From our Artistic Director:
We invite you to join us for our 2016 season, as Australia Pro Arte/Melbourne Chamber Orchestra celebrates its 25th anniversary.
It is a wonderful time for music in our country, with MCO itself being one of the beneficiaries: able to sustain within its membership an outstanding collection of gifted and deeply committed musicians, who joyfully share the ideals of chamber music sensitivity in forces ranging in number from five to twenty-eight.
We have planned a season of musical highlights. The mystery and darkness of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and his ecstatic Clarinet Concerto in the company of Ravel and Debussy, the two French composers who come closest to Mozart’s aesthetic ideals. Bach from many angles, including a concerto generally known as a keyboard concerto but here performed in its original conception as a violin concerto of remarkable virtuosity, a beautiful new work from Calvin Bowman for whom MCO audiences have consistently shown great enthusiasm, and two of Mendelssohn’s most popular works, the Hebrides Overture and the Violin Concerto, with the prodigious Australian violinist Grace Clifford as soloist.
There has never been such an abundance of marvelous Australian soloists. The eminent Australian soprano Sara Macliver will share her love and mastery of Bach with us, and consummate pianist David Fung generously offers us two Mozart piano concerti in the one program. We are also blessed with the artistry of harpist Melina van Leeuwen in French masterpieces; clarinettist David Griffiths in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto; and violinists Rebecca Chan and Anne-Marie Johnson in concertos by Haydn and Bach respectively.
With so many highlights you can see that our aim has been to make it impossible for you not to come!
William Hennessy
Artistic Director, MCO