MASTER SERiES10

BERND’S BACK!

SebaStian Lang-LeSSing Chief Conductor & Artistic Director

SATURDAY 27 NOVEMBER 8PM

Federation Concert Hall, Hobart

Sebastian Lang-Lessing conductor Bernd Glemser piano

BRAHMS

Piano Concerto No 1MaestosoAdagioRondo: Allegro non troppoDuration 44 mins

INTERVALDuration 20 mins

SHOSTAKOVICH

Symphony No 5Moderato – Allegro non troppoAllegrettoLargoAllegro non troppoDuration 44 mins

This concert will end at approximately 10pm.

Sponsored by

ABC Classic FM will be recording this concert for broadcast. We would appreciate your cooperation in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off.

1BERND’S BACK!

This booklet uses paper produced from 50% post-consumer recycled waste and 50% fibre sourced from responsibly managed forests. Printed with vegetable-based inks and in accordance with ISO 14001.

ABouT ThE MuSiC2 ARTiST pRofilES

BERND GLEMSER

Bernd Glemser is a rare breed of pianist both in his phenomenally broad and eclectic repertory and in his seemingly

ubiquitous presence on the concert stage. Indeed, so much about his career appears worthy of the record books. Since 1981 he has won outright or captured a prize in seventeen consecutive international competitions (including the People’s Choice Award in the 1985 Sydney International Piano Competition). In 1989 he became the youngest professor to teach at a German university when he took up a position at the Musikhochschule in Saarbrücken, and in 1996 he was invited to become the first Western musician to perform live on Chinese television. He has made 33 recordings, the first appearing only in 1994, and has performed with major orchestras and conductors throughout Europe, Canada, the United States, South America, China, Japan, Australia and elsewhere. His repertory encompasses most major composers from J S Bach to the moderns and takes in large chunks of Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. In addition to many awards, he received the Andor Foldes Prize in 1992 and the European Pianist’s Prize in 1993 in Zurich. In 2003 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

SEBASTIAN LANG-LESSING

Sebastian Lang-Lessing is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra since 2004. Awarded the Ferenc Fricsay

Prize in Berlin at the age of 24, he subsequently took up a conducting post at the Hamburg State Opera, was appointed resident conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and later Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy. Under his direction, the Opéra de Nancy was elevated to national status becoming the Opéra national de Lorraine. His international career started at the Paris Opera, followed by engagements at Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera and the Opera houses in Oslo and Stockholm. He conducted a highly regarded new production of Wagner’s Rienzi at Deutsche Oper Berlin in January 2010 and a new production of Rosenkavalier at Cape Town Opera during the World Cup. Concert engagements include performances with Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tokyo Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, major German Radio Orchestras and major Australian orchestras. He inaugurated the TSO’s annual Sydney season and led his orchestra on a tour of Japan. His discography includes music by the French composer Guy Ropartz, and his CDs with the TSO include the recently released complete symphonies of Mendelssohn with DVD, the complete Schumann symphonies, Romantic Overtures, music of Brett Dean, Mozart Arias with Sara Macliver, and works by Saint-Saëns, Franck, Ravel. Forthcoming TSO recordings include Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites, Mozart symphonies, Mendelssohn and Ravel piano concertos with soloist Kirill Gerstein. Sebastian Lang-Lessing has been appointed Music Director of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor Op 15

Maestoso Adagio Rondo: Allegro non troppoThis concerto was initially an abandoned attempt at a symphony derived from a sonata for two pianos. As is so often the case with Brahms, the inspiration came (at least in part) from Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms and Robert Schumann became firm friends soon after their first meeting in 1853. The following year Schumann attempted suicide. Brahms’s distress at the condition of his friend led to the composition of a sonata in D minor for two pianos. But Brahms was not satisfied, and within a few months the first movement formed part of a projected symphony in the same key. He had technical problems with the orchestration, despite assistance from a scholarly friend, Julius Grimm, who suggested a solution to the conflict between Brahms’s pianistic and orchestral concepts: a piano concerto.

Brahms later destroyed the duo sonata and the incomplete symphony, but parts of the two works are in the piano concerto. After many revisions of the first two movements, and the addition of a Rondo finale, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1 was complete in its first version early in 1858. It received a private rehearsal under Joseph Joachim and his Hanover orchestra on 30 March 1858, and a first public performance in Hanover on 22 January 1859.

Brahms’s writing for piano is robust and athletic. More significant is the consistent density of the texture, a vestige perhaps of the two equal partners for which this music was originally conceived. The opening, with its roaring timpani, has been likened to an image of the young Brahms hurling his theme like a thunderbolt.

After culminating in a burst of heavy trills, the music settles down to a series of lyrical episodes, introducing a gentler rocking music. The orchestra swells again with the opening material and then finally, as it subsides, the piano enters, setting up the other emotional extremity within which this movement will be played out.

With Schumann’s collapse, Brahms moved in with Clara, took charge of the family’s financial affairs, and helped with the children. Thus began the most complicated emotional period of his life, for Brahms fell in love with his idol’s wife, 13 years his senior. How close their relationship became we cannot now determine, but there is no doubt that the second movement of this concerto, the Adagio, is a declaration of his love. ‘I am painting a lovely portrait of you,’ he wrote to Clara during the composition of this movement. ‘It is to be the Adagio.’

The Adagio opens into the Rondo finale in a manner clearly derived from Beethoven’s C minor concerto (No 3). The seriousness of Brahms’s artistic intentions can be gauged by the finale. Here is an almost typically 19th-century showy ending, but the musical material, though carried along at speed, is nearly of equal weight to that of the first movement.

Brahms is often thought of as the most Classical of Romantic-era composers. ‘Passions are not natural to mankind, they are always exceptions or excrescences,’ he wrote to Clara in October 1857, perhaps mindful that their relationship would remain platonic. Nevertheless, in this work he expresses his emotions as openly as he ever would again.

Abridged from a note by Gordon Kalton Williams Symphony Australia © 1997

The TSO last performed this work in Hobart and Launceston on 16 and 17 June 2006 with conductor Arvo Volmer and soloist Boris Berman.

3ABouT ThE MuSiC

4 ABouT ThE MuSiC

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Symphony No 5 in D minor Op 47

Moderato – Allegro non troppo Allegretto Largo Allegro non troppo

‘Composed in 1937, the Fifth is essentially a neoclassical piece, the angular contour and dotted rhythms of its opening gesture immediately recalling the baroque overture.’

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is one of the iconic works of the 20th century. In purely musical terms it is a masterpiece, coherently expressed and brilliantly orchestrated in a large-scale architecture whose pacing is always expertly judged. But the work’s status derives at least in part from extra-musical considerations: the circumstances in which the work was conceived were extraordinary, and the piece has become a powerful symbol in the battle for the composer’s ideological soul.

The well-known facts of the symphony’s genesis bear repeating. By 1936 Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had enjoyed a very successful two-year run, but then Stalin, whose tastes tended to extend no further than Lehár’s Merry Widow, saw the show. An anonymous review appeared in the official newspaper Pravda accusing the composer of producing ‘chaos instead of music’ and warning that this ‘could end very badly’ for him. Shostakovich took to sleeping in the hallway of his apartment so as not to disturb his family when the NVKD (the predecessor of the KGB) arrived to arrest him – though it never came to that. Lady Macbeth was pulled from the stage and revised as the toned-down Katerina Ismailova, and he withdrew,

or allowed to be withdrawn, his Symphony No 4. He had good reason for alarm. Stalin’s infamous ‘purges’, the Great Terror, were at their height, resulting in the incarceration and often murder of a colossal number of leading intellects in all walks of life as well as potential political rivals. Whether out of caprice, paranoia or sheer sadism, Stalin came close to fatally weakening his country.

Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony – which had to wait decades for a performance – is an epic, blisteringly ironic work where triumphal fanfares turn sour in the space of a single bar and glacial spaces unfold menacingly. Composed in 1937, the Fifth, by contrast, is essentially a neoclassical piece, the angular contour and dotted rhythms of its opening gesture immediately recalling the baroque overture. The work has four movements in conventional forms (sonata-allegro, scherzo and so on); its musical language affirms traditional diatonic harmony in a Beethovenian journey from a striving D-minor opening to the blazing major-key optimism of the finale.

Following the common practice of Russian composers like Borodin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, Shostakovich places the dance-like scherzo second, before an emotionally powerful Largo which alludes briefly to his own setting of Pushkin’s poem Rebirth. At the time Shostakovich claimed that ‘man with all his experiences [is] in the centre of the composition, which is lyrical in form from beginning to end. In the finale, the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and joy of living’. Composers’ program notes are often unreliable, but years later Shostakovich’s conductor son Maxim claimed that his father had described it as an ‘heroic symphony’ – not unlike Beethoven’s Eroica in intent.

The work was a huge success at its première, with audience members weeping during the slow movement and on their feet, cheering, as the finale drew to a close. (And they stayed

5ABouT ThE MuSiC

on their feet for 40 minutes after the piece finished!) As a work which reflected the ideals of Socialist Realism, and which was clearly such a hit with the masses, the Symphony No 5 was Shostakovich’s passport to a return – for now at least – to official favour. When a journalist described it as ‘an artist’s response to just criticism’ Shostakovich didn’t demur, and that phrase has come to be seen as the work’s subtitle, though there is no evidence that it was indeed Shostakovich’s expressed view.

During the early stages of the Cold War, Shostakovich was derided in the West as a composer of what Virgil Thomson called ‘national advertising’ and a work like the Fifth was seen as a piece of mandatory optimism and Soviet propaganda. In the late 20th century, however, that attitude changed radically as the view emerged that Shostakovich was a secret dissident, encoding anti-Soviet ‘messages’ in his music, including the Fifth Symphony.

This view gathered strength with the publication in 1979 (four years after Shostakovich’s death) of a volume entitled Testimony: Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. In it Volkov quotes Shostakovich contradicting what he told his son, by saying:

I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, ‘our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’ What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.

Testimony created an ongoing furore, with musicologists and journalists confidently proclaiming the work either a complete fraud or a valuable document of the composer’s

thought. In 2004 one of the sceptics, Laurel E Fay, subjected the text to detailed examination. Fay cast doubt on the authenticity of the book, having discovered that the eight pages which the composer signed as having read all contained material which was not only innocuous but all of which had been published before. There was no guarantee that he saw, let alone dictated, the rest.

The stylistic change that came about with the Fifth was almost certainly fuelled by Shostakovich’s brush with the regime, and it is no accident that he began his epic cycle of intensely personal string quartets at this time. But certain facts are inconvenient to a simplistic reading of the man and his work, such as his decision to join the Communist Party in 1960, long after the immediate danger of Stalinism had passed. Moreover the Fifth Symphony was at one stage seen as pro-Soviet tub-thumping and then almost overnight regarded as a denunciation of the very same regime. Maybe it’s neither, but as critic Alex Ross puts it, ‘The notes, in any case, remain the same. The symphony still ends fortissimo, in D major, and it still brings audiences to their feet.’

Gordon Kerry © 2007

The TSO first performed this work in Hobart on 15 February 1962 with conductor Thomas Matthews. The most recent performance was in Hobart on 22 February 2002 with conductor Muhai Tang.

Dmitri Shostakovich

ignite

TSO Gift Vouchers offer flexibility and choice, starting at just $25.Perfect for the music lover in your life, TSO Gift Vouchers may be

redeemed for TSO concerts and merchandise.

Available from the TSO Box Office 1800 001 190

TSO Gift Vouchers offer flexibility and choice, starting at just $25.TSO Gift Vouchers offer flexibility and choice, starting at just $25.

Gift Voucher

YOUR CHRISTMAS

7ChAiR SpoNSoRS AND pATRoNS

CHAIR SPONSORS

Chair Sponsors provide valuable financial assistance to the TSO through an annual donation of $5,000 or more. Their donation, which is nominally placed beside an orchestra chair of their choosing, supports the entire orchestra. All donations to the TSO are fully tax deductible.

Chief Conductor GHDConcertmaster Mike and Carole RalstonAssociate Concertmaster R H O’ConnorPrincipal Second Violin Joanna de BurghPrincipal Viola John and Jo StruttPrincipal Cello Richard and Gill IrelandPrincipal Double Bass Patricia LearyPrincipal Oboe Melanie Godfrey-SmithPrincipal Clarinet Dr Peter StantonPrincipal Bassoon Julia FarrellRank and File Bassoon Alan and Hilary WallacePrincipal Horn Mr Kenneth von Bibra AM and Mrs Berta von Bibra OAM

Principal Trumpet Joy Selby SmithPrincipal Timpani John and Marilyn CanterfordPrincipal Harp Dr and Mrs Michael TreplinPiano Mrs Neale Edwards

TSO PATRONSHis Excellency The Honourable Peter Underwood AC, Governor of Tasmania TSO CHAIRMAN EMERITUS

TSO Patrons are individuals and couples who support the TSO with an annual donation of $500 or more. All donations to the TSO are fully tax deductible.

Yvonne and Keith AdkinsPeter and Ruth AlthausBrendan and Emily BlomeleyHans Bosman and Sue MaddenAileen BuchanDr Howard Bye and Mrs Dianne ByeJohn and Marilyn CanterfordHeather CartledgeGeorge and Jan CasimatyDr Alastair ChristieStephanie CooperThe Cretan FamilyDr Louise CrossleyJoanna de BurghJohn Dickens and Dr Ian PayneLyn EdwardsMrs Neale EdwardsMr Hansjuergen EnzJulia FarrellMrs S FyfeEmeritus Professor A R Glenn and Dr O F GlennMelanie Godfrey-SmithDr Duncan GrantKaaren HaasPatricia HaleyAndrew and Amanda HalleyBarbara HarlingBrian and Jacky HartnettRobyn and John HawkinsAndrew Heap and Judith HillhouseDr Don Hempton and Mrs Jasmine HemptonNicholas Heyward and Allanah DopsonMr Ian Hicks and Dr Jane TolmanMrs Lola Hutchinson OAM

Richard and Gill IrelandColin and Dianne JacksonRuth JohnsonDarrell Jones and James MainwaringVeronica KeachAndrew and Elizabeth KempRichard KentPatricia LearyLinda and Martin LutherDavid and Jennifer McEwan

Macquarie AccountingKatherine MarsdenSenator Christine MilneJill MureR H O’ConnorKim PatersonJim PleasantsJohn and Marilyn PugsleyMike and Carole RalstonJan and Alan ReesDr H Rees and Dr C DrewPatricia H ReidProfessor David Rich and Mrs Glenys RichDr John Roberts and Mrs Barbara RobertsMr and Mrs S RobertsKay RoddaAndrew ScobieJoy Selby SmithBrian ShearerEzekiel SolomonDr Tony SprentTony and Jeanette StaceyDr Peter StantonJohn and Jo StruttDr and Mrs Michael TreplinAlan Trethewey and Jean Trethewey OAM

Turnbulls PharmacyHis Excellency The Honourable Peter Underwood AC, Governor of Tasmania, and Mrs Frances UnderwoodJohn UpcherMr Kenneth von Bibra AM and Mrs Berta von Bibra OAM

Jessie VonkAlan and Hilary WallaceMichelle WarrenMichael WilkinsonGeoff and Vicki WillisJ ZimmermanAnonymous x 9

If you wish to become a Chair Sponsor or TSO Patron, please contact Lisa Harris on (03) 6232 4414 or harrisl@tso.com.au.

8 TASMANiAN SYMphoNY oRChESTRA

VIOLINJun Yi Ma ConcertmasterElinor Levy Associate ConcertmasterDaniel Kossov Principal SecondRobert John Principal FirstJessica BellRohana BrownMiranda CarsonYue-Hong ChaFrances DaviesCherelle GadgeMichael JohnstonChristine LawsonAlison Lazaroff-SomssichSusannah NgChristopher Nicholas James SteendamLaura ThomsonGeorge Vi

VIOLA Janet Rutherford*Simon ForresterRodney McDonaldWilliam NewberyAnna RoachJosephine St LeonLuke Spicer

CELLO Sue-Ellen Paulsen*Dale BrownIvan JamesMartin PenickaBrett Rutherford

DOUBLE BASS Stuart Thomson*Robin BrawleyMichael FortescuePhillipa Strickland

FLUTE Douglas Mackie*Lloyd Hudson PiccoloFiona Perrin

OBOEDavid Nuttall*Dinah Woods Cor Anglais

CLARINETDuncan Abercromby*Andrew Seymour E-flat ClarinetChris Waller Bass Clarinet

BASSOON Lisa Storchheim*John Panckridge ContrabassoonJack Schiller

HORN Wendy Page*Heath Parkinson*Jules EvansRoger JacksonGreg Stephens

TRUMPET Yoram Levy*Matt DempseyJoshua Rogan

TROMBONE Donald Bate*Liam O’Malley

BASS TROMBONERobert Clark*

TUBATimothy Jones*

TIMPANIMatthew Goddard*

PERCUSSION Gary Wain*Stephen MarskellCalvin McClayTracey Patten

HARPBronwyn Wallis#

PIANO/CELESTEStephanie Abercromby#

*principal player #guest principal

Jun Yi Ma plays a violin attributed to Guarneri on loan from Nathan Waks.

Chief Conductor & Artistic DirectorSebastian Lang-Lessing

Managing DirectorNicholas Heyward

Australian Music Program DirectorLyndon Terracini

TSO ChorusmasterJune Tyzack

TSO BoardGeoff Willis ChairmanPatricia Leary Deputy ChairDon ChallenMaria GrenfellNicholas HeywardPaul OxleyDavid RichJohn UpcherColin Norris Company Secretary

TSO Foundation Chairman Colin Jackson oam

FOTSO President Susan Williams

TASMANIAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Federation Concert Hall 1 Davey Street, Hobart Tasmania 7000 Australia GPO Box 1450, Hobart Tasmania 7001 Australia Box Office 1800 001 190 boxoffice@tso.com.au Administration (03) 6232 4444

www.tso.com.au

9TSo pARTNERS

CORE PUBLIC SUPPORT

PREMIER PARTNERS

MAJOR PARTNERS

WE ALSO WISH TO THANK

Foot & Playsted Fine Printers, Fuji Xerox Shop Tasmania.

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts, and the Tasmanian Icon Program.

PARTNERS

LEADERSHIP PARTNERS

MEDIA SUPPORTERS

0199bookings > 1800 001 190 or tso.com.au

TSo CAlENDAR of CoNCERTS

Saturday 11 december 6pm Christmas with the TSOFEDERATION CONCERT HALL, HOBART Welcome the festive season

with the TSO! Hear all your Christmas favourites and sing along too! A fun-filled event for all the family, Christmas with the TSO is a concert you won’t want to miss.

Brett Weymark conductor James Clayton baritoneChristopher Lawrence compereTSO Chorus

Program includes:HANDEL Messiah (excerpts)TCHAIKOVSKY Nutcracker (excerpts)CORELLI Christmas ConcertoANDERSON Sleigh RideSilent Night, O Come all Ye Faithful, The First Nowell

monday 29 november 8pm New WorldsFEDERATION CONCERT HALL, HOBART Bernd Glemser performs

Brahms’ brilliant Second Piano Concerto and Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducts Dvorák’s ever-popular New World symphony – voted Australia’s favourite symphony in ABC Classic FM’s nationwide poll.

tueSday 30 november 8pm

ALBERT HALL, LAUNCESTON

Sebastian Lang-Lessing conductorBernd Glemser piano

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No 2DVORÁK Symphony No 9, From the

New World

FrIday 4 marcH 7.30pm Starry, Starry NightFEDERATION CONCERT HALL, HOBART Join Sebastian Lang-Lessing

and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra for this starry season opener. Enjoy black-tie style, complimentary bubbles at interval and a sparkling program of orchestral showpieces including Rimsky-Korsakov’s brilliantly colourful Scheherazade and Ravel’s glittering Piano Concerto in G.

Saturday 5 marcH 7.30pm

ALBERT HALL, LAUNCESTON

Sebastian Lang-Lessing conductor Ewa Kupiec piano

LISZT Les Préludes RAVEL Piano Concerto in G RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade