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Australian Chamber Orchestra

2020 marks Richard Tognetti’s 30th year as the ACO’s Artistic Director. In celebration of his versatility and contribution to the Orchestra as arranger, composer, champion of new works and lost gems, and as a source of inspiration for new music, this program is a chance to look to the future as much as the past.
From the past is Tognetti’s acclaimed arrangement of Haas’s From The Monkey Mountains, a vivid tone poem composed in a Nazi ghetto that imagines a carefree life beyond the walls where the “rhythm of the open countryside and birdsong… the warm song of the human heart” resonate.

Looking to the future is the world premiere of a new work for electric violin by Samuel Adams, 33-year-old composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music and son of 20th century giant John Adams, written especially for Tognetti’s 30th anniversary with the Orchestra.

Tognetti’s progressive edge is highlighted in his own composition, Beyond, with vocals provided by the ACO’s Satu Vänskä, and in a new approach to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, long a favourite of the Orchestra and beloved of ACO audiences, now channelled through Scottish composer and electronica explorer Anna Meredith.

In its Australian premiere, Meredith’s ANNO intertwines Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with new compositions for electronics and string orchestra, moving through the seasons to create one continuous musical year that offers a fresh and invigorated experience of Vivaldi’s masterpiece. Featuring Richard Tognetti as soloist, Meredith herself will join the ACO to perform live electronics for these performances, a reminder of the adventure and imagination that has characterised this Orchestra and its artistic leader for 30 years.

Richard Tognetti - Director, Violin & Electric Violin
Satu Vänskä - Vocals, Anna Meredith- Electronics
Australian Chamber Orchestra

SAMUEL ADAMS New Work for Electric Violin and Strings – World Premiere* 12′
RICHARD TOGNETTI Beyond 4′
HAAS
String Quartet No.2 “From the Monkey Mountains” (arr. Tognetti) 32′
ANNA MEREDITH / VIVALDI ANNO: Four Seasons – Australian Premiere** 51′

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Is it possible that all roads lead from La Folia? Probably the oldest known musical theme of European culture, it has resonated through the centuries, from Corelli, Liszt and Beethoven, through to the artists of today.

In what marks the Australian debut of perennially in-demand director Jonathan Cohen, whose packed list of directorships includes The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Arcangelo and Les Violons du Roy, this virtuosic and evocative program may help answer this question as it moves from Vivaldi and Handel to the lesser known but harmonically gifted Francesca Caccini.

Naturally, the family Bach is also prominent. Principal Cello Timo-Veikko Valve is at the helm of CPE Bach’s impassioned Cello Concerto in A major, while the composer’s father, Johann Sebastian, features twice, including his final masterpiece The Art of Fugue, devised not for a patron but as the fruit of his late-in-life focus on pure composition. A world premiere from composer Paul Stanhope will present a modern take on the La Folia theme before Geminiani’s own famed La Folia variations, the Concerto Grosso in D minor.

Jonathan Cohen - Guest Director & Keyboard
Helena Rathbone - Violin
Timo-Veikko Valve - Cello
Australian Chamber Orchestra

LOCATELLI Concerto grosso in E-flat major “Il pianto d’Arianna” 15′
JS BACH The Art of Fugue: Contrapunctus 8 5′
HANDEL Concerto Grosso in A minor 10′
MOZART Fugue in E-flat major (after Bach’s BWV876) 2′
VIVALDI Concerto for Strings in G minor, RV156 6′
JS BACH Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes: Sinfonia 3′
CPE BACH Cello Concerto in A major 19′
FRANCESCA CACCINI Ciaccona 5′
PAUL STANHOPE Giving Ground – World Premiere* 5′
GEMINIANI Concerto Grosso in D minor “La Folia” 11′ 

Australian Chamber Orchestra

What might link Mozart and Vaughan Williams? Schubert and George Crumb? Signposting every 50 years from Beethoven’s birth with a significant composition of each era, this is an opportunity to grasp the sheer magnitude of Beethoven’s enduring influence and the development of music over the past 250 years.

Mozart met the young Beethoven in 1787 when he was sent to study in Vienna by wealthy benefactors in Bonn. However, by that time, Beethoven was already so immersed in Mozart’s music, he even worried that he may have unintentionally imitated him. For Schubert, who composed his Quartettsatz in C minor 50 years after Beethoven’s birth, the challenge was how to emerge from the vast shadow cast by Beethoven, in particular his imposing legacy on the string quartet.

If the lightness of the Pizzicato Polka, co-composed by the brothers Johann Strauss junior and Josef Strauss, works as a cheeky contrast, Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, performed by Richard Tognetti, is a continuation of forms once championed by Beethoven: the pastoral form and romance for violin and orchestra.
Where Schubert worked within Beethoven’s string quartet model, George Crumb sought to break it apart 150 years later in Black Angels, written in 1970 as a response to the Vietnam War. Black Angels created a new musical chapter, as will Anna Clyne’s new commission for strings, which will also show the ongoing connections to Beethoven in the early 21st century.

But there may be no better evidence of Beethoven’s enduring influence than the final number, his Cavatina & Grosse Fuge, the last major work he composed shortly before his death. Its presence serves to emphasise how contemporary Beethoven remains, resounding with perpetual modernity.

Richard Tognetti - Director & Violin
Australian Chamber Orchestra

1770: MOZART Mitridate: Overture 6′
1820: SCHUBERT Quartettsatz (arr. strings) 10′
1870: JOHANN STRAUSS II Pizzicato Polka 3′
1920: VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending 15′
1970: GEORGE CRUMB Black Angels (arr. Tognetti) 19′
2020: ANNA CLYNE New commission for strings – World Premiere* 15′
BEETHOVEN Cavatina & Grosse Fuge (arr. Tognetti) 24′