QYO Fundraising Gala Dinner 2023

QYO Fundraising Gala Dinner 2023

The QYO Fundraising Dinner on Sat 25 March at The Old Museum aimed to shine a light on QYO rising stars with an evening of great food, company and entertainment. Thank you to everyone who attended, especially our donors, musicians and event partner Cuisine on Cue. The event raised just over $100,000 which will help QYO to continue to offer the highest quality and best value orchestral programs for members and audiences. Donate here.

A Message from the Director of Music

A Message from QYO Artistic Director Simon Hewett

Dear QYO Players and Families,

For QYO veterans and newcomers alike, 2023 promises to be an incredible year. We can look forward to inspiring rehearsals, workshops, tutorials, great concerts, collaborations, tours, and the exciting possibility of plans for the restoration of The Old Museum. And for the first time in many years we welcome a new ensemble into the QYO family. All QYO groups are fortunate to work with some of Australia’s leading conductors and music educators. It is with great pleasure that I welcome Cherie Deacon to our conducting team. Cherie brings extraordinary experience working with young string players to QYO, and I am looking forward enormously to her performances with JSE 2.

I personally am looking forward to my first international tour with QYS. One of the highlights will surely be our performance in Vienna’s fabled Musikverein Concert Hall – home of the Vienna Philharmonic. QYS will have the honour of being the first Australian symphony orchestra, professional or amateur, to perform in this famous venue.

For decades QYO has provided young Queenslanders with exceptional musical training. More importantly, we bring together young people who share a love of music. QYO alumni frequently talk about the lifelong friendships that were forged during their time at QYO. I hope the friendships formed during 2023 will be just as long lasting.

Simon Hewett

John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition 2022

47th John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition 2022

Three of Australia’s most outstanding young violinists performed popular concertos with the Queensland Youth Symphony conducted by Paul Dean. Congratulations to 13 year old Ein Na from Brisbane who was this year’s winner.

Saint-Saëns - Violin Concerto No. 3, Soloist: Lara Dowdeswell from Sydney (Finalist)

Lalo - Symphonie Espagnole, Soloist: Ein Na from Brisbane (Finalist and Winner)

Brahms - Violin Concerto, Soloist: Teresa Yang from Sydney (Finalist)

Recitalists: Haydn Li (QLD), Jessica Ma (NSW), Louisa Pang (NSW), Jack Theakston (NSW)

QYO Finale 2022

2022 QYO Finale

Congratulations to all QYO members for an incredible year of music making, culminating in this wonderful concert. A big thank you to the conductors, tutors, volunteers and office staff, sponsors, donors and audience members.

Brahms Doubled

Brahms Doubled

On Sun 11 December 2022, Ensemble Q and Queensland Youth Symphony performed an afternoon of Brahms’ iconic masterworks under the Baton of Simon Hewett. This concert featured the Double Concerto with soloists Natsuko Yoshimoto (violin) and Trish Dean (Cello) followed by Brahms’ Symphony No.4.

This concert was a special collaboration between Ensemble Q and the Queensland Youth Orchestras. This project enabled QYO members to play alongside, and learn from some of Queensland’s leading professional musicians.

Ensembles: Ensemble Q and Queensland Youth Symphony
Conductor: Simon Hewett
Soloists: Natsuko Yoshimoto (violin) and Trish Dean (Cello)
Repertoire: BRAHMS: Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102 & BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98

2022 QYO Big Band Far North Queensland Tour

QYO Big Band Far North Queensland Tour

We greatly appreciate the many people who have made this tour possible including our major sponsor Arts Queensland, all the schools visited including Smithfield State High School and Bentley Park College for loan of equipment, teachers, students, venues and staff, community groups and all of the collaborating musicians, dancers and choristers.

Tour Performances

Wed 30 Nov Bentley Park College and Bar36 at The Reef Hotel Casino

Thu 1 Dec Yarrabah State School, Cairns Esplanade Lagoon Stage

Fri 2 Dec Mossman State School, Hemingway’s Port Douglas

Sat 3 Dec Kubirri Aged Care Mossman, Tanks Arts Centre Cairns

Sun 4 Dec Kuranda Amphitheatre

Mon 5 Dec Atherton State High School, Carinya Home for the Aged Atherton, Hemingway’s Cairns

Tue 6 Dec Smithfield State High School

Mahler 3 Program Notes

Program notes

MAHLER (1860-1911): Symphony No. 3 in D minor COMPOSED: The main work on the Third Symphony took place in the summers of 1895 and 1896. Two songs, “Ablösung im Sommer” (Relief in Summer) and “Das himmlische Leben” (Life in Heaven), provided source material for some of the symphony, and they date back to about 1890 and February 1892 respectively. Mahler made final revisions in May 1899.

WORLD PREMIERE: 9 June 1902. L. Geller-Wolter sang the alto solos and Mahler conducted, at the Festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, at Krefeld, Germany. TONIGHT’S PERFORMANCE: The first performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 by the Queensland Youth Symphony since it was established in 1966.

INSTRUMENTATION: 4 flutes (4 doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (1 doubling bass clarinet) and 2 high clarinets in E-flat, 4 bassoons (1 doubling contrabassoon), 8 horns, 4 trumpets, posthorn, 4 trombones, tuba, 2 harps, percussion including timpani, glockenspiel, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, bass drum with cymbal attached, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, and rute, and strings

DURATION: About 100 minutes.

THE STORY: When Mahler, then near to completing his Eighth Symphony, visited Sibelius in 1907, the two composers talked about “the essence of symphony.” Mahler rejected his colleague’s creed of severity, style, and logic, saying that “a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.” Twelve years earlier, while at work on the Third, he had remarked that to “call it a symphony is really incorrect as it does not follow the usual form. The term ‘symphony’—to me, this means creating a world with all the technical means available.”

The completion of the Second Symphony the previous summer had given him confidence, and he was sure of being “in perfect control” of his technique. In the summer of 1895, he escaped for some months from his duties as principal conductor of the Hamburg Opera, and situated himself in his new one-room cabin at Steinbach on the Attersee some twenty miles east of Salzburg, with his sister Justine and his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner to look after him (this most crucially meant silencing crows, waterbirds, children, and whistling farmhands). Here Mahler set out to make a world to which he gave the overall title The Happy Life—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, adding “not after Shakespeare, critics and Shakespeare mavens please note.”

Before hewrote any music, he worked out a scenario in five sections, titled What the Forest Tells Me, What the Trees Tell Me, What Twilight Tells Me (“strings only,” he noted), What the Cuckoo Tells Me (scherzo), and What the Child Tells Me. He changed all that five times during the summer as the music began to take shape in his mind and, with a rapidity that astounded him, on paper as well. The Happy Life disappeared, to be replaced for a while by the Nietzschian Happy Science (first My Happy Science). The trees, the twilight, and the cuckoo were all taken out, their places taken by flowers, animals, and morning bells. He added What the Night Tells Me and saw that he wanted to begin with the triumphal entry of summer, which would include an element of something Dionysiac and even frightening. In less than three weeks he composed what are now the second, third, fourth, and fifth movements. He went on to the Adagio and, by the time his composing vacation came to an end on August 20, he had made an outline of the first movement and had composed two independent songs, “Lied des Verfolgten im Turm” (“Song of the Persecuted Man in the Tower”) and “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen” (“Where the Lovely Trumpets Sound”). It was the richest summer of his life.

In June 1896 he was back at Steinbach. Over the winter he had made some progress scoring the new symphony and had complicated his life by an intense and stormy affair with a young, superlatively gifted dramatic soprano newly come to Hamburg, Anna von Mildenburg. Now, as Mahler worked, he came to realize that the awakening of Pan and the triumphal march of summer wanted to be included in a single movement. He also saw, to his alarm, that the first movement was growing hugely, that it would be more than half an hour long, and that it was also getting louder and louder. He deleted his finale, What the Child Tells Me, which was the “Life in Heaven” song of 1892 and which he put to work a few years later to serve as finale to the Fourth Symphony. That necessitated rewriting the last pages of the adagio, which had now become the finale, but essentially the work was under control by early August. The Happy Science was still part of the title at the beginning of the summer, coupled with what had become A Midsummer Noon’s Dream, but in the eighth and last of Mahler’s scenarios, dated August 6, 1896, the superscription is simply A Midsummer Noon’s Dream, with the following titles given to the individual movements:

First Part: Pan Awakes. Summer Comes Marching In (Bacchic procession) Second Part: What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me What Humanity Tells Me What the Angels Tell Me What Love Tells Me

At the 1902 premiere, the program page showed no titles at all, only tempo and generic indications (Tempo di Menuetto, Rondo, Alto Solo, etc.). “Beginning with Beethoven,” wrote Mahler to the critic Max Kalbeck that year, “there is no modern music without its underlying program.—But no music is worth anything if you first have to tell the listener what experience lies behind it, respectively, what he is supposed to experience in it.—And so yet again: pereat every program!—You just have to bring along ears and a heart and—not least—willingly surrender to the rhapsodist. Some residue of mystery always remains, even for the creator.”

Writing at about the same time to the conductor Josef Krug-Waldsee, Mahler elaborated:

“Those titles were an attempt on my part to provide non-musicians with something to hold on to and with a signpost for the intellectual, or better, the expressive content of the various movements and for their relationships to each other and to the whole. That it didn’t work (as, in fact, it could never work) and that it led only to misinterpretations of the most horrendous sort became painfully clear all too quickly. It’s the same disaster that had overtaken me on previous and similar occasions, and now I have once and for all given up commenting, analyzing all such expediencies of whatever sort. These titles . . . will surely say something to you after you know the score. You will draw intimations from them about how I imagined the steady intensification of feeling, from the indistinct, unbending, elemental existence (of the forces of nature) to the tender formation of the human heart, which in turn points toward and reaches a region beyond itself (God).

Please express that in your own words without quoting those extremely inadequate titles and that way you will have acted in my spirit. I am very grateful that you asked me [about the titles], for it is by no means inconsequential to me and for the future of my work how it is introduced into “public life.”

The climate has changed since Mahler’s time, and today’s audience is very much inclined to come to Mahler with that willingness to surrender for which he had hoped. We do well to ignore the “Titan” claptrap he imposed on his First Symphony—years after its composition; when, however, we look at the titles in the Third Symphony, even though they were finally rejected, we are looking at a series of attempts to put into few words the material, the world of ideas, emotions, and associations that lay behind the musical choices Mahler made as he composed. We too can draw intimations from them and then remove them as scaffolding we no longer need. That said, let us turn for a brief look at the musical world Mahler left us.

THE MUSIC: The first movement accounts for roughly one third of the symphony’s length. Starting with magnificent gaiety, it falls at once into tragedy—see-sawing chords of low horns and bassoons, the drumbeats of a funeral procession, cries and outrage. Mysterious twitterings follow, the suggestion of a distant quick march, and a grandly rhetorical recitative for the trombone. Against all that, Mahler poses a series of brisk marches (the realization of what he had adumbrated earlier for just a few seconds), the sorts of tunes you can’t believe you haven’t known all your life and the sort that used to cause critics to complain of Mahler’s “banality,” elaborated and scored with an astonishing combination of delicacy and exuberance. Their swagger is rewarded by a collision with catastrophe, and the whole movement—for all its outside dimension as classical a sonata form as Mahler ever designed—is the conflict of the dark and the bright elements, culminating in the victory of the latter.

Two other points might be made. One concerns Mahler’s fascination, not ignored in our century, with things happening “out of time.” The piccolo rushing the imitations of the violins’ little fanfares is not berserk: She is merely following Mahler’s direction to play “without regard for the beat.” That is playful, but the same device is turned to dramatic effect when, at the end of a steadily accelerating development, the snare drums cut across the oom-pah of the cellos and basses with a slower march tempo of their own, thus preparing the way for the eight horns to blast the recapitulation into being. The other thing is to point out that several of the themes heard near the beginning will be transformed into the materials of the last three movements—fascinating especially when you recall that the first movement was written after the others.

In the division of the work Mahler finally adopted, the first movement is the entire first section. What follows is, except for the finale, a series of shorter character pieces, beginning with the Blumenstück, the first music he composed for this symphony. This is a delicately sentimental minuet, with access, in its contrasting middle section, to slightly sinister sources of energy. It “anticipates” music not heard in the symphony at all, specifically the scurrying runs from the “Life in Heaven” song that was dropped from this design and incorporated in the Symphony No. 4. Some time after he finished this movement, Mahler noted with surprise that the basses play pizzicato throughout. In the last measure, Wagner’s Parsifal flower maidens make a ghostly appearance in Mahler’s Upper Austrian pastoral.

In the third movement, Mahler draws on his song “Ablösung im Sommer” (“Relief in Summer”), whose text tells of waiting for Lady Nightingale to start singing as soon as the cuckoo is through. The marvel here is the landscape with posthorn, not just the lovely melody itself, but the way it is presented—the magic transformation of the very “present” trumpet into distant posthorn, the gradual change of the posthorn’s melody from fanfare to song, the interlude for flutes, and, as Arnold Schoenberg points out, the accompaniment “at first with the divided high violins, then, even more beautiful if possible, with the horns.” After the brief return of this idyll and before the snappy coda, Mahler makes spine-chilling reference to the “Great Summons” music in the Second Symphony’s finale.

Low strings rock to and fro, the harps accenting a few of their notes. The see-sawing chords from the first pages return; a human voice intones the Midnight Song from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Each of its eleven lines is to be imagined as coming between two of the twelve strokes of midnight. Pianississimo throughout, warns Mahler. The harmony is almost as static as the dynamics.

From here the music moves forward without a break and, as abruptly as it changed from the scherzo to Nietzsche’s midnight, so does it change now from that darkness to a world of bells and angels. The text of the fifth movement comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), though the interjections of “Du sollst ja nicht weinen” (“But you mustn’t weep”) are Mahler’s own. A three-part chorus of women’s voices carries most of the text, though the solo contralto returns to take the part of the sinner. The children’s chorus, confined at first to bell noises, joins later in the exhortation “Liebe nur Gott” (“Only love God”) and for the final stanza. This movement, too, foreshadows the “Life in Heaven” that will not in fact occur until the Fourth Symphony.

Mahler perceived that the decision to end his symphony with an adagio was one of the most special he made. “In adagio movements,” he explained to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, “everything is resolved in quiet. The Ixion wheel of outward appearances is at last brought to a standstill. In fast movements—minuets, allegros, even andantes nowadays—everything is motion, change, flux. “Therefore I have ended my Second and Third symphonies contrary to custom . . . with adagios—the higher form as distinguished from the lower.”

A noble thought, but, not uniquely in Mahler, there is some gap between theory and reality. The adagio makes its way at last to a sure and grand conquest, but during its course—and this is a movement, like the first, on a very large scale—Ixion’s flaming wheel can hardly be conceived of as standing still. In his opening melody, Mahler invites association with the slow movement of Beethoven’s last quartet, Opus 135. Soon, though, the music is caught in “motion, change, flux,” and before the final triumph it encounters again the catastrophe that interrupted the first movement. The adagio’s original title, What Love Tells Me, refers to Christian love, to agape, and Mahler’s drafts carry the superscription: “Behold my wounds! Let not one soul be lost!” The performance directions, too, speak to the issue of spirituality, for Mahler enjoins that the immense final bars with their thundering kettledrum be played “not with brute strength, [but] with rich, noble tone,” and that the last measure “not be cut off sharply”—so that there is some softness to the edge between sound and silence at the end of this most riskily and gloriously comprehensive of Mahler’s worlds.

Program notes by Michael Steinberg.

This note originally appeared in the program books of the San Francisco Symphony and is used with permission

QYS Inner Worlds Concert Review

Leanne Kenneally singing Strauss’ Four Last songs with the Queensland Youth Symphony

Concert review
Queensland Youth Symphony: Inner Worlds
Saturday 28 May, 2022, 7:00pm
QPAC Concert HalL 

On Saturday 28th May, the Queensland Youth Symphony presented “Inner Worlds”, a program that featured the newly commissioned Present, Past, Future by Nicole Murphy and the ingenious pairing of two works by Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Four Last Songs.

Nicole Murphy’s Present, Past, Future is a triptych of works that take inspiration from poems by Antigone Kefala and Richard James Allen. Fittingly, for a work commissioned for a youth orchestra and written as the pandemic warped our collective sense of the passage of time, the poems selected by Murphy explore the themes of youth, the nature of time, and hope.

Based on Kefala’s In the bus, the first movement Present opened with plaintive cello, warm winds, and pointillistic textures from the harp and glockenspiel. The horns showed wonderful control and restraint, providing the foundations for a glorious unfurling of sound reminiscent of Debussy or Ravel’s symphonic sunrises.

The second movement, Past, is in turn inspired by Richard James Allen’s The Road to Utopia. The poem is a series of increasingly absurd instructions to the reader that culminate in a cry of frustration, but Murphy takes a more measured approach, imbuing the movement with a steely energy akin to that of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. It’s a challenging movement that requires technical precision and conviction in its delivery, and both the orchestra and conductor Simon Hewett seemed to relish the demands of the music. The balance was superbly handled in the interplay between soloists and sections, although I would have liked to see the brass players match Milly Yip’s contrabassoon growls with more snarls of their own.

Darkness gives way to hope in the third movement, as Murphy draws once again on Kefala’s magical minimalism for inspiration in Future. It’s a “celebration of exuberant youthfulness and optimism for the future” that allows the string section to wear their hearts on their sleeves with yearning upward melodic leaps. Reflecting on my own experiences as a member of QYS over a decade ago, I can’t help but feel hopeful about the future as well. I don’t recall performing a single work by a female composer during my time in the orchestra, let alone a newly commissioned multi-movement work.

The orchestra continued to shine in the second half of the program; as the iconic opening fanfare of Strauss’ epic tone poem rang out and the upper strings commenced their deft left-hand gymnastics, the irrepressibility of the young musicians filled the hall. The viola section’s powerful sound was a notable testament to the legacy of QYO’s founder John Curro. The enigmatic ending of Zarathustra made for an elegant transition into the Four Last Songs, featuring soprano Leanne Kenneally. Concertmaster In Yi Chae’s solo in the third movement was a highlight, her rich violin tone providing a wonderful foil to Kenneally’s polished performance.

That evening, I left the hall feeling buoyed by the brilliant performance by the orchestra, and optimistic about the future of orchestral music in this country. Given that the vast majority of Australian works commissioned or performed by Australian orchestras in the last decade are short works that can sit alongside a concerto or tone poem in the first half of a typical concert, I’m excited and incredibly proud to see QYO setting a brilliant example in both artistic vision and execution for Australian symphony orchestras to follow.

Flora Wong

Media Release - Big News for QYO and The Old Museum

Media Release - Download Official Press Release Here

Funding for a business case and master plan to restore Brisbane’s heritage-listed Old Museum — home of Queensland Youth Orchestras (QYO) — was approved in yesterday’s Queensland Budget 2022-23, following an unprecedented $20 million pledge to QYO.

The $1.6 million investment will investigate the feasibility of a full restoration of the beloved Old Museum.    

The $20 million pledge to QYO has been made by a philanthropist who wishes to remain anonymous, but would like to see a full restoration of The Old Museum, with QYO’s long-term future in the venue secured.

Queensland Youth Orchestras President Ian Walker said: "The State Government’s business case funding, coupled with this $20 million commitment, presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to conserve and revitalise The Old Museum's rich heritage.” 

“The Old Museum contains Brisbane’s first Concert Hall, in which stars like Dame Nellie Melba and Percy Grainger performed between 1891 and 1934. QYO has used the building for rehearsals, performances and administration since 1989, so we are also a big part of the building’s history.

“However, our vision for the restoration would make it possible for us to share these heritage spaces with all of Queensland. In addition to creating a world-class, medium-sized concert hall, a full restoration would include the construction of additional rehearsal and administrative facilities for QYO, and a re-purposing of the Exhibition Hall and basement spaces for all creative Queenslanders to use and enjoy," Mr Walker said.

Queensland Youth Orchestras Director of Music Simon Hewett sees the pledge as an acknowledgement of the extraordinary role QYO has played in the training of young Queensland musicians since 1966. 

“QYO has been training musicians to a world-class standard for generations, and our top orchestra, the Queensland Youth Symphony, is one of the best youth orchestras in the world,” Mr Hewett said.

“A restored Old Museum will be an investment in the future of music education in Queensland,  allowing us to enhance and expand our programs, and offer even more young musicians access to the fulfilment that great musical experiences provide.

“At QYO, we create connection for young people through music, which fosters lifelong well-being and resilience.” 

Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane is yet to have a medium-sized, public concert hall with the capacity to house a symphony orchestra.

QYO believes a revitalised Old Museum would be of incomparable value to the many orchestras, choirs, ensembles, chamber music groups, schools and community groups for whom the QPAC Concert Hall is too big and too expensive to hire.

“As Brisbane looks to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games and beyond, if we want to assume an identity as a truly global city, it is critical to invest in our cultural infrastructure,” Mr Walker said.

“The $20 million pledge to QYO, and the funding of the business case by the State Government, offers an exciting opportunity for us all to reimagine how The Old Museum can continue to serve QYO, and the rest of Queensland, well into the future.”

2022 QYO Fundraising Dinner

2022 QYO Fundraising Dinner

The Story of a Violin

The Story of a Violin

Have you ever wondered about the instruments that musicians play? String instruments, particularly, can have fascinating histories, and tonight there is one violin making its QYO debut that is very special indeed. As you are wowed by the technical expertise and rich melodies that In Yi Chae is crafting in her performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, take a moment to think of all the music played on that instrument before tonight. While it is the first public performance InYi will give on it, this violin has a long history of being played in Brisbane- in fact it was one of the first “fine” instruments brought especially to Qld: a father’s birthday gift to his beloved 18-year-old daughter.

This beautiful violin was made in 1890 (132 years ago!) in a famous English workshop belonging to William Ebsworth Hill and his four sons. The Hill family were long standing craftsmen (Samuel Pepys mentions taking his lute and “vial” to an instrument maker named Mr. Hill in his Diary of 1660) and they employed a number of luthiers to complete the long list of orders (a bit like a big restaurant might hire a few chefs). We know this is where the violin originates because there is a label stuck to the inside of the instrument. This label is cross-referenced with a sale note in the Hill accounts ledger, which reads:

4/9/1891

Jefferies, Mr. R. T.

20 St Mary Street, Brisbane

WE Hill & Sons violin + case 

£23

Imagine if Hill violins cost only £23 these days! So how did the violin come from a workshop in London to Brisbane? That sale note contains the clue:  Mr. Richard Thomas Jefferies was an accomplished violinist, violist, pianist and organist, who became known as “the Father of Music in Brisbane”. But that nearly didn’t happen! Despite his extensive musical grounding, RT Jefferies had emigrated from England to Australia with the idea of becoming a sugarcane farmer in Gatton. Fortunately for us, he was quite an unsuccessful agriculturalist, and so returned to Brisbane to resume his musical practice by conducting the major orchestras that had sprung up in Brisbane in the few decades since its establishment as a colony in 1825. He combined various instrumental and choral groups that had sprung up around Brisbane to form the Brisbane Musical Union, and this evolved into today’s Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

RT Jefferies dreamt of founding a musical dynasty. Despite their flamboyant names, his sons Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Richard Beethoven, did not display a great interest in, or have much talent for, music. However, three daughters – more modestly called Arena (Enie), Mary, and Vada – did and, with their father, they formed the Jefferies Family String Quartet. They performed widely, even making two tours of Great Britain and one of Europe. In the picture below they are from left to right: Enie, Mary, RT, and Vada. Enie achieved many things beyond challenging the accepted norms of the time, including the one that women didn’t own and drive motor cars then. She must have been a striking sight to see driving around Brisbane in her Vauxhall Velie (a very fine car in its time) which she purchased in 1922. Especially so when her husband, George Muller refused to take to the modern invention of the automobile, preferring to follow along behind in his pony cart. Enie was brave, talented, disciplined and focused, becoming the most accomplished female musician, in Brisbane, of her time.

As Enie was the principal violinist in all the orchestras or ensembles RT conducted, it seemed natural that on a visit to London, RT purchased a violin from the most reputable Hill workshop for her. This is the violin which the early Brisbane audiences would hear, either when Enie played first violin in the family quartet or as leader of the orchestra. There is no doubt that the violin she is holding in this photograph is the Hill violin. And it is the very same instrument that you hear InYi playing on today.

QYO is indebted to descendants of the Jefferies family (particularly Mr. Richard Muller) for their generosity in allowing the instrument to be played by the QYS concertmaster each year. And this gift is made possible by the extraordinary sponsorship of Mr. David Dalseno of First Strings, whose vision of protecting and preserving such historically significant instruments has been inspirational. As a violinist of the famous Orava Quartet, David is fully aware of the importance of best practice care for instruments, overseeing annual maintenance on the violin, and providing appropriate insurance. He has even outfitted the instrument with top quality accessories including a case and strings. What a beautiful gift to the musical community of Brisbane!

Documented & Facilitated by Helentherese Good

QYS ' The Planets' - Concert Review

THE PLANETS - Concert Review

Queensland Youth Symphony
Conductor Simon Hewett
Violin Soloist In Yi Chae
Canticum Chamber Choir
Chorus Master Emily Cox

The most striking thing about any youth music performance is the incredible energy and enthusiasm on show. This was displayed in Queensland Youth Symphony's "The Planets" concert on Saturday 19th March from the first moment as acting Concertmaster Miriam Niessl was rapturously welcomed onstage by her colleagues. Conductor Simon Hewett's task was to control and focus that enthusiasm. This was achieved with success in the opening work, the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten, aided by some accomplished wind and brass playing led by Katya Willett on flute. The Storm movement, after the restraint of the previous three, could have done with some more wildness from the strings.

Next, Concertmaster In Yi Chae was cheered onto the stage to perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. It was mentioned that after her original concerto audition she had been nudged to try the Tchaikovsky as it was seen to be well suited to her. This turned out to be inspired as the work indeed highlighted many brilliant facets of her playing. The strong, insistent tone of the G string melodies in the exposition propelled her sound upwards into a silvery, accurate higher register. Some hesitancy of her accompanying colleagues was handled well by the soloist as she wrested control of phrases and tempi leading to some very secure tutti sections. The audience was held absolutely spellbound by the compelling cadenza.

The less flashy second movement was carried well by In Yi with a sensitive duet with the clarinet. The third showcased a different tone colour again, with a biting, urgent quality to In Yi's playing as she again took control of the various themes. Simon Hewett coaxed the orchestra well as the concerto ended with a deserved standing ovation.

The second half of the concert featured many more musicians welcomed onto the stage for a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets. It soon became clear that there are many well-known "good bits" in this work, clearly beloved of the players and audience alike, and the main theme of Jupiter was a wonderful example of this. The slightly less rollicking parts of the movements were sometimes in danger of floundering but were held together by some very strong solos from the wind and brass and in particular the string principals.

A cracking tempo for the beginning movement Mars was held well by the strings with some fine brass ensemble playing. Venus featured some lovely horn moments while Mercury (clearly a "good bit" for the players) was accurate and well-charactered. After the glorious enthusiasm of Jupiter the three more ethereal movements showcased some fine solos from Shana Hoshino on oboe as well as euphonium and tuba.

The effect of the outer planets becoming more and more distant and mysterious was managed well. The choir entry was at such a perfect dynamic that the audience sitting up to try to discern the floating sounds was audible in the theatre. A fade to darkness at the conclusion was effective and the concert ended to prolonged applause with Conductor Simon Hewett acknowledging his very deserving solo players, the orchestra and Canticum Chamber Choir for a fantastic achievement.

By Vivienne Brooke

TwoSet Violin

TwoSet Violin

Comedy duo TwoSet Violin (QYS Alumni Eddy Chen and Brett Yang) visited The Old Museum recently.The duo is pictured here with QYS members Sophia and Joshua Jones. On Sun 24 Oct QYO members participated in (and won!) an online trivia contest hosted by Melbourne Youth Orchestras and TwoSet, competing against interstate youth orchestra members.

2021 Finale Concert

2021 Finale Concert

It was great to be back at QPAC for this year's QYO Finale concert, with our musicians performing to a capacity audience. The backstage arrangements were challenging with strict capacity limits and QYO volunteers did a wonderful job co-ordinating the movement of musicians. The audience enjoyed works by Sally Greenaway, John Rotar, Ralph Hultgren, Smetana, Reed, Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Harry Kim's big band arrangement of music by the band Genesis.

Big Band Tour 2021

Big Band Tour to FNQ

On 1 December, the QYO Big Band heads off to Cairns and nearby towns to share their skills and love of music with local musicians and community audiences, Activities including free public concerts, educational concerts and workshops, performances for aged care residents, and collaborations with local musicians and dancers. The musicians will also learn and perform a song in Kuku Yalanji language with the students of Mossman primary school.

Chen Yang 30th Anniversary

Chen Yang 30th Anniversary

QYO invites former members of the Junior String Ensemble to join one of our JSE Alumni Orchestras to celebrate Chen Yang's 30th year as JSE conductor. The rehearsals and concert, featuring many of Chen's much loved arrangements of popular classics, will take place at the Old Museum Concert Hall on Sat 18 Dec 2021.
More info here

New conductors!

Welcome to our new QYO2 & QYO3 Conductors

We welcome Paul Dean and David Deacon as the new conductors of QYO2 and QYO3 respectively in 2021. Among other roles, Paul is Head of Winds at Queensland Conservatorium and Co-Artistic Director of Ensemble Q. David is Co-Director of CoCurricular Music and Head of Strings at St Peters Lutheran College. Both are QYO Alumni. QYO extends sincere thanks to Sergei Korschmin (started in 2003) and Dr Bradley Voltz (started in 1998) for their major contributions as QYO conductors.

Concerts at Twilight

2021 Concerts at Twilight

Most of our ensembles participated in their first concert of the year. All of these performances were performed with social distancing in place and no audience members. it was certainly odd for our musicians, especially without an audience. Each of the concerts were live-streamed for family and friends of the musicians.

Artology Fanfare

Artology Fanfare

Our QYO Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Peter Morris, performed 16 fanfares each around 30 seconds long, written by wonderful young composers from around Australia who composed and submitted fanfares to Artology’s 2020 Fanfare Competition.⁠

Finale Concert

QYO Finale Concert - Covid Style!!

A massive congratulations to all who were involved in our 2020 Finale concert/recording!!

Despite this years challenges, our musicians have enthusiastically pushed through and made sure that it was a resounding success, and honestly, we couldn't be more proud of them all!

If you would like to purchase a DVD, CD or program of the 2020 Finale concert, please visit www.qyo.org.au/2020qyofinaledvd to order a copy.

Photos by Tae Young