National Symphony Orchestra
Jessica Cottis, conductor
Leticia Moreno, violin

Karen Power …nature calls…for Symphony Orchestra + Blackbird NSO Commission - World Premiere
Dvořák Violin Concerto
Beethoven Symphony No. 7

Three vital and vivid responses to the pleasures of birdsong, the natural world and to life itself – including the world premiere of Karen Power’s brilliant new piece – illuminate music’s power to thrillingly capture mood and moment, place and people.

Making welcome returns to the National Symphony Orchestra are the ‘engaged energy and musical intelligence’ (Sydney Morning Herald) of Jessica Cottis and the ‘formidable technique [and] compelling execution’ (The Scotsman) of Leticia Moreno.

Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and receiving its world premiere performance, Karen Power’s …nature calls… for Symphony Orchestra + Blackbird is an exquisite blending of orchestral colour and the recorded song of a blackbird that, the composer says, ‘momentarily inhabits the orchestra and imprints on each instrument before returning beyond the walls of the concert hall and back into life’.

Composed in collaboration with the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, Dvořák’s sole Violin Concerto is a tuneful, dancing piece brimming with innovation and vast emotional range from its serious and dramatic first movement to its nostalgic and gloriously lyrical Adagio and the diamond-like sparkle of its finale which employs traditional Czech folk dances in brilliantly skittish writing for the violin.

Famously hailed by Wagner as ‘the apotheosis of dance’, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony opens with dark foreboding but moves towards an exhilarating climax described by Tchaikovsky as ‘a whole series of images, full of unrestrained joy, full of bliss and pleasure of life’. Experiences of the Napoleonic wars, Beethoven’s acute deafness, and tortured affairs of the heart are given voice in tumultuously lyrical music whose innovations re-wrote the rule book for generations of composers who followed. Its grave second movement was heard to memorable effect in the film The King’s Speech.