Canberra Symphony Orchestra: Llewellyn Series/01, Mozart. Llewellyn Hall, ANU School of Music. Wednesday April 6 and Thursday April 7 at 7.30pm. cso.org.au.
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Mozart's influence reaches throughout the first concert of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra's 2016 Llewellyn Series.
The program will feature guest conductor Benjamin Northey and the CSO's own Virginia Taylor as soloist in the work that she chose: Jonathan Dove's The Magic Flute Dances – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra.
Taylor calls the piece "magic".
"It has a delicate and ethereal orchestral accompaniment and it transports you into a world of magic. It's quite charming."
The first performance of this work was in February 2000 by the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in England, with flautist Emily Beynon as soloist. Taylor came across it when she was looking for competition pieces for her students to play and found it listed as a piece for a competition final.
"It's a 20-minute work in five movements that are all connected to one another and it tells of the Flute's adventures," Taylor says.
Dove lets his imagination rove over what might have happened to Mozart's Magic Flute once the opera has ended.
He writes: "When Emily Beynon asked me for a concerto that had some connection with Mozart, I thought this could be an opportunity to let the flute out of its box, not to play the music it plays in the opera, but to play the music it has heard other people sing."
He imagines the flute reminiscing about the Queen of the Night, Tamino, Pamina and Papageno.
In 2012 Taylor premiered Matthew Hindson's House Music with the CSO, and The Magic Flute Dances will be another Australian premiere. She will be playing House Music again in Sydney soon and says that she would love to commission another solo flute work from Hindson.
Benjamin Northey wears hats both as the chief conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and as the associate conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
He has just conducted the season opener of the Christchurch Symphony – a program including works by Prokofiev and Debussy and the premiere of a viola concerto by New Zealand composer Chris Cree-Brown.
Northey says, "I was very much guided by [CSO artistic director] Nick Milton with the Canberra Symphony program."
The concert will open with Mozart's Symphony No. 31 in D major – Paris and conclude with Tchaikovsky's take on a Mozart work, Suite No. 4 in G major – Mozartiana. As well as The Magic Flute Dances, Northey will also conduct Nigel Westlake's Out of the Blue, a 10-minute piece for string orchestra written in 1994.
"I've never conducted the Dove work before," Northey says, "but it's a wonderful piece. I like the idea of extending Mozart's opera. It captures an imaginary world.
"And Out of the Blue is full of melodic invention and very cleverly orchestrated. It's a musical language that's familiar to us and Nigel taps into this very cleverly. I've conducted five or six pieces by him and they're always quite complex and challenging to the orchestra. It's always great to play some Australian music."
Northey says Mozart's "Paris" Symphony is a wonderful way to start a concert. "Mozart tailored the symphony to suit the audience. It's in the bright and sunny key of D major and light on its feet, very stimulating and uplifting. It was a big success in Paris."
Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana was written in 1887 as a tribute to Mozart on the 100th anniversary of Don Giovanni.
Northey says, "The Tchaikovsky piece is one of his lesser-performed works but filled with 19th-century charm. It's quite symphonic in its scale – a gorgeous piece."
