ICO 2025 Season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 30 March 1.00pm – Indooroopilly State High School

Welcome to our first ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert for 2025. This year we are celebrating Connection. What stories and sounds move us? What music are we passionate about? 

Become immersed in Shakespearean storytelling with Concert Favourites to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Sullivan’s Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 

Program

Franz Schubert – Overture to Die Zwillingsbrüder (The Twin Brothers), D.647

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – A Midsummer Nights Dream, Incidental Music, Op.61, No.5 Intermezzo; No.7 Notturno; No.9 Wedding March

Arthur Sullivan – Incidental Music to “The Tempest”, Op.1

Greta Hunter – Conductor

Greta Hunter is a Brisbane based conductor and flute specialist. She holds a Bachelor of Music (BMus(hons)) from the University of Queensland, majoring in flute performance, and currently studies Orchestral Conducting with the Cardiff International Academy of Conducting and Mark Shapiro (The Julliard School). 

Greta holds the position of conductor with the Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra (ICO), where she connects players to great orchestral works most often from the 18th – 20th centuries. With ICO, Greta creates valuable opportunities for outstanding young musicians to rehearse and perform concertos and solo works with a full orchestra. She is equally at home with choral music and is currently the musical director of Songshine Choir. Greta also works with school and community youth ensembles as well as being regularly invited to guest conduct other instrumental and vocal ensembles around Brisbane.

Greta is a flute specialist tutor at St Peter’s Lutheran College (Indooroopilly) and Westside Christian College. She is passionate about developing technique and musicianship and incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to her teaching, where she utilises and combines flute pedagogy with vocal pedagogy. Greta incorporates this approach to develop technique and musicianship for flutists and choristers alike and has seen significant positive benefits across both disciplines.

Greta is driven by the underlying philosophy that everyone deserves to experience meaningful music making. Through her work as both a conductor and flute specialist tutor, Greta guides people to explore the possibilities of expression through music and ultimately to engage with music in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Cici Wang – Soprano

Program Notes

Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

Overture to Die Zwillingsbrüder (The Twin Brothers), D.647, 1819

Franz Schubert is one of the best-loved and most important composers of the nineteenth century, his music consistently marked by a remarkable melodic gift, rich harmonies, and an expansive treatment of traditional forms. During his short but extremely prolific career, he composed nine symphonies, dozens of chamber and solo piano works, and a host of operas and liturgical works. His songs, numbering over 600, virtually created the genre of the art song. He started composing in his teens, and some early works came to the notice of Antonio Salieri, who worked with the young composer on composition and music theory.

Schubert realised that the sure path to fame and recognition passed over the opera stage, and he tried his hand at the intractable genre from his earliest years. Die Zwillingsbrüder (The Twin Brothers) was a commissioned work that gave Schubert his first hearing on the Viennese stage.

The Twin Brothers, the composer’s one-act singspiel, revolves around a case of mistaken identity, compounded by a romantic triangle. Franz Spiess, a one-eyed soldier, returns to his village to claim the hand of Lieschen, promised to him years earlier. The damsel, however, loves the handsome Anton. Meanwhile, Franz’s twin brother, Friedrich — identical to Franz, save for wearing a patch over the opposite eye — arrives and adds a fourth element to the triangle. Complications ensue; yet all is well that ends well, as Lieschen manages to marry her beloved Anton.

Program Notes:-

Chris Morrison – https://renochamberorchestra.org/program-notes-february-2019/

Chicago Symphony Orchestra –https://cso.org/experience/article/10099/a-miscellany-of-musical-twins-from-the-baroqu

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 – 1847)

A Midsummer Nights Dream, Incidental Music, Op.61, No.5 Intermezzo; No.7 Notturno; No.9 Wedding March, 1842-43.

Felix Mendelssohn and his family were ardent fans of the works of William Shakespeare, which had been translated into German in 1790. Felix and his sister Fanny loved A Midsummer Night’s Dream and put on many home performances, with each child playing many roles. In a letter Fanny wrote, “We have really grown up together with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Felix, in particular, has made it his own.”

In 1843, Mendelssohn was commissioned by the King of Prussia to write incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it premiered in 1843 at the King’s palace in Potsdam. As a longtime fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mendelssohn was already quite familiar with the structure of the play, and he was delighted to oblige his new patron.

The Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a deft musical description of Shakespeare’s play, and many of its themes are heard in later movements. The Intermezzo features two narratives: the first is the restless agitation of Hermia as she searches for her lover Lysander. The strings and winds again capture the distracted urgency of poor Hermia. The Nocturne, blankets the befuddled quartet of lovers Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius as they sleep in the forest. The lyrical horn solo evokes the warm serenity of a summer night. Another short melodrama precedes the Wedding March, which announces the wedding of Duke Theseus to Hippolyta, Hermia to Lysander and Helena to Demetrius. Its triumphal joy is a fitting celebration of their group ceremony.

Program Notes:- Oregon Symphony – https://www.orsymphony.org/concerts-tickets/program-notes/2324/mendelssohns-a-midsummer-nights-dream

Arthur Sullivan (1842 – 1900)

Incidental Music to “The Tempest”, Op.1, 1861, revised 1862.

Arthur Sullivan was born in London, the son of the bandmaster to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. By the age of 8 he had already learnt to play all of the instruments in his father’s band and at 14 he won the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. This scholarship allowed him to study at the Leipzig Conservatoire.

Sullivan composed his incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest in 1860-1861. Six movements, the Introduction, Ariel’s song, an Entr’acte, the Grotesque Dance, Entr’acte and Epilogue, and the Dance of they Nymphs and Reapers, were given their first performance at the Graduation Concert held at the Leipzig Gewendhaus in 1861, which marked the end of Sullivan’s time as a student at the Leipzig Conservatoire.

The music was well received both by the audience in the hall that evening and by the Leipzig press. The Neue Zeitschrift für Music commented: Mr Arthur Sullivan from London produced music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest which showed him strongly influenced by Schumann, and to some extent Mendelssohn … the composer handles the orchestral medium skilfully, and achieves charming effects.

On his return to London, Sullivan made some revisions to the score and, almost a year after the Leipzig performance, the work, now extended to twelve movements, was given its first London performance. The Times reported: Enough at present to say that his music to The Tempest, while betraying a strong partiality for Mendelssohn’s fascinating style, exhibits remarkable merits, and among the rest a decided vein for melody, a strong feeling of dramatic expression, and a happy fancy in the treatment of the orchestra … At the conclusion there was a loud call for ‘the composer’ who was greeted with the heartiest applause on all sides.

On the morning of 5 April 1862, few had heard of Sullivan. That evening he became famous and his career as a composer was triumphantly launched.

The incidental music was written to accompany an unabridged performance of Shakespeare’s play. In today’s performance we are following Ariel’s story as told by Sullivan’s music. Caliban’s story does not impact Ariel’s in this musical version, and we have therefore cut his story and accompanying themes fin our narration, which is written and performed by Jarrah Newman. 

Program Notes:- Gilbert & Sullivan Archive – https://gsarchive.net/sullivan/tempest/index.html

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Laura Garzon

Haruka Ono

Vivian Zhang

Clarinet

Colleen Rowe

Annalie Roux

Christopher Woods

Bassoon

Carolyn Brodie

Jarrah Newman

Mairin Thompson

Horn

Nicole Blackett

Paul Brisbane

Jace Graieg

Trumpet

Nicole Blackett

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting

Yitong Zheng