ICO 2026 Season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 21 June 1.00pm – Indooroopilly State High School

Welcome to our second ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert for 2026. We hope you have enjoyed a symphony of memorable moments this year.

Celebrate the inspiring world of orchestral music with some of the greatest hits of all time. In a special collaboration concert with Indooroopilly State High School, this program features many concert favourites from throughout history, and not to mention a stunning feature of Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2.

Program

ISHS Symphony Orchestra:

Franz Schubert arr. Richard Meyer – Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished” Movement 1

Norman Tailor – Latin Fever

Soon Hee Newbold – Gravitas

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra:

Paisello – The Barber of Seville

Beethoven – Symphony No. 7, 2nd Movement

Rachmaninoff – Scherzo in D minor

Bottesini – Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B Minor, 1st Movement

INTERVAL

Haydn – Symphony 94 Movement 3 Minuet

Mozart – Turkish March

Combined ISHS and ICO performance:

Galante – Nostalgia

Stravinsky – Finale from The Firebird

Greta Hunter – ICO 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.

James Kukulies – ISHS Conductor

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.

Alex Liao – Double Bass Soloist

Alex Liao is a dedicated double bassist and current Year 12 student at Brisbane State High School, where he studies under Phoebe Russell, Principal Double Bass of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. He is the Associate Principal double bass of the University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra, performing under the baton of Professor Paul Dean, and a committed member of the Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS). Most recently, he has also joined the Logan City Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to his orchestral pursuits, Alex has engaged in numerous chamber music opportunities, most recently performing the Beethoven Septet. With a passion for music and performance, Alex aspires to pursue a professional career as a double bassist, dedicating himself to refining his craft and performing at the highest level.

Program Notes

Giovanni Paisiello (1740 – 1816)

Barber of Seville Overture

Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most successful and influential opera composers of his day. Most of his 80-plus operas are comic, simple, and direct, getting to the plot more quickly and keeping it moving – a style different from previous composers. He is today primarily known for writing in 1782, the “other” Barber of Seville opera. The more famous version, composed by Gioacchino Rossini, premiered a few months before Paisiello’s death.

Paisiello was trained in Naples and established himself there as a leading comic opera composer. He was invited by Empress Catherine II of Russia to St. Petersburg in 1776. It was there he wrote his “Barber” – Il barbiere di Siviglia – which became known throughout Europe. Paisiello’s colourful scoring and warm melodies influenced Mozart, who composed his “Marriage of Figaro” as a sequel to Paisiello’s “Barber.” Paisiello later returned to Naples where he produced many of his best operas, including one called Nina. From that point, around 1790, he began composing serious operas.

Even though the popularity of Paisiello’s “Barber” initially hindered the success of Rossini’s version, soon Rossini’s “Barber” swept Paisiello’s from the stage. A long period ensued when Paisiello was nearly forgotten, but a 1960’s recording of his “Barber” enabled the public to recognise its merits. It has regained a limited place in the operatic repertory. Paisiello wrote a good deal of church music, including eight masses, and also composed motets, cantatas, oratorios, keyboard concertos, and string quartets.

Program notes by: The Kennedy Centre
https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/p/pa-pn/giovanni-paisiello/

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

Symphony 7 Op. 92 Movement 2

The transcendent Allegretto of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major continues to captivate listeners, with its theme of struggle and progress, of adversity and ultimate triumph. A simple rhythm is again the principal cause of the extraordinary effect. The rhythmic pattern consists merely of a dactyl (one long and two short syllables) followed by a spondee (two long syllables) played relentlessly, either in three parts, or in only one, then in all parts together.

Sometimes this pattern serves as an accompaniment, but frequently it focuses attention on itself, and also provides the starting point for a small fugal episode with two subjects played by the strings. It appears first in the lower strings—violas, cellos, double-basses—played piano, then is repeated soon after in a pianissimo full of melancholy and mystery. From there it passes to the second violins while the cellos sing a kind of lament in the minor mode. The rhythmic pattern rises from octave to octave, reaches the first violins who then pass it in a crescendo to the wind instruments at the top of the orchestra, where it bursts out in its full force. Sounded with even greater vehemence, the melody now assumes the character of an anguished lament. Conflicting rhythms clash painfully with each other; these are tears, sobs and supplications—this is the expression of limitless grief and all-consuming suffering. But a ray of hope appears: these heartbreaking sounds are followed by a transparent melody, pure, simple, gentle, sad and resigned, like patience smiling to suffering. The basses continue on their own with their inexorable rhythm under this melodic rainbow.

After a similar alternation of anguish and resignation, the orchestra, as though drained by such a painful struggle, plays only fragments of the main theme and collapses in exhaustion. Flutes and oboes pick up the theme in a dying voice, but do not have the strength to finish it, which the violins do with a few barely audible pizzicato notes. At this point the wind instruments, reviving like the flame of a candle on the point of extinction, utter a deep sigh on an unresolved harmony and … the rest is silence. This mournful cry, which begins and ends the andante, is produced by a six-four chord, which always tends to resolve itself onto another one. Ending on an unresolved harmony is the only way to conclude, by leaving the listener in suspense and thereby increasing the impression of dreamy sadness.

Program Notes by: https://stringsmagazine.com/beethovens-allegretto-greatest-music-ever/

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Scherzo in D minor

Scherzo in D minor is Sergei Rachmaninoff’s earliest surviving composition for orchestra, composed when he was a student at the Moscow Conservatory. It is quite short, taking between four and five minutes to play. The manuscript is dated 1888, when Rachmaninoff was still only 14. It is dedicated to his cousin Alexander Siloti, and it was intended to be part of a larger work because it is headed “Third movement”. The model for the work is the Scherzo from Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rachmaninoff had earlier transcribed Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony for two pianos, and the Scherzo also has echoes of that work. The first performance of both the Scherzo took place in Moscow 1945, and was published in 1947.

Program notes by: https://classicalnotes.blogspot.com/2015/05/rachmaninoff-scherzo-for-orchestra.html

Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889)

Double Bass Concerto No.2 in B Minor (Movement 1)

One of the most colourful – and mysterious – celebrities in nineteenth-century music is Giovanni Bottsini, the double bass virtuoso who also became a successful opera composer and conductor. Bottesini was to the double bass what Paganini was to the violin, or Liszt to the piano, a virtuoso supreme who astonished his audiences with effects previously unimaginable. Composed in 1845, this concerto remained unpublished until 1950 but soon became a standard work for the bass. The first movement, marked Allegro moderato, features a brief introduction. The solo double bass part, inspired by the Italian lyric vocal style known as “bel canto,” incorporates embellishments, leaps in the high register, and long, melodic lines. The movement reaches its dramatic climax with the cadenza, showcasing the player’s technical prowess through double stops, chord sequences, harmonics, and virtuosic passages.

Program notes by: https://anam.com.au/cms_uploads/docs/bottesini-bass-concerto-no.-2.pdf and https://www.ystmusic.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Concert-Program-.pdf

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Symphony 94 Movement 3 Minuet

The symphony has been the major genre for orchestra since the eighteenth century. While its viability seemed questionable as the twentieth century waned, it still has its adherents among contemporary composers, and will probably survive, though not with the same universality and vitality as before. As one can well imagine, from its roots in the early eighteenth-century opera overture to the extended and monumental works of late Romanticism, such a long gestation period, growth, and maturity would produce many “parents.” Haydn has popularly been known as the “father” of the symphony, but, of course, no one is. It must be said, though, that his contribution, at a critical time in its development was the most significant of anyone’s. He, who was responsible more than any other for what is known as “classical” musical style, created the most extended series of imaginative innovations and developments in the genre as it reached early maturity under the “big three,” Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

In this era, the third movement is generally the obligatory minuet and trio, but at the hands of a master, it’s not a perfunctory movement, at all. By this time in his life, Haydn had written countless minuets, but he never let the simple form get stale on him. This example leaves well behind the delicate, perfume-scented dance of earlier times, and is a rather heavy, stomping affair that evokes peasant waltzes rather than the powdered wig set. The scherzos of Beethoven seem right over the horizon. There’s always a middle section for contrast in these movements, and this one eschews the “stomping” for a light, flowing melody. Notice that here Haydn frequently doubles the melody in the first violins with the bassoon, not all that common, and testament to his skill at orchestra colour.

Program notes by: https://www.runyanprogramnotes.com/program_note/symphony-no-94-g-major-surprise-h-i94/

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Turkish March

One of Mozart’s best-known tunes, the ‘Rondo alla Turca’ is actually the third and final movement from his Sonata No. 11 K331 for piano. Mozart composed Sonata No. 11 at the age of around 27 – perhaps in 1783 in Vienna or Salzburg. The third and final movement, known popularly as the Turkish March, is in the rondo form, and was entitled ‘Alla Turca’ by Mozart himself. At the time Mozart wrote Sonata No. 11, the music of Turkish Janissary bands was very much in fashion. These groups are thought to be the oldest form of military marching bands in the world. Indeed, at that time in Mozart’s life, anything Ottoman was very much in vogue, and you can see the influence of the empire in his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which is set in a seraglio – a type of Ottoman harem or brothel. Mozart’s quick, simple, yet rustic melody has become so popular that it has inspired many to use it as a basis for new works.

Program notes by ClassicFM

Rossano Galante (b.1967)

Nostalgia (Overture)

Rossano Galante is a highly acclaimed American composer known for his emotionally charged and cinematic works for wind band. Galante developed a passion for music at an early age, studying composition and orchestration throughout his formative years. Although fairly brief in duration, this exciting overture features plenty of power and musical depth. It was originally written for brass quintet, and it wasn’t until many years later that the full band version was written.

The opening melody sweeps across the audience, taking each listener on a beautiful journey. One may envision themselves gliding over a vast and open valley or sweeping though a redwood forest. The second section gives way to a soaring melody in the oboe with the gentle trickle of percussive bells. Clarinet and euphonium develop this melody, with trumpets joining in for a triumphant return to the original theme. The ensemble returns with the opening fanfare for a brilliant conclusion to this new and exciting composition.

Program Notes by Kennesaw State University Wind Symphony concert program, 2018 – https://www.windrep.org/Landscapes_(Wind_Ensemble)

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Finale from The Firebird Suite (arr. Merle J. Isaac)

Igor Stravinsky was a Russian modernist composer with many famed works from the twentieth century. In 1910 he composed his first major orchestral commission, The Firebird Suite, which is a ballet whose music draws from Russian folklore. The story of the ballet is centered around Prince Evan Tsarevich. He, with the help of the titular mythical Firebird, seeks to free thirteen princesses who have been imprisoned by the spells of an evil Sorcerer Koschei. The ballet concludes with Tsarevich destroying the egg that makes Koschei immortal and the liberation of the princesses. Throughout the ballet, Stravinksy uses different modal techniques and leitmotifs to represent his characters. Humans and mortals, such as Tsarevich, are represented by diatonic scales and tonal melodies. Mythical characters, such as the Firebird and Sorcerer, are represented by added dissonance and chromaticism.

Program notes by: https://audienceaccess.co/bio/HARTS-64324

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

James Wigan

Sarah Rhodes

Vivian Zhang

Clarinet

Annalie Roux

Amira Geurgis-Brown

Bassoon

Carolyn Brodie

Layni Cameron

Horn

Nicole Blackett

Juliet McCreath

Trumpet

Caitlin Reilly

James Pisko

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting