Winter Daydreams

Umberto Clerici
Conductor/Cello

After a career spanning more than 20 years as a gifted cello soloist and orchestral musician, Umberto Clerici has consolidated his diverse artist achievements to rapid acclaim as a conductor. Umberto is now the Chief Conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Umberto began his career as a virtuoso cellist making his solo debut at the age of 17 performing Haydn’s D Major Cello Concerto in Japan. After years of performing on the stages of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, Umberto took up the position as Principal Cello of the Teatro Regio di Torino, following which he was Principal Cello of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2021.

It was in Sydney, in 2018, that Umberto made his conducting debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. Following a swift trajectory of prestigious conducting engagements, Umberto is now in high demand across Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

In addition to his role as Chief Conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Umberto’s recent conducting engagements include Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Steven Isserlis for the Volksoper Vienna, and debuts with Orchestra del Teatro Massimo in Palermo and Orchestra Regionale Toscana. Umberto has also curated a three-week series with the Sydney Symphony for ‘Symphony Hour’ and returned to the podiums of the Dunedin, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras.

In November 2024, Queensland Symphony Orchestra announced the extension of Umberto’s Chief Conductorship until the end of their Season 2027.

Highlights in 2025 will include conducting Daniil Trifonov playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, a return to Teatro Massimo in Palermo, and his second collaboration with Opera Queensland for which Umberto will conduct Puccini’s La Boheme.

As a cellist, Umberto remains beloved by audiences worldwide, having performed internationally as a soloist at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Vienna’s Musicverein, the great Shostakovich Hall of St Petersburg, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the Salzburg Festival, and is one of only two Italians to have ever won a prize for cello in the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Umberto plays cellos by Matteo Goffriller (made in 1722, Venezia) and Carlo Antonio Testore (made in 1758, Milano).

Hector Berlioz
(1803-1869)

Roman Carnival – Overture, Op.9

As a recipient of the Prix de Rome, Berlioz in the early 1830s spent some time in Italy; a setting which would figure in several of his subsequent works, including Harold in Italy and his opera Benvenuto Cellini, based on the memoirs of the 16thcentury Florentine goldsmith of the title. Berlioz, whose route to a compositional career had been a somewhat unconventional one, had hoped that Benvenuto Cellini might bolster his career in Paris, but it was a resounding failure and managed only three performances during its premiere run in 1838.

Not one to waste a good tune, however, Berlioz recycled some of its music for the present concert overture (not to be confused with the overture to the opera itself). Berlioz himself conducted the first performance of the Carnaval romain, on 3 February 1844 in Paris’ Salle Herz. It was an immediate success with the audience demanding an encore, despite the fact that the piece had received only a single rehearsal that morning (and without any woodwind players, who had been called up on National Guard duty during the day and had to read their parts at sight that evening).

The overture begins with a whirlwind saltarello, taken from the scene in the opera which presents the carnival. After a pause, the cor anglais plays a melody which, in the opera, Benvenuto sings to his beloved Teresa. It is repeated by the strings and then makes way for another bustling Allegro. Towards the end the saltarello returns, dominating the overture until its tempestuous end.

© Symphony Services International

First WASO performance: 16 August 1951. Bernard Heinze, conductor.
Most recent WASO performance: 2 February 2020. Benjamin Northey, conductor.
Instrumentation: two flutes (one doubling piccolo), oboe and cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons; four horns, two trumpets and two cornets, three trombones; timpani and percussion; strings.

Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835-1921)

Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op.33

Allegro non troppo –
Allegretto con moto –
Allegro non troppo

This concerto reveals many of Saint-Saëns’ most endearing qualities as a composer. It is a modestly engaging, unpretentiously beguiling work, its most important musical qualities being the tight construction (three movements sounding as if rolled into one) and the subtle orchestration which, with its discreet accompaniment, neatly solves the inherent problems of balancing the solo cello against a symphony orchestra. Composition of this concerto was one of the activities Saint-Saëns threw himself into following the death of his beloved great-aunt in January 1872. At the same time, he began writing a regular newspaper column, under the pseudonym Phémius, which promoted French music (composers such as Rameau, Gounod and Bizet) – part of the polemical struggle to bolster French national pride after the demoralising loss to Prussia in the recent Franco-Prussian War.

The A minor Concerto was first performed on 19 January 1873 by the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra with its principal cellist Auguste Tolbecque as soloist. Much later, the work became a particular favourite of the cellist Pablo Casals who played it at his London debut in 1905. And no wonder – as Saint-Saëns’ biographer James Harding says, it ‘gives the instrument an excellent opportunity to display its resources without straining after needless virtuosity’.

The work begins with one sharp chord from the orchestra, immediately ushering in a swirling theme from the solo cello, which will form the main thematic material for the movement. This material is repeated, varied, played on the woodwinds behind long notes on the solo cello and extended. Eventually, the cello plays an attractive romantic melody that is dovetailed into cadential material by the swirling theme in the accompaniment. A new sequence continues to work on the swirling figure, first making use of the half-tone rise and fall of its tailpiece.

A developmental extension of the romantic melody leads us imperceptibly into the minuet-like second movement. Saint-Saëns’ structural fluency has been revealed by the clever way in which this movement was introduced, almost as if it were merely another phase of the first movement. A dance-like figure for woodwinds is transformed into an accompaniment for a ruminative cello melody. There is a slightly darker, more lilting middle section, followed by cadenza-like runs in the cello solo which lead to a reprise of the dancing figure over a cello trill.

The movement winds down, and then the cello line forms the link to the final, and longest, movement. The oboe retrieves the first movement’s swirling figure, now more swiftly modulating and more intense with other woodwind interjections. After a dramatic development, the cello finally takes back the swirling figure. The cello now introduces a new aria-like theme, built on the rise-and-fall idea of the opening melody. Now, at last, the cello part begins to become more virtuosic, and in the slower section ends up in the instrumental stratosphere, with high harmonics. The music resumes speed after a reprise of the aria-like melody, and with an exciting pick-up, the movement and the concerto come to a close.

G.K. Williams
Symphony Australia © 1997

First performance: 19 January 1873, Paris Conservatoire Orchestra; Auguste Tolbecque, soloist.
First WASO performance: 24 February 1951. Vaughan Manly, conductor; Wendy Tyler, soloist..
Most recent WASO performance: 13-14 October 2017. Douglas Boyd conductor, Li-Wei Qin, soloist.
Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

Symphony No.1 in G minor, Op.13 Winter Daydreams

Dreams of a winter journey (Allegro tranquillo)
Land of desolation, land of mists (Adagio cantabile ma non tanto)
Scherzo (Allegro scherzando giocoso)
Andante lugubre – Allegro maestoso

Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony is the product of a nervous young man in his mid-20s just appointed to a responsible teaching position in a strange city, and trying to juggle his wish to compose with his new-found professional responsibilities. It is a remarkably assured work to have been composed under such circumstances, and to many listeners unfamiliar with it, may display more of the composer’s mature stylistic fingerprints than they might expect.

Tchaikovsky had just joined the staff of the Moscow Conservatoire in 1866 when its Director, Nikolay Rubinstein, urged him to write a symphony. Tchaikovsky, who had completed his first orchestral score only two years before, began sketches immediately, and was soon working so hard on it – writing well into the night and teaching during the day – that his health began to suffer, and he made fitful progress.

By the following summer he had worked his sketches up into full orchestral score. He chose this moment to show his former teachers Anton Rubinstein (Nikolay’s brother) and Nikolay Zaremba, who were quick to find fault. Tchaikovsky’s consternation at this criticism was allayed by Nikolay’s continuing enthusiasm, and it was this Moscow Rubinstein who conducted the first complete performance in February 1868.

It was a big success for Tchaikovsky, and became one of the first Russian symphonies to find public favour; but the composer continued to make alterations, revising it in 1874 and 1883. Despite these changes, Tchaikovsky told a friend: ‘I have a soft spot for it, for it is a sin of my sweet youth.’

With young composers it is often fun to play pick the influences. Tchaikovsky scholar John Warrack has discussed the Symphony’s particular debt to Mendelssohn. Following Mendelssohn’s Scottish and Italian symphonies, Tchaikovsky seems to have wanted to create his own Romantic musical landscape, but one arising out of the emotions stirred in him by his own country. The idea must have lost its appeal, for the final two movements lack the subtitles of the Symphony’s first half. The attempt at a lightness of texture in many key passages and the surprising independence of the woodwind writing suggests Mendelssohn’s immediate influence on the work’s musical language. Yet many of the ideas seem to prefigure passages we know well from Tchaikovsky’s later music.

The first movement opens with a flowing woodwind melody that has the light, questioning quality and gentle interjections that suggest a Mendelssohnian response to landscape. The passionate development of the main ideas, and healthy doses of bombast that follow, suggest the Tchaikovsky to come, as does a balletic passage for horns and woodwinds. The brass fanfares that dominate much of the development section prefigure the tense opening of the Fourth Symphony.

The slow movement resembles one of the great ballet adagios in both atmosphere and texture. Muted divisi violins play the beautiful first subject, which is followed by a long, songful oboe melody of the kind that Tchaikovsky used to complain came to him in so finished a state that he had difficulty developing them in a symphonic context. His phenomenal gifts as an orchestrator, even in this early work, are an exquisite disguise for such structural concerns.

The Scherzo is perhaps the most overtly Mendelssohnian movement. At the opening, the lightness of the scoring is offset by a pervasive chromaticism. The Trio begins as a waltz in all but name, then develops considerable tension. The Scherzo’s reprise is followed by an unusual passage in which the timpani taps out the rhythm of the main Scherzo tune under the strings’ reminiscence of the Trio’s waltz theme. A coda that begins quietly goes on to end with two abrupt final chords.

Although some of the Symphony’s ideas sound like Russian folksong, the Finale’s opening Andante lugubre, taken from a folksong called ‘The Gardens Bloomed’, is the first folk-music to be employed in the work. The pace soon quickens and the mood becomes more festive for the main body of the movement. In the middle of the festivities there is a sudden return to the darker mood of the opening, much like the return to the motto theme at the equivalent moments in the finales of the Fourth and Fifth symphonies. However, a spirit of brightness and grandeur gradually emerges and the Symphony ends in a mood of brash jubilation.

Abridged from an annotation © Phillip Sametz

First Performance: Nikolay Rubinstein conducted the Scherzo of Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony in Moscow in December 1866, followed by a performance of the Adagio and the Scherzo in Saint Petersburg the following February. He conducted the first complete performance of the work in February 1868.
First WASO Performance: 3-4 May 1968. Ladislav Slovák, conductor.
Most Recent WASO Performance: 2-3 October 2015. Alexander Lazarev, conductor.
Instrumentation: piccolo, two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; our horns, two trumpet, three trombones, tuba; timpani, percussion and strings.

Rosalind Appleby

Your Wesfarmers Arts Digital Pre-concert Talk for Winter Daydreams is delivered by Rosalind Appleby.

Rosalind Appleby is a Perth-based arts journalist, author and speaker. She uses words to champion, document and critique the arts and its practitioners.

Rosalind’s book Women of Note (Fremantle Press, 2012) reveals startling discoveries about Australian women composers, completing the missing jigsaw pieces in Australia’s music history.

Rosalind was Managing Editor and founding board member of Western Australia's leading arts magazine Seesaw (2018 - 2023). She was music critic at The West Australian newspaper for 16 years and has contributed to numerous publications including Opera Magazine (London), Limelight Magazine, The Australian newspaper, The Financial Times (London) and The Sunday Times.

Rosalind advocates for the arts through her lectures, author talks, artist interviews, pre-concert talks, awards judging and school seminars. She has presented at the Perth Writer’s Festival (2013, 2018, 2019) and at the national Women in the Creative Arts Conference (2017) in Canberra. For several years she produced and broadcast the experimental program Difficult Listening for RTRFM. She has been interviewed by Andrew Ford on The Music Show and for programs on 3MBS, 2MBS, Radio Fremantle and RTRFM.

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