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 © 2018 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.

The initial steps towards realising the long-cherished dream of the late PETRONAS Chairman, Tun Azizan Zainul Abidin, to create a youth orchestra as a ‘stage for young talents’, alongside the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), were taken on 13 January 2006. Some 500 aspiring musicians from across Malaysia auditioned and 110 – with an average age of 18 years – were selected to form the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO).

After a period of intensive training under its founding conductor, Kevin Field, and mentors drawn from the ranks of the MPO, the MPYO gave its first public concert in Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS on 25 August 2007. It has since established a pattern of music camps held three to four times a year, culminating in performances in Kuala Lumpur and beyond. It has toured Peninsula Malaysia (2007 and 2010), Sabah and Sarawak (2008), and performed in Singapore (2009 and 2017) and Brisbane, Australia, as part of an exchange programme with the Queensland Youth Orchestra (2012).

Auditions are held every year to provide opportunities for talented young Malaysian musicians to join the MPYO and participate in orchestral training and performances, under the guidance of the MPO musicians as tutors.

The music repertoire ranges from symphonic repertoire to specially-commissioned works by Malaysian composers. In an innovative project, ‘Jazzaar’, in 2010, the orchestra collaborated with six leading jazz musicians from the USA, led by Fritz Renold (who wrote his Suite Nusantara specially for the project) to enrich and widen their musical experience.

In 2013, the orchestra performed in Kedah with renowned local singers Datin Paduka Julie Sudiro and Datuk Yusni Hamid in a keroncong concert was attended by the HRH Agong of Malaysia. In 2014, the ensemble collaborated with Yayasan Warisan Johor and Orkestra Tradisional Malaysia in Johor Baru. In 2015, the MPYO was given the honour to perform at the opening of the 128th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2017, the MPYO was invited to perform at Majlis Santapan Malam Memuliakan Mesyuarat Majlis Raja-Raja ke-247 at Istana Negara, and Majlis Jamuan Teh Sempena Sambutan Ulang Tahun Hari Keputeraan Rasmi DYMM Sultan Ibrahim Ibni Almarhum Sultan Iskandar, Sultan Johor.

For inquiries, please call Fadilah Kamal Francis at 03-23314218, email fadilah.francis@mpo.com.my or check out www.mpo.com.my.

Sun 10 June 2018 at 8.30 pm

Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Naohisa Furusawa, conductor

PROGRAMME

HAYDN Symphony No. 104 in D major - 'London' 25 mins

MEDTNER Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op.33: First Section 12 mins

SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op.103 - 'The Egyptian': 2nd Movement 12 mins

INTERVAL 20 mins

CHOPIN Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante in E flat major, Op.22 14 mins

KALINNIKOV Symphony No. 1 in G minor 35 mins

featuring Kwan Yee Lim, piano

featuring Choong See May, piano

featuring Tengku Mohd Hadif Sharifudin, piano

PROGRAMME NOTES

The music on tonight’s programme might almost be subsumed under the rubric The Three Ages of Man. Chopin was just twenty when he wrote the Grand Polonaise brillante and Kalinnikov was not much older when he wrote his First Symphony. Medtner was comfortably into middle age by the time he brought out his First Piano Concerto but its form is highly unusual – almost experimental one might say – something a young upstart might have done. Saint-Saëns was a mature man of sixty when he premiered his Fifth Piano Concerto; this too a most unusual work in that it incorporates extra-musical and geographical elements. As for Haydn, his last symphony, No. 104, was the invention of an old man, the happy result of a lifetime of wisdom and experience.

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)Symphony No. 104 in D major - ‘London’ (1795)

I. Adagio – Allegro II. Andante III. Menuet IV. Finale: Spiritoso

No composer did more than Haydn to bring the symphony from its modest, lightweight beginnings to its present stature. The symphony we hear tonight is his last. Haydn could not have done better for a valedictory statement in the genre. It “seems to sum up, in one vast canvas, Haydn’s symphonic style”, wrote H. C. Robbins Landon, one of the world’s leading Haydn scholars. The first performance was probably given at the King’s Theatre in London on 13 April 1795 (some sources claim 4 May).

The first movement contains but a single subject, which serves as both first and second “theme” but in different keys. The third and fourth measures alone (the four repeated short notes followed by two longer ones) serve for the entire development section. Haydn’s boundless imagination sustains the continuous harmonic interest and unflagging rhythmic momentum. The second movement combines elements of rondo and variation form. The sturdy Menuet is notable for its lopsided metrical pattern (accents on the third beat of the bar) and for the timpani crescendo leading to the final statement of the main subject. A charming Trio separates the two identical statements of the Menuet. The finale takes as its main theme what Béla Bartók identified as a peasant song from Croatia.

NAOHISA FURUSAWA conductor

Naohisa Furusawa has been a member of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) double bass section since 2003. Born in Tokyo in 1973, he started to play the violin when he was four years old and later joined his junior high school orchestra as a double bass player at age 12; his first conducting experiences were with this orchestra. Later, he studied double bass with Prof. Nobuo Shiga, and piano and conducting with Prof. Kazue Kamiya at Tokyo’s Toho Gakuen School of Music.

Furusawa has performed as a double bass player with the NHK Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and several other orchestras, under the direction of many conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Lorin Maazel, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez and Valery Gergiev.

In 1998, Furusawa was awarded a scholarship from the Cultural Affairs Agency of Japan to study double bass at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. He has conducted Beethoven’s 9th Symphony five times with Tokyo’s MAX Philharmonic Orchestra. He also conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony with the MAX Philharmonic to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

He has conducted many young musician ensembles including MPO’s Encounter Training Ensemble and the Miri Tutti Project in East Malaysia as part of the MPO’s Education and Outreach Programme.

wikimedia.org

NICOLAI MEDTNER (1880-1951)Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op.33 (1914-1917)

First Section

Stylistically Medtner had much in common with Rachmaninoff, a died-in-the-wool Romantic. He brooked no patience with the modernist directions of contemporaries such as Strauss, Debussy, or Reger, not to mention Stravinsky or Schoenberg, and believed staunchly in the traditional forms and harmonic practice as used by the great composers of the past. Medtner’s entire catalogue, like Chopin’s, consists of music either for piano alone or with piano. The first of

his three piano concertos was begun in 1914 and completed three years later. The premiere took place in Moscow on 12 May 1918 (exactly a century ago) with the composer at the piano and Serge Koussevitzky on the podium. The concerto is a full-length work lasting over half an hour, but most unusually it is cast as a single large movement consisting of several connected sections. The overall structure resembles sonata-allegro form (exposition – development – recapitulation – coda) but each section individually develops musical material. The first section, which we hear tonight, sets forth the concerto’s grandiose main theme in the violins, from which several further themes are derived and developed in turn. The soloist plays almost continuously in fountains and cascades of virtuosic displays.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op.103 – ‘The Egyptian’ (1896)

II. Andante – Allegretto tranquillo quasi andantino – Andante

Among Saint-Saëns’ many interests was a fondness for travel. His exploits took him as far afield as Singapore and San Francisco. Nearer to his native France, a destination for which he held a special affinity was North Africa. He went at least twice to Egypt, each visit inspiring a work for piano and orchestra. In 1891 he produced Africa, and in 1896 his Fifth Piano Concerto, subtitled “Egyptian”. The composer himself was soloist at the world premiere, which formed part of a

jubilee on 2 June 1896 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Saint-Saëns’ debut as a pianist. Of the second movement, which we hear tonight, the composer commented

that it “takes us on a journey to the East and even to the Far East. The G major passage [the tranquil central episode in which a simple melody in the left hand is accompanied with the right in octave leaps] is a Nubian love song which I heard sung by the boatmen on the Nile”. Saint-Saëns also purportedly incorporated an imitation of croaking Nile frogs near the end of this movement. However, realism and pictorialism in music were not Saint-Saëns’ strong suits. Virtually everything he wrote is remarkable first and foremost for its polish, glitter, neat formal proportions, emotional restraint and clarity of texture.

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante in E flat major, Op.22 (1830-1834)

Chopin composed the Grande Polonaise brillante in 1830, the year he left Warsaw and settled in Paris. Four years later, he composed another independent piece, the Andante spianato and decided to perform them as a combined unit at one of his few public appearances in Paris on 26 April 1835. Spianato is Italian for “even”, “equalized”, “spun out” and indeed the music is just that. “It makes one think of a lake on a calm bright summer day”, wrote Chopin’s biographer Friedrich Niecks. The Andante spianato is for piano alone. A brief orchestral transition leads into the

Polonaise, whose main theme returns each time in different ornamental garb; by way of contrast, there is also a secondary theme in C minor. Orchestral accompaniment is minimal while the soloist indulges in brilliant bravura displays.

VASSILY KALINNIKOV (1866-1901)Symphony No. 1 in G minor (1897)

I. Allegro moderato II. Andante commodamente III. Scherzo: Allegro non troppo – Moderato assai IV. Finale: Allegro moderato

Vassily Kalinnikov lived not quite 35 years (a year less than Mozart) and left just a handful of works, mostly orchestral, of which his First Symphony remains his best-known composition. Both Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff were impressed with his work and tried to help him along in his career. His severe case of tuberculosis demanded that he move to Yalta in the South Crimea. When he died, his widow did not even have the money for

medtner.org.uk

wikimedia.org

wikimedia.org

pqpbach.sul21

a tombstone. Besides the work on this programme, Kalinnikov wrote a Second Symphony, a handful of other works for orchestra, an incomplete opera In 1812, some songs, piano pieces and choral music.

Rare indeed are the compositions dedicated to music critics. Kalinnikov’s First Symphony is one such case, the dedication going to Semyon Kruglikov, who also served as one of Kalinnikov’s teachers. The first performance, given in Kiev on 20 February 1897 at a Russian Music Society concert conducted by Alexander Vinogradsky, though seldom heard outside of Russia, this symphony offers all that we have come to love in the symphonies of other Russians of romantic persuasion like Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glazunov, Glière and Rachmaninoff. It is filled with colorful orchestration, sweeping melodies, high spirits and national flavour.

DEWAN FILHARMONIK PETRONAS – 462692-X MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA – 463127-HNote: Musicians are listed alphabetically and rotate within their sections. *MPYO Alumni **Guest musician

MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC YOUTH ORCHESTRA

FIRST VIOLINLow Zi YangElle Chang Su-TingSoon Wern-ShynnTan PinQi SophiaLee Fong YingKiew Zheng WeiAzhad Sulaiman @ ZakariaDebbie Johanna Ho Yan YanStephanie Wong Hui ErnLee Jin Yen

SECOND VIOLINIzzywan MusibJoey YoungTimothy SongEben Ting Ik Peng*Ng Chia WenWong Tzu ShiuanJoynner Junior HermonCheong Keat ZhenCeleste TanJarrett Chin Qi Ren Alisha Chan Yi Hung

VIOLADanish MubinPoh Yoon Hou**Ng Zhan Shen Benjamin Phoon Zu YingEvelyn Chow

CELLOJoshua Sim Te ShengHow Wei Tao StanleyGoh Wen ChihJennifer Lim Yi-MeiCharissa Tan Tian AiIsabel lau Kai Zi

DOUBLE BASSLee Kar YanKhee Yu HangGillian Too

FLUTEBonnie Kong Tien LiJapheth Law Sze ChengWooi Wei Kane

OBOETang Jung SiongMohd Izzat Bukhori AwangTunku Amanina Tunku Ibrahim

CLARINETEmily Tiow Yu XianEugene Chee Jia JiunnLing Ji XuTan Yi XinTang Kit Ying

BASSOONStephen Mak Wai SoonChong Chun Weng

FRENCH HORNChai Kee Hong**Chloe Chai Mei QinEric Tiow Xian LiangMohd Adznan MokhtarNoor Fauzan Mohd Khiry

TRUMPET Lau Hui PingNurliyana Abdul Ghafar

TROMBONEAinul Basyirah AznanTeh Yoong WeiAbdul Hanif Abdul HamidLow Kim Ven

TUBATan Shun Zhong

TIMPANI/PERCUSSIONNg Lip ShengChong Xin YiAdriel Wong Xian Lih

HARP Madelaine Chong Zhia Chee

CORPORATE SUITEPREMIUM MEMBERS

DEWAN FILHARMONIK PETRONAS

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERNor Raina Yeong Abdullah

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTWan Yuzaini Wan Yahya At Ziafrizani Chek PaNurartikah IlyasKartini Ratna Sari Ahmat AdamAishah Sarah Ismail Affendee

MARKETING Yazmin Lim AbdullahHisham Abdul JalilMunshi Ariff Abu HassanFarah Diyana IsmailNoor Sarul Intan SalimMuhammad Shahrir AizatAhmad Kusolehin Adha Kamaruddin

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPMANAGEMENTYayuk Yulianawati RilaJalwati Mohd Noor

MUSIC TALENT DEVELOPMENT &MANAGEMENTSoraya Mansor

PLANNING, FINANCE & ITMohd Hakimi Mohd RosliNorhisham Abd RahmanSiti Nur Ilyani Ahmad FadzillahNurfharah Farhana Hashimi

PROCUREMENT & CONTRACTLogiswary RamanNorhaszilawati Zainudin

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATIONSharhida SaadMuknoazlida MukhadzimNor Afidah NordinNik Nurul Nadia Nik Abdullah

TECHNICAL OPERATIONSFiroz KhanMohd Zamir Mohd IsaShahrul Rizal Mohd AliDayan Erwan MaharalZolkarnain Sarman

MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONICORCHESTRA

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERNor Raina Yeong Abdullah

GENERAL MANAGERKhor Chin YangSoraya Mansor

GENERAL MANAGER'S OFFICETimmy Ong

ARTISTIC ADMINISTRATION/ ORCHESTRA MANAGEMENT/ MALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC YOUTHORCHESTRAAhmad Muriz Che RoseSharon Francis LihanFadilah Kamal FrancisShireen Jasin MokhtarKatherine Tan Jia Yiing

MUSIC LIBRARYOng Li-HueyWong Seong SeongMuhamad Zaid Azzim Mohd Diah

EDUCATION & OUTREACHShireen Jasin MokhtarShafrin Sabri

DEWAN FILHARMONIK PETRONAS – 462692-XMALAYSIAN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA – 463127-H

Box Office:Ground Floor, Tower 2,

PETRONAS Twin TowersKuala Lumpur City Centre

50088 Kuala Lumpur

Email: boxoffice@dfp.com.my

Telephone: 603 - 2331 7007

Online Tickets & Info: mpo.com.my

malaysianphilharmonicorchestra