‘Love Mozart’

Saturday March 19th at 8.00pm
Venue: Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, Performing Arts Centre, Ivanhoe
Guest Artist – Anne Gilby | Oboe

Arnold	The Inn of the Sixth Happiness Suite
Mozart	Oboe Concerto
Soderlundh	Concertino for Oboe and Strings
Britten	Gloriana – Symphonic Suite

 

Malcolm Arnold’s Inn of the Sixth Happiness Suite, devised from the 1958 film, is full of memorable themes and ingenious combinations of textures and has become one of the best known of his hundred-or-so movie scores. It provides an ideal foil to the sense of colour, mystery and surprise conveyed in Britten’s beguiling theatrical orchestral suite from Gloriana, where the listener is taken on a musical journey of enormous power that is meaningful, gripping and satisfyingly neo-Tudor in its approach to form.

Mozart’s only Oboe Concerto is a magical display of compositional genius that transports the listener with an astounding profusion of enchanting melodies, mellow relaxation and conveys a message that is one of unbounded joy..

‘The Emperor’

Saturday June 25th at 8.00pm & Sunday June 26th at 2.30pm
Venue: Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, Performing Arts Centre, Ivanhoe
Guest Artists – Kristian Chong | Piano

Daugherty	Route 66
Beethoven	Concerto for Piano No. 5, “Emperor”
Shostakovich	Symphony No. 6

 

The magnificent “Emperor” piano concerto is Beethoven’s most innovative. Heroic in spirit, the “Emperor” combines a flamboyant gesture for soloist and orchestra together, seemingly at once declamatory and improvisatory.

Contrasting with this dramatic work, Michael Daugherty has written a fun and contemporary romp in Route 66, a rear-vision view of “main street America”.

The sixth symphony of Shostakovich embodies the tension between Shostakovich’s private feelings and his need to appease Stalin. It begins with a fierce, anguished Largo reminiscent of the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, before an explosion of exuberance in the agile Scherzo and joyfully exuberant Presto.

‘European Masters’

Saturday September 10th at 8.00pm
Venue: Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, Performing Arts Centre, Ivanhoe
Guest Artist – Roman Ponomariov | French Horn

Greig	Symphonic Dances
Mozart	Horn Concerto No. 4
Strauss	Horn Concerto No. 1
Copland	Our Town
Prokofiev	The Love of Three Oranges Suite

 

Grieg’s charming Symphonic Dances weaves beautiful and memorable themes from several Norwegian folk dances into a four-movement suite full of rich textures and lively dance rhythms.

The Fourth Horn Concerto of Mozart is a brilliant virtuoso vehicle that showcases the soloist’s ability. Richard Strauss wrote beautifully for horn, after having grown up with a horn player father.

The Horn Concerto No. 1 is an early work that displays the influence of Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns in its declamatory style.

The calm tempo of Copland’s suite from the soundtrack to the film Our Town provides a beautiful contrast with Prokofiev’s charming music from the satirical opera, The Love of Three Oranges

‘Marimba Fever’

Saturday December 3rd at 8.00pm
Venue: Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, Performing Arts Centre, Ivanhoe
Guest Artist – Sergei Golovko | Marimba

Daugherty	Fever from Lost Vegas
Copland	John Henry: A Railroad Ballad for Orchestra
Golovko	Russian Concerto for Marimba & Orchestra*
Vaughan-Williams	Prelude from 49th Parallel Suite
Schubert	Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”
Ginastera	Overture to The Creole Faust

In a *World Premiere performance, marimba virtuoso Sergei Golovko and the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra perform Golovko’s own Russian Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra.

This programme also celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Argentinian composer Ginastera, with the performance of his short tone poem, Overture to the Creole Faust, and also includes a wonderful selection of works by Daugherty, Copland, Vaughan-Williams and Schubert..