CONCERT PROGRAMME 2017/18 SEASON

Transcription

1 CONCERT PROGRAMME 2017/18 SEASON

2 The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) gave its inaugural performance at Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) on 17th August The MPO today comprises musicians from 24 countries, including 7 from Malaysia, a remarkable example of harmony among different cultures and nationalities. A host of internationally-acclaimed musicians has worked with the MPO, including Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Yehudi Menuhin, Joshua Bell, Harry Connick Jr., José Carreras, Andrea Bocelli and Branford Marsalis, many of whom have praised the MPO for its fine musical qualities and vitality. With each new season, the MPO continues to present a varied programme of orchestral music drawn from over three centuries, as well as the crowd-pleasing concert series. Its versatility transcends genres, from classical masterpieces to film music, pop, jazz, contemporary and commissioned works. The MPO regularly performs at major cities of Malaysia. Internationally, it has showcased its virtuosity to audiences in Singapore (1999, 2001 and 2005), Korea (2001), Australia (2004), China (2006), Taiwan (2007), Japan (2001 and 2009) and Vietnam (2013). Its Education and Outreach Programme, ENCOUNTER, reaches beyond the concert platform to develop musical awareness, appreciation and skills through dedicated activities that include instrumental lessons, workshops and school concerts. ENCOUNTER also presents memorable events in such diverse venues as orphanages, hospitals, rehabilitation centres and community centres. The MPO s commitment to furthering musical interest in the nation led to the creation of the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO). It gave its inaugural concert at DFP on 25 August 2007, followed by a tour in Peninsular Malaysia. It has performed in Sabah and Sarawak (2008), Singapore (2009) and Brisbane, Australia (2012). As it celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2018, the MPO remains steadfast in its mission to share the depth, power and beauty of great music. The MPO s main benefactor is PETRONAS and its patron is Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Haji Mohd Ali.

3 Sat 23 Sept 2017 at 8.30 pm Sun 24 Sept 2017 at 3.00 pm Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra Stéphane Denève, conductor Renaud Capuçon, violin PROGRAMME TCHAIKOVSKY Andante cantabile from String Quartet No. 1 6 mins BARTÓK Violin Concerto No mins INTERVAL 20 mins PROKOFIEV Suite from Cinderella 29 mins TCHAIKOVSKY Suite from The Sleeping Beauty 25 mins All details are correct at time of printing. Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS reserves the right to vary without notice the artists and/or repertoire as necessary. Copyright 2017 by Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (Co. No X). All rights reserved. No part of this programme may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright owners.

4 STÉPHANE DENÈVE conductor Stéphane Denève is Music Director of the Brussels Philharmonic, Principal Guest Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Director of the Centre for Future Orchestral Repertoire (CffOR). From 2011 to 2016, he served as Chief Conductor of Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and from 2005 to 2012, as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Recognised internationally for the exceptional quality of his performances and programming, he regularly appears at major concert venues with the world s greatest orchestras and soloists. He has a special affinity for the music of his native France and is a passionate advocate for new music. Recent engagements include with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica dell Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Vienna and NHK Symphonies, Munich and Czech Philharmonics, and Orchestre National de France. He appears regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the San Francisco, St Louis and Toronto Symphonies. Denève enjoys close relationships with many of the world s leading soloists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yo-Yo Ma, Nikolaj Znaider, James Ehnes, Leif Ove Andsnes, Leonidas Kavakos, Nicholas Angelich, Lang Lang, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Gil Shaham, Emanuel Ax, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Lars Vogt, Nikolai Lugansky, Paul Lewis, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, and Nathalie Dessay. In the field of opera, Denève has led productions at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival, La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Saito Kinen Festival, Gran Teatro de Liceu, Netherlands Opera, La Monnaie, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein and Opéra National de Paris. As a recording artist, Denève has won critical acclaim for his recordings of the works of Poulenc, Debussy, Ravel, Roussel, Franck and Connesson. A graduate and prize winner of the Paris Conservatoire, he worked closely in his early career with Sir Georg Solti, Georges Prêtre and Seiji Ozawa.

5 Renaud Capuçon violin Mat Hennek Born in Chambéry in 1976, Renaud Capuçon studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris with Gérard Poulet and Veda Reynolds, and later with Thomas Brandis in Berlin and Isaac Stern. Invited by Claudio Abbado in 1998 as Concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Capuçon continued his musical education with Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim and Franz Welser-Moest. Capuçon has collaborated with the world s leading orchestras and conductors: the Berlin Philharmonic/Bernard Haitink, David Robertson, Matthias Pintscher, Dresden Staatskapelle and Daniel Harding; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Kurt Masur; Orchestre de Paris/Wolfgang Sawallisch, Christoph Eschenbach and Paavo Järvi; Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Semyon Bychkov; Los Angeles Philharmonic/ Gustavo Dudamel and Andris Nelsons; and Philadelphia Orchestra/Charles Dutoit. He recently performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink; Los Angeles Philharmonic/Daniel Harding; Boston Symphony/Christoph von Dohnanyi and Andris Nelsons; New York Philharmonic/Charles Dutoit; Philharmonia Orchestra/Juraj Valculha; Seoul Philharmonic/Myung-Whun Chung; Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Yannick Nezet-Seguin; WDR Cologne/Jukka Pekka Saraste; and Orchestre National de France/Daniele Gatti. Capuçon has played chamber music with Martha Argerich, Hélène Grimaud, Nicholas Angelich, Frank Braley, Yefim Bronfman, Yuri Bashmet, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Mischa Maisky, Truls Mørk, Maria Joao Pires, Mikhail Pletnev, Gérard Caussé and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. In 2011, he was appointed the Chevalier dans l Ordre National du Mérite by the French Government. He is the musical director of the Easter Festival in Aix-en- Provence which he founded in 2013, and has been director of the Gstaad winter festival (Les Sommets Musicaux) since He has taught violin at the High School of Music in Lausanne since Capuçon plays the Guarneri del Gesù Panette (1737) which belonged to Isaac Stern.

6 PROGRAMME NOTES This concert features substantial excerpts from two full-length ballet scores, both by Russians and both based on beloved universal fairy tales about a handsome prince in search of a beautiful girl whom, following many difficulties, he eventually finds and marries. The programme opens and closes with nineteenth century music by Tchaikovsky which frames two scores from the first half of the twentieth century, one unmistakably Hungarian in character (Bartók s concerto), the other highly descriptive in its storyline (Prokofiev s Cinderella). PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY ( ) Andante cantabile from String Quartet No. 1, Op.11 (1871) The first of Tchaikovsky s three string quartets is by far his most popular. Much of its success is due to the famous Andante cantabile, the quartet s second movement, laid out in simple ternary (ABA) form plus coda. The opening theme is derived from a folk tune Tchaikovsky presumably heard sung by a gardener or a carpenter at his sister s house in Kamenka. For the contrasting central section, Tchaikovsky lightened the texture, giving an ingratiating theme to the first violin, a chromatic ostinato pattern to the cello (played pizzicato) and the barest of harmonic support to the others. The opening material then returns, and is followed by a coda iheart.com of the most delicate textures. The Andante cantabile is often performed as a separate piece, including by full string orchestra as we hear at this concert. Tchaikovsky himself often conducted the Andante cantabile in this form. BÉLA BARTÓK ( ) Violin Concerto No. 2 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante tranquillo III. Allegro molto Bartók s Second Violin Concerto was written in for violinist Zoltán Székely, with whom Bartók had formed a friendship years before. It ranks among the half dozen or so greatest violin concertos of the twentieth century, one that can stand proudly beside those of Berg, Bloch, Elgar, Prokofiev and Sibelius. Bartók s concerto also belongs securely in their company for its lyricism, warmth and accessible style.

7 muzeo.com When Székely asked Bartók to write a concerto for him, he had in mind a traditional, full-fledged, threemovement work. Bartók, on the other hand, preferred a single-movement work in variation form. In the end, both men got their way. The central movement is a theme-and-variation set. The outer movements are in sonata form, but are variations of each other. The themes of the first movement are recast in the finale, which unfolds section by section as a reflection of the opening movement. Székely gave the first performance on 23 March 1939 with Willem Mengelberg conducting the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. The concerto s formal logic is indubitably remarkable in itself but it is the emotional intensity and mellow expressiveness that keep it securely in the repertory. As in most of Bartók s compositions, a strong sense of the Hungarian ethos is present, noticeable especially in the rhythms and scale patterns. SERGEI PROKOFIEV ( ) Suite from Cinderella ( ) (compiled by Stéphane Denève) Introduction Shawl Dance Interrupted Departure The Clock Dance of the Prince Cinderella s Arrival at the Ball Grand Waltz Promenade First Galop of the Prince Amoroso Cinderella s Departure for the Ball Midnight Following the successful production of Prokofiev s Romeo and Juliet at the Kirov in 1940, this company asked the composer for another ballet. Prokofiev joined forces with Nikolai Volkov, who provided the scenario for Cinderella. Work was begun but laid aside during the German invasion, during which time Prokofiev worked instead on his opera War And Peace and the film score for Ivan the Terrible. The premiere on 21 November 1945 went not to the Kirov, who had commissioned the score but to the Bolshoi, since both the choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky and the prima ballerina for whom Prokofiev had conceived Cinderella, Galina Ulanova, had in the meantime changed companies.

8 pxhst.co Some composers have deliberately downplayed or eliminated the fairy tale elements of the story. Prokofiev did the opposite. A major role in my work on Cinderella, he wrote, was played by the fairy-tale nature of the subject, which faced me as the composer with a number of interesting problems the mysteriousness of the good grandmother fairy, the vivid and poetic breath of nature in the figures of the four fairies of the seasons of the year and their attendants, the fantasy of the twelve dwarfs leaping from the clock at midnight and beating out a tap-dance reminding Cinderella to return home, the swift alternation of the countries of the world visited by the prince in search of Cinderella. When played in its entirety, the three-act ballet score lasts nearly two hours. For concert purposes, Prokofiev created three suites (Op.107, 108, 109) but conductor Stéphane Denève has constructed his own suite consisting of a dozen numbers in more or less chronological sequence. PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Suite from The Sleeping Beauty, Op.66a ( ) I. Introduction II. Adagio: Pas d action (Act I) III. Pas de caractère: Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat IV. Panorama V. Waltz (Act I) Charles Perrault s fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty from his Mother Goose stories has captured the imagination of dozens of composers, including Humperdinck and Respighi for operas and Borodin and Debussy for songs. But standing head and shoulders above all others is Tchaikovsky s ballet score, which captures all the beauty, magic and enchantment of Perrault s tale to perfection. Tchaikovsky himself thought it to be one of his greatest creations. It was first performed in St. Petersburg on 15 January 1890, but did not achieve worldwide fame until Sergei Diaghilev revived it in London in Since then, it has been continuously in the repertory and remains one of the half dozen most beloved of all full-length ballets. The music can properly be described as symphonic in that, unlike most other ballet scores of the nineteenth century, it has an inner, organic unity achieved through the use of leading motifs and formal but flexible design (as opposed to a succession of unrelated short numbers). To Tchaikovsky s biographer John Warrack, no score of his possesses a finer flow of brilliant, attractive, memorable ideas; but it does so because of the strength of the design.

9 A scene from 'Sleeping Beauty', Cork Opera House, 2012 irishtheatre.ie The theme of good triumphing over evil, and life over death, is represented by the frequent recurrence in various guises of the motifs of the wicked fairy Carabosse and the good Lilac Fairy. Indeed, the score s Introduction acquaints us with these two motifs right from the very start. There is no mistaking which is which! The most popular of the many suites that have been arranged from the complete, twohour score consists of five numbers assembled by the pianist and conductor Alexander Siloti at the composer s request, shortly after the premiere but not published until Following the aforementioned Introduction comes the scene where celebrations for Princess Aurora s sixteenth birthday are in progress. She dances with four suitors in turn ( Adagio ), and each prince offers her a rose; hence, this famous passage is often known as the Rose Adagio. Part of the Princess wedding festivities include entertainment by various fairytale characters. One of these character dances is by Puss-in-boots and the White Cat, who prance to music that imitates cat-like behaviour with amazing realism stalking, mewing, purring and spitting. The Panorama is the smoothly gliding music that accompanies Prince Charming s journey down the stream through the enchanted forest past ever-changing scenery. The Suite ends with one of Tchaikovsky s most famous waltzes.

10 MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA RESIDENT CONDUCTOR Naohisa Furusawa FIRST VIOLIN Co-Concertmaster Peter Daniš Principal Ming Goh Zhenzhen Liang Runa Baagöe Maho Daniš Miroslav Daniš Evgeny Kaplan Martijn Noomen Sherwin Thia Marcel Andriesii Tan Ka Ming Petia Atanasova *Tao-Ming Yu *Julie Colman SECOND VIOLIN Timothy Peters Assistant Principal Luisa Hyams Catalina Alvarez Chia-Nan Hung Anastasia Kiseleva Stefan Kocsis Ling Yunzhi Ionut Mazareanu Yanbo Zhao Ai Jin Robert Kopelman Ikuko Takahashi *Marco Roosink VIOLA Gábor Mokány Ong Lin Kern Sun Yuan Thian Aiwen Fan Ran *Ida Kovács *Gusztáv Németh *Lucina Horner *Jan Wea *Hsiao Chia Chien CELLO Csaba Körös Assistant Principal Steven Retallick Mátyás Major *Tamás Zétényí Gerald Davis Julie Dessureault Laurentiu Gherman Elizabeth Tan Suyin Sejla Simon DOUBLE BASS Wolfgang Steike Raffael Bietenhader Jun-Hee Chae Naohisa Furusawa John Kennedy Foo Yin Hong Andreas Dehner *Andrea Beyer FLUTE *Andrew MacLeod Yukako Yamamoto Rachel Jenkyns PICCOLO Principal Sonia Croucher OBOE Simon Emes *Qiuzi Hu Niels Dittmann CLARINET Gonzalo Esteban *Andrew Simon Matthew Larsen BASS CLARINET Principal Chris Bosco BASSOON Alexandar Lenkov *Denis Plangger HORN s Grzegorz Curyla *David Evans James Schumacher Laurence Davies Assistant Principal Sim Chee Ghee TRUMPET *Yoram Levy William Theis *Jeffrey Missal Assistant Principal *Matthew Dempsey TROMBONE *Alejandro Diaz *Fernando Borja *Marques Young BASS TROMBONE Principal Michael Becker TUBA *Daniel Honaker TIMPANI Matthew Thomas PERCUSSION Matthew Prendergast s Joshua Vonderheide *Kyle Ritenauer *Tan Su Yin *Edouard Beyens HARP Principal Tan Keng Hong CELEste *Akiko Daniš CORPORATE SUITE CLUB MEMBER Note: Sectional string players are rotated within their sections. *Extra musician.

11 Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Nor Raina Yeong Abdullah BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Wan Yuzaini Wan Yahya At Ziafrizani Chek Pa Nurartikah Ilyas Kartini Ratna Sari Ahmat Adam Aishah Sarah Ismail Affendee MARKETING Yazmin Lim Abdullah Hisham Abdul Jalil Munshi Ariff Abu Hassan Farah Diyana Ismail Noor Sarul Intan Salim Muhammad Shahrir Aizat Ahmad Kusolehin Adha Kamaruddin CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Asmahan Abdullah Jalwati Mohd Noor Music TALENT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT Soraya Mansor PLANNING, FINANCE & IT Mohd Hakimi Mohd Rosli Norhisham Abd Rahman Siti Nur Ilyani Ahmad Fadzillah Nurfharah Farhana Hashimi PROCUREMENT & CONTRACT Logiswary Raman Norhaszilawati Zainudin HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION Sharhida Saad Muknoazlida Mukhadzim Zatil Ismah Azmi Nor Afidah Nordin Nik Nurul Nadia Nik Abdullah TECHNICAL OPERATIONS Firoz Khan Mohd Zamir Mohd Isa Yasheera Ishak Shahrul Rizal Mohd Ali Dayan Erwan Maharal Zolkarnain Sarman Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Nor Raina Yeong Abdullah general manager Timothy Tsukamoto gm's office Timmy Ong ORCHESTRA MANAGEMENT Amy Yu Mei Ling Tham Ying Hui ARTISTIC ADMINISTRATION Khor Chin Yang Sharon Francis Lihan MUSIC LIBRARY Ong Li-Huey Wong Seong Seong EDUCATION & OUTREACH Shafrin Sabri Shireen Jasin Mokhtar MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC YOUTH ORCHESTRA Ahmad Muriz Che Rose Fadilah Kamal Francis

12 Box Office: Ground Floor, Tower 2, PETRONAS Twin Towers Kuala Lumpur City Centre Kuala Lumpur Telephone: Online Tickets & Info: mpo.com.my malaysianphilharmonicorchestra DEWAN FILHARMONIK PETRONAS X MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA H