ICO 2025 Season – Sundays @ 1pm

Sunday 7 December 1.00pm – Indooroopilly State High School

Welcome to our final ICO Sundays @ 1pm concert for 2025. We hope you have enjoyed a symphony of memorable moments this year.

Feel the waves of passion with an extraordinary opening of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture followed by the formidable first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Afterwards, find reprieve in the English countryside with works by Holst and Quilter.

Program

Ludwig Van Beethoven – Coriolan Overture, Op.62

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto, Op.35, 1st Movement in D Major

INTERVAL

Gustav Holst – Two Songs Without Words, Op.22

Roger Quilter – Where the Rainbow Ends

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.

Fan Yang

Program Notes

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1826)

Coriolan Overture, Op.62, 1807.

This overture was inspired by Heinrich von Collin’s play Coriolan, based on one of Shakespeare’s less frequently performed tragedies, Coriolanus. Collin’s play enjoyed some success on the Viennese stage for a time after its creation in 1802, subsequently fading from view. It resurfaced for a remarkable one-night stand in 1807 at the palace of Beethoven’s patron Prince Lobkowitz – a vehicle solely for Beethoven’s new overture. Collin’s play then sank like a stone, while Beethoven’s tremendous overture endures.

Beethoven no doubt identified with Shakespeare’s story of a lone man heroically bucking the system, rather than any putative improvement on the original by Collin. Thus, it is assumed that Beethoven’s overture is “programmatic,” dealing with the Roman general Coriolanus and his contempt for the plebeians of Rome, whom he considers greedy and corrupt. He also curses the Roman Senate for bowing to the wishes of the plebeians, for which act of rebellion he and his family are exiled. Coriolanus joins the enemy side, the Volscians, whom he agrees to lead in battle against Rome. Volumnia, Coriolanus’ mother, begs her son to make peace with Rome.

The stormy first subject of the overture, in C minor, shows Coriolanus’ rebellious nature, the second subject (a tone higher) is associated with the gentle and humane Volumnia. Volumnia eventually seems to win her son over, but then the C-minor theme returns, with less conviction, and the music literally falls apart, as does Coriolanus, whose only possible fate is death: in Shakespeare he is killed by the Volscians, whose army he ultimately refuses to lead against Rome. In Collin, he falls on his own sword. In Beethoven he fades away, almost imperceptibly.

Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)

Violin Concerto, Op.35, 1st Movement in D Major, 1878.

In October 1877 Tchaikovsky fled from his home and from a disastrous marriage that had lasted little over two months. It threw him into a deep depression, but curiously, this crisis that would have silenced most creative minds worked in his case in a positive direction. He never lost his will to compose even when he felt besieged by the world’s tormenting army. Always a wanderer, he left Russia and resumed work on two of his most masterly pieces, the opera Eugene Onegin and the Fourth Symphony. In March 1878, when he moved on from his refuge in Italy to Switzerland, still troubled in spirit but rich in inspiration, he composed the Violin Concerto with remarkable speed.

The chosen key of D has an inescapable magic and brilliance on the violin. The course of Tchaikovsky’s concerto is not hard to follow, although the only real puzzle comes at the beginning: The first eight bars, so affecting and so innocent, are never heard again. The first subject proper is left until the soloist’s entry, and when it has generated a lively rush of notes, the second subject continues in precisely the same mood. It too develops in pace and complexity until the full orchestra gives out the main theme, like a grand ceremonial procession. The development follows, and a cadenza of great brilliance brings back the opening material. In the coda, the contest between violin and orchestra becomes more and more strident.

Gustav Holst (1874 – 1934)

Two Songs Without Words, Op.22, 1906.

English composer, Gustav Holst was born into a very musical family. His father was a pianist and his mother was a singer. As a child, he was taught the piano, organ, and trombone. He received his formal musical education at the Royal College of Music beginning in 1893, where he studied composition. There, he met another composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, who had a profound impact on his career. They would regularly spend time together and each would try out each others compositions before publication or performance. After he finished college, Holst played his trombone professionally. He soon found that it was difficult to earn a living as a trombonist and composer, so in 1904 he took a job as the Director of Music at the St. Paul’s Girl’s School in Hammersmith, a job that he held until he died. It was during his time as a teacher that he composed his most famous work, The Planets.

Throughout his life, Holst continued to compose orchestral music, wind ensemble music, operas, chamber music, and vocal music of many different styles, and had a great interest in various kinds of literature, poetry and astrology. Two Songs Without Words was dedicated to Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Country Song opens with the principal theme as an unaccompanied clarinet solo, followed by its repetition in the full woodwind section. The main theme returns in a “maestoso” setting before fading into a quite closing. Marching Song is characterised by a distinctive running sixteenth note figure. The principal melody, first played by the low woodwinds, is punctuated by these same running sixteenth note fragments. Both themes are again repeated with much variation before the tempo picks up into a short coda-style ending.

Roger Quilter (1877 – 1953)

Where the Rainbow Ends, 1911.

Where the Rainbow Ends is a children’s play, written by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey with incidental music by the English composer Roger Quilter. Set in ‘Rainbow Land’ two girls, two boys and a pet lion cub set off on a magic carpet to search for their missing parents. Guarded and helped by Saint George, along their way they face various dangers and encounter talking animals, mythical creatures and even a white witch.

The first performance took place at the Savoy Theatre, London, 1911. The play was part of the regular Christmas scene and was performed professionally every year for 49 years up to 1960, including during the two World Wars. The cast included 45 children – amongst them a 12-year-old Noël Coward – who were all acquired and managed by Italia Conti, marking the beginning of the Italia Conti Academy.

Roger Quilter’s Where the Rainbow Ends suite of delightful incidental music has five movements: Rainbow Land; Will o’ the Wisp; Rosamund; Fairy Frolic; and Goblin Forest. It was performed at the 1912 Proms, and through BBC radio the music became known throughout the world.

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Flute

Zoe Arthy

Kymberley Jones

Vivian Zhang

James Wigan

Maddie Beltrame

Clarinet

Annalie Roux

Amira Geurgis-Brown

Bassoon

Carolyn Brodie

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting