Bohemian Rhapsodies

Johannes Fritzsch
Conductor

Johannes Fritzsch was appointed Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in February, 2021 having previously served as their Chief Conductor (2008-2014). Since 2018, Johannes has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

From 2006 – 2013 he was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Oper Graz, Grazer Philharmonisches Orchester (Austria). Prior to his appointment in Graz, Johannes held the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Staatsoper Nürnberg.

He regularly conducts the major Australasian orchestras as well as leading productions for Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, West Australian Opera and State Opera of South Australia.

Other recent appointments: Adjunct Professor, The Conservatorium of Music at the University of Tasmania; Professor of Opera and Orchestral Studies. Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. In 2017, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra invited him to design and lead the newly founded Australian Conducting Academy.

© Patrick Togher Artists’ Management 2022

Image credit: Peter Wallis

Brent Grapes
Trumpet

Principal Trumpet of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Brent Grapes started his musical studies in his hometown of Perth before attending the Juilliard School in New York. Former teachers include David Elton, Raymond Mase and Mark Gould. During his time in the United States, he established a reputation as both an orchestral trumpeter and as a soloist. In 2007, Brent was the winner of the Juilliard School concerto competition, culminating in a performance of the Jolivet Concertino for Trumpet, Piano and Strings with the Juilliard Orchestra at Lincoln Center. Brent is also a 2 time winner of the US National Trumpet Competition, in 2007 and 2008.

In November 2022, Brent is thrilled to premiere a newly commissioned trumpet concerto composed by Nigel Westlake.

Brent has performed as guest Principal Trumpet for the Sydney Symphony, the Australian World Orchestra and is a frequent guest musician with the Australian Brass Quintet. In addition to his performing roles, Brent is a passionate educator, and in addition to giving masterclasses at the Australian National Academy of Music and tutoring members of the Australian Youth Orchestra, he is the Head of Brass at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Brent Grapes is generously supported by a private, philanthropic partner through the Duet program.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)

Symphony No.35 in D, K.385 Haffner

Allegro con spirito
Andante
Menuetto – Trio
Finale (Presto)

This symphony, the first Mozart completed after moving from Salzburg to Vienna in 1781, shows the confidence and richness of the opera he had composed for Munich the previous year, Idomeneo, transferred to a grand piece for orchestra alone. It is called the ‘Haffner’ Symphony because the music was composed for festivities in Salzburg associated with the ennoblement of the Mozarts’ friend Siegmund Haffner the Younger.

When in 1782 he received his father’s request for some new music appropriate to the occasion, Wolfgang Mozart was preoccupied with the production of his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, and his marriage to Constanze Weber. But he somehow found time to compose festive music in six movements, including two minuets and a march. This was the standard form of an orchestral serenade. (Mozart had already in 1776 composed such a serenade for wedding festivities in the Haffner family – that Haffner Serenade, K250, is an entirely different piece.)

Later in the same year, 1782, when planning one of his ‘academies’ or subscription concerts in Vienna, Mozart asked his father to return to him from Salzburg the ‘Haffner music’. When he received it, he wrote back, ‘I was quite surprised by the new Haffner symphony, for I had forgotten every single note of it; it must certainly be very effective.’

For the concert on 22 March 1783 Mozart adapted his score by adding flutes and clarinets to the first and last movements, and deleting the march and the first minuet. It was common for elaborate multi-movement serenades to be ‘reduced’ to three or four movement symphonies in this way. In Mozart’s case, at least, there is little distinction between ‘symphonic’ writing and the grand festive style of his most ambitious serenades.

The first movement of the Haffner Symphony, an imposing call to attention, begins with the kind of striking gesture which would make a talkative audience sit up and pay attention. Mozart asked for it to be played ‘with great fire’. It turns out that these two leaps of an octave followed by a rhythmic flourish are the main substance of the first movement. As in many of the first movements of Haydn, which we know Mozart was studying at the time, there is no contrasting second theme, yet the tonal drama of the form is not any the less for that.

The grace of the Andante has been related by many commentators to its serenade origins, but this is an unnecessary explanation: a symphony, in Vienna’s concert life at this time, was not expected to be the main work of the evening. Mozart’s own performance of a piano concerto would have taken a higher place. Relaxation was just what was needed after an unusually tightly-written first movement with so much imitative counterpoint.

The Menuetto is grand without being pompous – this is certainly a minuet which asks to be listened to, not merely background music for dancing. The delicate subtleties of the Trio, then, will not be overlooked by the audience.

In the Finale we are in the world of comic opera. Mozart had been exploring how to write opera in a new way in The Abduction from the Seraglio, and there are reminders of that here, especially of the blustering triumphant rage of Osmin, the overseer of the harem. But Mozart smiles, laughs, and is serious all at once. In this Finale, which he said should go ‘as fast as possible’, he takes the quicksilver patter of Italian musical comedy and hands it back to the Italians, enriched. It is no accident that the final bars suggest (to modern ears) Rossini, who as a teenager 20 years after the composition of this symphony was so mad about Mozart (and Haydn) that his friends called him ‘the little German’.

David Garrett © 1999

First Performance:
22 March 1783, Vienna.

First WASO performance:
7 July 1978. Peter Eros, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
13 July 2002. Matthias Bamert, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; two horns, two trumpets; timpani and strings.

Nigel Westlake
(b. 1958)

Concerto for Trumpet & Orchestra (2022)

Intrada
Fanfare
Adagio
Scherzo

My concerto for trumpet & orchestra brings into play the traditional classical template of four contrasting movements (slow - fast - slow - fast) as a vehicle for the virtuosity and extraordinary talents of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s (WASO) Principal Trumpeter Brent Grapes.

Completed during the Corona virus pandemic and facing the tyranny of distance due to border closures between Sydney and Perth, the ability to establish a composer / performer collaborative relationship with Brent was somewhat compromised.

We began by swapping sound files and musical thoughts electronically, during which time I asked Brent about his favourite trumpet works. His list included iconic
trumpet solos by George Gershwin, Astor Piazzolla, John Williams and the concertos of Henri Tomasi (1948) and Alexander Arutiunian (1949). All these works share a common thread of accessibility and melodic lyricism and they aspire to express sentiments such as nobility, humour and pathos amongst many others. It was
particularly inspiring to hear recordings of Brent playing the Tomasi and Arutiunian concertos, his playing so natural, unforced and completely at home.

Thus, I settled on a plan to write a conventional work that plays to the strength of the soloist in the hope of finding the sweet spot that sits somewhere between nudging the technical limitations of the instrument and an embrace of lyrical narrative.

Opening with a gentle and slow-moving elegy, the Intrada (I) is a token of remembrance for Paul Goodchild, Principal Trumpeter with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 2021. Written the day of Paul’s funeral in April 2022, the solo is played offstage thereby conjuring an elusive and other worldly presence.

The Fanfare (II) offers a short burst of driving energy and pulsing 5/8 rhythms that support an agile trumpet solo characterised by rapid fire articulated note groupings & dexterous flourishes.

The Adagio (III) was composed immediately following my work on the movie adaptation Tim Winton’s glorious oceanic novella “Blueback” (due for release in 2023). The salt spray of the Indian ocean and majestic creatures of the deep were still very much a part of my consciousness as I wrote this section of the concerto.

The work concludes with the Scherzo (IV), a celebratory, upbeat finale based on a series of typical “clarion call” trumpet motifs that are teased and exchanged between soloist and orchestra in a playful dialogue. The forward momentum of the music is driven by the use of strong displaced accents and irregular time signatures.

Commissioned for the:
West Australian Symphony Orchestra by Geoff Stearn and Janet Holmes á Court AC.

Instrumentation:
two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo & alto flute), two oboes (2nd doubling cor anglais), two clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon); four horns, three trombones; timpani, percussion, piano, harp and strings.

Bedřich Smetana
(1824-1884)

My Country: Vltava

Andante
Allegro marcato
Adagio
Allegro giocoso

The tone poem depicting Bohemia’s greatest river, the Vltava (known in German as Moldau), is the second of the six spiritually and, to an extent musically, integrated movements making up Smetana’s orchestral masterpiece, the symphonic cycle My Country (Má vlast). Composed between 1872 and 1880 in patriotic celebration of the nation’s countryside, history and legend, it was intended to assert Czech identity within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today, it symbolises the finer feelings of patriotism for people the world over.

‘Vltava’ depicts the course of the river through the countryside, by means of a rondo-like structure in which a pulsing theme first heard in E minor recurs and grows and will eventually achieve grandeur in E major. In passing episodes, the river encounters a hunt, a village festival and a moonlight dance of water nymphs. Challenged by the turbulent Rapids of St John, the river emerges broader, its spirits proudly lifted as it surges forth to meet its destiny – at Vyšehrad, dominating the right bank as it enters Prague, the legendary High Castle of Bohemia’s first royal dynasty; then on through the Golden City and beyond.

The resounding, foursquare ‘Vyšehrad’ motto with which the Vltava is greeted to Prague comes from the first movement of My Country. It is the musical and spiritual linchpin of the cycle, evoking glories of a medieval past, climaxing the river’s journey, and combining with a 15thcentury Hussite battle hymn to end the cycle in a grand apotheosis affirming the Czech people’s golden future.

Anthony Cane © 2008

First performance:
4 April 1875. Adolf Čech conducting.

First WASO performance:
7 June 1969. Thomas Mayer, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
16 November 2013. Michał Dworzyński, conductor.

Instrumentation:
three flutes (doubling piccolo), two each of oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Leoš Janáček
(1854-1928)

In March 1915 the authorities closed down Janáček’s Russian Circle in the Moravian capital, Brno. Its promotion of Russian language and culture, with undertones of pan-Slavism, could be subversive in wartime. Janáček himself was listed as ‘politically suspect’.

It was scarcely a coincidence that Janáček now returned to a Russian literary classic, Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, which he had read (in Russian) and thoughtfully annotated ten years earlier, as the basis for a composition which he determined would be his ‘musical testament’. Its theme would be, as he later wrote, ‘prophecy and presentiment of the victory of the Slavs’, with Cossack chief Taras Bulba ‘champion of the fight against their enemies’. Gogol’s tale of a heroic people fighting for freedom and independence mirrored the wartime dreams of Janáček and many of his compatriots for their own Moravian, Czech and Slovak peoples. In their fellow-Slavs from mother Russia lay the great hope for liberation from Austro- Hungarian domination.

Janáček’s composition hastened slowly, probably because no such pro-Russian work could expect a performance while the war lasted. Begun in 1915, it was not completed until Good Friday of 1918. But instead of welcoming the new Czechoslovak Republic after the war, Taras Bulba had to wait three years for its first performance in Brno (under František Neumann, 1921) and a further three years for its Prague premiere (under Václav Talich, 1924) – though in each case its success was immediate.

In selecting three grim but pivotal scenes from Gogol’s story, Janáček seizes on the self-sacrifice that transcends human feeling. Taking his two dearly-loved sons on campaign against the Poles, Taras Bulba is forced to execute the younger, Andriy, for treason in loving a Polish nobleman’s daughter and fighting with the besieged enemy against his own people. He is forced to watch helplessly the final, public agonies of his captured elder son, Ostap, stoical under Polish torture until, in extremis, he cries for his father and is comforted by a ringing ‘I hear thee!’ from among the hushed crowd. His ruthless exploits are ended by his own eventual capture, yet Taras Bulba ignores the flames consuming the tree to which he is nailed and all the while exhorts his troops to safety through a daring feat of horsemanship. In his death agony, the Cossack leader’s prophetic vision comes in words that Janáček quoted as his inspiration: ‘No flames, no torture of this world, will ever break the spirit of the Russian people.’

No matter, when Janáček later spoke expansively of the ‘victory of the Slavs’, that the Poles, too, were Slavs! Nor was the agnostic Janáček much concerned with Gogol’s central theme of the people’s defence of their holy Orthodox Church against an expansionist Western church in Poland. The inclusion of organ and bells in Janáček’s large orchestra, however, suggests a prayerful Polish populace in the siege of the opening movement and exaltation in the Cossack’s prophetic vision. A tender oboe melody evokes the bliss with which Andriy discovers his beloved amidst the siege, and it is in the scream of a high clarinet that the dying Ostap cries out for his father. Janáček has the Poles dance a wild Mazur to celebrate the capture of Ostap, and a Crakowiak on the building of his father’s funeral pyre.

In this, his most grandiose and colourful orchestral work, Janáček achieves a richness and variety of expression that speaks eloquently to a wider international audience than just his fellow Slavs.

Anthony Cane © 2003

This work, published by Bärenreiter/Alkor Kassel, has been supplied by Clear Music Australia Pty Ltd as hire agents for Bärenreiter in Australia.

First performance:
9 October 1921, Brno, Czech Republic. František Neumann conducting, 1921.

First WASO performance:
1 September 1995. Vernon Handley, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
25 July 2009. Jakub Hrůša, conductor.

Instrumentation:
three each of flutes (doubling piccolo), oboes (doubling cor anglais), clarinets (doubling bass clarinet) and bassoons (doubling contrabassoon); four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, percussion, harp, organ and strings.