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).

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

Nocturne for Cello and Small Orchestra (after Op.19 No.4)

Like many composers, Tchaikovsky struggled to balance his need for solitude in order to work with the demands of being a public figure. In 1888, he wrote to a friend that he had expended a lot of money and energy on a recent tour: ‘In return I have gained some celebrity but every hour I ask myself “why?” Is it worthwhile? And I came to the conclusion that it is better to live quietly without fame.’

The tour that provoked this occurred in February of that year. According to his brother, Modest, the day Tchaikovsky arrived in Paris (after concerts in Berlin and Prague) he began rehearsing for a soirée at the home of émigré socialite Marie de Bernadaky, who had hired the orchestra of Édouard Colonne for the entertainment of her 300 guests. The program included the Serenade for Strings and the Nocturne for Cello and Orchestra, where the soloist was Anatoly Brandukov.

Tchaikovsky’s reception in the salons of Paris was warm and enthusiastic, as was the public’s response to the first of his concerts at the Châtelet where the program was, substantially, repeated. It was only after his second concert that, according to Modest Tchaikovsky, the press turned: suddenly Tchaikovsky wasn’t ‘Russian’ enough, and his pieces were too long. It was in that climate that Tchaikovsky wrote the letter quoted above.

The Nocturne may have been hastily produced for the Bernadaky soirée, but it is of course an arrangement of the fourth of Tchaikovsky’s Six Pieces for Piano, Op.19, which he had composed in 1874. And, in fact, it appears that Tchaikovsky based his new version on an arrangement for cello and piano by Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, the German-born cellist who played in the first performances of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartets and Piano Trio in Moscow.

The Nocturne (marked Andante sentimentale in the original) is perfect material for transcription. The orchestral version is transposed from the piano’s remote C sharp minor to D minor, allowing the soloist to take full advantage of the cello’s resonance, and, naturally, the singing opening melody is transposed down into the cello’s most expressive register and the accompaniment adjusted for transparency. Following the model of the nocturne as laid down by John Field and Chopin, there is a more animated central section before the opening theme, now set among ornate countermelodies, returns.

From Paris, Tchaikovsky travelled to London and Tbilisi before enjoying the solitude of home.

First performance: 4 March 1888, Paris. Anatoly Brandukov (cello).
Instrumentation: two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; two horns and 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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