The Great Romantics

I am so excited to be back in Perth with my orchestra to start the season. 2023 is set to be a wonderful year as we welcome back some much-loved international and Australian guests and showcase the depth of talent we have here in Western Australia and indeed within the orchestra. I am delighted that in 2023 we feature several WASO Principals as soloists, and that you, our audience, will get to experience their wonderful artistry.

WASO has a proud history of supporting new Australian music and this year is no exception. We premiere five new works across three different concert series, including two works by our Composer in Residence Olivia Davies. I’m excited to be conducting one of Olivia’s works, as well as the world premiere of Andrew Schultz’s Bassoon Concerto which he has written for WASO Principal Bassoon Jane Kircher-Lindner.

As I’m sure you all know, the music of Richard Wagner has played a big part in my conducting career and so I am thrilled to conduct Act I of Die Walküre in May. This opera is such an important work and I have been wanting to bring it to WASO for many years. I’m eager to give audiences a deeper understanding of this incredible score and so my new Discover concert is the perfect opportunity. It is also no secret that I love performing Romantic works, so the other concert in this series, Discover: Bruckner, will also be a highlight for me this season.

In 2023 I celebrate 10 years as WASO’s Principal Conductor and I’m so delighted that we can continue our artistic journey together. We have tackled the masterworks of the repertoire, explored new works and concert formats and enjoyed some truly exceptional music making together. I look forward to returning to key works with fresh insight and continue exploring fresh repertoire for you to enjoy.

WASO’s Assistant Conductor Jen Winley joins me on this journey again in 2023. It has been a joy to see Jen’s development over the last year, and a pleasure to see her career blossoming across Australia.

There is so much to look forward to in the 2023 WASO season with old favourites and new experiences for everyone.

Thank you for your incredible support of this wonderful orchestra and I look forward to continuing our musical journey together.

Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor

A renowned conductor in both the operatic and symphonic worlds, Asher Fisch is especially celebrated for his interpretative command of core German and Italian repertoire of the Romantic and post-Romantic era. He conducts a wide variety of repertoire from Gluck to contemporary works by living composers. Since 2014, Asher Fisch has been the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO). His former posts include Principal Guest Conductor of the Seattle Opera (2007-2013), Music Director of the New Israeli Opera (1998-2008), and Music Director of the Wiener Volksoper (1995-2000).

Born in Israel, Fisch began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and kappellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has built his versatile repertoire at the major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and Semperoper Dresden. Fisch has conducted at leading American symphony orchestras including those of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia. In Europe he has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France, among others.

Highlights of Asher Fisch’s 2022-23 season include Lohengrin and La forza del destino at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and Tannhäuser at Opera Australia, as well as concerts with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Fisch’s 2021-22 season featured Adriana Lecouvreur at the Vienna State Opera, a gala concert at the Hungarian National Opera with Kristine Opolais, Otello and Der Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and concerts with the Colorado Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Other recent seasons included concert and opera engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, Sydney Symphony, Teatro Massimo Orchestra in Palermo, Carmen, Die Zauberflöte, and Parsifal at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Ariadne auf Naxos with the Bayerische Staatsoper at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Tannhäuser at the Tokyo National Theater, and Pagliacci and Schitz at the Israeli Opera.

Asher Fisch’s recent recordings with WASO include Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2018, which won Limelight Magazine’s Opera Recording of the Year in 2019, Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 and tenor Stuart Skelton’s first solo album Shining Knight, all of which were released on ABC Classics. Fisch’s recording of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with the Munich Radio Orchestra won Limelight Magazine’s Opera Recording of the Year in 2017. In 2015, he recorded the complete Brahms symphonies with WASO, released on ABC Classics to great acclaim. His recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle with the Seattle Opera was released on the Avie label in 2014. His first Ring Cycle recording, of the Helpmann award-winning State Opera of South Australia production, garnered praise and awards including the Prix Lauritz Melchior and Académie du disque lyrique Paris. Fisch is also an accomplished pianist and has recorded a solo disc of Wagner piano transcriptions for the Melba label.

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Lukáš Vondráček
Piano

Lukáš Vondráček’s natural and assured musicality and remarkable technique have long marked him out as a gifted and mature musician since his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy at the age of 15. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards, including the Grand Prix at the 2016 Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels.

Over the last decade Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world working with orchestras such as the Philadelphia and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Symphony Radio Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic and Netherlands Philharmonic orchestras under conductors such as Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Yannick Nézet Séguin, Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Pietari Inkinen, Vasily Petrenko, Jakub Hrůša, Anu Tali, Xian Zhang, Krzysztof Urbański, Stéphane Denève and Elim Chan, among many others.

The 2022/23 season sees Lukáš Vondráček work with renowned orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra amongst many others.

César Franck
(1822-1890)

Le Chasseur maudit (The Accursed Huntsman) – Symphonic poem after a ballad of Bürger

If we find it hard to be stirred by the story Franck outlined as the preface in words to this symphonic poem, that’s because the time of its Romanticism has past, and some of its most thrilling things, especially, have lost their power to make us shiver, so that only the stage-trappings remain. The ballad by Gottfried August Bürger which Franck summarised as his inspiration, Der Wilde Jäger (1778), concerns a Count from the Rhineland, who, forgetful of his religious duty, goes hunting on a Sunday morning (hunting horns; cellos intone a religious melody, bells, then the hunt itself). He defies the pious churchgoers who try to restrain him. In the middle of the forest, he suddenly finds himself alone, his horse refuses to go further (tremolos). He blows into his horn, but now it will not sound. An other-worldly voice curses him ‘Sacrilegious man’, it cries, ‘be forever hunted by the evil one!’ Then flames surround him on every side. To escape, he begins his endless wild ride, pursued by demons, ‘by day across the abysses, by night through the air.’ As the wild chase begins in earnest, the curse is underlined by the tuba. The ending pans away in truly cinematic fashion.

Bürger’s poem was one of the most influential of the ballads in which he breathed new life into the genre: it draws on folk elements, and heightens the eerie, ghostly atmosphere. This implied rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment appealed to the generation of the ‘Storm and Stress’ of the 1770’s, and later to the Romantics. But why did it appeal to César Franck? On the face of it, his whole artistic imagination was drawn to more spiritualised subjects, and his sense of drama was musical rather than pictorial.

Yet Le Chasseur maudit brought Franck the first, and just about the only unqualified public success of his career. The première of the symphonic poem, conducted by the composer at a concert of the Société Nationale on March 31, 1883, was greeted by a long ovation. It is quite amusing to notice how Franck’s worshipful disciples, notably Vincent d’Indy, seem almost embarrassed by this success. A respectable composer, and especially their revered ‘Father’ should have chosen a loftier subject, and avoided following a literary program so closely. Or so his admirers spun his posthumous legend. It may in fact have been d’Indy himself, more likely Henri Duparc, who drew Franck’s attention to Bürger in the first place. Duparc had composed his Lenore (1875) on Bürger’s most famous ballad, about a young woman who, when her lover failed to return from the war, blasphemed against heaven. Her punishment was to be carried away by her lover on a wild midnight ride, during which he turned into a ghostly skeleton, leaping with Lenore and his steed into an open grave. Franck was probably tempted to rivalry with the tone-poems of his younger friends and pupils, especially as his own subtle Les Eolides (1877) had recently been coolly received at a Lamoureux concert.

Franck’s biographer Jean Gallois suggests there was a deeper reason for Franck’s attraction to Bürger’s ballad. Noting the obvious, highly-strung Romanticism of the music, he suspects the disquiet of a soul haunted by passion and struggling with itself. It is well known that Franck’s Piano Quintet of 1878-9 betrays, in its often unbridled emotionality, the susceptibility of the devout and upright Franck to the talent and other attractions of his youthful pupil the pianist and composer Augusta Holmès - a suspicion aroused in Mme. Franck by the dedication of the Quintet, which seemed confirmed by its music. The tone-poem, Gallois thinks, is an aftereffect of the crisis revealed by the Quintet. It is noteworthy that whereas Bürger’s title Der Wilde Jäger puts the accent on the Count’s wildness, and Sir Walter Scott called his English version The Chase, Franck’s title emphasises the curse, and the Count’s flouting of his religious duty. Did Franck partly identify, guiltily, with the hero of the poem? At any rate, as Gallois observes, The Accursed Huntsman gives the lie to those who want to see in Franck only a man fixed in his meditations or lost in a seraphic complacency.

© David Garrett 2006

First performance:
31 March 1883 in Paris.

First WASO performance:
This is the first performance by WASO.

Instrumentation:
piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bells, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, strings

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23

Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso –
Allegro con spirito
Andantino semplice – Prestissimo –
Andantino semplice
Allegro con fuoco

If it was fortuitous that Tchaikovsky succeeded at his first attempt, writing perhaps the ‘greatest piano concerto of all time’, then it is remarkable that he simultaneously created a new Russian genre. The striking mix of lyricism and virtuosity in his First Piano Concerto, Op.23, which was written over six weeks late in 1874, would later be emulated by many Russian composers. The concerto is not Tchaikovsky’s only youthful work to find a permanent place in the repertoire - Romeo and Juliet (1869, but later revised) and Swan Lake (1876) are distinguished inclusions – but it was the first to receive an international premiere. The dedicatee of the concerto, Hans von Bülow, performed it in Boston, Massachusetts in 1875 to positive reviews, yet one wonders if the small band, consisting of only four first violins, were a match for the music’s potential. (A critic noted that, after a missed entry of the trombones in the first movement, von Bülow cried out ‘the brass may go to hell!’) Rather, it is likely that the potential of the new concerto was first realised in a performance in Moscow by Sergei Taneyev later that year, following an apparently mediocre performance given by Gustav Kross in St Petersburg.

It had been to Anton Rubinstein’s younger brother, Nikolai – equally as gifted by all accounts – that Tchaikovsky had turned within days of the score’s completion, seeking advice about piano composition that only a professional could offer. Instead, and quite notoriously, he savaged the concerto, devastating its composer with comments suggesting that, in all, only a few pages could be salvaged and that the remainder should be discarded. There has been speculation ever since over the reason for Rubinstein’s reaction – ranging from jealousy to a tempestuous personality – but the defiant young Tchaikovsky remained true to his word, publishing the work exactly as it stood. Nikolai Rubinstein was soon to recant his position, however: as well as conducting the first Moscow performance with Taneyev, he performed it often as soloist in the years before his early death.

In hindsight, it may have been over the demanding solo part that he had voiced concerns, or about sections where piano textures might be lost beneath the orchestration. Similarly, it could have been about structural matters that are still difficult to explain today, chief of which is the famous melody that begins the concerto but which, inexplicably, never returns. In this opening passage, Tchaikovsky eventually relented to advice, replacing lightweight arpeggios that had previously accompanied the soaring melody with the now-famous double-octave chords (revised version, 1889). In terms of structure, it is the brisk, dotted theme that quietly follows which is the real first subject in this sonata-form movement. And here, as if to indicate to the world the ethnic authenticity of his music, Tchaikovsky follows in the style of the newly formed nationalist group of composers (the so-called kuchka, or ‘Mighty Handful’) by using a Ukrainian folksong, ‘Oy, kryatshe, kryatshe’.

The simple theme that opens the second movement typifies Tchaikovsky’s innate gift for melody, the solo flute conjuring folk-like affinities. A central section – originally marked Allegro vivace assai but later escalated to Prestissimo, no doubt capitalising on the concerto’s virtuosic appeal – briefly quotes a café waltz, Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire, well-known to the composer’s circle of friends. And it is to another Ukrainian folksong, ‘Vïdy, vïdy, Ivan’ku’, that Tchaikovsky turns for the principal theme of the finale, its dancelike cross-rhythms again evoking national character. The broadly lyrical melody that contrasts with this material twice succeeds in holding back the momentum, before the concerto arrives at a seemingly inevitable conclusion: a forceful octave cadenza traverses the entire keyboard, and moves headlong into an apotheosised statement of the movement’s main lyrical theme. With the pianist indefatigably leading the entire orchestra with fortissimo treble chords, it is a famous and satisfying ending. (And for more than a few composers who followed, one that proved irresistible to copy!)

Scott Davie © 2011/2013

First performance:
25 October 1875, Boston. Benjamin Johnson Lang, conductor; Hans von Bülow, soloist.

First WASO performance:
14 April 1945. William Cade, conductor; Marshall Sumner, soloist.

Most recent WASO performance:
10-11 March 2017. Daniel Blendulf, conductor; Daniil Trifonov, soloist.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings.

Sergei Prokofiev
(1891-1953)

Romeo and Juliet

Music from Suite 1 (Op.64b) and Suite 2 (Op.64c)

The Montagues and the Capulets (Suite2, No.1)
Juliet the Young Girl (Suite 2, No.2)
Romeo and Juliet (Suite 1, No.6)
The Death of Tybalt (Suite 1 No.7)
Friar Laurence (Suite 2, No.3)
Masks (Suite 1, No.5)
Romeo at Juliet’s Grave (Suite 2 No.7)

Prokofiev wrote his ballet Romeo and Juliet after his return to the USSR at the height of Stalin’s Great Terror. The work’s standing in the repertoire belies its somewhat protracted genesis, having been passed from the Kirov to the Bolshoi before finally receiving its premiere in Brno in 1938 (the Russian premiere took place two years later).

The ballet is divided into four acts – totalling some 52 numbers and lasting well over two hours. Thus rarely performed, Prokofiev decided to break the music down into a number of suites for concert purposes. The first two symphonic suites from the ballet, each consisting of seven movements, do not follow each other consecutively: rather, the suites develop parallel to each other. Some numbers were taken directly from the ballet without alteration, others were compiled from different sources within it. The third suite, compiled ten years later, is based on dances which primarily feature Romeo or Juliet.

This concert’s selection, taken from suites 1 and 2, suggests the outline of Shakespeare’s story of the star-cross’d lovers who were married by Friar Laurence when he thus hoped to heal the breach between their parents’ ‘warring houses’. When Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin Tybalt in revenge for the murder of his friend Mercutio, he is banished. Meanwhile, Juliet’s father, ignorant of the marriage, wants her to marry Count Paris. To help her out of the impossible situation, Friar Laurence gives Juliet a potion which will make her apparently lifeless for two days. Sadly, his message to Romeo, outlining the plan, goes astray. Romeo returns to the Capulet vault, finds Juliet apparently dead and kills himself. Juliet wakes, finds him dead and, guessing what has happened, takes his dagger and stabs herself.

Prokofiev used the principle of leitmotifs attached to each character or specific emotion – love, hate, youth, age, peace, battle, etc. The orchestration of the suites is very lush and the harmonies are steeped in post-Romantic grandeur.

Montagues and Capulets (Suite 2, No.1)
The Montagues and the Capulets opens in a stormy atmosphere suggestive of the aggressive rivalry between the two families. The music includes that which accompanies the Duke’s warning to the brawlers at the start of the ballet, and the so-called Dance of the Knights at the ball. The Knights’ music frames an aloof minuet which Juliet dances with her betrothed, Paris.

Juliet the Young Girl (Suite 2, No.2)
Juliet, depicted before her ill-fated marriage and still very much a child, is wonderfully characterised by Prokofiev as she playfully teases her nursemaid. At the entrance of Juliet’s mother and a discussion of the arranged marriage, the music is subdued and stately, with a hint of the troubles to come.

Romeo and Juliet (Suite 1, No.6)
This is the love music with which the first act of the ballet ends: Juliet, having fallen in love with Romeo at the ball, is out on her balcony in the moonlight; Romeo appears below and they tenderly swear everlasting love to each other.

Death of Tybalt (Suite 1, No.7)
The Death of Tybalt is one of the most dramatic moments in the ballet. Brilliant rapid passages depict the antagonism of the duel; the full orchestra, with timpani, accompanies Tybalt’s funeral procession.

Friar Laurence (Suite 2, No.3)
Plodding clarinets and tuba accompany a solo bassoon line characterising Friar Laurence. Prokofiev’s simple, major-key melody in sustained notes sums up the position of trust in which the good friar is held by others.

Masks (Suite 1, No.5)
This is a march, and the playful cornet, clarinet and oboe solos accompany the arrival of Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio, all masked for the ball that they are about to gatecrash.

Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb (Suite 2, No.7)
In the full ballet, the music for Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb is used both for Juliet’s funeral and for the moment when Romeo discovers the heavily-sedated Juliet and believes her dead. Poignantly, the music expressing his grief recalls the themes used in earlier love scenes.

© Symphony Australia

First performance of the ballet:
30 December 1938, Brno, Czech Republic.

Most recent WASO performance:
14-15 November 2014. Marko Letonja, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, english horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, cornet, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (snare drum, glockenspiel, tambourine, cymbals, triangle, bass drum, maracas), piano, harp, strings.