More about the Australia Ensemble
Season 2009
From the Artistic Chair, Emeritus Professor Roger Covell
When Joseph Haydn began writing string quartets and symphonies these were modest categories of works, limited in scope and ambition. By the time he ended his career he was largely responsible for ensuring that they had become the dominant genres of chamber and concert-hall music. In the two centuries since his death, signalled by a bicentenary in 2009, Haydn’s reputation has never faltered with knowledgeable listeners, yet his very clarity of texture and economy of method have caused him to be relatively undervalued in times of extravagant musical dimensions and durations. The Australia Ensemble is happy to be able to mark the Haydn bicentenary in 2009 with two works of the highest quality: an eloquent and memorable string quartet (one of the last two such works he completed) and a brilliant piano trio from the great harvest of his late works when this formerly salaried staff musician discovered to his astonishment that the musical world was at his feet.
The Australia Ensemble is equally happy to be able to salute the genius of Felix Mendelssohn in the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2009 with a program centred on his magnificent regime in Leipzig, where his work as composer, pianist, educator and music director gave that city a prestige it retained until well after the end of the nineteenth century. His string octet and many other well-known works will rightly receive much attention in his bicentenary year, but we take pleasure in drawing particular attention to the high merits and representative style of his B minor Piano Quartet, an amazing and little-known score he wrote when he was not quite sixteen.
In one of our six Saturday night programs we take a look at some of the ways in which American music discovered its special aptitudes for the concert hall (with a little help from such sympathetic visitors as Antonín Dvořák) and deliberately explore the contrasts, in another, between music of revelry and music of reverie. Mostly, however, we allow the pieces chosen for performance to make their own statements of affinity and difference. Recent music includes Brett Dean’s Winter Songs cycle, in which this composing Queenslander comes to terms with the climate he encountered in Berlin as a member of the Berlin Philharmonic; commissioned scores from Paul Stanhope and the Ensemble’s resident pianist-composer Ian Munro; and a major new piece by Steve Reich. Balancing these novelties are such mainstays of the concert repertory as Beethoven’s popular Septet, his masterly E minor Rasumovsky String Quartet, and Brahms’s superb Trio for horn, violin and piano.
Join our responsive and friendly audience, drawn by the playing of this country’s finest chamber ensemble, and discover, or rediscover, how subscribing to the series is a lasting investment in the delight of discovery.
Program 1
Saturday March 14, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809): String Quartet Opus 77 No.1 Hob. III:81 (1779) - 200th anniversary of the composer's death
Brett DEAN (b 1961): Winter Songs for tenor voice flute (doubling piccolo and alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), bassoon and horn (2000)
Johannes BRAHMS (1833 - 1897): Trio for horn, violin and piano opus 40 in E flat (1865)
Joseph Haydn, a supreme master of instrumental clarity, didn't invent the string quartet but made of it a genre that has inspired almost every great composer since his time. he died 200 years ago with with a longer list of first-class quartets to his name than any other composer. We shall hear one of the last two quartets he completed, a tuneful, springy and beautiful work worthy of starting our celebration of his bicentenary. Brahms has contributed worthily to the string quartet tradition but is even happier when he adds a piano or wind instrument to the string texture. His trio for horn, vioin and piano is a masterpiece unmatched in its genre for eloquence and power. Brett Dean, though a string-playing virtuoso himself, chooses to partner a tenor voice wth wind quintet in his cycle of Winter Songs, in which this Queenslander comes to terms with the unfamiliar feel of a northern European winter during his years as a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Program 2
Saturday April 4, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
Musical America Discovers Itself
Vincent d'INDY (1851-1931): Suite for flute, string trio & harp (1927)
Leonard BERNSTEIN (1918-1990): Sonata for clarinet & piano (1942)
Nadia BOULANGER (1887-1979): Two Pieces for cello & piano (1914)
Aaron COPLAND (1900-1990): Piano Quartet (1950)
Anton DVOŘÁK (1841-1904): String Quintet (American) in E flat for two violins, two violas & cello Opus 97 (1893)
Concert music from the United States may not have achieved anything like the international domination of American-style pop and jazz, but its status has risen appreciably as a result of the relatively recent arrival of some outstanding composers whose leading works have become part of the world’s standard repertories. One of those composers is Aaron Copland and among his finest, most absorbing and satisfying chamber music is his Piano Quartet for keyboard, violin, viola and cello. Copland acknowledged his debt to Nadia Boulanger, a great teacher in Paris who showed him and many other American composers how to find themselves stylistically, just as Vincent d’Indy at Paris’s Schola Cantorum helped Cole Porter to become one of the most sophisticated harmonists among Broadway composers without destroying his originality. Boulanger and d’Indy make brief appearances in this program in their own right, as does Leonard Bernstein, who picked up hints from many of his predecessors; while Antonín Dvořák, the great Czech composer who spent some years as head of a New York conservatory, urged American musicians to learn from the sounds around them, including Afro-American and native American traditions, and showed them how in his sparkling and melodious Opus 97 E flat (American) String Quintet for two violins, two violas and cello.
Program 3
Saturday May 16, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
Mendelssohn and the Riches of Leipzig
J.S BACH (1685-1750): Allemanda from the solo Violin Partita No 2 in D minor BWV1004 (1720), arranged with piano accompaniment by Robert Schumann
Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856) Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) for piano & viola, Opus 113 (1851)
Ludwig THUILLE (1861-1907): Sextet for piano & wind quintet in B flat Opus 6 (1888)
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847): Piano Quartet in B minor Opus 3 (1825) - 200th anniversary of the composer's birth
Leipzig, the city of Bach, enjoyed another glorious period of music-making when Felix Mendelssohn took up his position as the town’s general music director, adding the originality of his own compositions to the skill with which he organised and directed concerts. Mendelssohn, the bicentenary of whose birth occurs in 2009, acknowledged his great predecessor in taking several initiatives to revive the regular performance of Bach’s music and he and Schumann, another contemporary ornament of musical life in Leipzig, both felt the need to supply simple keyboard accompaniments for the awe-inspiring and strange experience of Bach’s unaccompanied works for violin and cello. We hear, as an insight into a time when Bach still seemed a musty survivor of the baroque era to many listeners, the opening movement of the Partita No 2 for solo violin with Schumann’s respectful keyboard filling-out of the work’s chordal implications, and also Mendelssohn’s own superlative and precocious Piano Quartet in B minor. Schumann contributes some of his characteristically tender and fanciful instrumental songfulness in his Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) for piano and viola; and a work that had its first performance in Leipzig, the Sextet for piano and wind quintet by a 19th century composer new to our programs, Ludwig Thuille, testifies to the lingering prestige won for the city by the Mendelssohn regime, even in post-Mendelssohnian times.
Program 4
Saturday August 15, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
Scenes of Reverie and Revelry
James MACMILLAN (b 1959): Cumnock Fair for piano & string quintet (1999) -50th anniversary of the composer's birth
Percy GRAINGER (1882 -1961): Shepherd's Hey for flute, clarinet, strings & keyboard (1911)
Christopher ROUSE (b 1949): Compline for flute, clarinet, harp & string quartet (1966)
Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937) Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet & string quartet (1905)
Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924): Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor Opus 45 (1886)
What Grainger called the ‘keeping-on-ness’ of traditional dance fiddling, whether from Ireland, Scotland or elsewhere in the British Isles or from a huge range of Continental traditions, is one of the great sources of resilient energy in music. James MacMillan, widely regarded as the leading Scottish composer of today, strikes sparks off his own heritage in his Cumnock Fair for piano and string quintet. Grainger himself provides a thumbnail reminder of his exuberant re-creation of fiddling traditions in his Shepherd’s Hey, while the American composer Christopher Rouse favours reverie rather than revelry in his Compline, an impression of Rome that takes in its ecclesiastical traditions and the ever-present music of its bells. As Rouse’s piece is scored for the same instrumental forces as Ravel’s famous Introduction and Allegro, it might have seemed churlish not to include this piece as well, in which revelry occasionally seems on the verge of influencing the unforgettable reverie of its sinuous melodies. Fauré’s Second Piano Quartet alternates quiet eloquence and nimble brilliance, demonstrating how well these qualities can live together if their contrasts are handled by a master.
Program 5
Saturday September 12, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
Eugene GOOSSENS (1893-1962): Suite for flute, violin & harp (1914)
Toru TAKEMITSU (1930-1996): Quatrain II for clarinet, violin, cello & piano (1977)
Ian MUNRO (b 1963): New comissioned work for flute, clarinet, piano, two violins, viola, cello & percussion (2009) - first performance
Ludwig BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): String Quartet in E minor Opus 59 No. 2 (1805)
After the Australia Ensemble’s performance in 2008 of Eugene Goossens’s holiday impressions, which used with outstanding skill and freshness the then new vocabularies of Debussy and Ravel, it seemed only right to turn to another Goossens work from the same eve-of-World War I period, his Suite for flute, violin and harp, for more pleasures of a deft and welcoming kind. Toru Takemitsu, a distinguished Japanese composer of a different generation, shares with Goossens an abiding love of Debussy’s style and aesthetic and combines it, in his Quatrain II, with an ultra-sensitive skill in using timbre owing much to his own national traditions. The Ensemble’s resident pianist, Ian Munro, another devotee of French music, has become increasingly familiar to his audiences in the last few years as a composer and arranger, notably in his Divertissement sur le nom d’Erik Satie in the 2007 Saturday night series, and will compose a new piece for Ensemble members in this program. Beethoven’s String Quartet in E minor, the second quartet of the Rasumovsky set and one of the greatest works of European chamber music, ends the concert.
Program 6
Saturday October 24, 8pm Sir John Clancy Auditorium.
The Australia Ensemble Players Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809): Flute Trio in G, Hob.XV:15 - 200th anniversary of the composer's birth
Paul STANHOPE (b. 1968): New commissioned work for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello & piano (2009) - first performance
Steve REICH (b 1936): Double Sextet for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, piano & pre-recorded tapes
Ludwig BEETHOVEN (1770-1829): Septet in E flat, Opus 20, for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello & double bass (1800)
Haydn’s music, celebrating a 200-year span in which this composer’s posthumous reputation has endured as a guiding light of music, begins both first and final programs in the Australia Ensemble’s 2009 Saturday night series, this time with the graceful G major Flute Trio from his prolific creative harvest. Paul Stanhope, among the most gratefully accomplished of Australian composers, is delivering another newly commissioned piece written for the formidable talents of Ensemble players; and the American composer Steve Reich, whose music has fascinated Ensemble audiences on other occasions with its intricately shifting patterns, has a major new score, his Double Sextet, in which flute, clarinet, cello and piano are joined by vibraphone and a scintillating maze of pre-recorded sounds. Beethoven’s Septet for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass, the companionable and tuneful work that first made Beethoven a household name as a composer in Vienna, brings the concert and the series to a warmly convivial close.