Cellist soloist with orchestra

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34027, 16 December 1975, Page 18

Cellist soloist with orchestra

The Christchurch cel-j list, Roger Brown, who won the Harry Dexter Scholarship for the most promising young cellist at the International Festival of Youth Orchestras in Aberdeen, will he the soloist with the Christchurch .SymphonyOrchestra on Saturdaynight in a performance of Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major in the James Hay Theatre.

Mr Brown has studied the cello since he was 12, with Ellen Doyle and Francis de Goldi. He has played in the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the University of Canterbury Chamber Orchestra, and was principal cellist with the 1975 National Youth Orchestra during its overseas tour.

The Dexter scholarship will take him to London next year, to study under Professor William Pleeth. Haydn's concerto was written during the composer’s vouth although it was discovered only m 1961.

in a private music collection in Czechoslovakia. The orchestration of two oboes, two horns, and strings is the same as that of Haydn’s D Major Cello Concerto, and the wind are dispensed with in the slow movement. The work is full of brilliant bravura writing for the soloist in the first and third movements, while the slow movement takes the form of a dialogue between the cello and the strings of the orchestra. The concert is the first of a series of six to be presented by the orchestra under the baton of Peter Zwartz. Other local soloists will be featured later in the series, when three Mozart piano concertos will be presented. Some members of the orchestra will also be soloists in Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos which, with the composer’s four suites for orchestra, form the basis of the concert series. The first two of the six Brandenburg Concertos are included in Saturday night’s programme. These concertos, named for the nobleman who commissioned six concert! grossi

from Bach, employ groups of soloists rathen than single soloists, the groups alternating and combining with a larger group of players. This i jis typical of the concerto! 'form of Bach’s time, though; Ihe differed from other com-! (posers of the genre in that !he wrote for a different j combination of instruments (in each concerto. The form lis an excellent vehicle for 1 Bach’s contrapuntal skill, (and his use of contrasting j instrumental colouring, | which have rarely been 'equalled. The remaining works on ' the programme are from ! relatively recent composers. (Divertimento, or Serenata IV, by the Bohemian com- ! poser, Bohuslav Martinu, was written in 1930, and displays the composer’s strong rhythmic sense and his skill in writing transparent textures, as well as his sense of fun. The Third Suite from Respighi's An- ' cient Dances and Airs contains, as the main title suggests, transcriptions ofi music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, originating in Italy, Sicily.; land Spain. Mr Zwartz. who is already' known in Christchurch for his work with the School of Instrumental Music and the Christchurch Youth Orches-t tra. is the musical director as well as conductor for the!' series. He has worked with; the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Ballet, the Toronto and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras. and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.