ICO 2026 Season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 13 September 1.00pm – Indooroopilly State High School

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

Be charmed and dazzled by some of the best names in classical music. Have fun with Mozart’s thrilling Marriage of Figaro Overture and delight in the joyful elegances of Boccherini’s Cello Concerto No. 9 and Mozart’s Symphony 36.

Program

Mozart – Marriage of Figaro Overture

Boccherini arr. Gruetzmacher – Cello Concerto in Bb Major 482

INTERVAL

Mozart – Symphony No. 36 ‘Linz’

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.

Emma Seedell-Greene – Cello Soloist

​Emma Seedell-Greene is an English-Australian cellist in her second year of university at the Queensland Conservatorium, where she is currently working towards a Bachelor of Music, majoring in cello performance. She has an ever-growing passion for world music, and currently learns under the guide of Hungarian cellist György Deri at her university.

Emma has been a cellist of the Queensland Youth Symphony for four years. In 2023 at the age of 18, she toured Austria, Germany, and Singapore, performing symphonic works in world-famous concert halls as a member of QYS. AddiNonally, Emma has worked alongside QSO for their ‘Spirit of Christmas’ concert, as well as their Ensemble Q.

Previous to her current music studies and Nme with QYS, Emma was taught by the late David Dornbusch, and Queensland Symphony Orchestra cellist MaShew Jones. She began her orchestral journey with the Tangiev String Orchestra, where she was principal cellist for many years. In 2022, Emma completed and received her Associate in Music (AMusA).

Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

Marriage of Figaro Overture

In 1782, the French playwright, Beaumarchais, offered private readings to King Louis XIV of his comedy of manners, The Marriage of Figaro. Instead of being pleased, the monarch decided the story was “detestable and must never be produced.” The irreverence was simply too much. As “forbidden fruit,” the play became the rage of the aristocracy, and it surfaced repeatedly in secret productions (one even including the King’s wife.) Like the King, Napoleon also sniffed danger in the plot, and he declared that the play was “the revolution already in action.” The Austrian government echoed the danger and banned the play from its borders. In 1784, the play was presented publicly in Paris to great acclaim, and within a year, Germany had twelve translations on hand. The Marriage of Figaro was unquenchable.

After searching through hundreds of plays for an opera buffa, Mozart decided this was just the ticket. With the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, the pair produced the opera Marriage of Figaro in only six weeks. The Overture was completed only two days before the opening on May 1, 1786.

The music opens with bustling notes, like whispers of gossip which gain momentum. Ultimately, these fragments gel into an energetic theme which romps happily throughout the Overture. Moods shift like quicksilver; a comedic helter-skelter atmosphere prevails; and there is no rest. At one point, Mozart had considered a contrasting slow tune for oboe but deleted the idea. Allowing the Overture to run with its madcap nature, uninterrupted by any structural corseting, provided the perfect introduction and preparation for the hilarious opera. It has always delighted audiences as a separate concert piece for hundreds of years.

Program notes by: Marianne Williams Tobias – https://www.indianapolissymphony.org/backstage/program-notes/mozart-overture-tole-nozze-di-figaro/

Luigi Boccherini (1743 – 1805)

Cello Concerto in Bb Major 482 (arr. Gruetzmacher)

The Cello Concerto in B-flat Major is Luigi Boccherini’s most beloved work for the instrument, embodying Classical charm and virtuosity. The version frequently performed, recorded by legends like Jacqueline du Pré, was rearranged by the 19th-century German cellist Friedrich Grützmacher in 1895. This arrangement is technically a Romantic-era reimagining that blends the original concerto with elements from other Boccherini works. The Allegro moderato opens the concerto with a bright, sunny, and elegant theme, which the cello echoes after the orchestra introduces it. It is characterised by high-register singing and a lively dialogue between soloist and orchestra, culminating in a dramatic cadenza. The Adagio non troppo is the emotional heart. It is tender, lyrical, and introspective, allowing the soloist to demonstrate profound expression. The Rondo (Allegro) is a playful and spirited finale that features technical challenges, such as arpeggios, before returning to the light-hearted main theme.

Program Notes by: https://www.google.com/search

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

Symphony No.36 in C, K.425, Linz

Mozart spent four days composing the symphony, and it was first performed in the theatre at Linz in 1783. Scored for pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets as well as timpani and strings (Thun’s Linz orchestra had no flutes) the Linz Symphony shows more strongly than any other Mozart symphony the influence of Joseph Haydn.

The most obvious Haydnesque feature is the first movement’s slow and genial introduction, although the subsequent sonata-form romp (with an unusually regular recapitulation) is typical Mozart. The second movement makes use of the gently rocking rhythm of a siciliana while the minor-key episode introduced by pattering unison strings appears to have been inspired by a passage from the Michael Haydn Symphony performed in the same concert.

In the words of the great Mozart scholar, Albert Einstein, the final two movements could be mistaken for Haydn “if it were not that they contain in every bar typically Mozartean chromaticism, agitation and pliancy.” The third movement includes a charming trio which adds a delicious touch of local flavour by being somewhat in the nature of a popular Austrian dance, the Ländler, while the fourth movement is a bustling and energetic finale which would certainly have tested the virtuosity of the Linz violinists.

Program notes by: https://www.hkphil.org/watch-and-listen/symphonies/mozart-symphony-no-36-linz

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra