Songbird

Sunday 6 December 1.30pm

Sherwood Districts Football Club, 41 Chelmer St East, Chelmer

Conductor – Greta Hunter

Guest baritone soloist – Hainian Yu

Welcome to our pot pourri of orchestral pieces by Beethoven, Elgar, Schubert, Strauss, Mahler and Mozart. We are delighted to be joined by Hainian Yu, baritone, performing Mahler lieder and Mozart arias with us. Birds, streams, countryside walks, love and loss. Lose yourself in a Sunday afternoon of beautiful music.

The bistro will be open before, during and after the concert. Enjoy our Gold Class concert service.

This concert is dedicated to Sam Pearse – oboist, bassoonist, past president, and active committee member over many years. You can read more about Sam here. Valé Sam.

Program

Schubert – Overture in the Italian Style D590

Mozart – Birdcatcher’s Aria from The Magic Flute

Mahler – Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (movements 1, 2 and 4)

Mahler – Rückert Lieder no 3 (“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”)

Mozart – Papageno/ Pagapena duet from The Magic Flute

 INTERVAL

Schubert – 6 German Dances Arr. Webern

Strauss – Pizzicato Polka Arr. Hildreth

Elgar – Minuet Op. 21

Elgar – Salut d’Amour Op. 12

Beethoven – Symphony #6 (2nd movement)

Mozart – Turkish March (Rondo alla Turca from Sonata No. 11) Arr. Girod

JOIN US AT THE BAR FOR A DRINK AFTER THE PERFORMANCE

Greta Hunter – Conductor

Greta Hunter is a Brisbane based flutist and conductor. Greta holds a Bachelor of Music (first class honours) majoring in Classical Flute Performance from the University of Queensland. As a flutist, Greta held the 2018 position of principal flute with the Queensland Youth Symphony after previously performing as the orchestra’s principal piccolo. Greta has also toured regularly with QYO Chamber Orchestra and in 2017 toured with the Queensland Youth Symphony on its major international tour to China and Germany.

Greta is a young, up and coming conductor with a passion for community music. In 2019 she attended the Melbourne Youth Orchestra’s conductor development program as well as 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. In 2018 Greta was invited to guest conduct the Queensland Youth Symphony in its 2018 Strings Sensations concert.

Greta is currently the musical director of four community ensembles around Brisbane. She is also the flute specialist tutor at Westside Christian College

Hainian Yu – Baritone Soloist

Hainian Yu is a dynamic young baritone who is always excited about bringing the joy of classical music to the lives of others. His recent performing experiences include:

• Dr Falke in Sound Thinking Opera’s fully staged production of Die Fledermaus
• The bass Storm Trooper in Brisbane City Opera’s production of Richard Ferguson’s Opera Galactica
• Bass soloist in UQ Chorale’s 2019 QPAC performance of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms
• Antonio in The Marriage of Figaro,
• Soloist with the Amadeus Orchestra
• Finalist in both the Nickson and Ethel Osborn Prizes at UQ.

Currently part of the exciting new vocal ensemble Seren8, Hainian has sung regularly with the UQ Vocalists, and as a dep at St John’s Cathedral and St Stephen’s Cathedral. He has also obtained a Trinity College Silver medal for outstanding performance in Trinity vocal exams. In addition to vocal performance, Hainian is passionate about eighteenth-century music and has recently completed his thesis studying galant schemata in the music of C. P. E. Bach. He is also a passionate academic tutor and is simultaneously completing a dual degree in biomedical science (in preparation for MD) along with his BMus degree at UQ.

Naomi Klazinga – Soprano Soloist

Hainian will be joined by Naomi Klazinga for the Papageno/Papagena duet.

Program Notes

Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

Overture in the Italian Style D590

Franz Schubert is one of the best-loved and most important composers of the nineteenth century, his music consistently marked by a remarkable melodic gift, rich harmonies, and an expansive treatment of traditional forms. During his short but extremely prolific career, he composed nine symphonies, dozens of chamber and solo piano works, and a host of operas and liturgical works. His songs, numbering over 600, virtually created the genre of the art song. He started composing in his teens, and some early works came to the notice of Antonio Salieri, who worked with the young composer on composition and music theory. After a couple of unhappy years spent as a schoolteacher by day and composer by night, Schubert decided to pursue a career as a full-time composer, leading a somewhat bohemian life while creating a vast number of compositions that, at the time, attracted little attention. Only gradually did his music win acclaim, inspiring a remarkable burst of creativity in the mid 1820s. By that time, however, he was suffering badly from the syphilis and (possibly) typhoid fever that would take his life at age 31.

The Overture in D major in the Italian style, D. 590 was written in November 1817, with its companion Overture in C major in the Italian style, D. 591, the descriptive titles known in Schubert’s time but not to be attributed to him. One of the overtures, perhaps the first of the pair, had a public performance in March 1818 and was welcomed by critics, with praise for the work’s ‘youthful fire’. Both reflect the influence of Rossini, whose operas increasingly fascinated the Viennese public. 1816 had brought performances in Vienna of L’inganno felice and Tancredi, followed in 1817 by L’italiana in Algeri, and the fashion was to continue into the following decade, exciting the jealous opposition of composers writing in the German classical tradition.

The first of the two new overtures starts with an Adagio that leads, after the opening chords, to an Italianate theme. The strings introduce the principal theme of the Allegro giusto, which, in its course, seems to make direct reference to Rossini. Schubert arranged both overtures for piano duet, and the Overture in C major for two pianos, eight hands, to be performed in this version in March 1818 in a private concert.

Six German Dances – Arr. Webern

Schubert wrote these Six German Dances in October 1824 for Caroline Esterházy, daughter of a Hungarian Count who hired Schubert to give his children music lessons. Like much of his music, the German Dances were never published during Schubert’s lifetime. What makes them remarkable is that the manuscript didn’t surface during the decades after his death when the efforts of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms were bringing Schubert’s achievements to light. The German Dances remained in private hands until 1930, when, upon their discovery, the Viennese music publisher Universal Edition commissioned an orchestral arrangement of the works from Anton von Webern.

The first three dances are in A-flat, and the others are in B-flat, effectively dividing them into two groups. This division is further underlined by da capo repetitions of the first dance after the third and the fourth dance after the sixth; this gives each group the feeling of a free-standing musical entity. Webern, a follower of Schoenberg and a leading exponent of atonalism and the compositional style of the Second Viennese School during the earlier decades of the 20th century, provided a faithful orchestral rendition of the dances. He restricts himself to an orchestra that Schubert would have recognized and uses it felicitously and with great restraint. Witness, for example, the way Webern creates a miniature dialog among the winds in the second dance, or the delicate juxtaposition of solo and tutti strings in the third dance. To lavish such care on what was essentially a student exercise (albeit one from the pen of a master) seems almost excessive, but in Webern’s orchestration we have an admiring act of homage from one Viennese master to another.

Program notes by Chris Morrison for Reno Chamber Orchestra, Keith Anderson for Naxos Records and John Mangum for the LAPhil

Wolfgang Amadèus Mozart (1756-1791)

Excerpts from The Magic Flute

Mozart wrote The Magic Flute, his final opera, in 1791. A fantastical hybrid of the serious and the comic, whose generic multiplicity is held together by Mozart’s extraordinary music.

The baritone Papageno is a comic foil to the tenor hero Tamino in The Magic Flute. A simple bird catcher, Papageno attempts to cope with life’s most basic urges: friendship, the desire for romantic love and domestic bliss, fear of danger, and joyful celebration of pleasures such as food, drink, and music. His arias are quasi-folk songs, yielding some of The Magic Flute’s most memorable melodies. In “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja,” (Papageno’s first song in the opera,) Papegeno describes his simple living, punctuating the narrative with Pan pipes. He sings of his wish to find a pretty girl to love and cherish.

The bird-catcher, that’s me,
always cheerful, hip hooray!
As a bird-catcher I’m known
to young and old throughout the land.
I know how to set about luring
and how to be good at piping.
That’s why I can be merry and cheerful,
for all the birds are surely mine.

The bird-catcher, that’s me,
always cheerful, hip hooray!
As a bird-catcher I’m known
to young and old throughout the land.
I’d like a net for girls,
I’d catch them for myself by the dozen!
Then I’d lock them up with me,
and all the girls would be mine.

If all the girls were mine,
I’d barter plenty of sugar:
the one I liked best,
I’d give her the sugar at once.
And if then she kissed me tenderly,
she would be my wife and I her husband.
She’d fall asleep at my side,
and I’d rock her like a child.

In the final scene of the opera, Papageno is saved from attempted suicide by the Three Boys who remind him that if he uses his magic bells he will find true happiness. When he does, Papagena appears and the two plan for the future, which includes producing many children.

PAPAGENO
Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Papagena!

PAPAGENA
Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Papageno!

PAPAGENO
Are you really all mine now?

PAPAGENA
Now I really am all yours.

PAPAGENO
So now be my darling little wife!

PAPAGENA
So now be the little dove of my heart!

PAPAGENO, PAPAGENA
What a pleasure that will be,
when the gods remember us,
crown our love with children,
such dear little children!

PAPAGENO
First a little Papageno!

PAPAGENA
Then a little Papagena!

PAPAGENO
Then another Papageno!

PAPAGENA
Then another Papagena!

PAPAGENO, PAPAGENA
Papageno! Papagena!
It is the greatest feeling
that many, many
Pa-Pa-Papagenos,
Pa-Pa-Papagenas
may be a blessing to their parents.

Turkish March (Rondo alla Turca from Sonata No. 11) – Arr. Girod

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 Laurie Shulman for San Bernardino Symphony, Northern Ireland Opera, ClassicFM and Opera-Arias.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (often translated as “Songs of a Wayfarer”) is one of Mahler’s earliest works. Unusually, he himself wrote the poems upon which the songs are based. The inspiration was Mahler’s unhappy love-affair with Johanna Richter, a soprano working at the Royal Theatre in Kassel, where Mahler was employed as a conductor from 1883 – 1885. A letter from Mahler to a friend from 1st January 1885 shows his state of mind:

“I have written a cycle of songs, six at present, all of which are dedicated to her. She doesn’t know about them. What can they tell her that she doesn’t know already? The order of the songs is meant to show a wayfaring journeyman who has had a fateful experience, and who is now setting off into the world, travelling on alone.”

In their texts the Lieder are very much part of the German Romantic tradition and have much in common with Schubert’s song cycles – themes of unrequited love, departure, nature as a comforter and even a reference to the “Lindenbaum”, the title of one of the most famous songs from Schubert’s Winterreise. Musically, however , they are unmistakeably Mahler’s own, with an earnestness of expression at times bordering on the hysterical and melodramatic. The music from the second and fourth songs appears in a different guise in the First Symphony.

In the years after their initial composition Mahler revised, orchestrated and reduced the songs in number from six to four. The first performance of the cycle as we know it now was in 1896, with the Berlin Philharmonic, Dutch baritone Anton Sistermans and Mahler himself conducting.

I.
When my darling has her wedding-day, When her joyful wedding-day comes,
I shall have my day of grief!
I shall go to my dark little room,
There I shall weep
for my dear beloved!

Blue flower, do not wither! Sweet little bird!
You sing on the green heath. Ah, how beautiful the world is! Chirp! Chirp!

Do not sing, do not bloom! Spring is past!
All singing must now end. At night when I go to sleep, I think of my sorrow!

II.
I went across the fields this morning, dew still hung on the grass;
The merry finch spoke to me:
“Good morning!
Isn’t it a wonderful world?
How the world delights me!”

The bluebells in the fields also rang out to me,
their morning greeting: “Isn’t it a wonderful world? How the world delights me!”

And then in the sunshine the world began to sparkle;
Everything gained sound and colour in the sunshine!

Flower and bird, great and small! “Good day, isn’t it a wonderful world?”

Now will my happiness also begin?
No, I know that happiness can never bloom for me!

IV.
The two blue eyes of my beloved, Have sent me out into the wide world. I had to take my leave of
this place I loved!
Oh blue eyes,
why did you look on me?
Now I have eternal sorrow and grief

I went out into the still night
across the dark heath.
No-one bade farewell to me.
My companions were love and sorrow!

By the roadside stands a linden tree, There for the first time I found rest in sleep!
Beneath the linden tree,

that snowed its blossoms over me,

I knew no more of life’s sorrows

and everything was well again! Everything! Love and sorrow,

and world and dreams!

“Ich bin der Welt Abhanden gekommen” (Rückert – Lieder no 3)

During the summers of 1901 and 1902, Gustav Mahler set to music five poems by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Rückert. The third of these, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”, portrays a world-weary artist who exists in our everyday world, but who actually lives his life in another, more ethereal plane reserved for great artists. Mahler, much maligned as composer during his lifetime, identified strongly with the poem, saying that it expressed his very self. In fact, he felt so strongly about this song that he reused much of the music in the famous Adagietto of his Fifth Symphony, which he composed during the summer of 1902.

The orchestral song begins with a mournful melody played by solo English horn. This melody is then restated and extended by the singer during the first stanza, which speaks of the artists isolation in a world that already thinks him dead. The tempo increases slightly for the second stanza, during which the artist reflects that he does not really care what the world thinks. The third stanza is remarkably peaceful as the artist describes the other world in which he resides: I live alone in my heaven, in my love, in my song. The gentle consonant-dissonant alternation of the violins and English horn in the coda seems to portray the artist staring beyond the horizon into his musical paradise.

Many consider “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”, as Mahlers greatest song, one of his most profound and moving works and was of immense personal significance for Mahler.

I am lost to the world

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world’s tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

Program notes for the Mahler Players, and by “FiDiTanzer528” (These links have translations of the lyrics of the lieder.)

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825–99) and Josef Strauss (1827–70)

Pizzicato Polka – Arr. Hildreth

Strauss, Jr. wrote the Pizzicato Polka in 1869 as a collaboration with his younger brother Josef. Josef had begun helping Johann with the direc- tion of his orchestra in 1853, and they collaborated on several compo- sitions together. This particular piece was written for the brothers’ last year at the Pavlovsk summer concert season in St. Petersburg. This summer concert series had become a favorite of Strauss’s, and he par- ticipated in it for more than a decade. This piece shows the lively hu- mor of Strauss that often made its way into his music, perfect for a summer festival. The dramatic dynamic changes, sudden pauses, and surprising fermatas continue to turn the corners of audiences’ mouths up.

Program notes by UT Arlington Symphony Orchestra 

Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934)

Minuet Op. 21 and Salut d’Amour, Op. 12

Inspired by his country’s culture and landscape as well as his colleagues on the Continent, English composer Edward Elgar produced an impressive output of music throughout his career.  Elgar was born into a family of little means; his father, an organist, owned a small music shop, and made sure that all of his seven children received a musical upbringing.

The Minuet, Op. 21, was originally a piano piece, written in 1897 for the son of a friend, Paul Kilburn. The following year Elgar made an orchestral version of the piece, which was first heard in New Brighton in 1899, conducted by Granville Bantock.

Elgar originally composed his Salut d’Amour as an engagement present to his future wife, Caroline Alice Roberts, in 1888 after she gave him two poems for the same occasion.  It was originally entitled Liebesgruss (Love’s Greeting) and written for piano.  In the same year he arranged the work for violin and piano, and soon after, in 1889, he orchestrated the work.  All three versions (solo piano, violin and piano, and orchestral) were published by Schott and renamed Salut d’Amour, with Elgar’s permission.  A breakthrough for the composer, Salut d’Amour sold quite well once Schott Frenchified both the title of the work as well as the name of the—at the time unknown—composer, writing Ed. Elgar instead of Edward Elgar.

Salut d’Amour is now one of Elgar’s most widely recognized pieces, and its popularity has led to arrangements for almost every instrument.

Program notes by Christina Dioguardi for Phoenix Orchestra and Keith Anderson for Naxos Records

Beethoven

Symphony #6 – Pastoral – 2^nd movement

Our familiar picture of Beethoven, cross and deaf, slumped in total absorption over his sketches, doesn’t easily allow for Beethoven the nature-lover. But he liked nothing more than a walk in the woods, where he could wander undisturbed, stopping from time to time to scribble a new idea on the folded sheets of music paper he always carried in his pocket. “No one,” he wrote to Therese Malfati two years after the premiere of the Pastoral Symphony, “can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear.”

Beethoven begins the second movement with a gentle babbling brook (one of those undulating accompaniment figures that Schubert would later do to perfection) and ends with notorious bird calls … bringing the music—and the brook—to a halt, and then specifying first the nightingale (flute), then the quail (oboe), and finally the cuckoo (clarinet). But as many a writer has pointed out, the birds are no more out of place here than a cadenza in a concerto—the nightingale even provides the final obligatory trill.

Program notes by Phillip Huscher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

 

 

 

Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra

Conductor – Greta Hunter

Guest Baritone Soloist – Hainian Yu

Master of Ceremonies – David Cotton

Flute

Kerynne Birch

Kymberley Jones

Julie Stanton

Oboe

Clint Fox

Clarinet

Colleen Rowe

Robert Teakle

Annissa Teo

Bassoon

Sam Battock

Chris Buckley

Horn

Paul Brisbane

John MacGinley

Piano

Gary Hunt

Timpani and Percussion

Janine Kesting