ICO Sundays 2022

Sunday 11th September 1.00pm @ Sherwood State School, cnr Oxley and Sherwood Rds, Sherwood

Conductor – Greta Hunter

Violin Soloist – Miriam Niessl

Join us for a concert where the orchestral sounds will lift your heart, make you think, and propel you to dance as you listen to compositions by Rossini, Bargiel and Saint-Saëns, and be dazzled by the virtuosity of soloist Miriam Niessl as she performs the truly great violin concerto by Mendelssohn.

Program

Gioachino Rossini – Il Signor Bruschino Overture

Felix Mendelssohn – Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra Opus 64

INTERVAL 

Woldemar Bargiel– Intermezzo Opus 46

Camille Saint-Saens – Suite Pour Orchestre (Suite in D major) Opus 49

Greta Hunter – Conductor

Greta Hunter is a flutist, music educator, conductor, and musical director of three community ensembles in Brisbane.

Greta holds a Bachelor of Music with first class honours majoring in Classical Flute Performance from the University of Queensland.  She held the 2018 position of principal flute with the Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS) after previously performing as the orchestra’s principal piccolo.  Greta has toured regularly with the QYO Chamber Orchestra and in 2017 performed with the QYS on its major international tour to China and Germany.  She is the flute specialist tutor at the Westside Christian College, Brisbane.

Greta is an experienced conductor with a passion for community music.  In 2019 she attended the Melbourne Youth Orchestra’s conductor development program, and the advanced conducting program at the Australian Choral Conductors Education and Training (ACCET) Summer School.  Greta has also attended the Australian Conducting Academy in Tasmania and the Zlin International Conducting Masterclass in the Czech Republic, and was invited to guest conduct the QYS in its 2018 Strings Sensations concert.

Greta is the musical director and conductor of the Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra, Songshine Choir and Queensland Korean Junior Strings.

Miriam Niessl – violin

Miriam Niessl was born into a large musical family, and at the age of 4 she commenced her studies under the Suzuki tutelage of Christine Dunaway. After being awarded her AMusA at 13 she continued her studies with Dr Brendan Joyce, the artistic director of Camerata.

Through the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Young Instrumentalist Prize’, Miriam was awarded the loan of an Arthur Edward Smith Violin and the highly memorable opportunity to perform a duet with the concertmaster, Warwick Adeny.  Miriam has been a longstanding member of the Queensland Youth Orchestra, and is now the Associate Concertmaster under Simon Hewett’s baton.

In 2021 Miriam commenced her studies at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University where she now studies under the repute Michele Walsh. Her tertiary studies are supported by the Sir Samuel Griffith Scholarship due to outstanding academic achievement at high school.  Miriam has competed in several in-house competitions including the Basil Jones Sonata Prize and the Matilda Jane Aplin Prize where she was awarded as a finalist and prize winner respectively.

Miriam has immensely enjoyed her membership in the Tarilindy Quartet where the group was announced a finalist in the 4MBS chamber music prize and was nominated to represent Australia in the ‘Musical Chairs’ International Chamber Music Festival in Canada earlier this year.

This year Miriam was greatly excited to participate in the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp and Winter Season. Miriam made her debut performance in the Young Artist series of the Brisbane Music Festival at the invitation of artistic director, Alex Raineri, and hopes to pursue a career in orchestral, chamber and solo performance.

Program Notes

Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868)

Il Signor Bruschino Overture

You’ve heard Rossini’s music everywhere, from Bugs Bunny to bath soap commercials to orchestra halls. The skipping, tinkling tunes of Rossini run through our heads like classic one-liners.

What is it about Rossini’s music that makes it so enduringly popular, more than 140 years after his death? Perhaps it is the ear-to-ear grin that shines through his every musical phrase. At his best, Rossini created diversionary music, the kind of stuff that’s made to lift the heart and lighten the load. Be it an aria, a march, a dance or a chorus, each of Rossini’s works glow with a giggling light-heartedness that is rarely heard elsewhere.

During his lifetime, Rossini was almost entirely celebrated as a composer of operas, of which there were many. His first opera, “La cambiale di matrimonio” (The Marriage Contract), was performed when he was just 18 years old. Within three years, his name was virtually synonymous with Italian comic opera — both at home and abroad.

One of his first major successes came with “Il signor Bruschino, ossia Il figlio per azzardo” (Signor Bruschino, or The Accidental Son), which premiered in Venice in 1813. Though significantly shorter than most of his later operas, this one-act farce already displayed many of the compositional signatures for which Rossini would become known, starting with the brief and vigorous overture.

The overture is perhaps best-recognized by its signature trick: a repeating motif in which the second violins tap their bows on their music stands. Beyond that, this is quintessential Rossini: a little false bluster, a lot of levity, and a couple of thrilling crescendos to tie it all up.

Program Notes by:

Joe Nickell https://www.thecip.org/rossini-overture-il-signor-bruschino/

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)

Concerto in E Minor for Violin and Orchestra Op. 64

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto stemmed from a deep friendship and collaboration with the esteemed violinist, Ferdinand David. It was the first in a series of violin concertos written by pianist-composers with the assistance of eminent violinists. David was responsible both for the cadenza and for giving frequent advice regarding technical matters through the compositional process. The outcome was a serious, exquisite, elegant essay in the romantic concerto genre, ultimately ranking among the finest violin concerti written in the nineteenth century. Perhaps David anticipated this when he said to the composer, “This is going to be something great! There is plenty of music for violin and orchestra, but there has only been one big, truly great concerto (Beethoven) and now there will be two!” Mendelssohn replied, “I am not competing with Beethoven.”

The Mendelssohn concerto bore no resemblance to the Beethoven work. Its three movements are played without pause. This concerto discards the usual orchestral introductory exposition, beginning instead with orchestral “accompaniment” style, thereby creating a sense of expectation. The violin soloist obliges quickly with a soaring, restless melody, intensifying as it rises. Completing its statement, the soloist moves to a lower register, and remains in the background, as the second theme murmurs from flutes and clarinets. Mendelssohn’s development provides a structural surprise. In this section, the composer moves a written cadenza from its traditional place at the end of the first movement to a new location at the end of the development. The recapitulation enters from the orchestra with the soloist continuing an arpeggiated figure derived from the cadenza. The soloist is clearly collaborating at this point with the orchestra rather than seizing the stage, revealing one of the concerto’s features of interlocking partnership between the two forces. A solo bassoon, holding one note from a cadential chord bridges this movement into the second.

The middle section, an Andante in C major, offers a tender theme sung by the soloist as its main subject. A middle section spins a minor tune over bustling 32nd notes providing significant contrast to the opening calm. The third section recalls the opening theme, refreshed by new accompaniment. Fourteen bars of transitional material bridge to the concluding section.

A tiny introduction and brass fanfare opens the brilliant finale. The soloist answers with lightly scampering arpeggios. A bright main theme from the soloist dances over fairy-like accompaniment from the orchestra. Echoes of Midsummer Night’s Dream are everywhere. Changing this delicate mood, the orchestra asserts a strong second theme, which steadily loses its initial weight, gains flexibility, and finally runs off in a playful mood. The soloist provides a lyrical theme in the development section leading to continued collaboration with the orchestra until a dazzling conclusion.

Program Notes by: 

Marianne Williams Tobias https://www.indianapolissymphony.org/backstage/program-notes/mendelssohn-concerto-in-e-minor/

Woldemar Bargiel (1828 – 1897)

Intermezzo Op. 46

Woldemar Bargiel was born in Berlin.  His father Adolph Bargirl was a well-known piano and voice teacher, and his half sister was Clara Schumann. Clara was nine years older than Woldemar, and throughout their lives, they enjoyed a warm relationship.  The initial opportunities which led to the success and recognition he enjoyed were due to Clara, who introduced him to both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. 

Bargiel received his first lessons at home and later with the well-known Berlin teacher of music theory Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn. Upon the suggestion of Schumann and the recommendation of Mendelssohn, Bargiel at age 16 went to study at the famous Leipzig Conservatory with some of the leading men of music: Ignaz Moscheles (piano) and Niels Gade (composition), and also with Julius Rietz.

Bargiel followed the well-heeled route of training in Leipzig, and then a succession of teaching posts in Germany and around Europe culminating in twenty three years up to his death as director of the composition class at the Royal Höchschule für Musik in Berlin.  Eventually, Clara and Robert Schumann were able to arrange for the publication of some of his early works, including his First Piano Trio.

If that would lead you to expect music strong on a certain academic correctness you would be right. The German Musical Times from 1860 is quoted as saying he had “… a mimetic predilection for Schumann”, but in fact most of the time you spend hearing not just echoes of contemporaries from Brahms to Tchaikovsky but positive pastiches.

Program Notes by:

Joachim Raff https://www.talkclassical.com/68590-woldemar-bargiel-1828-1897-a.html

Nick Barnard http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Jun/Bargiel_sy_CDS11052.htm

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)

Suite Pour Orchestre (Suite in D major) Op.49 

Born in Paris, Camille Saint-Saëns is one of the most extraordinary musical prodigies in the history of Western music. As a highly gifted pianist he made his concert debut at the age of ten, at which he announced to the audience that he would happily perform any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas as an encore. 

Having studied at the Paris Conservatoire, he followed a conventional path as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris, and later at La Madeleine, where he remained for some two decades and was praised for his improvisatory prowess. He was much in demand throughout Europe and the Americas, enjoying a successful career as a pianist and composer; however, the perception of Saint-Saëns the composer changed throughout his lifetime, which coincided with a period of revolutionary changes in the arts. During his youth, he championed such progressive figures as Wagner and Liszt, yet in his later years he revealed a much more conservative approach, rooted in tradition and reactionary to the innovative developments of Debussy, Stravinsky and others.

In its original form, the Suite in D major, Op. 49 might be considered a remnant of a now defunct genre: music for harmonium. This instrument enjoyed great popularity in the 19th century, especially in France. The fact that Saint-Saëns originally composed the Suite in D major for harmonium in 1863 can be seen, therefore, as conforming to the fashion of the time, and as the instrument was often seen as a ‘substitute orchestra’, it was inevitable that in 1869 he prepared an orchestral version for the Concerts Litolff held at the Paris Opera. 

The suite is largely characterised by French Baroque dance movements, as found in the music of old French masters such as Rameau, but also in the solo violin, cello and keyboard suites and partitas of Bach. Beginning with a Prélude dominated by low, rustic-sounding drones, a stately Sarabande follows which, despite its Baroque inspiration, simultaneously seems to look ahead to the music of Elgar. This gives way to a lively Gavotte, a medium-paced dance in ABA form, whose middle ‘B’ section sees the return of a drone (this time in the upper strings), supporting a pair of duetting flutes. The remaining two movements leave the world of French Baroque dance music behind: after the calm introspection of the gently flowing Romance, the moto perpetuo drive of the Final rounds off this attractive suite with a scherzo-like finesse.

Program Notes by:

Dominic Wells https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.573732&catNum=573732&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English 

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Midori Matsumura

Nickea Warrener

Oboe

Ben Duke

Clarinet

Ryan Evans

Colleen Rowe

Bassoon

Jarrah Newman

Kirsten Wilson

Horn

John MacGinley

Bob Townsend

Piano

Gary Hunt

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting