Date/Time:

Oct. 20th, 2009 19:30 (Tues.)

Venue:

Shanghai Oriental Art Center - Concert Hall

Ticket Price (RMB):

680, 500, 400, 300, 200, 100 Yuan

Seating Plan:

Click to View

Ticket State:

Out of Date!

Booking Office:

No. 272 Fengxian Road

Booking Hotline:

62172426, 62173055

1932 was a momentous year for Sydney. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, an engineering miracle of the day was opened in March. In July 1932 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was established, and with it the group of musicians that would become the Sydney Symphony.

The Orchestra consisted of just 24 players, who performed incidental music for radio plays, music for the dinner hour and broadcasts of concert repertoire. The first significant concert event in which the orchestra took centre stage occurred in 1934, when the renowned Irish conductor Sir Hamilton Harty visited Australia which led to calls for the creation of a permanent concert orchestra for Sydney. A forceful new group of ABC managers increased the size of the Sydney orchestra to 45 players, augmented to 70 for public performances, and inaugurated annual concert seasons in 1936.

Political instability in 1930's Europe saw many leading artists spending large amounts of time in Australia. Fine performances were given under the direction of  Antal Dorati and Sir Thomas Beecham. Soloists appearing with the Orchestra included Artur Rubinstein, Bronislaw Huberman and Artur Schnabel.

During the war, despite the near impossibility of buying strings or instruments, the Orchestra was a source of inspiration and solace to enthusiastic servicemen. The number of women in the Orchestra increased to 32 in 1942 from a pre-war total of 20.

At war's end the ABC reached agreement with the Sydney's city council and the NSW State Government to establish an orchestra in Sydney. The new 82-player Sydney Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert in January 1946.

One of the prominent guests in that 1946 season was conductor Eugene Goossens. A world-famous musician and charismatic leader, Goossens agreed to return the following year as the Orchestra's first Chief Conductor. He determined to make the Sydney Symphony "among the six best in the world."

Goossens' introduced outdoor concerts, conducted Australian premieres of major new works as a matter of course, and in 1948 uttered the famous statement: "Sydney must have an Opera House." It was he who chose Bennelong Point as the site for what would become Australia's most famous building.

After Goossens, the next conductor to have his kind of galvanising impact on the players was the Dutchman Willem van Otterloo. An eight-week European tour in 1974 culminated in two concerts in Amsterdam and The Hague that were Otterloo's special home-coming. It was also under Otterloo that the Orchestra made the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall its main performance home.

In 1982 Sir Charles Mackerras became the first Australian to take up the Chief Conductor's post. When he fell ill in 1985, the young Australian conductor Stuart Challender stepped in to conduct some of his performances. These concerts led to his appointment as the Orchestra's Chief Conductor in 1987.

Under Challender, the Symphony's supreme achievements were the ABC Classics disc of Peter Sculthorpe's music, performances of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, the Sydney and Adelaide seasons of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and the 1988 tour of the USA. As his international reputation grew, so his illness increasingly sapped his energies, and he died of AIDS-related causes in 1991.

Edo de Waart's appointment as the Sydney Symphony's Chief Conductor and Artistic Director a short time later has led to a period of greatness for the orchestra marked by many landmark events: the concert performances of Wagner's Das Rheingold, thrilling performances of Mahler's second and third symphonies, a strong commitment to new Australian music and the release of four CDs marking the beginning of a new recording agreement with the ABC Classics label.

In 1995, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, under Edo de Waart's direction, undertook a triumphant concert tour of Great Britain and Europe. Their equally successful two-week tour of Japan and Taiwan took place in November 1996, and included a Tokyo concert performed in the presence of the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan.

A series of initiatives announced by the Federal Government in 1994, including increased player numbers (110), increased touring and recording ventures as well as enhanced orchestral salaries and conditions have seen the Sydney Symphony develop into Australia's flagship orchestra.

As the city's major musical organisation, the Sydney Symphony was the official Cultural Ambassador for the Olympic Arts Festivals and played a pivotal role in the celebrations surrounding the Sydney Olympics in the year 2000, both in the numerous outdoor and cultural events surrounding the Games.

Integral to the Sydney Symphony's annual program of activity is a strong commitment to music education at all levels. Under the inspiring directorship of Richard Gill, the Education Program reaches all ages and all regions of New South Wales, and has become an envied resource for music education projects in other states and territories. The Sydney Sinfonia is a vital ensemble which performs in education programs for the youngest school children through to the very popular adult education series Discovery Program, while simultaneously providing training for emerging young musicians who work side-by-side with mentors from the Sydney Symphony, providing a bridge into the profession of the orchestral musician.

The Sydney Symphony’s award-winning Education Program is central to the Orchestra’s commitment to the future of live symphonic music, developing audiences and engaging the participation of young people.  The Sydney Symphony maintains an active commissioning program promoting the work of Australian composers and in 2005 Liza Lim was appointed Composer-in-Residence for three years. 

Maestro Gianluigi Gelmetti, whose appointment in 2004 followed a ten year relationship with the Orchestra as Guest Conductor, is now in his third year as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony, a position he holds in tandem with that of Music Director at the prestigious Rome Opera. 

The Sydney Symphony is already reaping the rewards of Maestro Gelmetti’s  directorship through the quality of sound, intensity of playing and flexibility between styles.  His particularly strong rapport with French and German repertoire is complemented by his innovative programming in the Shock of the New concerts and performances of contemporary Australian music.

Now in its 75th year, the Sydney Symphony is Australia’s flagship orchestra. Its 2007 Season bears the hallmark of artistic excellence with performances by a stellar line-up of internationally renowned soloists, Australia’s top musicians and the world’s most illustrious, sought after conductors. In 2007, the Orchestra celebrates its 75th anniversary and the milestone achievements during its distinguished history.

Vladimir Ashkenazy

In the years since Vladimir Ashkenazy first came to prominence on the world stage in the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw he has built an extraordinary career, not only as one of the most renowned and revered pianists of our times, but as an artist whose creative life encompasses a vast range of activities and continues to offer inspiration to music-lovers across the world.

Conducting has formed the largest part of his activities for the past 20 years. Formerly Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic (1998 to 2003), and Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo (2004 to 2007), in January 2009 he took up the new position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A regular visitor to Sydney over many years, he already shares a warm relationship with the Orchestra. They will collaborate on a number of exciting projects including composer festivals, major recording projects and international touring activities.

Alongside these positions, Ashkenazy continues his longstanding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of which he was appointed Conductor Laureate in 2000. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he tours with them worldwide, and has developed landmark projects such as ‘Prokofiev and Shostakovich Under Stalin’ in 2003 (a project which he also took to Cologne, New York, Vienna and Moscow)and‘Rachmaninoff Revisited’ in 2002 at the Lincoln Center, New York.

Ashkenazy also holds the positions of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with whom he tours each year, and Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He maintains strong links with a number of other major orchestras with whom he has built special relationships over the years, including the Cleveland Orchestra (of whom he was formerly Principal Guest Conductor), San Francisco Symphony and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin (Chief Conductor and Music Director 1988-96), as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world. He returned to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in October 2007.

While conducting takes up a significant portion of his time each season, Ashkenazy continues to devote himself to the piano, these days mostly in the recording studio where he continues to build his extraordinarily comprehensive recording catalogue with releases such as the 1999 Grammy award-winning Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No.3 (a work which he commissioned) and Rachmaninov Transcriptions. Most recently released are his recordings of that most challenging and enriching of works, Bach's Wohltemperierte Klavier and released in June 2007, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.
Beyond his hectic and fulfilling performing schedule, Ashkenazy continues to be involved in some fascinating TV projects, often inspired by his passionate drive to ensure that serious music continues to have a platform in the mainstream media and is made available to as broad an audience as possible. Many will remember his programmes with the outstanding director Christopher Nupen, including in 1979 Music After Mao, filmed in Shanghai, and the extraordinary Ashkenazy in Moscow programmes which marked his first visit in 1989 to the country of his birth since leaving the USSR in the 1960s. More
recently he has developed educational programmes with NHK TV including the 1999 Superteachers working with inner-city London school children, and in 2003-4 a documentary based around his ‘Prokofiev and Shostakovich Under Stalin’ project.

Bezhod Abduraimov

The Grand Prize winner of the London International Piano Competition 2009, Behzod Abduraimov was born in Tashkent in 1990 and began to play the piano at the age of five. He was a pupil of Tamara Popovich at the Uspensky State Central Lyceum in Tashkent, and since 2007 is pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree at the International Center for Music at Park University, Kansas City studying with Prof. Stanislav Ioudenitch.

In April 2009, Behzod achieved a sensational victory in the London International Piano Competition. He gave an electrifying performance of Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.3 at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra- bringing the audience to their feet for a standing ovation, and was unanimously awarded the Grand Prize.
Since his first performance as soloist at the age of eight with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, Behzod has given many concerts in the USA, Italy, Russia and Uzbekistan. His further achievements included the First Prize at the Republican Competition in Uzbekistan (1999), Grand Prix in the Competition ‘Le Muse’, in Agropoli, Italy (2003) and First Prize in the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition (2008). The same year he won both the Lennox Young Artist Competition and the Corpus Christi International Competition, USA and performed with the Richardson Symphony Orchestra in Dallas and the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, Texas in 2009.

Since 2004, Behzod has been invited to perform every year at the Spivakov International Charity Foundation in Moscow and from 2005 at the International Keyboard Institute & Festival in New York City and the International Summer Piano Academy in Como, Italy.

As a result of his success in the London International Piano Competition, Behzod Abduraimov has received great critical acclaim and subsequently been invited to perform with the Royal Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestras this season. He will give his London Philharmonic Orchestra & Wigmore Hall debuts in 2010 and has been invited to record a solo CD on the Naxos label.

‘almost levitating with excitement, he combined unbridled joy with a hugely impressive technical control.’         
——The Independent