Our Festival opens with a symphonic celebration of Nature, as we regather alongside the exquisite seascape of Southwest Victoria. Acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of the form, Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Quintet combines his Romantic lyricism with his love of Slavic folk tunes and dances. A melancholic Ukrainian Dumka, a fiery Bohemian Furiant and a spirited Polka take us into a rustic state of nostalgia for simpler, more harmonious times.
For Beethoven, the countryside provided great solace and healing for his advancing deafness and loneliness – “how delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, over grass and rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do.” His 6th Symphony (which he named “Pastoral”) may at first seem to be a series of blissful scenes depicting a happy arrival, a babbling brook with birdsong, country folk dancing, a passing storm and a grateful shepherd’s song, but for Beethoven it was more of a visceral outpouring of the ecstatic relief he experienced when surrounded by Nature.
Artists
Zoë Black Violin Sarah Curro Violin Caroline Henbest Viola Molly Collier-O’Boyle Viola Michelle Wood Cello Noah Lawrence Cello Caroline Almonte Piano
Performing
BEETHOVEN Symphony No 6, “Pastoral”, Op 68 (arr. Fischer for string sextet)
DVORAK Piano Quintet in A major, Op 81
