CONCERT PROGRAMME
2016/17 SEASON
The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) gave its inaugural performance at Dewan
Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP) on 17 August 1998. 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 has been 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), Brisbane, Australia (2012), Kedah (2013) and
Johore Bahru (2014).
As it celebrates its 18th anniversary in 2016, 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.
Sat 13 May 2017 at 8.30 pm
Sun 14 May 2017 at 3.00 pm
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
Kolja Blacher, conductor/violin
PROGRAMME
MOZART
BRAHMS
Overture to The Marriage of Figaro 4 mins
Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77 38 mins
INTERVAL 20 mins
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op.60 34 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. 462692-X). All rights reserved. No part of this programme may be
reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright owners.
Kolja Blacher
conductor/violin
Kolja Blacher studied at the Juilliard School of Music with Dorothy DeLay and
with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. He has performed as soloist all over the world
with orchestras including the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics, NDR Symphony,
Gewandhaus Leipzig and the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia. He has worked with
conductors including Claudio Abbado, Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Dimitri
Kitajenko, Mariss Jansons, Matthias Pintscher and Markus Stenz.
Blacher’s programmatic spectrum comprises works for solo violin from Bach to
Berio, the classical-romantic core repertoire, and contemporary music for violin and
orchestra (including works by Magnus Lindberg, Kurt Weill, Hans Werner Henze
and Bernd Alois Zimmermann). Open to new concert experiences, he gave the
German premiere of Brett Dean’s Electric Preludes for the six-string e-violin.
In the past five years, ‘Play-Conduct’ concerts have become the new focus in
Blacher’s artistic activities; as a leader – both as a soloist and from the concertmaster’s
chair – he worked regularly with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra
Sinfonica di Milano, Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra,
Festival Strings Lucerne, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Bern and the
Orchestra of the Komische Oper in Berlin. This new form of performance practice
leads him all over the world, from St. Antonio to Paris.
Blacher was a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg
before returning to his hometown in Berlin where he teaches at the Hochschule für
Musik “Hanns Eisler.” A born and bred Berliner (his father was the Baltic-German
composer Boris Blacher), he lives with his family in Berlin.
Blacher plays a 1730 ‘Tritton’ Stradivari generously on loan from Kimiko Powers.
www.kolja-blacher.com
PROGRAMME NOTES
Greatness in profusion marks all the music on this programme. The overture
introduces one of the few truly great comic operas in the repertory, an inexhaustible
work of art that delivers greater depth of beauty, and new layers of meaning at every
turn. Brahms’ Violin Concerto has but one peer in the pantheon of violin concertos,
that of Beethoven. As for Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, some may argue that it is
not quite as “great” as the Third or Fifth or Ninth, but that argument usually goes out
the window after hearing a performance of it!
WOLFGANG AMADÈ MOZART
(1756-1791)
Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
(1786)
The Background
The Marriage of Figaro received its
premiere at Vienna’s Burgtheater on
1 May 1786 to a mixed reception,
but it was Prague that truly took this
comedy of manners to its heart. Mozart
attended a performance there less than
a year after its Viennese premiere and
reported: “I looked on with the greatest
pleasure while all these people flew
about in sheer delight to the music of my
Figaro ... they talk of nothing but Figaro.
Nothing is played, sung or whistled but
Figaro. No opera is drawing audiences
like Figaro”. Introducing this great work of
mirth and truth is a four-minute overture
of scintillating brilliance, irrepressible
charm and formal perfection.
The Music
“Is there any music in all the world as fresh as the Overture to The Marriage of
Figaro?” asks Edward Downes in his New York Philharmonic annotation. From the
first quiet murmur of the cellos and double basses to the last brilliant fanfare of
horns, trumpets and drums, the Figaro overture represents the kind of music of
which Salieri, aghast in wonderment, spoke in the film Amadeus: “Displace one
note and there would be diminishment; displace one phrase and the structure would fail!”
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77 (1878)
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Adagio
III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace
The Background
Brahms’ Violin Concerto ranks today alongside Beethoven’s (also in D major) as
one of the two greatest ever written. In it, Brahms brings together ardent lyricism and
architectural strength in perfect proportion. The whole concerto has been called a
“song for the violin on a symphonic scale”, built with magnificent themes that “blossom
before us like opening flowers in a richly stocked garden” (Hubert Foss). It dates from
1878, which places it between the Second and Third Symphonies. Joseph Joachim,
Brahms’s close friend and advisor in all matters pertaining to the violin, was soloist in
the first performance on 1 January 1879, with the composer conducting the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra.
The Music
The concerto opens with a relaxed theme in the lower strings, bassoons and horns ̶
a characteristically warm, Brahmsian scoring. It takes only a few moments to realize
that this is going to be a concerto on a grand scale. After presentation of several more
thematic ideas, the soloist enters with a flourish, which develops into a long, quasicadenza before eventually settling down to repeat the themes first heard in the long
orchestral exposition. Additionally, the violin first presents a new theme, rapturously
flowing and waltz-like. Brahms left the cadenza to the discretion of the soloist. Many
have been written since the original one by Joachim.
The long, serene oboe solo that begins the second movement is one of the most
gorgeous melodies Brahms ever wrote, and it serves to remind us that Brahms was
one of the great song composers of the nineteenth century. The central portion of
the movement shifts to the minor mode, and has been described as soaring into
“impassioned melancholia”. The final part of the ternary-form (ABA) movement
begins with a re-statement of the oboe theme accompanied by new figurations from
the violin.
The bold and fiery finale, the only movement full of virtuosic display, is a slightly
modified rondo structure (ABACBA) whose principal theme is marked by a Hungarian
gypsy flavor.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op.60
(1806)
I. Adagio – Allegro vivace
II. Adagio
III. Allegro vivace – Un poco meno
allegro – Allegro vivace
IV. Allegro ma non troppo
The Background
“A slender Grecian maiden between two
Norse giants” is Robert Schumann’s oftquoted description of Beethoven’s Fourth
Symphony. It was the Fourth’s accident
of history that placed it between those
towering creations, the Third (Eroica) and
Fifth Symphonies, and there is no denying
that the Fourth exists on a somewhat less
exalted plane than its neighbors. But there
are different kinds of greatness, and in performance the Fourth invariably stimulates
the degree of esthetic satisfaction and listening pleasure reserved for what we call
“masterpieces”. It may lack the implicit theme of grandiose, heroic struggle that
characterizes the Third and Fifth Symphonies, but “for all its lack of ‘great issues’”,
writes David Cairns, “the Fourth contains as much drama as do the symphonies
on either side … a conflict and eventual reconciliation between, on the one hand,
broad lyricism and the long singing line, and, on the other, rhythmic insistence, violent
accents and syncopation. In energy, the Fourth is inferior to none”.
The first performance, a private one, took place in the Viennese town house of Prince
Lobkowitz on 15 March 1807 with Beethoven conducting.
The Music
The symphony’s long, dark, mysterious opening offers no clue to the buoyancy, joy
and ebullience that otherwise mark the work. When the main Allegro section finally
arrives, the effect is not unlike that of the emergence from a tunnel, from darkness
into light. The first theme is announced immediately in the violins, a theme that will by
turns sound airy and graceful or robust and sturdy, depending on the orchestration.
The second theme shows Beethoven at his most playful: an idea passes through the
bassoon, then the oboe, and finally the flute before finding its lyrical conclusion in the
violins. The clarinet, neglected in this passage, gets to start the closing theme ̶ a lyrical
duet-dialogue with bassoon.
Over a rhythmic pattern that pervades much of the movement, the ravishing principal
theme of the Adagio unfolds with infinite grace and rarefied beauty. It is the kind of
line, so simple yet so exquisite, that brings to mind the themes of Mozartian slow
movements. Berlioz called it “angelic and of irresistible tenderness”. An equally
haunting spell is woven by the solo clarinet in the second theme as the line rises
and falls in gentle caresses. Yet, for all its lyricism, moments of insistent rhythmic
repetition remind us that the dramatic tension of this music lies largely in the very
contrast of those two elements, melody and rhythm.
Beethoven called the bumptious, frolicsome third movement a Menuetto, but it is
a scherzo in all but name. The whiplash alternations of loud and soft, the stabbing
accents, the rapid tempo and motoric energy all point to a Beethoven scherzo.
Actually, it is a double scherzo, for the contrasting, quaintly rustic Trio section,
featuring woodwind choir, occurs twice, resulting in the basic form of Scherzo-TrioScherzo-Trio-Scherzo.
The finale is a wonderful mix of quicksilver, lightning exuberance, coiled energy and
perpetual motion.
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MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
RESIDENT
CONDUCTOR
Harish Shankar
Naohisa Furusawa
FIRST VIOLIN
Co-Concertmaster
Peter Daniš
Principal
Ming Goh
Co-Principal
Zhenzhen Liang
Runa Baagöe
Maho Daniš
Miroslav Daniš
Evgeny Kaplan
Martijn Noomen
Sherwin Thia
Marcel Andriesii
Tan Ka Ming
Petia Atanasova
SECOND VIOLIN
Section Principal
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
VIOLA
Co-Principal
Gábor Mokány
Fumiko Dobrinov
Ong Lin Kern
Carol Pendlebury
Sun Yuan
Thian Aiwen
Fan Ran
*Emil Csonka
*Jennifer Arnold
CELLO
Co-Principal
Csaba Körös
Assistant Principal
Steven Retallick
Gerald Davis
Julie Dessureault
Laurentiu Gherman
Elizabeth Tan Suyin
Sejla Simon
Mátyás Major
DOUBLE BASS
Section Principal
Wolfgang Steike
Co-Principal
Joseph Pruessner
Raffael Bietenhader
Jun-Hee Chae
Naohisa Furusawa
John Kennedy
Foo Yin Hong
Andreas Dehner
FLUTE
Section Principal
Hristo Dobrinov
Co-Principal
Yukako Yamamoto
Sub-Principal
Rachel Jenkyns
PICCOLO
Principal
Sonia Croucher
OBOE
Section Principal
Simon Emes
Sub-Principal
Niels Dittmann
CLARINET
Section Principal
Gonzalo Esteban
Co-Principal
*David Dias da Silva
Sub-Principal
Matthew Larsen
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Principal
Chris Bosco
BASSOON
Section Principal
Alexandar Lenkov
Co-Principal
*Muzsi Levente
Sub-Principal
Orsolya Juhasz
HORN
Section Principals
Grzegorz Curyla
*Igor Szeligowski
Co-Principal
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Sub-Principal
Laurence Davies
Assistant Principal
Sim Chee Ghee
TRUMPET
Co-Principals
William Theis
*Jeffrey Missal
Assistant Principal
John Bourque
TUBA
Section Principal
Brett Stemple
TIMPANI
Section Principal
Matthew Thomas
Assistant Principal
Matthew Kantorski
PERCUSSION
Section Principal
Matthew Prendergast
HARP
Principal
Tan Keng Hong
CONTRABASSOON
Principal
Vladimir Stoyanov
Note: Sectional string players are listed alphabetically and rotate within their sections. *Extra musician.
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