Orchestra Nova, Mahler Centenary (1860-1911) Concert
Sunday 18^th September 2:00pm - Lake Macquarie Performing Arts Centre

Mahler Centenary (1860-1911).

Works which were performed in this concert include:

Wagner: Prelude to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg
Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer. Vocal Soloist-Samantha Cobcroft
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major

In commemoration of Gustav Mahler, one of music's giants who died in 1911, Orchestra Nova under the baton of John Nottle is proud to present a performance of the Songs of a Wayfarer for low voice and orchestra. The soloist was the wellknown and acclaimed Newcastle musician Samantha Cobcroft.

The concert will also feature two other Central European composers, Beethoven and Wagner, who had a profound influence on the work of Mahler.

Wagner's magnificent Prelude to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a lively and joyous work which sets the scene for one of opera's most loved and performed works in the repertoire. After interval Orchestra Nova performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major.

Mahler lived in a very exciting time in a fin-de-siecle Vienna which had become isolated from western Europe due to the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the war with Prussia. As a result Emperor Franz-Joseph kept a conservative hold over his Hapsburgian empire centred in Vienna. However, Vienna glittered, and it became known as the ballroom of Europe in La Belle Epoque. It was also one of the first cities in the world to get electric light. It became a city that was the intellectual and artistic capital of Europe, and was a hothouse of daring ideas and radical developments. Sigmund Freud began his work in psychoanalysis at this time. Gustav Klimt was scandalising society with his highly eroticised paintings. And Gustav Mahler married Alma Maria Schindler, the most beautiful women in Vienna, conducted to high acclaim at such reknowned institutions as the Vienna Court Opera, and in the summer holidays composed song cycles and extended symphonies. Symphonies that bridged 19th century tonality and aristocratic sensibility with a more dissonant, warring and socially conscious 20th century.

The Songs of a Wayfarer (Leider eines fahrenden Gesellen), of 1884-85 (orchestrated 1890's), are very closely related to Mahler's 1st Symphony. Indeed some of the songs share the same material and tonality as Symphony No. 1. The texts are Mahler's own. They reflect an unhappy love affair with a young singer, Johanna Richter. His harmony in these songs is diatonic, but he is beginning to explore radical and thought provoking key relationships, implying an unstable if not disintegrating social world. And even in these songs we experience the conflict that was to be worked out in his later symphonies-a love of nature and life combating emptiness and despair.

Great Classics.
 Sunday 26^th June 2011 - Lake Macquarie Performing Arts Centre

 Music Director and Conductor, John Nottle
 Guitar soloist: Giuseppe Zangari

Concert program included.

On 26th June, under the baton of Music Director John Nottle, Orchestra Nova presented three of classical music's most endearing works at The Lake Macquarie Performing Arts Centre, Warners Bay.
The concert began with the overture to the opera The Italian Girl In Algiers composed by Rossini. When this work was first presented to the public it was an immediate success. And judging by the applause after Orchestra Nova's performance, this works' endearing charms are still as fresh today as ever.

The guitar soloist, well-known Newcastle musician and educator, Giuseppe Zangari, then performed Rodrigo's very famous Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. This evocatively rich work, full of Spanish rhythm and lyrical sensuality, was given a virtuosic and musical interpretation by Mr. Zangari. The Concierto de Aranjuez is considered one of the pinnacles of Spanish music and the guitar concerto repertoire. Thus it was pleasing to see a number of guitarists and students in the audience listening to such a master musician as Giuseppe Zangari perform this popular guitar classic.

After interval Orchestra Nova presented Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, more familiarly known as From The New World because of it's association with C19th Native American music and African-American spirituals.

Composed in 1893 during Dvorak's 1892-1895 National Conservatory of Music tenure in New York City, the symphony was first performed by The New York Philharmonic Orchestra. At the premiere performance at Carnegie Hall, the reception was one of perpetual cheering. The end of each movement was met with thunderous applause. Dvorak, an undemonstrative man, was obliged to stand and take many bows.

Orchestra Nova performed this work with considerable energy, flair and colour. The evocative Cor anglais solo in the slow movement, which many commentators believe to be the spiritual centre of the symphony, was given a sensitve interpretation by Kylie-Ann Lysaght.

The last movement began at a brusque pace and recalled material from earlier movements as well as combining new material to end an afternoon of music making in a burst of triumphant glory.

^{Guiseppe Zangari - Photo by Caterina Photography.}

Peter and the Wolf. A Childrens Concert.
 Sunday 27^th March 2011 - Newcastle City Hall

 Music Director and Conductor, John Nottle
 Narrator, ABC Newcastle Radio personality, Matt Bevan
 With actors and dancers from the Hunter School of Performing Arts.

Concert program included.

^{Orchestra Nova Peter and the Wolf, A Childrens Concert at Newcastle City Hall on 27th March 2011. With Narrator, Matt Bevan and actors and dancers from the Hunter School of Performing Arts.}

On Sunday afternoon, 27th March, Newcastle City Hall was filled to capacity by parents and children eagerly soaking up the atmosphere created by Orchestra Nova and its Music Director, John Nottle, in the first concert of this year.
Beginning with March of the Toys, followed by a concert suite of music from the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the hour long concert's penultimate work Peter and the Wolf culminated a highly successful afternoon of music making.
Designed to introduce young children to the exciting world of orchestral music, Orchestra Nova's children's and family concert was hugely successful, if the smiles on young faces both during and after the concert was anything to go by!
The concert was both interactive-with children coming onto the stage to conduct the orchestra in a rendition of March of the Toys-and entertainingly educational. Peter and the Wolf was composed by Prokofiev to introduce young people to the instruments of the orchestra. Orchestra Nova's performance of this classic was complimented admirably by Matthew Bevan as the Narrator, and students from The Hunter School of Performing Arts colourfully enacting the story.

Quote from Elizabeth Horwitz, Hunter Performing Arts magazine

 "A real pleasure for the kids and adults alike.... people were commenting before they left - all lovely... and the smiles were the measure of real success."

^{Photos by Jasmine Cooper.}