To download the printed program, click here
The proposed program is as follows, but may not be in performance order.
PERCY GRAINGER’S KIPLING’S JUNGLE BOOK CYCLE
This cycle is made up of ten short movements.
To read detailed program notes of Percy Grainger’s setting, click here.
LEE SU MIN HARP SOLO ITEM
Lee Su Min is performing a solo item on harp, an improvised work “This Season”.
Su Min Lee is a composer, harpist, improviser and dancer. As a harpist, she has performed with the Monash Academy Orchestra and Monash Art Ensemble (2023-2025), and alongside artists including Paul Grabowsky, Ngaiire, Sandy Evans, Raymond MacDonald, and Mindy Meng Wang. As a composer, she enjoys exploring the possibilities of combining the harp with various instruments, and has written and premiered new compositions for, and with, Monash Percussion Studio, Eclectus Duo and Nicole Canham. Recent notable projects include winning the 2024 Allan Zavod Perfotrmers’ Award, having her solo piano composition, Fly High, Butterfly, published by ANZCA Music Examinations in the Associate Performer Diploma (Classical Pianoforte) 2025-2027 syllabus, and receiving a Green Room nomination for Outstanding Sound Design in Independent Theatre for her harp improvisation and performance on Felix Nobis’ Beowulf: Reforged (2024), presented at Melbourne Fringe Festival.
“This season” is a harp improvisation from my 2023 album, “Scattered Thoughts” – here is a YouTube link to the full piece. It is a bittersweet piece that expresses the nostalgia of temporality, recognising that every season, including the best ones filled with favourite memories, eventually comes to an end. The original track involves overlaying multiple layers of harp improvisations, but I would like to extract particular layers for the live performance of this piece. Within this, gestural and textural improvisations that explore the timbral versatility of the harp will be incorporated, allowing the performance environment to shape and guide improvisational choices, creating a sense of spontaneity and excitement.
STEPHEN COUTTS – BARITONE VOICE
Stephen is an operatic tenor who has performed extensively with the Victorian Opera, Opera Su Presto, Victorian Concert Orchestra, Amore Duet, Melbourne Shakespeare Company and other leading companies around Australia. In the fields of opera, operetta and musical theatre, he has played many leading roles in productions and he currently studies under the tutelage of Australian operatic soprano, Jessica Pratt. Stephen was a Young Songmakers Scholar in 2019 with Songmakers Australia and was the Maroondah Singers Vocal Scholar between 2020-2023. His rich Tenor voice is celebrated for its depth and colour well as its delightful light, lyrical quality. Stephen is singing two songs tonight.
“Where’re you walk” from Semele for baritone and concert band
by George Frederick Handel trans. Mark Hindsley
“The Holy City” for tenor and concert band
by Stephen Adams arr. Darryn Wright
The opera “Semele” composed in 1744. It was innovative in that it fused elements of opera, oratorio and classical drama. It was a music drama presented as an oratorio. In this song, the god Jupiter conjures a beautiful, tranquil paradise to distract his mortal lover, Semele, from her dangerous ambition for immortality.
“The Holy City” is a religious ballad, dating from 1892, that celebrates universal peace and brotherhood. It was said to be the most pirated musical piece prior to the internet. It was one of the most commercially successful songs of the 20th Century.
INTERVAL
HECTOR BERLIOZ SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE
In 1830, Hector Berlioz wrote Symphonie Fantastique. This five movement programmatic music masterpiece tells the story of a young artist’s drug-induced hallucinations fueled by his unrequited love for actress Harriet Smithson. The symphony uses a recurrent musical theme, the “idée fixe,” to represent the beloved. The “idée fixe” was an innovative unifying composition technique that modified the melody to suit the program at that stage of the composition. It was later taken up by Romantic composers such as Richard Wagner. The work was programmatic, another innovative feature.
The diversity in styles and emotions in this concert will provide you with contrasting extremes of composition styles, a wide range of emotions and alongside that, challenging music that we have practiced hard to perform to you tonight. We savour the wild and the wonderful that music brings to us, and to you.
- Rêvieries, Passions – Reveries, Passions
The “idée fixe” melody is Harriet, an actress that Berlioz was infatuated with.
First he remembers that weariness of the soul, that indefinable longing, that sombre melancholia and those objectless joys which he experienced before meeting his beloved. Then the volcanic love with which she at once inspired him, his delirious suffering, his return to tenderness, his religious consolations.
2. Un Bal – A Ball
At a ball, in the midst of a noisy, brilliant fête, he finds his beloved again.
3. Scêne aux Champs – In the Country
On a summer evening in the country, he hears two herders calling each other with their shepherd melodies. The pastoral duet in such surroundings, the gentle rustle of the trees softly swayed by the wind, some reasons for hope which had come to his knowledge recently – all unite to fill his heart with a rare tranquility and lend brighter colours to his fancies. But his beloved appears anew, spasms contract his heart, and he is filled with dark premonition. What if she proved faithless? Only one of the shepherds resumes his rustic tune. The sun sets. Far away there is rumbling thunder – solitude – silence.
4. Marche au Supplice – March to the Scaffold
He dreams he has killed his loved one, that he is cindemned to death and led to his execution. A march, now gloomy and ferocious, now solemn and brilliant, accompanies the procession. Noisy outbursts are followed without pause by the heavy sound of measured footsteps. Finally, like a last thought of love, the idée fixe appears for a moment, to be cut off by the fall of the axe.
5. Songe d’une Nuit du Sabbat – Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
Witches’ Sabbath – Church bells tolling – Dies Irae chant
He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath surrounded by a fearful crowd of specters, sorcerers, and monsters of every kind, united for his burial. Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter, distant cries, to which others seem to respond! The melody of his beloved is heard, but it has lost its character of nobility and reserve. Instead, it is now an ignoble dance tune, trivial and grotesque. It is She who comes to the Sabbath! A shout of joy greets her arrival. She joins the diabolical orgy. The funeral knell, burlesque of the Dies Irae. Dance of the Witches. The dance and the Dies Irae combined.