ICO 2025 Season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 22 June 1.00pm – Indooroopilly State High School

Welcome to our second ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert for 2025, where we are thrilled to present our first joint concert with Indooroopilly State High School. This concert celebrates the connections we make through music; ISHS students joining us to experience playing full length classical repertoire and ICO players having an opportunity to play repertoire that requires double our usual size.

Come along on an exciting musical journey of twists and turns. Connect with history and get to know the sounds of London in the 1790’s, the melodies of European music halls in the 1820s, and the sounds of France in 1850s.

Program

Franz Schubert – Overture to Rosamunde (arr. Leidig). Combined orchestras

Gioachino Rossini – Overture to The Barber of Seville highlights (arr. Isaac). ISHS orchestra

Camille Saint-Saëns – Cello Concerto No.1 in A Minor, op.33. ICO with soloist Laura Boon

INTERVAL

Joseph Hayden – Symphony No.100 in G Major, ‘Military’. ICO with augmenting players from ISHS

Greta Hunter – Conductor ICO

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.

James Kukulies – Conductor ISHS

Mr James Kukulies is a career long Instrumental Music Teacher with the Queensland Department of Education; he has over 30 years of music teaching experience. James grew up in Central Queensland and moved to Brisbane to attend the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and the University of Queensland where he gained his music and teaching qualifications.  As a passionate practitioner and program leader, he has continued to reposition his work in the classroom, in front of students and ensembles, within community groups and music extension programs (such as the State Honors Ensemble Program) building skills, experience and connections with music making.

In 2016 James started the Indooroopilly State High School Symphony Orchestra with 33 students, and then a harp player joined the group late in its first year.  (Somehow, to Mr K’s amazement, a harp player has emerged from the student cohort almost every year since.)  As the school and program were growing rapidly at that time, there was a need to create an ensemble for the school’s highest achieving Instrumental Music students from all areas of the program. Today the Symphony Orchestra still fills that role.  The strings have their own string orchestra where they can refine their skills, they are then joined by the top performing woodwind, brass and percussion students who perform in a soloistic capacity to create the full orchestral sound.  Each year they engage in new repertoire, encompassing reductions of mainstream classical period music, along with popular movie themes, modern orchestral compositions and light concert orchestra style music.

Laura Boon

Program Notes

Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

Rosamunde Overture (arr Leidig)

Schubert composed his incidental music to the romantic drama “Rosamunde, Princess of Cypress” in less than three weeks, using an overture that he already composed for the drama, Die Zauberharfe, The Magic Harp. Schubert’s Overture to Rosamunde was warmly received at its 1823 performance, with the audience demanding an immediate encore. Brimming with the buoyancy and joie-de-vivre that marks his best music, it is a reminder that every piece written by Schubert, who died in 1828 at the age of just 31, was a youthful work.

The composition is disposed in the sonatina form (i.e., sonata-allegro without a development section) employed by Mozart for several of his opera overtures. After a slow introduction containing a theme of ineffable, limpid grace, there follows an exposition with three further Schubertian melodic inspirations. Following a tiny passage at the overture’s mid-point for the reason of modulation, the trio of themes is heard again, and the work is rounded off with a jolly, vigorous coda. It has an abundant flow of pleasing melodies, brilliantly orchestrated.  This sparkling music has thrived on its own as one of Schubert’s most popular works.

Program Notes:- Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra https://culturaldistrict-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/culturaldistrict/system/assets/18236/original/April_23__2017_.pdf

Gioachina Rossini (1792 – 1867)

Barber of Seville Overture

Rossini’s first opera was composed in 1810, and by the time of the composition of The Barber of Seville in 1816, his fame and recognition was formidable. The Barber of Seville is perhaps the greatest comic opera ever written, and the overture is a perfect reflection of all that made it a masterpiece of élan, sparkle, and wit.

Most of his overtures generally follow a pattern, beginning with a slow introduction, usually featuring a cantabile melody in a woodwind instrument.  The main, fast section soon follows, in which the first tune is usually taken by the strings (but not always, as in this particular overture), and the second one by the winds.  There is no development in this truncated sonata form, with the work ending with a recapitulation.

The most striking and beloved characteristic is the famous “Rossini crescendo”, most often featuring the winds, which keeps repeating a main motive, gradually getting louder and louder, as the harmony swings like a pendulum between the tonic and dominant.  Arias in his operas often use the technique to stunning dramatic effect, and its appearance in the overtures is no less smashing.  It’s easy to see why Rossini is perhaps the non plus ultra of composers who makes the most of simple ideas.

Program Notes: https://www.runyanprogramnotes.com/program_note/overture-barber-seville/

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 – 1921)

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33, 1872.

Born in Paris in 1835, Camille Saint-Saëns was an organist, pianist, and composer of music in the classical French tradition. He was born with a remarkable talent. At the age of three, he could already read and write and had begun piano lessons. He began composing at age 5. He made his piano debut at age 10, playing Bach, Mozart and Beethoven for Paris audiences.

In 1848 Saint-Saëns entered the Paris Conservatoire studying organ and composition. He was appointed organist of the Church de la Madeleine in 1857, a post that he held for 20 years. He also taught piano at l’école Niedermeyer from 1861 to 1865 where Gabriel Fauré was one of his pupils. In 1871, Saint-Saëns co-founded the Société Nationale de Musique, a forum for promoting contemporary French Chamber and Orchestral music. During his association with it until 1886, he composed many of his better known works. Among them are Cello Concerto No.1.

The Cello Concerto No.1 is in a single movement. It begins with an impetuous theme in rushing triplets for the soloist that recurs throughout the piece as a supporting pillar. A contrasting, lyrical second theme for the cello is accompanied by a sedate, chordal accompaniment for the string choir. The vibrant motion of the opening theme soon returns and encourages the entire ensemble to join in a developmental discussion. The lyrical theme is heard again, this time as a transition to the Concerto’s central portion, a slow movement with the spirit of a delicate minuet embroidered with a simple, flowing descant from the soloist. The mood of this quiet little dance is broken by a resumption of the rushing triplet theme acting as a link to the Concerto’s last large division. After a brief pause, the finale-like section begins with the cellist’s introduction of a gently syncopated theme. The music builds on this theme, and adds another in the cello’s sonorous, low register as it calls forth increasingly brilliant pyrotechnics from the soloist. One final time, the rushing triplet theme returns, to mark the beginning of the coda and launch the Concerto on its invigorating dash to the end.

Program Notes:- The Kennedy Center – https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/artists/saint-saens-camille/

Des Moines Symphony – https://www.dmsymphony.org/about/news/program-notes-camille-saint-saens-cello-concert-no-1/

Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)

Symphony No.100 in G Major, ‘Military’, 1793-94.

Joseph Haydn never shied away from pleasing the crowd. Near the end of his life, when he was Europe’s preeminent composer, he made two trips to London for seasons of concerts devoted to his music, composing, among other works, 12 new symphonies. The “Military” Symphony was written for the second visit in 1794-95.

The Symphony, which was originally labeled “Grand Overture with the Militaire Movement,” premiered in 1974 at the Hanover Square Rooms, which could hold an audience of 800. Haydn led the orchestra from the fortepiano, a quieter forerunner of the modern grand piano, and Johann Salomon, the violinist, sat in the concertmaster’s seat. In addition to the standard pairs of winds, horns, and trumpets as well as strings and timpani, the orchestra included a battery of Turkish percussion, triangle, cymbals, and bass drum, for which there was a great vogue in late-18th-century European music.

The Symphony opens with an imposing slow introduction; the spirited Allegro that follows (beginning with a solo flute and the oboes) is tautly constructed. Haydn then offers a selection of brief, tightly interconnected motives that form the basis of the movement.

Haydn holds his percussion in reserve until the second movement, the “Militaire Movement.” The main theme, folk-like in its simplicity and steady in its march rhythm, comes from a duet for two liras, an instrument similar to a hurdy-gurdy. A review of the symphony by a London newspaper described the progress of the movement: “It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increase to a climax of horrid sublimity!…”

The third movement is a minuet, a courtly dance with a stately triple rhythm. The movement’s outer sections employ the full orchestra, giving them a sense of grandeur and occasion, while the central section relies mostly on the textures of solo winds and gentle, quiet violins, although even here there is a momentary military outburst. The Presto finale rushes by like an unstoppable perpetual motion machine. In a stroke of genius, Haydn brings back his Turkish percussion during the movement’s closing moments, creating a sense of balance between the finale and the first two movements and bringing things to a exhilarating conclusion.

Program Notes:-

John Mangum – https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/3915/symphony-no-100-military

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Robin Phillips

Vivian Zhang

Clarinet

Colleen Rowe

Annalie Roux

Bassoon

Carolyn Brodie

Jarrah Newman

Mairin Thompson

Horn

Nicole Blackett

Shannon Pallett

Trumpet

Nicole Blackett

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting

Yitong Zheng

*Thank you to ISHS students for augmenting ICO in the violin, cello and flute sections during our performance of the Haydn Symphony.