event program - Hydro Tasmania centenary

Front cover: The Polish
Orchestra in Tarraleah, 1948.
Right: Tarraleah Lodge today.
Right: Camp Number 8.
TSO concert at
Below: School group at Tarraleah
in the 1930s.
Tarraleah
Paying tribute to the people who built ‘the Hydro’
TSO concert at Tarraleah
As Principal Partner of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Hydro Tasmania is
commemorating its long partnership in its centenary year with this historic concert at
Tarraleah.
The TSO will perform a one-off concert paying tribute to the people who built ‘the
Hydro’, particularly the many migrant workers who’ve come to Tasmania over the
past 100 years to work on development of the hydropower system.
Soak up the sounds and immerse yourself in the history of what was one of the first,
largest and most sophisticated Hydro villages in Tasmania.
In addition to the concert, you can enjoy a complimentary lunch in the Highlander
Restaurant and Bar, experience the 100 Years of Hydro exhibition, see a special
screening of the People of the Hydro centenary documentary, and take a guided tour
of the village.
TSO concert at
Tarraleah
SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2.30PM
The Great Hall, Tarraleah
Event details
12:30pm – 2:00pm
Complimentary lunch will be served for all ticket holders in the Highlander
Restaurant and Bar.
2.30pm – 3.30pm
TSO concert in the Great Hall.
Enjoy at your leisure from 12 noon – 4pm
• 100 Years of Hydro exhibition located near the Highland Store reception area.
• People of the Hydro documentary screening on a continuous loop in the church.
• Village tours departing every 30 minutes from the Highland Store reception.
To find out more about Hydro Tasmania’s centenary celebrations, or to share your
Hydro stories and photos, visit hydro100.com.au.
Photo opposite page: In the early 1930s workers initially had to be accommodated in tents.
Marko Letonja conductor
Sue-Ellen Paulsen cello
RESPIGHI
Ancient Airs and Dances – Suite No 3
Italiana
Passacaglia
TCHAIKOVSKY
Variations on a Rococo Theme
Introduction (Moderato quasi andante)
Theme (Moderato semplice)
Variation I (Tempo della thema)
Variation II (Tempo della thema)
Variation III (Andante sostenuto)
Variation IV (Andante grazioso)
Variation V (Allegro moderato)
Variation VI (Andante)
Variation VII and Coda (Allegro vivo)
GRENFELL
Tarraleah*
Paying tribute to the people who built ‘the Hydro’
HANDEL
Water Music – Suite No 1
Allegro
Passepied
Adagio e staccato
Minuet
SCULTHORPE
Pastorale
MOZART
Symphony No 40, K550, 1st movement
Molto allegro
ELGAR
Salut d’amour
*World première season
This concert will end at approximately 3.30 pm.
Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off.
marko letonja
Sue-Ellen Paulsen
program notes
Although the Hydro village of Tarraleah was established in the mid-1930s, its
social fabric was transformed in the second half of the 1940s with the arrival of
migrants from war shattered Europe. Part of the rationale for the selection of music
in today’s concert was to reflect the ethnic diversity of Tarraleah’s post-war years.
To that end, you will hear works by Italian, Russian, German, Austrian and English
composers. Today’s concert also includes music by Australian composers, including
Maria Grenfell, whose specially commissioned work, Tarraleah, makes use of a
Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and
Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony
Orchestra, and Music Director of the Orchestre
Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Born in Slovenia,
he studied at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana
and the Vienna Academy of Music.
He was Music Director of the Slovenian
Philharmonic Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and
Music Director and Chief Conductor of both the
Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in Basel
from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal Guest
Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and
made his debut with the TSO the following year.
His many opera engagements have included
Pique Dame at the Grand Théâtre de Genève,
Nabucco at the Semperoper Dresden, Il dissoluto
assolto/Sancta Susanna and The Makropulos
Case at La Scala Milan, La traviata for Opera
Australia, Rigoletto for the West Australian
Opera, Madama Butterfly at the Staatsoper
Berlin, Die Walküre at the Opéra du Rhin, and
Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung
at the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon. He returned
to La Scala in 2012 for a season of Les contes
d’Hoffmann.
Recent engagements include Romeo ét Juliette
at the Arena di Verona and Pique Dame at the
Vienna State Opera. He will return to the Vienna
State Opera in coming seasons for Pique Dame,
Boris Godunov and Les contes d’Hoffmann.
Sue-Ellen Paulsen studied at the
Queensland Conservatorium of Music where
she had lessons with Richard Dedecius. As an
undergraduate she appeared as soloist with the
Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Queensland
Conservatorium Orchestra and Queensland
Youth Orchestra.
In 1980 she won the ABC Concerto Competition
(now the Young Performers Award) and was
awarded a scholarship enabling her to pursue
postgraduate study in Vienna with André
Navarra. Her professional career began in
Armidale with the New England String Quartet.
She assumed her current position with the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in 1986. Since
then she has been guest principal with the
Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony and
Australian Chamber Orchestra.
An experienced soloist, she has performed
concertos by Shostakovich, Walton, Mills and
Ligeti among many others and is featured
as soloist on several of the TSO’s Australian
Composer Series CDs. A strong advocate for
contemporary music, she has commissioned and
premièred many new Australian works including
one written especially for her by Andrew Ford.
She has recently recorded the Schumann piano
trios with the Kingfisher Trio (ABC Classics).
She is lecturer in cello at the Tasmanian
Conservatorium of Music.
Polish hymn.
Italian composer
Ottorino Respighi
(1879-1936) had
a life-long interest
in the music of the
Baroque. In addition
to composing
original music, he
arranged works by
J S Bach, Frescobaldi,
Monteverdi and
others. His three
suites of Ancient Airs
and Dances are orchestrations of lute music
of the 16th and 17th centuries. Ancient Airs
and Dances, Suite No 3, completed in 1931,
commences with Italiana, an arrangement of
a song that was originally written sometime
around 1600. With its gentle lilt and graceful
melody, it projects an air of refinement and
serenity. The suite ends with a Passacaglia.
A Passacaglia is a piece of music that unfolds
around a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern,
or ‘ground’, is played at the outset and
embellished in each successive variation. The
original piece of music on which Respighi based
this particular movement is by 17th-century
guitarist and composer Ludovico Roncalli.
Like the Ancient Airs and Dances, the
Variations on a Rococo Theme by Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) are a
homage to music of an earlier time — in
this case the 18th century, and the music
of Mozart in particular. The ‘Rococo Theme’,
played by the solo cello near the start of
the work, is a theme of Tchaikovsky’s own
invention. Seven variations on the theme
follow, varying from the dreamy and
introspective to the vigorous and virtuosic.
Although not called
a cello concerto,
this is essentially
what the work is.
It was composed
for virtuoso
cellist Wilhelm
Fitzenhagen,
a colleague of
Tchaikovsky’s
at the Moscow
Conservatory.
Tarraleah has been written
specifically for this concert by
Hobart-based composer Maria
Grenfell (born 1969). Maria has
described the work as follows:
In 1948 a British transport
ship docked at Elizabeth
Street Pier in Hobart with 300
Polish ex-servicemen from
post-war Europe. Initially
expecting to work in New South Wales, they
had been persuaded to travel to Tasmania
(supposedly “mild and not as hot”) to work
on the expanding hydro-electric scheme in
Tarraleah, Waddamana and Butlers Gorge.
The construction of the subsequent dams
and power stations could not have happened
without these and many other immigrants,
who made new lives for themselves and
worked hard, despite the cold, and, at times,
difficult and dangerous conditions. I was
fascinated by many of their stories, both
hair-raising and humorous. There is an old
Tarraleah Power Station.
Polish prayer hymn, Bogurodzica, that
originated somewhere between the
10th and 13th centuries, and calls on
Christ to give people a blissful stay
on earth and everlasting existence in
heaven. It seemed appropriate to draw
on this hymn for musical inspiration in
tribute to the invaluable contribution
of those who settled in this state.
What would the Hydro be without water and
what would a Hydro concert be without some
water music? The Water Music by George
Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was composed
to accompany King George I as he travelled up
and down the river Thames on the evening of 17
July 1717. The king and his entourage were on
one barge and the musicians were on another.
The work was thus a type of serenade. Handel
composed a significant quantity of music for the
occasion, which is conventionally divided into
three suites. In this concert, selected passages
from four movements from the Suite No 1
are being performed. Various instruments are
brought to the foreground, notably the French
horn and oboe.
The late Peter Sculthorpe
(1929-2014) was a leading
figure in Australian music
for more than half a century.
The Launceston-born
composer was included
among the nation’s 100
Living National Treasures
in a popular poll conducted
in 1988 and named one
of Australia’s 45 Icons in
1999. His Pastorale began
life in 1949 as a movement
of the String Quartet No
3. The orchestral version
being performed here
was created in 2013 for The Magic Island, a
collaborative recording project between the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Hush
Music Foundation. (Hush recordings are played
in children’s wards and hospitals around the
country to assist putting young patients and
their families at ease.) As you would expect
from a work titled Pastorale, this is a gentle and
reflective work.
The Symphony No 40 by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (1756-1791) is one of the best-loved
of all symphonies. It was composed around
the middle of 1788 (at the same time, in the
fledgling colony of New South Wales, a raggletaggle community was taking shape on the
shores of Port Jackson). Mozart overwhelmingly
favoured major keys in his symphonies so it is
unusual that this particular symphony is in a
minor key, G minor. Only the first movement,
Molto allegro, from the four-movement
symphony is being played in this concert.
It opens with one of the most recognisable of
all of Mozart’s themes which, in true Mozartian
fashion, is developed meticulously as the
movement progresses. Also typical of Mozart is
the richness of the woodwind
writing — he was never one
to skimp when he had a full
woodwind section at his
disposal!
What a difference a name makes. The final
work in today’s concert, by English composer
Edward Elgar (1857-1934), was originally
titled Liebesgrüss (Love’s Greeting). It was under
this title that the work was released by the music
publishing firm Schott, which had bought the
work from Elgar for two guineas. Sales were
slow at first but picked up considerably when
Schott renamed the work Salut d’amour. In
fact, had Elgar not sold the work outright, Salut
d’amour would have netted him a tidy sum. As it
was, all profits went to the publishing firm. Elgar
composed the work in 1888 as a love offering
to Alice Roberts. She married him the following
year.
Robert Gibson ©2014
A place from the past, a place for the future
Tarraleah was one of the most long-lasting
Hydro villages, surviving for almost six decades.
It has one foot in the past and another in
the future, starting life in the Depression and
continuing now as a tourism village.
Tarraleah was part of the most remarkable
expansion of Tasmania’s hydropower system,
which occurred during the 1930s Depression,
when money was tight and materials scarce.
The Hydro had to find ways to address a
looming electricity supply crisis and in 1934, a
newly-elected state government used an act of
parliament to fast track work on the Tarraleah
scheme.
Tarraleah was a small town with a big purpose.
It emerged slowly from forests and mud in the
mid-1930s and flourished for years. It was built
to house workers, engineers, and managers
creating an ambitious hydro-electric power
scheme.
the isolation and conditions. They lived in tents
and earth-floored shacks and carried water from
the nearby creek for drinking and cooking. Later,
more substantial dwellings were gradually built.
Surrounded by wilderness and mountains,
Tarraleah was cut off from the rest of the world.
While some left at the first opportunity, many
grew to love the town and the ties that bound
them. Those who lived here turned a sea of mud
into a strong sense of community.
The Upper Derwent scheme, with Tarraleah as
its centerpiece, generated electricity that fuelled
Tasmanian progress.
Workers came from around the world, many
seeking a new life after the war in Europe.
At least 30 nationalities were represented here
at one time. Bonds formed in the village have
lasted a lifetime.
Fifteen hundred people were employed over the
life of that scheme.
After construction finished, it became the base
for those operating the power scheme and
continued as a Hydro village into the 1980s.
Many houses were sold and dismantled in
the mid-1990s. The population shrank to four
residents.
Today the Tarraleah Power Station remains an
important part of the Derwent hydropower
scheme, ensuring safe, reliable energy supply for
the state.
New owners took over Tarraleah village in 2005,
reinvigorating it as a tourism venture. Original
public buildings and residences have been
converted into accommodation. Those who visit
enjoy a range of activities, including fishing,
bushwalking, guided tours, a cooking school and
spa treatments.
Wander around Tarraleah to experience past
meeting present.
Workers, wives and children needed
resilience to survive in the early days.
Some arrivals to the early camps, predating this village, cried when they saw
Below: Tarraleah Power Station on 12 March 1938.
Above: The workers from the Bakery
and Cookhouse in 1935.
Left: Living conditions at Ticklebelly
Flat in early 1935.
Tarraleah Penstocks today.
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tasmanian symphony Orchestra
Violin
Elinor Lea#
Concertmaster
Monica Naselow#
Associate Concertmaster
Lucy Carrig Jones
Principal Second
Christopher Nicholas#
Principal First
Miranda Carson
Yue-Hong Cha
Edwina George
Michael Johnston
Alison Lazaroff-Somssich
Susanna Low
Rohana O’Malley
Viola
Anna Roach#
Katie Betts
Rodney McDonald
William Newbery
Cello
Brett Rutherford#
Ivan James
Martin Penicka
Double Bass
Stuart Thomson*
flute
Douglas Mackie*
Lloyd Hudson Piccolo
Oboe
David Nuttall*
Dinah Woods Cor Anglais
Clarinet
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Chris Waller Bass Clarinet
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John Panckridge
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horn
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Heath Parkinson*
*principal player
#
guest principal
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managing Director
Nicholas Heyward
Tso chorusmaster
June Tyzack
Tso Board
Patricia Leary Chair
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Don Challen am
Peter Cretan
Maria Grenfell
Nicholas Heyward
Christopher Lawrence
Paul Oxley
John Upcher
John De Paoli
Company Secretary
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For more information visit tso.com.au.
For more information visit tso.com.au.
Tasmanian
Symphony
Orchestra
Federation Concert Hall
1 Davey Street, Hobart
Tasmania 7000
GPO Box 1450
Hobart TAS 7001
Box Office 1800 001 190
boxoffice@tso.com.au
Administration 6232 4444
tso.com.au
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