Scheherazade

Jen Winley
Conductor

Jen Winley is WASO’s Associate Conductor. Jen began her career in percussion and timpani working principally with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and regularly with Orchestra Victoria and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO). She then spent several years as a classroom music educator and loves being able to combine her passions for music and education when working with young people.

Jen made her professional conducting debut in 2020 with several orchestras in Perth including WASO and Perth Symphony Orchestra. Jen is a highly versatile conductor and enjoys working on a wide variety of projects. She has conducted WASO in mainstage concerts, Family, Education and Outreach projects, regional tours, Films in concert, and contemporary and recording projects. Jen is also proud to have conducted the WA Youth Orchestra since 2019.

In 2023, Jen made her debut as conductor with West Australian Opera and Queensland Symphony Orchestra and in November 2023 WASO announced Jen as their Associate Conductor. The two-year appointment sees Jen become the first Associate Conductor in the organisation’s history. 2024 sees Jen make her debut with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and her subscription concert debut with WASO.

Jen Winley is supported by the Simon Lee Foundation.

Jenna Smith
Associate Principal, Trumpet

Jenna completed her Bachelor of Music performance degree with first class honours in 2016, studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Andrew Evans. While a student, she received the Ted and Susan Meller Memorial Scholarship, the James Witheford Foundation Award for Brass, and the Busby Musical Scholarship. She also participated in Australian Youth Orchestra programs from 2012 to 2017. In 2017 she performed as the AYO Principal Trumpet and received the AYO Accenture Scholarship. In 2017 and 2018 Jenna was the Trumpet Fellow in the Sydney Symphony Fellowship program.

She has played with the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmanian symphony orchestras, the Opera Australia Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and the SSO Sinfonia. In 2016, she toured to Singapore as a member of the Australian World Orchestra’s Academy Program. Jenna has performed as a soloist with The Metropolitan Orchestra and the Sydney Wind Symphony.

Jenna’s Chair is supported by John and Nita Walshe through the Duet program.

Mel Bonis
(1858-1937)

Trois Femmes de légende (Three Legendary Women)
I. Ophélie
II. Salomé
III. Le Songe de Cléopâtre (Cleopatra’s Dream)

Identities

It’s 1881. A prize-winning 23-year-old student at the Paris Conservatoire composes a nocturne for piano and labels it Opus 1, ‘my first piece’. The signature reads ‘Mel Bonis’.

Elsewhere in Europe, Richard Strauss is completing his own early opuses; Oscar Wilde publishes his first book of poems; Vincent van Gogh begins painting in earnest. In Paris, a Conservatoire classmate, Claude Debussy, is trying his hand at opera. Perhaps more significant, because ‘Mel Bonis’ is a woman, the French feminist newspaper La Citoyenne (The Citizeness) is launched. Over the course of a decade, the paper will advocate for women’s enfranchisement: demanding changes to the Napoleonic Code that had abolished the financial and legal rights gained during the Revolution and relegated women to an inferior status by upholding the supremacy of husbands and fathers.

The most plausible candidate is Alice Stuart-Wortley, the amateur pianist whose friendship with Elgar is documented in more than 400 letters written between 1909 and 1931. Within that correspondence, Elgar consistently referred to the Violin Concerto as ‘our concerto’ and he sent her a handwritten copy of the quotation from Lesage. His private name for her was ‘Windflower’ and Elgar described the work as containing more than one ‘Windflower’ theme. But Elgar was always one who liked to complicate his enigmas, and later in his life he confided to his friend Ivor Atkins that the inspiration for the concerto had actually been his former fiancée Helen Weaver, a fine violinist in her own right. No matter who the unknown inspiration was, the ‘subject’ of the concerto, as always, remains Elgar himself. ‘I have written out my soul,’ Elgar wrote to Stuart-Wortley shortly after its completion.

This is the world in which the young Mélanie Hélène Bonis resorts to a gender-neutral nom de plume. A world in which her very presence at the Conservatoire is remarkable, and must be attended by chaperones. A world in which her parents can halt her studies (she’d fallen in love with a singer-poet) and in 1883 marry her off to a twice-widowed industrialist 22 years her senior.

And so, barely two years after the ‘birth’ of Mel Bonis, a new identity was established: Madame Albert Domange. Her husband was likeable but didn’t share his new wife’s musical ear. For the next decade, the composer who’d been described as ‘strongest in her class’ raised children and managed an affluent household but wrote almost no music.

Mel Bonis emerged again in the 1890s, when she reconnected with her true love, Amédée- Louis Hettich. Eventually, an affair led to the secret birth in 1899 of a child, Madeleine. (Madeleine would learn the truth about her ‘godmother’ only after a budding romance with her half-brother forced a revelation.) But meanwhile, Hettich encouraged Bonis to compose, collaborating with her on songs and introducing her to the publisher Leduc. In a musical blossoming that extended to World War I, Bonis composed prolifically in most genres except opera, appeared in concert as a pianist, was published, won prizes and received admiring reviews. And at a time when women numbered only seven per cent of the membership, she was enlisted in the Société des Compositeurs de Musqiue, becoming the first woman to serve on the committee. Of particular significance for this concert, in 1908–09 she resumed her technical studies, taking orchestration lessons from Charles Koechlin.

Legends

‘Femmes de légende’ might be a 21st-century label – assigned by her great-granddaughter, Christine Géliot, when she collected these pieces for publication – but it reflects an abiding theme in Bonis’s music. In eight cameo works for piano as well as orchestra, she gave musical life to remarkable women of myth, literature and history – their passions, their strengths and their tragedies.

Géliot suggests that Bonis’s choice of subject matter testified to her thoughts and feelings about the nature of femininity. At the same time, these subjects reflect contemporary fashion. Shakespeare’s Ophelia was a popular subject in visual art (for example, the 1852 painting by Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais). Oscar Wilde’s Salomé premiered at the Comédie-Parisienne in 1896 and Richard Strauss’s opera based on it received its Paris premiere in 1907. And Cleopatra’s fatal dream of Antony had been an established trope in French tragedy for centuries.

Musically, Bonis was equally in tune with times. Her language embraced the Romanticism of César Franck and Gabriel Fauré and her command of form was widely admired, but on this conservative foundation she built an inventive style that reveals an ear for jewel-like colours and expressive use of harmony. She also adopted technical devices that can be heard in composers such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Igor Stravinsky as well as Debussy, including octatonic scales and modes. These otherworldly or ‘exotic’ aspects of her style were in turn rooted in the singular fascination with the East that had emerged with the expansion of the Second French colonial empire (think Camille Saint-Saëns’ Egyptian piano concerto).

The slow and mysterious Ophélie is an Impressionistic miniature portrait, in which cascading harps and shimmering strings over repeated horn notes introduce the themes of water, despair and death. Salomé is just as compact: in the space of five minutes, Bonis evokes the perilous seduction of the dance of the seven veils and – with one abrupt chord at the end – its violent aftermath. Listen for the compelling five-beat pulse (a dance, yes, but not a dance for a European ballroom) and the stark contrasts of tempo, mood and colour.

Le Songe de Cléopatre is the longest and most complex of the three pieces. According to legend, the Queen of Egypt saw Mark Antony’s ghost in a dream, commanding her to kill herself. In Bonis’s music we hear both the floating tranquillity of a dreamscape and the horror of impending doom. Again, the music is dominated by harp sonorities, and seductive and sumptuous effects are created through harmony and a kaleidoscope of instrumental colours.

There’s a curious disconnect between ‘Madame Domange’ – conservative, dutiful and profoundly religious – and ‘Mel Bonis’ – composer of the forward-looking and extraordinarily sensuous orchestral works. But both must have shared what she called her ‘greatest sorrow’: never to hear these remarkable works in public performance. A century on, the world is making up for the neglect.

Yvonne Frindle © 2024

Premiere history:
Although the orchestral versions of Salomé and Le Songe de Cléopâtre were probably played through in a rehearsal in the composer’s lifetime, there were no public performances of these works until the 21st century, when Christine Géliot, Mel Bonis’s great-granddaughter, collected and edited them for publication. They were recorded by the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra and Benoît Fromanger in 2012 and received their concert premiere in 2015, Jessica Cottis conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

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

Instrumentation:
three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes (one doubling cor anglais), two clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and percussion, two harps and strings.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel
(1778-1837)

Trumpet Concerto

Allegro con spirit
Andante –
Rondo

This is one of the most often played of all trumpet concertos. It is also, nowadays, just about the only work of its composer in the standard repertoire. Trumpet players have seized on it as the first work for standard Classical orchestra which exploits the capacities of the modern trumpet.

The history of this concerto is tied up with the most popular trumpet concerto of all, Haydn’s, composed just a few years earlier for the same player, but not quite the same instrument. Just a little way into the orchestral introduction, another famous musician makes his bow, in an obvious crib from a phrase of Mozart’s ‘Haffner’ Symphony. For this composer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, to echo Mozart is hardly surprising, since he came as a boy from his native Bohemia to live in Mozart’s household for two years as a pupil-apprentice. Mozart conducted one of his own piano concertos for Hummel’s Vienna debut as a pianist in 1787.

The natural trumpet, just a length of tubing folded on itself, could only play melodies in its highest register, and the late 18th century had lost the taste for that exciting, but strenuous and penetrating sound. Haydn wrote his trumpet concerto in 1796, five years after Mozart’s death, persuaded by the first successful attempt to make a trumpet which could play melodies in the middle and low registers, where the trumpet could sound rounded and mellow.

Anton Weidinger was a trumpeter in the Imperial Court Orchestra in Vienna, inventor of the first keyed trumpet that worked. His four-keyed instrument, which he called the ‘organisierte Trompete’ [systematised trumpet] was capable of a full chromatic scale, filling in the notes missing in the lower range of the natural trumpet.

Like most inventions, this one’s bugs needed ironing out, and the four years before Weidinger premiered Haydn’s concerto in 1800 may have elapsed because it took that long for Weidinger to play Haydn’s music to the composer’s satisfaction. Maybe neither was really satisfied, because soon afterwards Weidinger added two more keys, to improve the muffled sound and insecure intonation of his keyed trumpet. By the time Hummel wrote his concerto for it, Weidinger’s trumpet could play almost all the notes of the chromatic scale convicingly, and may have been less tiring to play, since Hummel’s concerto is considerably longer than Haydn’s. Weidinger’s tone was compared to a sonorous oboe or clarinet. A review of 1803 admired his ‘tones never heard before’.

By 1803 when his trumpet concerto was composed, Hummel had emerged in Vienna as a leading pianist. The coming of Beethoven shook Hummel’s selfconfidence, and divided admirers of the rival pianists into hostile camps, but the two musicians became friends. Haydn, too, took an interest in Hummel, and lobbied successfully to make him his successor in the service of the Esterhazy family. The trumpet concerto was one of Hummel’s first works for his new employers, and was premiered at the Castle in Eisenstadt on 1 January 1804.

The borrowings from Mozart, and perhaps also from Haydn (such as his Symphony No.83, ‘The Hen’, in the repeated clucking woodwind notes accompanying the trumpet’s second solo subject) may be due to Hummel’s inexperience in 1803 as a composer for orchestra. He was to become a prolific composer in all genres, though mainly remembered for his piano music. His very difficult and showy piano concertos are enjoying something of a modern revival. No innovator, Hummel is perhaps best regarded as one of the most accomplished composers of the Silver Age of Viennese Classicism. He accepted as given the formal devices copied from Haydn and Mozart, embellishing them with his gift for charming melody, freely unfolding ideas, and elaborate virtuoso decoration. In another sphere Hummel was a pioneer – a shrewd businessman, he systematised multi-national music publishing and led the composers’ fight for uniform copyright laws.

From the trumpet’s very first entry, it is clear that Hummel is writing to the astonishing new features of Weidinger’s trumpet, with an emphasis on the middle and low registers, songful melodies, trills, and rapid semiquaver figures. Trills may have been one of Weidinger’s specialities, since a wavy line over some notes in the slow movement seems to call for a slow trill. The listener may be distracted from this feature, heard at the beginning of the slow movement, by another blatant crib – this time from the opening of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C, K467 (‘Elvira Madigan’) – the same figure exactly of lapping strings over basses rising in plucked arpeggios. Hummel develops the hints of dreamy Romanticism in his Mozart model,but not at great length, leading without a break into the lively Rondo with a subject in repeated notes, running passages up the scale from low to high, expressive episodes (but always tailing off into virtuoso fast-note display), and trills.

David Garrett © 2001

First performance:
January 1804, Eisenstadt. Anton Weidinger, trumpet.

First WASO performance:
29 September 1984. Geoffrey Payne, trumpet.

Most recent WASO performance:
8 October 1988. Paul Terracini, trumpet.

Instrumentation:
flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two horns, timpani and strings.

Amy Furfaro
Violin

What inspired you to become a professional musician, and how did your journey lead you to join the West Australian Symphony Orchestra?

I have always loved making music with friends. I started violin lessons with my two best friends who learned from their grandmother. Our families used to go on holidays together and start the day with violin practice/trio, before getting down to the serious business of mucking about on bikes or the beach.

In late high school, my passion for ballet and violin came into direct conflict: I had to choose between playing with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra or dancing in Swan Lake with my ballet school, in their joint production. In the end, the choice was made for me - if I didn’t play, I couldn’t be in the orchestra. I loved it and I haven’t looked back since!

The incredible tutors and experiences on National Music Camps, Australian Youth Orchestra Programmes, the VCA and ANAM, as well as attending many MSO and ACO performances, all helped cement my determination to become an orchestral musician. There is nothing quite like the thrill of being in the middle of that massive symphonic sound.

The network of friends I made through all my studies meant that when I wanted to return to Australia after studying and working in the UK, and with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, Perth was a great place to land. From the first rehearsal I played with WASO (as a casual), it was a goal to get a permanent job with them!

Are there any particular pieces or performances you're excited to be a part of in 2024?

I’m excited to have the opportunity to play Mahler 8 for the first time later this year, as well as the selections from the Ring Cycle in June. This is a huge repertoire that doesn’t come around very frequently. Along the way, there are many highlights including working with soloists from within the orchestra, working with conductor Umberto Clerici again, and premiering another work by composer Holly Harrison – her piece Hi Vis that we played last year was so much fun to learn and play!

Outside of your professional career, what are your hobbies or interests?
For relaxation, I love reading detective fiction, as well as getting out and about on my bike and being part of a community garden. This year I’d like to explore more of Perth’s beautiful bike path network. I also like to get crafty, whether drawing or learning to sew.

If you could perform with any historical figure, musician, or even fictional character, who would it be and why?
This one is really tough – there are so many to choose from. Stephane Grappelli, David Oistrakh and Ginette Neveu are my violin idols so they’d have to be in the mix, but perhaps more to speak to than play alongside. Having said that, I think it would have been amazing to be part of the orchestra for the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It was such challenging listening for audiences at the time that it ended in a riot!