Program

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Rick Prakhoff

Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

Rick Prakhoff

Conducting was the obvious choice for Rick to allow him to perform the music which first engaged him as a child. It was during his second extended stay in London, seeking a career as a classical guitarist, that he realised he had heard far more orchestral, choral and operatic performances than guitar concerts. Conducting was the only career path which would allow him to finally perform the repertoire he truly loved.

Following his BMus in Perth at WAAPA (majoring in conducting) Rick’s training continued in Melbourne when he was selected for Symphony Australia’s Young Conductor programme, working for five years in intensive workshops with renowned conducting teachers Jorma Panula, Gustav Meier, Noam Sherif, Vernon Handley and Johannes Fritzsch, working with WASO, OV, QSO, ASO and the AOBO.

As a freelance conductor Rick has performed with orchestras, choirs and opera companies in Sydney, Canberra, Perth and Melbourne.

Rick was appointed as Artistic Director of the Zelman Memorial Symphony Orchestra in 2018 and has been the Artistic Director of the Melbourne Bach Choir since its inception in 2005.

Following their first collaboration with a performance in the Melbourne Town Hall of the Verdi Requiem in 2019, Zelman, the MBC and bass Adrian Tamburini joined for a memorable performance in the Myer Music Bowl in March 2021 by Zelman’s commission of composer Luke Styles’ No Friend But the Mountains: A Symphonic Song Cycle, based on the remarkable book by Kurdish refugee Behrouz Bouchani, detailing his incarceration by the Australian Government.

Rick was honoured to lead Zelman and the MBC in their performance of Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 2 in September 2023 to highlight Zelman’s 90th anniversary.

Kristian Chong

Piano

Kristian Chong

Leading Australian pianist Kristian Chong has performed throughout Australia and the UK, and in China, France, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, and Zimbabwe.

Performances find him regularly at home as concerto soloist, chamber musician and recitalist, having performed with most of Australia’s major orchestras as soloist, and with many leading instrumentalists and ensembles in chamber music. Recent highlights include Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a recording (for Tall Poppies) of the Brahms Clarinet & Piano Sonatas with Philip Arkinstall, and performances in the Great Performers Series at the Melbourne Recital Centre with violinist Satu Vänskä and cellist Li-Wei Qin.

His collaborations have included musicians such as violinists Sophie Rowell, Dale Barltrop, Daniel Dodds, cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, the Australian and Tin Alley String Quartets, and baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes amongst many others. He also is the director of Kristian Chong and Friends at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Kristian studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Piers Lane and Christopher Elton, and with Stephen McIntyre at the University of Melbourne, where Kristian currently teaches piano and chamber music.

Kristian is a Yamaha performing artist.

The Wreckers – overture

Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)

In the late 1880s, English-born composer, Ethel Smyth, visited the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall. It was there that she learned about the eighteenth-century practice of “wrecking” where the villagers would lure passing ships to the shore, murder their crews, and plunder the valuables. Smyth had become so obsessed by these stories that in 1903, she collaborated with her friend, writer Henry Brewster, to construct an opera on the subject.

Smyth completed The Wreckers in 1904 with a French libretto and the title Les naufrangeurs, and with the hope of performances in France or Belgium but none were forthcoming. She eventually had the text translated to German in 1906 and secured a performance in Leipzig under the new title Strandbrecht (Beach Lover). Although successful, Smyth felt that the premiere lacked something after a section of the third act was cut and so withdrew the score immediately. Returning to England, she translated the text into English with the section from the final act restored and then secured a performance at His Majesty’s Theatre, London in 1909 under Sir Thomas Beecham. Unfortunately, this under-rehearsed performance was a disaster. The following year (1910), Beecham performed the work more successfully at Covent Garden.

The Wreckers themes of love, violence, and betrayal are reflected in the opera’s overture. The opening depicts the wildness of the sea in the strings and brass, while a chorale-like theme towards the end represents the power of the local church community celebrating the victory of the ‘wrecking’ crews. The quieter middle section features a Cornish folk song from the cor anglais and then a solo violin.

Roger Howell 2025

Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor, Op.37

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

I. Allegro con brio
II. Largo
III. Rondo: Allegro

On the 5th of April 1803, Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Piano Concerto in C minor. The concerto was performed at one of the composer’s own concert extravaganzas which included the premieres of his Second Symphony, and his oratorio Christus am Ölberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives). It was thought that Beethoven had begun to write the concerto as early as 1796 and completed in 1802 until closer inspection of the autograph revealed a completion date of 1803 – not long before the premiere was due to take place. With Beethoven rushing to finish the concerto on time, the composer’s page turner for the concert, Ferdinand Ries, recalls a famous story of seeing incomplete pages of scribble as Beethoven improvised and nodded his head as a cue for Ries to turn the page.

Much has been written about the fact that Beethoven based this concerto on Mozart’s 24th Concerto, also in C minor. Many harmonic ideas in both composers’ first movements are similar, but Beethoven’s first movement has a greater emotional depth than Mozart’s. From the outset we hear a martial theme in a dotted rhythm in the strings and woodwinds with initial restraint from the trumpets and timpani. Contrast is then provided with a more lyrical second theme on the clarinet. In another new idea, the soloist enters with a series of scales before stating the first theme. In a further break from convention, the soloist takes the lead role in the concluding coda immediately following the cadenza.

In the second movement, Largo, Beethoven switches the tonal centre to the remote key of E major highlighting the ethereal stillness of the opening theme. The central section features lyrical solos from the flute and bassoon to a rippling accompaniment from the soloist – an idea not usually found in concertos of the Classical period.

The military soundscape of the first movement returns in the finale, with the soloist initiating the main theme complimented with trumpet fanfares in the orchestral refrain that follows. Two other themes offer contrast with the former being dance-like in quality and the latter featuring a lyrical clarinet solo. The tempo quickens near the end in a joyful coda that rounds off the concerto.

Roger Howell 2025

Symphony no.5 in D minor, Op.47

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)

I. Moderato
II. Allegretto
III. Largo
IV. Allegro non troppo

On 26th of January 1936, Dimitri Shostakovich attended a performance of his 1934 opera The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He knew that the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, would be there and was hoping to please him. The reaction the composer received was exactly the opposite. Two days later, he read an article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda that was scathing of the work. With the headline “Muddle in Place of Music”, Shostakovich was now regarded as an “enemy of the people”. He needed to find a way back to redemption and what emerged from the gloom was the composer’s Fifth Symphony.

Shostakovich began work on the symphony in April 1937 and completed it a mere three months later. The symphony’s premiere in November of that year was both a critical and popular success. Many in the audience recognised that Shostakovich was speaking to them through a musical code, language that completely fooled the Soviet authorities. The composer even added a suggested subtitle to the front page of the score which read: “A Soviet Artist’s Response to Just Criticism”.

To open the symphony, Shostakovich turned to Beethoven for the bold statement he knew he needed. The first theme has a rhythmic and melodic similarity to the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. At the end of this theme, the trumpets play a single-pitched repeated three note pattern, also derived from Beethoven, which serves as a structural reference point throughout the symphony. When the first melody emerges in the violins, it was recognised by Shostakovich’s audience as a Slavic folk song with flattened tonal inflections for a more plaintive sound. In the movement’s central section, this theme is heard more menacingly in the horns and trumpets before being transformed into a military march when the percussion enters. After a climax, a quieter theme heard earlier re-emerges to take the movement to a gentle close.

The second movement is a parody on the dance music Shostakovich used to enjoy in films and dance halls. At the same time, it is also a protest about the enjoyment of dancing: How can one dance when there is a regime weighing you down? The weighty sound of the double basses from the outset conveys a reluctant dancer struggling to get going. The clarinet and violin solos represent the suave musicians at dance halls persuading people to dance to their melodies.

The third movement is a requiem for those people who were killed during the early years of Stalin’s regime. There are moments when divided strings sound like a choir singing a familiar liturgy at a Russian Orthodox Church service. Also, the lonely oboe solo with shrieks from the cellos is Shostakovich’s tribute to his close family members who had died in the prison camps.

The fourth movement opens with a series of marches that lead to a climax and a central section of quieter, reflective themes. Two of these themes were particularly significant for Shostakovich. The first is a slow march-like passage in the strings that references a truth-telling episode from Mussorgsky’s opera, Boris Godunov. The other significant theme is a quotation from the composer’s setting of Pushkin’s poem Rebirth about a picture revealing itself over time after being blackened with thick paint. When the main theme returns, its transition from D minor to D major revealing the happy ending demanded by the Soviet authorities is blurred by a sudden burst of minor-key tonality.

Roger Howell 2025

The Orchestra

Concertmaster: Susan Pierotti

* Principal Player
** Guest Principal Player

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