Archived event
Performance details
Thursday 1 June 2023 at 7.30pm
Saturday 3 June 2023 at 2pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Featuring
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Carlo Antonioli* conductor
Li-Wei Qin cello
Program
Lili Boulanger D'un matin de printemps
Elgar Cello Concerto
Prokofiev The Love for Three Oranges: Symphonic Suite (excerpts)
Lili Boulanger D'un soir triste
Ravel La valse
About this performance
Travel back in time for this snapshot of Europe in 1918-1919, when manifold compositional lineages collided with the life-changing events of the First World War.
- Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy, daughter of a Russian princess, and the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome composition prize. Her evocative and richly textured works D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning) and D’un soir triste (Of a Sad Evening) were written in 1918, just before her death at only 24 and speak to genuinely thrilling musical genius cut tragically short.
- Get your tissues at the ready and join internationally-acclaimed Australian cellist Li-Wei Qin for one of the most divine, lyrical, and emotionally-stirring works of the 20th century – Elgar’s beloved Cello Concerto.
- Based on a commedia dell’arte play, this suite from Prokofiev’s vibrant comic opera Love for Three Oranges is absurd escapism at its most playful, inspired by Prokofiev’s courtship with wartime America.
- French impressionist Ravel’s La Valse musically plots the birth, rise, and decline of the Viennese waltz. Journeying from joyful buoyancy to chaotic and crazed destruction, La Valse has often been interpreted as an allegory of Europe before, during, and in the direct aftermath of WWI.
Duration: approx. 2 hours including interval
*Please note: Benjamin Northey is unable to conduct this performance due to illness.
Take a deep dive into Elgar's Cello Concerto
Cybec Assistant Conductor Carlo Antonioli, presenter Nicholas Bochner and three talented ANAM cellists recently explored Elgar's deeply moving work at our Ears Wide Open event on 1 May 2023.
This event is now available to stream for free on MSO.LIVE! Watch now to discover what makes this contemplative and elegiac work so enduring.
East meets West is supported by the Li Family Trust and the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations
The Cybec Foundation generously provides support for Carlo Antonioli's Assistant Conductor position.
