altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed and open to the sky. I believe I have found there the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.

Mendelssohn continued to work on this and the Hebrides Overture during his travels, but in Italy, understandably, his mind turned more to the Italian Symphony. As he said, ‘Who can wonder that I find it difficult to return to the Scottish mood?’

It is probably in terms of overall mood that the Scottish Symphony most noticeably reveals its original impetus.

A luxury lounge bar of unfathomable curiosities, where more than 400 of

the world’s finest spirits are surrounded by a breathtaking collection of

rare fossils dating back 550 million years. An intimate encounter of

Tasmanian hospitality on Hobart’s waterfront and a celebration of

human discovery and distillation.

MACq 01 Hotel, 18 Hunter St, Hobartevolvespiritsbar.com.au

Post-Concert Intimacy

54

One can perhaps glimpse, through the overall sombreness, the Scottish landscape ‘looking so stern and robust, half-wrapped in haze of smoke or fog’, but this work is not as pictorial as the Hebrides Overture. The portrait is somewhat muted.

Although many of Mendelssohn’s works during the period bore the sign of literary or pictorial inspiration, his aesthetic probably owes more to the philosophy of a family friend, Hegel, who was to say in Vorlesung über die Aesthetick (Lecture on Aesthetics, Berlin, 1836) that the composer ‘should devote equal attention to two aspects – musical structure, and the expression of an admittedly indeterminate content.’ It is probably towards the creation of a piece which is satisfying on purely musical terms that the composer directed his energy in this instance. The symphony is composed in the standard symphonic four-movement plan, but structurally, Mendelssohn was trying to break new ground, not only linking the four movements, but relating them through some cross-referencing of themes.

The first movement rarely leaves the minor mode, even for the lyrical second subject. The second movement is an example of the fleet-footed scherzando style which we have typically come to associate with the composer of the Octet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The finale provides an affirmative conclusion but also binds the work together thematically. Here we may recognise the music of the opening – purged of its brooding, but retaining its regal quality.

How Scottish is the work? Certainly there are no bagpipe competitions, though Mendelssohn wrote home about one:

[the bagpipers] with long red beards, tartan plaids, bonnets and feathers, naked knees, and their bagpipes in their hands...passing along the half-

ruined grey castle on the meadow, where Mary Stuart lived in splendour and saw Rizzio murdered...

And there is no folksong quotation, which would have been the easiest way to make a Scottish association. The nearest Mendelssohn actually comes to folk-like sources is in the scherzo, where the main melody could be thought to possess a ‘folkish’ pentatonicism. Even so perceptive a critic as Schumann, hearing this symphony and thinking it was the Italian, was moved to remark on how appropriately it portrayed its subject! It was, he said, ‘so beautiful as to compensate a listener who had never been in Italy’ – which should console those listeners who simply wish to enjoy the superbly well-written music.

GK Williams, Symphony Australia © 1999

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor Kenneth Murison Bourn in Hobart on 10 October 1954 and, most recently, with Garry Walker in Hobart on 20 May 2016.