FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 17, 2015
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
rebecca.a.bailey@dartmouth.edu
603.646.3991
“Intensity and virtuosity, fireworks and soulful moments”:
Australian Chamber Orchestra returns to the Hop April 19
Photos (from top): Australian Chamber Orchestra, by Pierre Toussaint; Martin Fröst, by Nikolaj Lund.
HANOVER, NH—Known for poise, balance and intelligence as well as "high-spirited, rhythmically propulsive
energy" (Los Angeles Times), the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) returns to the Hop to perform with the
jaw-dropping Swedish-born Martin Fröst—whose "virtuosity and musicianship [are] unsurpassed by any
clarinetist" (The New York Times)—on Sunday, April 19, at 7 pm in Spaulding Auditorium.
Last here in 2012 for a ravishing
performance of Winter Morning Walks
(which later won a Grammy), ACO in this
concert spans three centuries with works
by Haydn, Prokofiev and Jonny
Greenwood, of the alt-rock band
Radiohead, and, with Fröst, a Mozart
concerto.
Founded 40 years ago as a conductorless
orchestra and reinvigorated 15 years ago
when it invited then-rookie conductor
Richard Tognetti to occupy its podium,
ACO has won an ecstatic and devoted
Australian and international following,
appealing to a broad range of people—
including many who are new to chamber
music—through the breadth of its
repertoire and the zest and immediacy
of its performance style, as well as
extensive, inventive audience outreach.
Wrote The New York Times, “Intensity and virtuosity are hallmarks of this orchestra…There were plenty of
fireworks and soulful moments in this passionate interpretation, enhanced by the musicians’ vivid attention to
color and dynamics.” Chicago Classical Review praised ACO’s “impassioned, full-metal performance…the tonal
refinement and high-wire intensity demonstrated by Tognetti and his 16 colleagues also revealed the ACO as
one of today’s finest chamber orchestras." Wrote The San Francisco Chronicle, “[The ACO] plays with the sort
of fleet rhythmic control and tonal purity that most chamber groups can only envy.”
Fröst is typical of the A-list soloists with which ACO collaborates. Of the glamorous, globe-trotting player,
reviewers have said: “Fröst exhibited a virtuosity and a musicianship unsurpassed by any clarinetist—perhaps
any instrumentalist—in my memory” (The New York Times); “Martin Fröst performed faultlessly. His range of
dynamic control was astounding” (Edinburgh Evening News); and “Masterful, self-assured, his variable playing
and enunciating body language confirms this soloist as one of the best, most recognized respected soloists
around the world…Surely some music fans were quietly thanking God that they had been allowed to
experience this concert” (Anzeiger Harlingerland, Germany).
Fröst joins the ACO on Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major,
composed in 1791 and the last work Mozart completed before his
untimely death. Mozart wrote the concerto for the great virtuoso
clarinet player Arthur Stadler, a close friend, a fellow Mason and, on
numerous occasions, a spirited gambling companion. “One would never
have thought,” a critic wrote of Stadler in 1785, “that a clarinet could
imitate the human voice to such perfection.”
Contrasting with the concert’s 18th- and early 20th-century works is
Water, by multifaceted British rock musician and Radiohead guitarist
Greenwood, for strings, piano and South Asian instrument tambura.
Inspired by a couplet from a Philip Larkin poem and by the composer’s
trip to India, Water includes “the spicy drone of real and synthesized
Indian tamburas…providing a backdrop against which an upright piano
and the 18 strings of the Australian Chamber Orchestra each do their
own things with gently shifting melodic templates,” wrote The Irish
Times. “The recipe may recall Ravi Shankar and the colorful era when
westerners from Messiaen to the Beatles flirted with Indian classical
music. Yet the product has a lean level-headedness that could only
belong to the present moment.”
Speaking to Spin Magazine, Tognetti said of Greenwood: "I believe he's
the first celebrated pop musician who has been able to straddle the
world of classical music. In terms of the cross-fertilization of ideas, it's a
great time to be a musician."
The 15 fleeting pieces that make up Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, Op. 22, based on a poem written by Russian
poet Konstantin Bal'mont, were written for piano between 1915 and 1917 and then later transcribed for string
orchestra. British musicologist David Fanning wrote of them: “Prokofiev supplies snapshots of his most
characteristic moods—sometimes grotesque, sometimes incantatory and mystical, sometimes simply poetic,
sometimes aggressively assertive, sometimes so delicately poised as to allow the performer and the listener to
make up their own minds.”
Written in 1785 when, under a new contract, Haydn was at last able to write for organizations other than that
of his employer, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, his Symphony No. 83, “The Hen” got its nickname “from an early
listener’s reaction to a lighthearted moment in the first movement of the work,” wrote musicologist Ed
Rutschman. “The oboe and the first violins seemed to suggest the motions and sounds of a hen, and the name
‘La poule’ stuck. Haydn’s more profound accomplishment at this point, however, is to relate the new,
lighthearted theme to the stormy opening theme of the movement by their sharing of a rhythmic pattern. The
remaining three movements are an elegant slow movement, a minuet and a rambunctious Finale, all of which
display Haydn’s witty unpredictability.”
RELEVANT LINKS
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/australian_chamber_orchestra
https://www.aco.com.au/
http://www.martinfrost.se/
http://www.fabermusic.com/composers/jonny-greenwood
https://www.aco.com.au/about/musicians/richard_tognetti
Download high-resolution photos:
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScont
ent::loadArticle::article_id=A14ACB33-679C-469F-9E075A08469894E7&sessionlanguage=&SessionSecurity::linkName=
CALENDAR LISTING:
Australian Chamber Orchestra with Martin Fröst, clarinet
Known for poise, balance and intelligence as well as "high-spirited, rhythmically propulsive energy" (Los
Angeles Times), ACO performs with the jaw-dropping Swedish-born Fröst—whose "virtuosity and
musicianship [are] unsurpassed by any clarinetist" (The New York Times). Last here in 2012 for a ravishing
performance of Winter Morning Walks (which later won a Grammy), ACO spans three centuries with works
by Haydn, Prokofiev, Greenwood (of the alt-rock band Radiohead), and, with Fröst, Mozart.
Sunday, April 19, at 7 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$30/50/60, $10 Dartmouth students, 18 & under $17/19
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
* * *
Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing
arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and
the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each
year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students
and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with
outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop
enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the
development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.