FANTASTIC
Event description
THATCHER CONDUCTS BERLIOZ
***
Sydney Youth Orchestras
Conducted by International Rising Star & SYO Alumni, Toby Thatcher
ILLEAN Land’s End
BERLIOZ Symphonie Fantastique
SYO Philharmonic
Conductor, Brian Buggy OAM
Dvořák - Carnival Overture Op. 92
***
Fresh from conducting the Australian Bushfire Benefit concert in London, rising international podium star, Toby Thatcher returns home from his UK base to conduct a program of orchestral masterworks composed over 200 years apart. What a phenomenal contrast.
Inspired by the graphite-rendered seascapes of modern artist Vija Celmins, Australian composer Lisa Illean’s Land’s End is a Zen-like experience of stillness and rarefied sound that will send the young SYO players into the frontline of contemporary music.
The main work is this trailblazing concert is from the French musical Romanticism and a riot of musical psychedelia: the 26-year-old Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique of 1830, a ‘fantastic’ trip inspired by unrequited love into a dream-world of obsession and nightmares. Witches, the glitter of Parisian salons, and the fatal blow of the guillotine are evoked in a work that is one of the most viscerally exciting of symphonies, requiring all the harps, bells and timpani we can find!
The concert begins with the Sydney Youth Orchestra Philharmonic and conductor Brian Buggy OAM in the less diabolic but equally exuberant Carnival Overture by Antonin Dvořák.
***
Additional Information:
Young children are welcome at Sydney Youth Orchestra concerts. For all performances, children two years of age or older must have a ticket (even if the accompanying adult intends to sit the child on his/her knees).
Doors will open 30 minutes prior to the start of the event.
Please bring your ticket to display at the door and gain entry to the venue.
Concert programs are available for a gold coin donation.