ICO 2024 season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 16 June 1.00pm @ Sherwood State School, cnr Oxley and Sherwood Rds, Sherwood

Welcome to the third ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert in 2024 (the second concert here at Sherwood State School) where you will enjoy the quality of our thoughtfully chosen repertoire. The orchestra will open with the Tragic Overture Op.81 by Johannes Brahms, a piece with defiant energy mixed with fleeting touches of thrilling, individual emotion. Next, be captivated by a 15-minute extravaganza, Sonata for Grand Viola by Niccoló Paganini, performed by soloist, Haydn Li. And finally, a French twist with Étienne-Nicolas Méhul’s Symphony No.2, a perpetually sunny work showcasing a transition from the classical to romantic periods.

Program

Johannes Brahms – Tragic Overture Op. 81

Niccoló Paganini – Sonata for Grand Viola

INTERVAL

Étienne-Nicolas Méhul – Symphony No. 2 in D major (movements 2, 3 and 4)

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.

Haydn Li

Haydn Li attained his AMusA on both violin and viola in 2021, and LMusA on viola in 2022.

Haydn is a two-time recitalist in the John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition, and two-time finalist in the QSO Young Instrumentalist Prize. In 2023 he won 2nd prize in the AUSTAQ Concerto Competition, and was invited to perform at the AMEB Diploma Awards Ceremony, where he was also presented with the AUSTA Strings Award.

In 2022, Haydn was the concertmaster of QYO2, and in 2023 he lead the Redland Sinfonia as the youngest ever concertmaster in their Finale concert, appearing also as a soloist on both the violin and viola. Haydn currently plays violin in QYS.

Haydn is also the violinist of Trio Bellissimo piano trio, and violist of The IncrediBows string quartet, with both ensembles reaching the grand finals of the 2022 Strike A Chord National Chamber Music Championship held in Melbourne. Trio Bellissimo has been invited to perform internationally in Hamburg and Amsterdam, and in the masterclass of Louise Hopkins.

Haydn, 15 years-old, currently studies violin with Warwick Adeney and viola with Yoon Joo Jee. Haydn is an avid athlete, and was the Age Champion for Athletics in 2021 and 2023 at Canterbury College.

Program Notes

Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)

Tragic Overture Op. 81

In the summer of 1880, when Brahms was visiting the fashionable resort of Bad Ischl known for its medicinal springs and brine baths, he composed two concert overtures. “One weeps, the other laughs,” he commented. The laughing piece referred to his rollicking Academic Festival Overture, Opus 80, filled with light-hearted student songs, written to acknowledge his doctoral degree bestowed by the University of Breslau, introduced by soft trombone chords. The weeping piece was his Tragic Overture, Opus 81, and a heavy counterpoise to the first. Brahms explained his motivation saying, “I could not refuse my melancholy nature the satisfaction of composing an overture for tragedy.”

Tragic Overture begins with two slashing chords, which preface the solemn main theme, orchestrated within low strings and low winds in D minor. Trombones and tuba build a bridge to a contrasting F major theme, but relief is short. A third main subject stemming earlier sketches is also introduced. Writing in sonata form, the composer moves directly into a convulsive development. Brahms scholar Walter Niemann wrote, “The fleeting touches of thrilling, individual emotion in this overture are not to be found in conflict and storm, but in the crushing loneliness of terrifying and unearthly silences in what have been called ‘dead places.’” Themes surge and spin in a tempest of emotion. A traditional recapitulation, introduced by two fortissimo chords, summarizes the main ideas with certain alterations. Opus 81 premiered on December 20, 1880 in Vienna under the baton of Hans Richter.

Program notes:-

https://www.indianapolissymphony.org/backstage/program-notes/brahms-tragic-overture/

Niccoló Paganini (1782 – 1840)

Sonata for Grand Viola

Paganini had been playing the viola and composing for it for several decades before he became seduced by the idea of it as a solo instrument around 1832. Paganini owned a particularly large and sonorous viola made by the famous Stradivari clan, referred to as a Grand Viola, and wanted to show off both the instrument and his techniques with it. He then heard a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, was utterly enchanted by it, and commissioned the composer to write a viola concerto. Reluctant at first – after all, Berlioz was being asked by the greatest musician on the planet to compose a concerto for an instrument Berlioz was not intimately familiar with – Berlioz eventually began his majestic Harold in Italy, a sort of symphonic tone poem led by a viola soloist. Paganini, however, was unimpressed after hearing the first movement and abandoned Berlioz, but not before the composer sagely suggested that Paganini write his own. The result, in 1834, was Paganini’s own Sonata for Grand Viola and Orchestra.

Program notes:-

https://www.musicprogramnotes.com/paganini-sonata-for-grand-viola-and-orchestra/

Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763 – 1817)

Symphony No. 2

Méhul was one of the most important French composers who lived at the time of the French Revolution. Beethoven is said to have admired Méhul’s music, and even was influenced by him in his own Fidelio. Known primarily a theatre composer, Méhul composed several instrumental works as well, including five symphonies (the fifth was incomplete and unperformed). Symphony No. 1 bears the clear influence of Haydn in its brilliantly contrasted first movement, and especially in the innovative pizzicato scherzo. The finale is striking for its dramatic main theme, an insistent repeated note figure that suggests similarities with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Symphony No. 2 presents a more lyrical countenance, sounding very much like the youthful symphonies of Franz Schubert, though with greater contrapuntal sophistication. This perpetually sunny work makes novel and, one could say, Beethovenian use of the timpani in the finale, making for a satisfyingly buoyant ending.

Program notes:-

https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-5783/

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Narelle Clarke

Kymberley Jones

Robyn Phillips

Clarinet

Joan Martinuzzi

Colleen Rowe

Bassoon

Angela Cook

Thomas Melton

Horn

Nicole Blackett

Jason Graieg

David Innes

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting