Chamber Series: Rapture

CHAMBER SERIES

Sunday 3 August 2025, 2pm

Government House Ballroom

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West Australian Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and Elders of Country throughout Western Australia, and the Whadjuk Noongar people on whose lands we work and share music.

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Rapture

Johannes BRAHMS String Sextet No.2 in G, Op.36 (36 mins)

Interval (25 mins)

Elena KATS-CHERNIN String Quartet Miniatures (20 mins)

Arnold SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No.1 (21 mins)

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This performance is recorded for broadcast Wednesday 24 September, 1pm (AWST) on ABC Classic. Date subject to change. For further details visit abc.net.au/classic

Did you know?

Kats-Chernin began to write rags after a commission from ABC Classics, who were putting together a CD with pianist Donna Coleman titled Rags to Riches. They asked Elena to contribute, so, while suffering from jetlag one night, as an experiment she wrote ten rags and sent them off for consideration. One in particular captured producer Ralph Lane’s attention, but he asked her to put it into a minor key. “So I changed it to a minor key and it instantly became much better. We called it Russian Rag and from then on I couldn’t stop writing them!”

Eliza Aria, from the ballet Wild Swans, was inspired by soprano Lisa Crosato who was also working on the project. Kats-Chernin said "One morning before rehearsal I went to my room with the idea in mind, using just three chords and only the white notes at the start. It really was just a five-minute kind of thing.” It was incorporated into the ballet and audience members left the theatre whistling the tune.

In the mid-1900’s, Schoenberg began to teach music privately to select students. Some of his most notable pupils of atonality included Alban Berg, Leon Kirchner, and Anton Webern.

Schoenberg became famous for the “twelve-tone technique” — replacing traditional scales with the entire chromatic scale, unanchored by any particular “home” tone, and not reliant upon familiar intervals or harmonies.

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