Australian Haydn Ensemble Program Guide | Sydney Morning Masters | May 2024

Australian Haydn Ensemble
THE CONCOURSE, CHATSWOOD
WED 22 MAY
11AM

SYDNEY
MORNING
MASTERS
THE CONCOURSE, CHATSWOOD
Wed 3 July 2024, 11am
Jonathan Békés & Ying Ho cello, piano
Wed 4 September 2024, 11am
Andrea Lam piano
Wed 23 October 2024, 11am
Affinity Quartet string quartet
Book now
musicaviva.com.au/sydney-morning-masters | 1800 688 482

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Eora Nation and
we pay our respects to Elders past and present – people who have sung
their songs, danced their dances and told their stories on these lands
for thousands of generations, and who continue to do so.
PROGRAM (approximate duration: 45 min)
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756–1791)
Flute Quartet in D major, K.285 (1777)
I Allegro
II Adagio
III Rondo
15 min
Joseph HAYDN (1732–1809)
Symphony No. 104 in D major ‘London’ (arr. Salomon)
I Adagio – Allegro
II Andante
III Menuetto and Trio: Allegro
IV Finale: Spiritoso
30 min
—
Skye McIntosh artistic director & violin
Matthew Greco violin
Karina Schmitz viola
Daniel Yeadon cello
Melissa Farrow flute
Please ensure that mobile phones are turned to silent and onto flight mode before the performance.
Photography and video recording are not permitted during the performance.
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© Oliver Miller
Australian Haydn Ensemble
The Australian Haydn Ensemble is one of
Australia’s leading historically informed
orchestras and chamber music groups.
The Australian Haydn Ensemble brings
together world-class musicians who excel
in both modern and period instrument
performance and are highly committed to
both historical research and performance.
The ensemble’s repertoire is principally
music of the late Baroque and early
Classical era. The Australian Haydn
Ensemble’s name pays tribute to the great
‘Papa Haydn’ who was a central figure of
the late 18th century in Europe.
Formed in 2012, Australian Haydn
Ensemble burst onto the Australian
music scene with passion and energy.
It has performed all over the country,
including the Adelaide Festival (2022),
the Canberra International Music Festival
(2022 and 2023), the Melbourne Festival
(2016) as well as locally focused events
such as Festival by the Sea (QLD 2016), the
Tyalgum Festival (2018), the Mornington
Peninsula Festival (2019), the Organs of
the Ballarat Goldfield’s Festival (2019)
and the Canowindra festivals. In October
2023, the ensemble made its debut
international tour to the United States of
America.
The Australian Haydn Ensemble has
built a reputation for its vibrant and
accessible performances, which are
faithful to the sound-worlds that would
have been familiar to Haydn and his
contemporaries. The ensemble has
received critical acclaim for its debut ABC
Classics recording, The Haydn Album,
which premiered at No. 1 on the Australian
Classical Aria Charts. According to
Gramophone magazine, ‘…this is a
polished, style-conscious ensemble’.
The Australian Haydn Ensemble
has collaborated with many leading
international and Australian historical
specialist performers including Midori
Seiler (Germany), Melvyn Tan (United
Kingdom), Marc Destrubé (Canada),
Catherine Mackintosh (United Kingdom),
Charles Neidich (USA), Stefanie True
(Canada), Erin Helyard, Neal Peres Da
Costa, Sara Macliver, Helen Sherman and
David Greco (Australia).
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Skye McIntosh is the founder, Artistic
Director and Principal Violin of the
Australian Haydn Ensemble. Skye is
a sought-after specialist in Baroque
and Classical period violin throughout
Australia, regularly leading the Australian
Haydn Ensemble in both orchestral and
chamber music performances.
Matthew Greco is a concertmaster,
soloist and core member of some of
the world’s leading period instrument
ensembles. He has been a member of the
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra since
2006 before moving to The Hague, The
Netherlands, where he studied Baroque
Violin at the Royal Conservatoire. After
completing post-graduate studies, he
has continued to enjoy performing with
a variety of international ensembles and
festivals in Australia, The Netherlands,
France, Italy, Poland, and Canada.
Karina Schmitz is Principal Viola with
the Australian Haydn Ensemble and in
19th-century period trio Notturno. She has
performed with the Australian Chamber
Orchestra, the Australian Romantic and
Classical Orchestra,
Van Diemen’s Band, Salut! Baroque, and
Ensemble Galante. In the United States,
Karina was Principal Viola of Handel &
Haydn Society in Boston, Principal Viola of
Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, Principal Viola
of the Carmel Bach Festival in California,
and founding violinist/violist with New
York based 17th-century ensemble
ACRONYM.
Daniel Yeadon is an exceptionally
versatile cellist and viola da gamba
player. He has a love of a wide range of
musical genres and performs repertoire
from the Renaissance through to
contemporary. Daniel is a passionate
chamber musician, playing regularly
with the Australian Romantic & Classical
Orchestra, Ironwood, Australian Chamber
Orchestra, Australian Haydn Ensemble
and Bach Akademie Australia.
Melissa Farrow is a Sydney-based
musician who specialises in historical
flute performance and practice. She
is the Principal Flute in the Australian
Brandenburg Orchestra and lectures
in Baroque Flute at the Sydney
Conservatorium of Music.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
While in Mannheim during the winter of
1777–78, Mozart received a commission
from a Dutch music lover (whom he
referred to as DeJean or Dechamps) for
several works for flute. He complied with
three quartets for flute and string trio as
well as two concertos. The three quartets
are all in a concertante style, with one
or more solo parts. The flute is featured
prominently throughout the quartets,
albeit not to the extent that it would be in
a concerto; rather, the melodic material is
shared across the four parts more evenly.
Among the three flute quartets for
DeJean, the D major quartet is the most
important and elaborate work and the
only one with three movements – the
others have only two. It was composed
probably as the first of the set, in
December 1777, and finished on
Christmas Day.
The first movement is a carefully worked
sonata form movement with a full-scale
thematic development section, graceful
and elegant. The second movement,
in B minor, is a romance-like flute solo
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of gentle melancholy, accompanied
throughout by plucked strings. The finale
is a French Rondeau featuring a string of
innocently charming melodies, as joyous
and carefree as anything Mozart ever
wrote.
Symphony No. 104 was Haydn’s final
symphony. Better known as the ‘London’
Symphony, it was the last in a set of
twelve commissioned by the impresario
and musician Johann Peter Salomon,
and was first performed at a benefit
concert in London on May 4, 1795. It was
immediately hailed as an outstanding
success: the Morning Chronicle declared
that the new work ‘for fullness, richness,
and majesty, in all its parts, is thought by
some of the best judges to surpass all his
other compositions.’
Such success did not go unnoticed in
the commercial world of London music.
Salomon had paid Haydn two hundred
pounds for the right to arrange his first six
London symphonies for chamber forces
and a similar financial arrangement was
evidently soon made for the final six.
The usual combination for symphonic
arrangements was for piano, violin and
cello, in which the piano part contains
the essence of the work and the string
parts appear almost ad lib. Adaptations
of this sort hardly did justice to the bold
inventiveness of Haydn’s scoring, and
with characteristic skill Salomon devised
a new combination of instruments which
would retain the chamber character of
the trios while allowing much greater
scope for reflecting Haydn’s genius. Thirty
years later, the English composer Samuel
Wesley could still recommend Salomon’s
adaptations unreservedly: ‘let me instance
twelve delectable Symphonies of Haydn
which have been reduced from the score
with extraordinary ingenuity and accurate
judgement ... and nicely adapted for two
violins, tenor, bass, flute, and a supporting
accompaniment on the pianoforte’.
The versatility of this combination is
immediately apparent in Salomon’s
arrangement of Symphony No. 104,
although we note that this morning’s
arrangement forgoes the continuo-style
piano part and elects for flute with string
quartet only. The flute, in particular, adds
a harmonic and tonal resource which
Salomon used very effectively to suggest
all the wind parts in the fully-scored
symphony.
The symphony is set in four movements: in
the first, a minor-key opening gives way
to a joyous Allegro; the second movement
darkly shifts moods around a G-major
melody; the third is a lively minuet; and
the finale is built around a folk theme,
recently identified as a Croatian ballad
but which displays similarities to the wellknown
street tune ‘Hot Cross Buns’.
ADAPTED FROM NOTES
© MUSICA VIVA AUSTRALIA
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The Choir of
King’s College,
Cambridge
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
returns to put the glorious sound of the
British choral tradition in dialogue with
one of the oldest cultures on earth. Hear
soaring hymns and mighty anthems
alongside a new Australian work.
PROGRAM 1 (Gabrieli, Bull, Tallis, Weir, Stravinsky, Barbeler + more)
Sun 28 July, 5pm
City Recital Hall
(limited availability)
PROGRAM 2 (Handel, Bainton, Duruflé, Barbeler + more)
Mon 29 July, 7pm
Sydney Opera House
TICKETS FROM $77
musicaviva.com.au/kings
1800 688 482 (no booking fees)