Magic Spirit

Benjamin Northey
Conductor

Australian conductor Benjamin Northey is the Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the Principal Conductor in Residence of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He has previously held the posts of Associate Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2010-2019), Resident Guest Conductor of the Australia Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra (2002-2006) and Principal Guest Conductor of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra (2007-2010).

Northey appears regularly as a guest conductor with all major Australian symphony orchestras, Opera Australia, New Zealand Opera and State Opera South Australia.

His international appearances include concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, the Malaysian Philharmonic and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

An Aria Awards, Air Music Awards, and Art Music Awards winner, he was voted Limelight Magazine's Australian Artist of the Year in 2018. Northey's many recordings can be found on ABC Classics.

In 2023, he conducts the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Tasmanian and Christchurch Symphony Orchestras and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

© Patrick Togher Artists’ Management 2023

William Barton
Didgeridoo/Vocals

William Barton is Australia’s leading didgeridoo player as well as composer, instrumentalist and vocalist.

William first learnt the instrument from his uncle, Arthur Peterson, an elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga people and was working from an early age with traditional dance groups and fusion/rock jazz bands, orchestras, string quartets, and mixed ensembles.

Throughout his diverse career he has forged a path in the classical musical world, from the London, Berlin and Bremer Philharmonic Orchestras to historic events at Westminster Abbey for Commonwealth Day 2019, at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli and for the Beijing Olympics.

William holds honorary doctorates from both Griffith University and the University of Sydney, and has released five albums on the ABC Classic label.

William was named Queensland Australian of the Year for 2023, was an Australian of the Year nominee and received the Don Banks Music Award from the Australia Council in 2021.

In 2022 he was recognised for his work with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the multi award-winning soundtrack from the film River.

Image credit: Tanja Bruckner

Maurice Ravel
(1875-1937)

Ma Mère l’oye (Mother Goose) – Suite

Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Tom Thumb
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
The Fairy Garden

Ravel wrote his Mother Goose Suite in 1908-10 as a set of piano duet pieces for the two young children of his friends, Cipa and Ida Godebski. Ravel’s aim to evoke the ‘poetry of childhood’ in his 5 pièces enfantines ‘naturally led me to simplify my style and thin out my writing’. In 1911 Ravel orchestrated the set, and extended it into a ballet score.

The suite, based on a selection of fairy tales, begins with the slow, stately dance, Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty. In the second movement, Tom Thumb attempts to retrace his path by following his trail of breadcrumbs, but they have been eaten by the birds, whose chirruping is suggested by the woodwind and a solo violin playing harmonics.

Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas is a former princess who has been made ugly by a wicked witch – hence her name, which means ‘Ugly Little Girl’. With a Green Serpent who had once been a handsome prince, she has sailed to the land of the Pagodas, tiny people with bodies made of jewels and porcelain, where they are restored to their former appearance and married.

In Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, the voice of Beauty is represented by the clarinet and that of the Beast by the contrabassoon.

The suite closes with The Fairy Garden, where, in the ballet, Prince Charming finds the Princess asleep. As the sun rises, she awakens; there is a joyous fanfare as the other characters gather around her and the Good Fairy blesses them all.

Symphony Australia © 2003

First performance:
Piano version premiered by Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony on 20 April 1910, Salle Gaveau, Paris. The ballet premiered at Théâtre des Arts, Paris on 29 January 1912.

First WASO Performance:
10 August 1940, Antal Dorati conducting.

First WASO Performance:
13-14 October 2017, Douglas Boyd conducting.

Instrumentation:
two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling cor anglais), two clarinets, two bassoons (second doubling contrabassoon), two horns, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste and strings.

William Barton
(b.1981)

Apii Thatini Mu Murtu
(To Sing and Carry a Coolamon on Country Together)

This work is about reconnection to the mother country and paying homage and respect to our language, to the land, and to our dreaming. Last year I had the privilege of having a 2020 Prelude Residency at Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers House where I began working on what you will hear today. At the piano I let my ideas flow and visualised where I am – I am in Kalkadoon country flying above the landscape like an eagle. I can see the rugged beauty of the escarpment over the Argylla and Selwyn Ranges, the tinted pinks and reds of the land in winter time (that magic time of renewal and fresh air). I am reconnecting to country and breathing life into it for my dad who is buried out there, thinking of where he is.

While this work is my own reconnection to country and language, I wanted this work to be a part of the continued revitalisation of language. Language should be accessible not only for our own people but for everyone. I want people to walk away from this experience having a melody or a language word from Kalkadunga, my people, resonate with them.

In this busy world today, many miss out on the lullaby of our ancestors – of our grandfathers, uncles, and aunties singing to us as children. Music is so much embedded in our DNA and it has to be revitalised always. I see this piece as a revitalisation of connection and of country – when you sing to a dry river bed, you’re singing up country. When you reconnect to country, you’re energising it and you’re getting energy back from it, and the more we sing the song together, the more energy we create for peace and harmony. When people hear this work, you know it is welcoming people into a shared experience of reconnection; the musicians, me as a composer, and Benjamin Northey as conductor are a unified team on stage to tell the story of our people and our unique Australian sound.

From my first appearance on stage with QSO to now, I’ve come full circle and I feel this work represents a legacy of composing new Australian works. I would like to thank Queensland Symphony Orchestra and The Honourable Anthe Philippides who commissioned this work and for recognising the importance of supporting new works to make sure new music is always being created. Thank you to my supporters who have journeyed with me over the last 20 years. Thank you to my mum, for her support over the years and to my partner, Véronique Serret, who has been the musical strength behind many things for me.

- William Barton, 2021

First performance:
26 June 2021, Brisbane. Benjamin Northey conducting.

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

Gabriel Fauré
(1845-1924)

Requiem Op.48 (1900 version)

Fauré’s Requiem is his one widely popular work; indeed the only one of his larger-scale works to have found a secure place in the repertory. The highly civilised, rather private style of his other compositions makes it unlikely they will ever have wide appeal.

Fauré stood somewhat apart from the musical partisanship of his day - independent of the German tendencies of Franck and his followers, and of the ‘impressionism’ of the Debussyites. He nevertheless earned wide respect and became Director of the Paris Conservatoire (1905-1920). Ravel was the most famous of his pupils.

The Requiem, first performed in 1888 at a funeral in the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, is a comparatively early work which reflects and sums up many features of its composer’s early style. It makes a memorable impression of serenity and contemplation, highly appropriate to the Mass for the Dead.

It has been said that Fauré’s Requiem is suited to liturgical use rather than concert performance. But it is largely in the concert hall that it has become known, and special permission had to be obtained from the Church for it to be performed at Fauré’s own funeral. This is because of Fauré’s unconventional choice of liturgical texts - he omits the Dies Irae, except for the Pie Jesu, and adds two movements whose words are taken from the order for Burial: the Libera me and the In Paradisum. It has been suggested that Fauré chose his texts to give greater prominence to the word requiem (rest).

Fauré’s father died in 1885. Then his mother died on New Year’s Eve 1887, and it may have been this event which prompted him to complete the Agnus Dei, Sanctus, and In Paradisum, which, together with other movements of the original version, were the first performed. The most dramatic part of the work, the Libera me was composed much earlier (in 1877), but added later - it is the only part which refers to the Day of Judgement.

There has been considerable discussion as to whether Fauré’s Requiem is more pagan than Christian in tone. It has been called (wrongly) ‘a Requiem without the Last Judgement’, and as ‘a paradisiacal imagining, with no trace of torment or doubt, scarcely even of mourning’. This goes too far, but Fauré, though a church organist, was more drawn to Greek stoical ideals of contemplation and resignation than to the Christian sense of sin, judgement and hope for the afterlife.

The musical style of the Requiem shows the influence of the École Niedermeier, where Fauré trained as an organist. This school promoted study of the masters of church music of the past, and even of the ecclesiastical modes used in Gregorian chant. This musical source is evident throughout the Requiem, most strikingly in the monotoned chant of the solo baritone in the Hostias. These sober passages are contrasted with long phrases of sinuous melodic curve, such as the themes of the Domine, Pie Jesu, Libera me and In Paradisum. The originality of the melodic outline sets Fauré’s Requiem apart from the sacred works of Gounod, which Fauré admired and which influenced his early sacred compositions.

Fauré’s great restraint is particularly evident in his orchestration. Several of the pieces which constitute the Requiem were first conceived as choruses with organ, and even in the final version the organ, with double basses, plays a kind of continuo role.

The versions of Fauré’s Requiem

As performed in January 1888, the first version consisted of Introit and Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei and In Paradisum. The choir and treble soloist (in the Pie Jesu) were accompanied by a small orchestra: divided violas and cellos, double basses, harp, organ, and one solo violin in the Sanctus.

In June 1889 Fauré completed the Offertorium, and in 1891 added the Libera me of 1877, with baritone soloist and rescored for an orchestra including trombones. Adding horns and trumpets, and violins in the In Paradisum, this version of the Requiem was first performed at the Madeleine on 21 January 1893.

Fauré then expanded the orchestra still further for the version first performed in 1900 at the Trocadéro. The idea was to make the Requiem more suitable for concert performance. Possibly one of Fauré’s pupils adapted the orchestration. The added parts for woodwinds and violins double other instruments.

As Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux points out, the version heard tonight, though not the composer’s first idea, was approved by him. There are two equally valid performing traditions for the Requiem: one stressing its liturgical purpose, the other more symphonic in scale, making the work a quieter example of the tradition of sacred works with orchestra to which the masses of Gounod and Saint-Saëns belong.

David Garrett
Symphony Australia © 1998

First Performance:
12 July 1900, Paris. Paul Taffanel conducting. The piece premiered in its first version in 1888.

Most recent WASO performance:
7-8 August 2015 (1893 version). Simone Young, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, two clarinets and two bassoons; four horns, two trumpets and three trombones; timpani, organ, harp and strings.