CLARE GORMLEY SOPRANO JEFFREY BLACK BARITONE SYDNEY SOLOISTS

Transcription

1 CLARE GORMLEY SOPRANO JEFFREY BLACK BARITONE SYDNEY SOLOISTS

2 GUSTAV MAHLER ( ) Symphony No. 4 in G major* [53 06] 1921 chamber version by ERWIN STEIN ( ) I. Bedächtig. Nicht eilen II. In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast 9 06 III. Ruhevoll IV. Sehr behaglich (Das himmlische Leben The Heavenly Life) 9 23 Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) 1920 chamber version by ARNOLD SCHOENBERG ( ) [16 20] I. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht 3 45 II. Ging heut Morgen übers Feld 4 13 III. Ich hab ein glühend Messer 3 22 IV. Die zwei blauen Augen 5 00 Clare Gormley, soprano Jeffrey Black, baritone Sydney Soloists John Harding, conductor and director * World premiere recording 3 Total Playing Time 69 36

3 It might be thought nowadays that the cutting-edge composers of turn of the century Vienna had a moderately easy ride judging from the fact that composers were able to write and have performed such speculative works as Mahler s later symphonies, Richard Strauss Salome and Elektra, and even Arnold Schoenberg s Gurrelieder and Erwartung. The radical Gustav Mahler, indeed, was director of the eminently respectable Vienna State Opera until However a few factors conspired to make public concert-giving a less than ideal experience for these seemingly fortunate composers. While their works could certainly be played, there was no certainty they would be listened to; such works as Mahler s third and fourth symphonies guaranteed crowd-pleasers today were met with derision at their early performances, and many of the most sumptuous orchestral works of Schoenberg or Alban Berg were not even heard through. Even such an overtly Romantic work as Schoenberg s Verklärte Nacht caused a furore mainly, it seems, on account of a single chord forbidden by what then remained of the rules of harmony. As the English composer Peter Maxwell Davies has said, One longs for a situation where an audience would recognise such a thing, and know to hiss. 4 Innumerable fine anecdotes survive of the fiery receptions accorded to such works; appropriately for our repertoire here, perhaps two of the finest concern Schoenberg and Mahler. At the premiere of Schoenberg s Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, Mahler enforced silence in the middle of the piece (in the face of a bout of ostentatious chair-scraping and walkouts), and stood up at the close, loudly cheering and applauding until all hissers were silenced. He later confided to his wife Alma: I don t understand what he s doing, but he s young and he may be right. And on another contentious evening: Mahler was in the audience and next to Mahler was sitting a very remarkable person by the name of Josef Polnauer. Mahler was very disturbed by the shouted invectives of a person behind him in the audience so Mahler turned around and said, you are not supposed to hiss when I applaud. To which he answered back quite brazenly, I hiss also at your unprintable symphonies! Whereupon, Polnauer let it fly he gave it to him whereupon the attacked person brought out a knife and sliced Polnauer s face open, and he carried the scar with great pride to the end of his days. Before long, this rather heady environment of informed musical controversy came to an end. In 1907, Mahler was forced to resign from his Vienna State Opera post. A few years later, after a brief and tempestuous period as director of the New York Philharmonic, he succumbed to the heart condition that had plagued him for some years. Soon after that came the First World War, from which Europe s economy would take decades to recover but the days when hundreds of performers might be put at the disposal of a controversial young composer (or even a controversial older composer) had gone forever. In 1918 Arnold Schoenberg wished to find a more sympathetic (and preferably unarmed) audience for a presentation of his Chamber Symphony, Op. 9. Thus: Arnold Schoenberg, at the request of Hugo Heller Concert Management, has agreed to perform his Chamber Symphony, introduced in Vienna several years ago by the Rosé Quartet and the Wind Ensemble of the Court Opera, in a manner new to current concert format. Rather than giving a single performance, Arnold Schoenberg plans to hold a series of ten open rehearsals. In the final rehearsal, the work will be played in its entirety at least once without interruption. 5 In this way the listener is offered the opportunity to hear the work often enough to grasp it in detail as well as in its entirety. It will also be of interest to the audience, and especially to musicians, to be able to follow the performance preparation of such a difficult work from the very beginning. The event was a considerable success, as Alban Berg wrote to his wife, Helene, on 13 June In place of the usual hissing and fistfights (or worse): A storm of clapping and cheering at the end, the performers and Schoenberg were called on again and again, and it was a long time indeed before the hall emptied. I was absolutely shattered by listening to the work twice without following the score! I felt ten years younger, and as if, say, I d been at the first performance of Mahler s Third. Although I went to bed at 11.15, I couldn t get to sleep until two It was in this environment that the Society for Private Musical Performances came into being. The autocratic Arnold Schoenberg by now a father figure himself to some of Vienna s most far-reaching musical radicals decided to establish an

4 environment in which important recent works could not only be heard, but heard sympathetically and repeatedly (in an age when gramophone recording was still at a very rudimentary stage), in committed and well-prepared performances. There would, of course, be compromises. Orchestral works were heard from the beginning in arrangements for two pianos. Soon afterwards they began to be heard in versions, such as those recorded here, for chamber ensembles of a few winds, harmonium, piano, percussion and strings. In another respect there would be no compromises. There would be no critics, no applause and no uninvited guests. Members of Schoenberg s Society for Private Musical Performances were issued with photo identification cards to be checked at the door by the burly, and scar-faced, Josef Polnauer. The Society s first concert occurred on 29 December 1918, with performances of works by Scriabin (two piano sonatas), Debussy (Proses lyriques) and Mahler (Symphony No. 7, in a version for piano duet). For the first year and a half, it presented no Schoenberg works; the President of the Society wished there to be no perceived conflict of interest. It was disbanded at the end of 1921, when economic circumstances could not accommodate even such a comparatively straitened musical idealism. During that time, however, they had given one hundred and thirteen concerts on an almost weekly basis, premiering new works (including Berg s Four Pieces, Op. 5 for clarinet and piano, and Stravinsky s Berceuses du chat and Pribaoutki) and presenting a wide variety of arrangements, ranging from Strauss waltzes to Bruckner s Symphony No. 7, as well as works in their original form by composers as disparate as Reger, Satie, Szymanowski and Milhaud. Nowadays, of course, groups like the Society are few, and are becoming increasingly far between. Even then, they tend to be supported not solely by the concert-going public, but with some reluctance by government bodies which are not particularly interested in the works themselves, but which retain a faint awareness that it is nevertheless the sort of thing that ought not to disappear entirely. It might seem odd that such an underground organisation as Schoenberg s Society saw it necessary to make an arrangement of what is now probably Mahler s second most performed symphony. There are, nevertheless, many good reasons. Mahler s Symphony No. 4 was far from an uncontroversial work in its time the child s version of heaven, with which the work ends, was seen as an outright joke by many who had experienced the grandiose conclusions of Mahler s preceding three symphonies (and indeed practically the entire Romantic orchestral repertoire!). In any case, the Society s concerts were not just intended to bring works to performance that would otherwise not have been heard they were intended to bring Society members to a level of understanding of the works that could only be acquired through repeated hearing. Of course, if this were all such an arrangement could do, making a recording of it today may seem an act of wilful redundancy. But there is another reason why a chamber arrangement of this work compels our hearing today. For all Mahler s orchestral skill, there are important parts of his textures that are not always well represented in even the finest orchestral recordings. This is partly because instruments have subtly changed since his time (making it just that little bit easier, for example, for the brasses to overwhelm the rest of the orchestra); it is also partly because Mahler writes subsidiary lines in such a way that players (or worse, conductors) are tempted to highlight them to the detriment of the overall balance. (One excellent example in Symphony No. 4 is the timpani part in the full version just before figure 20, corresponding to the mark in this recording. Marked f by Mahler amid a general ff, and only doubling the occasional note of the bass line, it is generally unleashed to exhilarating but confusing effect.) Sometimes, indeed, it is simply a fault of Mahler s. He was still, after all, a composer who orchestrated from an initial piano conception even Maurice Ravel, perhaps the most fastidious orchestrator of all, occasionally slipped up under such conditions. Arnold Schoenberg put it best: A sculpture can never be seen from all sides at once; despite this, all its sides are worked out to the same degree. Almost all composers proceed in the same way when handling the orchestra; they realise even details that are not under all circumstances going to be audible. The arrangement used for this recording was made by Erwin Stein ( ), and first heard (after the first seven of Debussy s Préludes Book I) at the Society s 79th concert on 10 January 1921, with Stein conducting. Stein had participated in the Society from the beginning; he also became artistic adviser to Universal Edition in 1924, and remained in this post until 1938, when he moved to England to work for Boosey and Hawkes. The score and parts, however, had been lost since the performances by the Society; all that 6 7

5 remained was Stein s annotated copy of the orchestral score, kept in the Schoenberg Institute in California. The Britten Estate commissioned a reconstruction based on this score from Marion Thorpe, Erwin Stein s daughter; the reconstruction was first performed in 1993, at a concert held to mark the 80th anniversary of Benjamin Britten s birth. For all the skill with which Mahler handles his large orchestra, it is astonishing to note how much of the original colour is retained in this arrangement for a tiny fraction of the forces. This is due both to the frequency with which Mahler reduces his orchestra to a few soloists, and also (more prosaically) with the amount by which the home listening environment necessarily reduces the music s dynamic level. The fourth symphony s first movement opens with the most genial of all Mahler themes, and continues through a dizzying procession of unusually fine melodies. These are kaleidoscopically rearranged (in Erwin Stein s own words, shuffled like a pack of cards ) throughout the course of the movement; there is almost no filler, and an extraordinary momentum. Of particular note is a theme for flute (four flutes in the original) that recurs at the third movement s climax, and regularly in the fourth movement s vision of paradise. Here, however, it sets off 8 a train of events moving far from the movement s opening geniality although as the climax subsides, that geniality is abruptly reasserted as though nothing had ever intervened. The second movement makes use of a striking instrumental gesture: a solo violin tuned up a whole-tone (A-E-B-F# rather than the usual G-D-A-E), used to imitate a folk fiddle. Indeed, Mahler has a specific fiddle in mind; that of Freund Hain, a kind of Pied Piper figure who leads souls dancing away after death. Of course, the trajectory of the dance (and of the symphony as a whole) is Paradise so death is treated here without quite the same weight as in many of Mahler s other works. This leads aptly into the Ruhevoll of the third movement the most consoling vision of death Mahler was ever to give us, at least until the rather different ending of the ninth symphony. It alternates with more anguished music, eventually building to the symphony s real climax: quite literally, the opening of the gates of Heaven. Here Mahler s long-range tonal plan is worth a mention. The first movement (and most of the third movement to this point) has centred on G major. The climax is in E major, a key previously glimpsed in the first movement s flute theme; the fourth movement begins in G major again, but will end in a paradisiac E major. Intriguingly, this little song (originally entitled Das himmlische Leben The Heavenly Life) was written in 1892 some years before even the third symphony ( ), with the rest of the fourth not following until The song thus gave rise to the tonal plan of the larger work, just as it had already supplied it with its programmatic goal a childlike vision of paradise. The arrangement here of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is by Schoenberg himself; it was first performed on 6 February 1920 in the company of a piano version of Ravel s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, some Satie piano pieces, and Szymanowski s Romances for violin and piano. Like Das himmlische Leben, these songs also appeared in a symphony; Mahler s first symphony takes the main theme of Ging heut Morgen übers Feld as the principal melody of its first movement, while the music of the words Auf der Straße steht ein Lindenbaum (from Die zwei blauen Augen ) appears in the central section of the third movement s funeral march. The song cycle came into being in 1884 in the piano version (and in 1896 in a version for orchestra) as a result of Mahler s unhappy relationship in 1883 with the singer Johanna Richter. The texts 9 are mostly by Mahler himself, although they draw heavily on the general mood (and some of the words) of the folk collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The primary theme of the songs is disappointed love. Like the fourth symphony, they also deal with death but a greater contrast between the ardent, slightly melodramatic treatment of the theme here and the childlike innocence Mahler was able to summon (or at least imitate) for the symphony could scarcely be imagined. Select Bibliography: Carl Rosman Brun, Bernhard (ed. & trans.) Alban Berg: Letters to His Wife (London, Faber: 1971) Stein, Leonard (ed.) and Black, Leo (trans.) Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (London, Faber: 1975) Smith, Joan Allen Schoenberg and His Circle: A Viennese Portrait (New York, Schirmer Books: 1986)

6 Das himmlische Leben The Heavenly Life Wir genießen die himmlischen Freuden, We delight in the pleasures of heaven d rum tun wir das Irdische meiden. and so shun that which is earthly. Kein weltlich Getümmel No wordly turmoil hört man nicht im Himmel! does one hear in Heaven! Lebt alles in sanftester Ruh! Everything lives in the gentlest peace! Wir führen ein englisches Leben! We lead the life of angels! Sind dennoch ganz lustig daneben: But are nevertheless quite very merry: wir tanzen und springen, we dance and leap, wir hüpfen und singen! skip and sing! Sankt Peter im Himmel sieht zu! Saint Peter in Heaven watches. Johannes das Lämmlein auslasset, Saint John has released his little lamb, der Metzger Herodes drauf passet! to the butcher Herod. Wir führen ein geduldig s, We lead a patient, unschuldig s, geduldig s, blameless and patient, ein liebliches Lämmlein zu Tod! dear little lamb to death! Sankt Lucas den Ochsen tät schlachten Saint Luke slaughters the oxen ohn einigs Bedenken und Achten. without a care or thought. Der Wein kost kein Heller The wine costs not a penny im himmlischen Keller, in Heaven s cellar, die Englein, die backen das Brot. and angels bake the bread. Gut Kräuter von allerhand Arten, Good herbs of many kinds, die wachsen im himmlischen Garten! grow in Heaven s garden! Gut Spargel, Fisolen Good asparagus, beans, und was wir nur wollen! and whatever we want! Ganze Schüsseln voll sind uns bereit! Full dishes are ready for us! Gut Äpfel, gut Birn und gut Trauben! Good apples, good pears and good grapes! Die Gärtner, die alles erlauben! The gardener allows us everything! Willst Rehbock, willst Hasen, auf offener Straßen sie laufen herbei! Sollt ein Festtag etwa kommen, alle Fische gleich mit Freuden angeschwommen! Dort läuft schon Sankt Peter mit Netz und mit Köder zum himmlischen Weiher hinein. Sankt Martha die Köchen muß sein. Kein Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden, die uns rer verglichen kann werden. Elftausend Jungfrauen zu tanzen sich trauen! Sankt Ursula selbst dazu lacht! Cäcilia mit ihren Verwandten sind treffliche Hofmusikanten! Die englischen Stimmen ermuntern die Sinnen, daß alles für Freuden erwacht. If you want roebuck, if you want hare, in the open streets they are running by! Should a feast-day approach one day, all the fish swim joyfully to us! Over there, off runs Saint Peter with his net and bait to the heavenly pond. Saint Martha must be the cook. No music anywhere on earth can be compared to ours. Eleven thousand maidens dare to dance! Saint Ursula herself laughs! Cecilia and all her relatives are excellent court musicians! The angelic voices encourage the senses, so that everything awakens with joy. Based on Des Knaben Wunderhorn from an anthology of folk songs published by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht When my darling has her wedding-day Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, When my darling has her wedding-day, fröhliche Hochzeit macht, her joyous wedding-day, hab ich meinen traurigen Tag! I will have my day of mourning! Geh ich in mein Kämmerlein, I will go to my little room, dunkles Kämmerlein. dark little room. Weine! Wein! Um meinen Schatz, Weep! Weep! For my darling, um meinen lieben Schatz! for my dear darling! 10 11

7 Blümlein blau! Verdorre night! Little blue flower! Do not wither! Vöglein süß! Du singst auf grüner Heide. Sweet little bird! You sing on the green heath. Ach, wie ist die Welt so schön! Oh, how is it that the world is so beautiful! Ziküth! Ziküth! Chirp! Chirp! Singet nicht! Blühet nicht! Do not sing! Do not bloom! Lenz ist ja vorbei! Spring is past! Alles Singen ist nun aus. All singing must now stop. Des Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh, At night when I go to sleep, denk ich an mein Leid! I think of my sorrow! An mein Leide! Of my sorrow! Ging heut Morgen übers Feld I walked across the fields this morning Ging heut Morgen übers Feld, I walked across the fields this morning; tau noch auf den Gräsern hing. dew still hung on the grass. Sprach zu mir de lust ge Fink: The merry finch said to me: Ei, du! Gelt? Guten Morgen! Ei, gelt? Hey, you! Good morning? Hey! Du! Wirds nicht eine schöne Welt? You! Isn t it becoming a beautiful world? Zink! Zink! Schön und flink! Chirp! Chirp! Beautiful and quickly! Wie mir doch die Welt gefällt! How the world delights me! Auch die Glockenblum am Feld And the bluebells in the field, hat mir lustig, gutter Ding merrily and with good spirits mit den Glöckchen, klinge, kling, chimed out to me with their bells (ding, ding), ihren Morgengruß geschellt: their morning greeting: Wirds nicht eine schöne Welt? Isn t it becoming a beautiful world? Kling, kling! Schönes Ding! Ding, ding! beautiful thing! Wie mir doch die Welt gefällt! Heia! How the world delights me! Hey! Und da fing im Sonnenschein And then in the sunshine, gleich die Welt zu funkeln an; the world suddenly began to glitter; alles Ton und Farbe gewann everything took on a sound and colour im Sonnenschein! in the sunshine! 12 Blum und Vogel, groß und klein! Flower and bird, large and small! Guten Tag, ists nicht eine schöne Welt? Good day, is it not a beautiful world? Ei, du! Gelt? Schöne Welt? Hey, you! Isn t it a beautiful world? Nun fängt auch mein Glück wohl an? Will my happiness also begin now? Nein! nein! Das ich mein, No! no! My happiness mir nimmer blühen kann! can never bloom! Ich hab ein glühend Messer I have a red-hot knife Ich hab ein glühend Messer, I have a red-hot knife, ein Messer in meiner Brust. a knife in my chest. O Weh! Das schneid t so tief Oh! It cuts so deeply in jede Freud und jede Lust. into every joy and delight. So tief! So tief! So deep! So deep! Ach, was ist das für ein böser Gast! Ah, what an evil guest it is! Nimmer halt er Ruh, nimmer halt er Rast! Never does it rest, never does it relax! Nicht bei Tag, noch bei Nacht, Not by day or by night, wenn ich schlief! when I would sleep! O Weh! Oh! Wenn ich in dem Himmel seh, When I look up into the sky, seh ich zwei blaue Augen steh n. I see two blue eyes. O Weh! Wenn ich im gelben Felde geh, Oh! When I go into the yellow field, seh ich von fern das blonde Haar I see her blond hair in the distance im Winde weh n. blowing in the wind. O Weh! Oh! Wenn ich aus dem Traum auffahr When I wake from a dream und höre klingen uhr silbern Lachen, and hear the tinkle of her silvery laugh, O Weh! Oh! Ich wollt, ich läg auf der schwarzen Bahr, I wish that I was lying on a black bier, könnt nimmer die Augen aufmachen! and that I could never again open my eyes! 13

8 Die zwei blauen Augen The two blue eyes Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz, The two blue eyes of my darling, die haben mich in die weite Welt geschickt. they have fated me to go into the wide world. Da mußt ich Abschied nehmen I must to take my leave vom allerliebsten Platz! of this beloved place! O Augen blau, warum habt ihr mich angeblickt? O blue eyes, why did they look at me? Nun hab ich ewig Leid and Grämen! Now I will have eternal sorrow and grief! Ich bin ausgegangen in stiller Nacht, I went out into the still night, wohl über die dunkle Heide. far across the dark heath. Hat mir niemand Ade gesagt. No-one said farewell to me. Ade! Mein Gesell war Lieb und Leide! Farewell! My companions are love and sorrow! Auf der Straße stand ein Lindenbaum, On the road stood a linden tree, da hab ich zum ersten Mal im Schlaf geruht! and there for the first time I rested in sleep! Unter dem Lindenbaum, Under the linden tree that der hat seine Blüten über mich geschneit, snowed its blossoms onto me, da wußt ich nicht, wie das Leben tut, I did not know how life went on, war alles, alles wieder gut! and everything, everything was well again! Alles! Alles, Lieb und Leid All! All, love and sorrow and Welt und Traum! and world and dream! Gustav Mahler Clare Gormley An important young talent in the operatic world, Australian soprano Clare Gormley is in growing demand throughout the world. Born in Papua New Guinea and now residing in New York, she was a member of the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program following the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1992 the first Australian to win the award in almost 30 years. Clare Gormley made her professional debut in 1991 as a member of The Australian Opera s Young Artists Program and has been a regular guest artist for the Australian Opera (now Opera Australia) since that time. Her repertoire with the company includes Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Alexandra (The Eighth Wonder), Blanche (Les Dialogues des Carmélites), Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). Highlights of her international career include engagements with The Metropolitan Opera, New York, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as well as engagements with various houses in America including Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, San Diego Opera, Tulsa Opera and the Canadian Opera Company. Clare Gormley has also performed at the Lincoln Centre, New York, with the Mark Morris Dance Group for the Brooklyn Academy of Music s Next Wave Festival and at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. Her concert experience, particularly in Australia, is extensive, including engagements with the Sydney Symphony, Musica Viva, Queensland Symphony, Queensland Philharmonic and Queensland Pops Orchestra, as well as numerous recitals

9 Jeffrey Black Brisbane-born Jeffrey Black made his operatic debut in 1984 as a principal artist of The Australian Opera (now Opera Australia). He made his UK debut in 1986 at the Glyndebourne Festival, and has since appeared internationally with many leading opera companies including The Metropolitan Opera, New York, The Royal Opera Covent Garden, Los Angeles Opera, Netherlands Opera, Opera Bastille Paris, Geneva Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, New Israeli Opera, Washington Opera, De Vlaamse Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires as well as the festivals of Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence. 16 Jeffrey Black is a noted interpreter of the great Mozart roles of Don Giovanni, the Count (Le nozze di Figaro), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), and Papageno (Die Zauberflöte). His many other appearances include Schaunard (La Bohème), Dr Falke (Die Fledermaus), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Zurga (Les pêcheurs de perles), the title role in Eugene Onegin, Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor), Rodrigo (Don Carlos), the Count (Capriccio), Wolfram (Tannhäuser), Figaro (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Ford (Falstaff ) and Balstrode (Peter Grimes). On the concert platform, Jeffrey Black has toured for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has appeared in recital with Geoffrey Parsons. His other concert engagements include performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Die Fledermaus, Carmina Burana (recorded by EMI), as Christus in Bach s St. Matthew Passion under Franz Welser-Möst, and arena concerts with Kiri Te Kanawa in London, Stockholm, Sydney and Melbourne. Recent performances include the Count (Le nozze di Figaro) in Sydney and the title role in Don Giovanni in Melbourne, both with Opera Australia; Faure s Requiem with the Melbourne Symphony, and a recital as part of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Portraits series. In 2003, Jeffrey Black s performances will include Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor) with Opera Australia, and a performance of Haydn s Creation with Christchurch City Choir. The Sydney Soloists The Sydney Soloists is one of Australia s leading chamber music ensembles comprising principal players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The Ensemble is led and directed by one of Australia s foremost violinists and Concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, John Harding. Formed in 1995 by Francesco Celata, the ensemble has recorded for ABC Classics, 2MBS FM and ABC Classic FM. The group has performed regularly for the Sydney Festival, the Government House (Sydney) chamber music series, the Canberra International Chamber Music Festival, and the ABC Sunday Live programme. The group has also performed in the Sydney Opera House for the SSO s Great Classic Series and in the Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne. The Ensemble performs masterpieces from chamber music repertoire of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. 17 John Harding John Harding is one of Australia s preeminent violinists. His career has taken him to the USA, where he studied conducting with James Levine and was a leading violinist for the Metropolitan Opera; Hong Kong, where he was founder of the string school of the Academy for the Performing Arts; and Europe, where for five years he was primarius of the internationally famous Orlando Quartet. With this ensemble, he performed over one thousand concerts in all the major centres of the world, playing frequently in Japan, the USA, Australia and Europe. After leaving the Quartet, he spent a year as leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, but decided to remain living in the Netherlands where he was a faculty member of both the String and Chamber music departments of the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague. He was also the concertmaster of its famous orchestra, the Residentie Orkest. John Harding became the Co-Concertmaster and Associate Conductor of the Sydney Symphony in In 1998, he was appointed Conjoint Professor of the Faculty of Music at The University of Newcastle where he undertakes a variety of tasks including lessons, master classes to

10 string students and conducting of the symphony and chamber orchestras in rehearsals and concerts. The Australian composers Ross Edwards and Carl Vine have both written violin concertos for him. Conductor John Harding* Violin 1 and director John Harding + Violin 1 Fiona Ziegler* Violin 2 Emma Hayes* Viola Esther van Stralen Cello Nathan Waks Double Bass Kees Boersma Flute/Piccolo Alison Mitchell Oboe/Cor Anglais Diana Doherty* Clarinet/Bass Clarinet Francesco Celata Piano Michael Brimer Piano/Harmonium Paul Rickard-Ford* Percussion Richard Miller +, Brian Nixon* Alison Eddington* Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan Product Manager Anna-Lisa Whiting Recording Producer Ralph Lane Recording Engineer Yossi Gabbay Editor Ralph Lane Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Recorded 26 June (Songs of a Wayfarer) and 6-7 September (Symphony No. 4) 1998 in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation s Eugene Goossens Hall, Ultimo, Sydney Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australasia by Universal Classics & Jazz, a division of Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. + Songs of a Wayfarer only *Symphony No. 4 only 18