The Lark Ascending

Fabien Gabel
Conductor

Fabien Gabel has established an international career of the highest calibre, appearing with orchestras such as London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln Cologne, Tonkünstler-Orchester, Oslo Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Having attracted international attention in 2004 as the winner of the Donatella Flick conducting competition, Fabien Gabel was Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2004- 2006. He was music director of Orchestre Symphonique de Québec from 2012-2021 and Orchestre Francais de Jeunes from 2017-2021.

Praised for his dynamic style and sensitive approach to the score, he is best known for his eclectic choice of repertoire ranging from core symphonic works to new music to championing lesser-known composers of the 19th and the 20th century.

Image credit: Maison Simons

Emma McGrath
Violin

British-American-Australian violinist Emma McGrath is the Concertmaster of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. She enjoys an international and varied career as a Concertmaster, soloist, chamber musician, conductor, teacher, educator, and leader.

Emma has been a highly sought-after Guest Concertmaster in the UK, USA, Australia, Spain, and New Zealand, and has performed as a soloist all over Europe, Asia, Australia, and the USA. An avid chamber musician, Emma was a member of the award-winning Panormo Quartet in London, the Starling Quartet in Pittsburgh, and the Kettering Piano Quartet and the Tasmanian String Quartet in Hobart.

Prior to moving to Tasmania, Emma was the Assistant Concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony, and then the Associate Concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony.

She is also a professional singer, baroque violinist, and conductor - and enjoys bushwalking in Tasmania’s wild places in her
spare time.

Image credit: Alastair Bett

Camille Pépin
(b.1990)

Laniakea

English translation of the program notes published in the full score:

When I was asked to write an overture for the "Roulement de timbales" series, I immediately had in mind something vast and powerful. I then thought of the recent discovery of Laniakea, this supercluster of galaxies counting among greatest structures of the Universe. Discovered in 2014 by Hélène Courtois, Laniakea means "immeasurable celestial paradise" in Hawaiian. Inside this supercluster, the galaxies are in motion and converge towards a single point called the Great Attractor. You have to imagine currents of galaxies where all the matter is pouring into the same place - like in the heart of a valley - at a crazy speed of 630 km/s.

Immensity, movement, speed, light... were the words that guided me in composing. This scenario of such a vast celestial horizon is a source of inspiration teeming with colours for my imagination as an orchestrator! So, I wanted to find musical resonances in this fascinating world of the infinitely large.

Like Haydn's Symphony No.103, Laniakea opens with a roll of timpani. He will return during the play under different forms: sometimes "naked", sometimes in the background or even in relay with the bass drum.

Laniakea is presented as a cosmic fresco articulated in three episodes preceded by an introduction and completed by a coda.

Powerful and majestic, the introduction presents a theme in brass and bells on a roll of timpani. The strings constitute a resonant and vibrating “wall of sound”. The material changes gradually. The woods melt into the strings and become liquid. The brass theme unfolding on this shimmering texture becomes softer and softer, eventually dissolving and let the light shine.

The first large part begins with a motif of oboe, glockenspiel and harmonics of high strings: so many luminous particles trying to break through this immense sky. The vibraphone and the woodwinds create a reverberating pad and help to give this passage a celestial and scintillating colour.

The texture becomes more rhythmic with the birth of a swirling and repetitive motif in the violas. In this hypnotic episode, the introductory theme is echoed in bells and horns. It intensifies. Matter spreads. Glockenspiel and harmonics - luminous keys - are suffused with stellar wind with the suspended cymbal roll. A more lyrical and bewitching theme appears on the cellos. It will be presented with different colours passing to the violins then to the violas. The appearance of the Eb-D glissando on the trombones is a signal: we move gradually into the second part. The rhythmic pattern dies out and the material becomes more and more nebulous.

- Camille Pépin

First performance:
16 May 2019, Echirolles (France). Leonard Slatkin, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
This is the Australian premiere.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboe, clarinets and three bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and one tuba; timpani and two percussion, strings.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
(1872-1958)

The Lark Ascending - Romance for Violin and Orchestra

Surely one of Vaughan Williams’ most loved and best-known works is the miniature masterpiece The Lark Ascending. A magical opening and a serene simplicity transport the listener to an unmistakably English landscape, perhaps to the Cotswolds where Vaughan Williams grew up. Inspiration for the work came from a poem of the same name by George Meredith (1828-1909). Meredith (also remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and The Egoist) was one of the most admired literary figures of his day, of whom contemporary Scottish writer William Sharp declared ‘there is no living writer so saturated with the spirit of nature in England as this rare poet’. Vaughan Williams precedes the score with lines from Meredith’s poem:

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup

And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

Vaughan Williams composed The Lark Ascending in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I when birdsong was gradually to be replaced by the horrifying sounds of conflict and destruction; but he put the score aside until 1920. It was dedicated to Marie Hall, a brilliant violinist who had, at one time, been given lessons by Elgar. She gave the first performance with Geoffrey Mendham in December 1920 in an arrangement for violin and piano. The first performance of the orchestral version took place at the Queen’s Hall in a British Music Society concert held on 14 June 1921 with Marie Hall as soloist, and the British Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Boult. The Times reported that ‘it showed serene disregard of the fashions of today or yesterday. It dreams its way along.’

The brevity of The Lark Ascending belies its significance in the emergence of what came to be referred to as ‘English Pastoralism’. Alarmed at the spread of industrialism over the English landscape and expressing a nostalgia for rural traditions, writers such as George Meredith, Edward Thomas, W.H. Hudson and Thomas Hardy sought to promote and preserve a quintessentially English landscape through the literary medium. Until The Lark Ascending was performed, few musical equivalents existed. Following its first public performance, English critics described The Lark Ascending as a musical evocation of the English landscape and the preeminent example of English Pastoralism in music. Wilfrid Mellers comments that ‘the ramifications of this magical piece haunted Vaughan Williams throughout the rest of his creative life, and its presence is at least latent in the finest music of his successors... But by no other composer is the interdependence of man and Nature more movingly expressed.’

The ‘Romance’ of Vaughan Williams’ subtitle is unlikely to mean the common idea of ‘romantic’; rather, it may refer to the 18th-century musical term for an instrumental slow movement in ABA form. He also used the term for other slow movements, including those of his Piano Concerto and Fifth Symphony. The version of The Lark Ascending we hear in this performance is scored for two flutes, one oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, triangle and strings; however, Vaughan Williams also scored a version for chamber orchestra with single winds.

The ethereal opening establishes the tone and also provides the main thematic material of the entire piece. Above pianissimo sustained muted strings, the solo violin emerges, trilling, swooping, rising in emulation of Meredith's lark soaring above the English countryside. Vaughan Williams’ lark sings a pentatonic melody (a five-note phrase equivalent to playing the black notes on the piano) with a falling minor third. James Day observes that, unlike Messiaen in his treatment of
birdsong, Vaughan Williams makes no attempt to replicate the lark’s microtonal call. The harmonic background, which is essentially modal, shifts subtly so that orchestral colours and textures provide a changing musical landscape.

The Lark Ascending is in a simple ternary form with the outer lifting sections framing a middle section in 2/4 time.

While the rhapsodising violin soars far above the countryside in the first section, it is drawn earthward in the central section (Allegretto tranquillo) which features a simple folk-like theme introduced initially by the flute and clarinet. The nature of the folk-song theme constrains even the lark as the solo violin’s melismas become separate and marked notes which are forced into duple patterns. In the last section the main theme is fully orchestrated and the tempo more animated but in the final ethereal moments the soloist’s lyrical melody is heard alone as the lark flies beyond our vision of this tranquil idyll.

Catherine Hocking © 2001

First performance:
14 June 1921, London. Marie Hall, violin. Adrian Boult, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
10 February 2018. Laurence Jackson, violin. Christopher Dragon, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, triangle, strings.

Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835-1921)

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28

The Spanish violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) became the toast of Europe during the second half of the 19th century and his fiery interpretations,
incomparable technique and pure tone inspired many leading composers to write works for him. Enduring masterpieces such as Max Bruch’s Second Violin
Concerto, Lalo’s Concerto in F minor and Symphonie espagnole, Wieniawski’s Second Violin concerto and Dvorák’s Mazurek Op.49 all owe their existence to Sarasate’s dominating presence on European concert stages.

Camille Saint-Saëns was also attracted to Sarasate’s musicianship, and for him he composed his first and third Violin Concertos, as well as the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. It’s easy to see the appeal of Sarasate’s playing for a composer like Saint-Saëns – indeed there were similarities in their musical strengths and weaknesses. While both were superb technically and capable of virtually anything within their areas of specialisation, both were nevertheless criticised by their contemporaries for a lack of emotional commitment. In both cases (Saint-Saëns as composer, Sarasate as performer) it seemed that their music came too easily, resulting in performances of formal perfection but little soul. And yet for all that, there is no doubting that the music resulting from their collaboration has endured well beyond their lifetimes, as tonight’s performance of the impressive Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso demonstrates.

Saint-Saëns wrote it for Sarasate in 1863, and like so many of his works it is a brilliant, polished and stylish vehicle for a virtuoso performer. The Introduction is predominantly sombre in character (a few bars in the middle, however, lighten the mood), while the Rondo is notable for the deft interplay of duple and triple metres. Its graceful, lilting theme dominates the work as a whole, contrasted only by a more serious second subject and an exquisite but strangely unrelated intermezzo of just 20 bars’ duration. This brief intermezzo forms one of the highlights of the work. As the virtuoso Leopold Auer wrote, ‘it’s as if the composer had deliberately decided to turn his inspiration into another channel and create something novel’. The syncopated initial theme soon returns, however, and after some brilliant passage work for the soloist, a Più allegro section brings the work to a sparkling conclusion.

© Symphony Australia

First performance:
4 April 1867, Paris. Pablo de Sarasate, violin.

Most recent WASO performance:
14 February 2009. Shaun Lee-Chen, violin.

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

Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)

Symphony No.3 in F, Op.90

Allegro con brio
Andante
Poco allegretto
Allegro

While the connection between Beethoven and Brahms has long been remarked, the influence of Goethe on Brahms has never been acknowledged fully. Like Brahms, Goethe was at heart a Classicist whose artistic vision was nevertheless broad enough to embrace, and indeed to be embraced by, the Romantic spirit of his age.

Perhaps because their art strived to reconcile these two conflicting impulses of passion and order, and perhaps because of the magnitude of the messages which they sought to convey, both Goethe and Brahms struggled for decades over their greatest masterpieces. In Brahms’ case, the breakthrough First Symphony took 15 years of painstaking effort. For Goethe, Faust emerged only after 60 years of intermittent rejection and revision. So perhaps it should be no surprise that when Brahms sought to convey his most personal thoughts through music, he turned to Goethe for his texts.

So too the middle movements of the Third Symphony emerged (according to Max Kalbeck) from incidental music which Brahms had sketched (but apparently never used) for a production of Goethe’s Faust. While no obvious traces of this appear in the Third Symphony, the dramatic power and universalist vision embodied within it suggest that no ordinary motivations were behind its composition.

Brahms began formal work on the Third Symphony during 1882 and completed it in Wiesbaden in 1883, when he was 50 years old. He had moved to Wiesbaden primarily to be near the contralto Hermine Spies, and it seems that she was the latest in a longish line of female idols whom Brahms wished to marry but didn’t dare ask.

Brahms’ unrequited love for Hermine was exacerbated by other personal crises at this time – not least the recent death of his revered teacher Eduard Marxsen and a temporary estrangement from Joseph Joachim. Small wonder then that the sunny disposition of the Second Symphony gave way now to more mixed emotions.

The symphony’s first performance was given by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter in December 1883, and was well received on first hearing. It has never really fallen out of favour, owing to its mastery of construction, its persuasive blend of lyricism and drama, and its exceptional orchestration. Apparently during the first rehearsals Brahms made many minor adjustments to the instrumental arrangements, subtly altering the orchestral colouring. And the resulting work, with its extraordinary clarity of instrumental effects and chamber music textures, demonstrates that Brahms was a much underrated orchestrator.

He was even better at providing spectacular openings for his symphonies, and the Third is no exception. It begins with three dramatic chords which immediately give way to the passionate main theme in the strings. As in so much of Brahms’ greatest music, the first 30 seconds have penetrated directly into the heart of the musical matter and the sound-world of the entire symphony has largely been established. After the graceful secondary theme appears in the clarinet, the development is followed by the return of the opening motif in the horns, leading to an unusually diverse recapitulation and a coda which brings a more tranquil restatement of the opening material.

The slow movement contains one of Brahms’ most famous melodies which is introduced by the clarinet and then imitated by the violas and other sections of the orchestra. It is music which is so evocative that it lends itself to a variety of conflicting interpretations – it is chorale-like but also pastoral, its grace is Mozartian but its reflectiveness is typically Brahmsian, it is almost naive in sentiment but extraordinarily sophisticated in execution, and its musical material is basically diatonic but with interjections of wrong-key ‘foreign’ chords.

The third movement serves as a kind of melancholy minuet and trio. The minuet opens in the cellos and, after a brief trio section, it returns with the horn leading the way.

As in his other symphonies, Brahms throws the weight back on in the finale. It begins sotto voce and with a sense of suppressed agitation but soon boils over, the blaring brass and woodwind working up to a climax during the development. In the recapitulation the tempo slows and at last, in pianissimo whispers in the strings, the very first theme of the symphony returns, and consolation takes over from conflict as this most unified and beautifully proportioned of symphonies ushers in its sublime conclusion. Had he lived to hear it, Goethe may well have been impressed.

Adapted from a note by Martin Buzacott
Symphony Australia © 1997

First performance:
2 December 1883, Vienna. Hans Richter conducting.

Most recent WASO performance:
28 August 2015. Asher Fisch, conductor.

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