Mostly Mozart - Grand Gestures

Finnish-Australian cellist Timo-Veikko Valve (‘Tipi’) — Principal Cello of the Australian Chamber Orchestra for almost two decades — returns to lead the talented young musicians of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in a morning of two completely different moods.

Mozart’s Gran Sestetto Concertante opens the program with lightness and joy. In 1779, a 23-year-old Mozart returned home to Salzburg from Paris and Mannheim, brimming with ideas, and wrote a Sinfonia Concertante in which violin and viola share the spotlight as equals; a rarity at the time. Nearly thirty years later, an unknown arranger reworked it for six string players, passing those solo lines between them like a lively conversation among friends.

Then comes the thunder with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Its four-note opening, da-da-da-DUM, is the most famous in all of classical music, and it has startled and thrilled audiences since its first performance in Vienna in 1808. With the power of the full ANAM Orchestra led by Tipi on cello, those four notes journey from darkness to blazing triumph.