ICO 2023 season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 26th March 1.00pm @ Sherwood State School, cnr Oxley and Sherwood Rds, Sherwood

Conductor – Greta Hunter

Violin soloist – Isabelle Watson

Welcome to our first ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert for 2023. Sit back and enjoy Purcell’s majestic masque, The Fairy Queen; Bruch’s famous Violin concerto in G minor, featuring soloist, Isabelle Watson; and finally, Haydn’s most original symphony, The Drumroll.  The orchestra’s musical versatility is displayed as it transverses the centuries through performance of these forms in classical music.

Program

Purcell – excerpt from The Fairy Queen Z629 – Act IV symphony. 

Bruch – Violin concerto #1 in G minor, Opus 26

INTERVAL

Haydn – Symphony #103 “Drumroll” in Eb major, Hob.1:103.

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.

Isabell Watson – violin

Violinist, Isabelle Watson is in her final year of a Bachelor of Music (Honours), University of Queensland (UQ), under the tutelage of A/Professor Adam Chalabi.  Her honours thesis examines thematic syntax in Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No.1 (op. 25) and Violin Concerto (op. 64) using analytical models from a recent branch of New Formenlehre adapted to nineteenth century forms.  

Isabelle enjoys the collaborative and powerful nature of orchestral playing. She has recently held principal positions in the Queensland Youth Symphony, UQ Symphony Orchestra and Pulse Chamber Orchestra, and has played in the Chamber Orchestra at the Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp.  Her experience as an emerging artist with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra (Young Mannheim Symphonists Program: Tempestuous Skies tour in 2022) has given her fresh insights into this music by drawing on expressive tools, stylistic information, early recordings, and experimentation with the unique colours and textures of gut strings and classical bows. 

Her musicianship has been recognised with various prizes including winner of the Richard Pollett String Prize, 4MBS Musica Viva Sid Page Chamber Music Prize with the Viridian Piano Quartet, and runner-up in the Sleath String Performance Prize.  

Isabelle enjoys researching and writing about music. She is also fascinated by the French language, completing a Diploma of Languages majoring in Advanced French.

Isabelle was awarded her AMusA in violin during her Year 12 studies at Somerville House in 2018.

Program Notes

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

The Fairy Queen

With the re-opening of theatres after the Restoration of the monarchy, English theatre developed its own unique style, often called dramatic opera, in which additional scenes with music (masques) augmented spoken plays. Using Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the backdrop, The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell expounds on love and marriage, with allusions to co-regnants William and Mary, even as it references London’s ever-expanding world-view.

The Fairy Queen, first performed in London in 1692, was a great success. An unknown librettist adapted Shakespeare’s play and provided the new scenarios and texts. Purcell provided music for the additional scenes interpolated into each act of the play.

The drama of The Fairy Queen is in five acts preceded by instrumental music. The “first and second music,” consisting of two pieces each, were played as the audience took their seats. Then the overture, beginning with its trumpet fanfare, would announce the beginning of the drama. Between the acts are instrumental “act tunes” meant to be played during scene changes.

Act IV begins with a three-movement symphony in the Italian style. In the music that follows, Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, are reconciled after their quarrel, and their reunion is celebrated with a sunrise and the rebirth of the world. All nature is now in order once again, and there follows a masque of the four seasons.

Program notes: Handel & Haydn Society: https://handelandhaydn.org/enhanced-program-notes-the-fairy-queen-love-unbound/

Boston Baroque – Martin Pearlman: https://baroque.boston/purcell-the-fairy-queen

Max Bruch (1838-1920)

Violin Concerto No1 in G minor

Max Bruch’s enduring masterpiece, Violin Concerto No.1 received its official premiere in Bremen in 1868, given by the pre-eminent German violinist, Joseph Joachim. Improvisatory in nature, the opening music in both orchestra and solo violin initiates a mood of introspection, as if searching for the character and sonority of the violin and its collaborator, the orchestra. Both orchestra and violin soloist are given the freedom to establish a presence and a timbre. The establishment of a robust pulse is created by the ‘long-short’ rhythm introduced by the cellos and basses. When the music begins to ease into a song-like character, the interplay between violin soloist and orchestral violins becomes kaleidoscopic in effect. The soloist descends whilst the orchestral violins ascend. This is followed by imitation of the solo line in the 1st violin section while the solo part is now on the ascent. Bruch then marks the score Un poco piu lento (a little more slowly) and this becomes the lyrical heart of the first movement, signalling the style of much of the music to come in both second and final movements ‒ soulful, sweeping, introspective yet courageous.

The Adagio presents a melody of great tenderness, with eloquent counterpoint, notably in the violas and first violins. The establishment of a greater rhythmical foundation is again aided by the cellos and basses, since their gentle pizzicatos facilitate the music’s flow, and open the door to the trading of motives between solo violin and its woodwind/horn counterparts. A new musical subject, descending by a third, then a fourth and finally a fifth, is heard in the bassoons and horns, then in the flute and oboe, decorated by solo violin. The movement overall is in Eb major. Bruch’s shift from its Dominant of Bb major into Gb major is arresting and beautiful. The orchestral violins play the theme in this seemingly distant key, and the solo violin is then heard an octave higher. Breadth and volume develop from this place of intimacy, but as the movement draws to a close, the theme seems to be suspended, and reluctant to find its repose. A long pause is followed by the marking of three pianissimos in the strings and horn and the final ascent of the solo violin ebbs, falls, and dies away.

Bruch’s exciting Finale ‒ Allegro energico has more than a little Hungarian Dance style and fervour about it. The large leaps in the second main theme are almost operatic in their character, and Bruch marks the violin solo part to be played on its lowest string for richness and depth of tone. The virtuosic passage work is always melodic, and faithfully ornaments the orchestral lines. The high, singing music here echoes the soulful sweep of the first movement’s melodies, lending a unity to this concerto. Stringendo (becoming faster) and a final Presto render the music unstoppable as it drives to a conclusion of great elation.

Program notes: Feargus Hetherington https://feargushetherington.com/repertoire/direct-from-the-violin/bruch-violin-concerto-no1-op26/programme-note/

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Symphony No. 103 in Eb (The Drumroll)

Symphony No. 103 is the second last of all Haydn’s symphonies and in may ways the most original. The striking opening drumroll that gives the symphony its nickname introduces an imposing slow introduction that is ambiguous in both key and metre. Although the ensuing Allegro con spirito starts with a jolly folk tune based on a Croatian melody, and the second theme is also dancelike, they too succumb to rhythmic and harmonic ambivalence, with accented offbeats and occasional modulation into minor keys. After much inventive manipulation of the two dance themes, the slow opening is suddenly repeated, before a spirited set of fanfare-like flourishes concludes the movement.

The second movement is a clever double variation on two themes, one in C major and the other in C minor and both of Croatian origin. The genial Menuetto also has its origins in folk music, in this case the Ländler, the forerunner to the waltz. The horns open the final movement with a four note motif that Haydn then works up in an elaborate competition with the main theme. Ultimately this motif is heard in all the brass and woodwind to bring the work to an exciting conclusion.

Program notes: Maroondah Symphony Orchestra https://www.maroondahsymphony.org.au/program-notes/haydn-symphony-103-the-drumroll/

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Hayley Bryant

Zoe Ingram

Kymberley Jones

Clarinet

Richard Iliff

Colleen Rowe

Bassoon

Jarrah Newman

Kirsten Wilson

Horn

Nicole Blackett

David Innes

Piano

Gary Hunt

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting