THE EDINBURGH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Leader – Lawrence Dunn
Musical Director – Maestro Alberto Massimo
Guitar Soloist – Macaulay Lock
STRINGS and PIPES
featuring works by Boyce, Handel, Giuliani and Rheinberger
Admission by programme at the door
£8
Children free
ALBERTO MASSIMO
Alberto graduated BMus in organ, trumpet and composition. Specialising in conducting, he attended courses in Vienna, Salzburg, at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, studying with Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Ferdinand Leitner, Carlo Maria Giulini, Franco Ferrara and Leonard Bernstein. In Rome he received appointments as organist and choirmaster, remaining also at the Basilica di Santa Cecilia for four years and occasionally playing for a Papal Mass in the Vatican. After postgraduate study at the Accademia Barocca di Roma in harpsichord and basso continuo, on an Italian Government grant, he obtained a postgraduate Diploma in Music at the University of Edinburgh. He was nominated ‘Professional of the Year in Music 1991’ by the international board of the American Biographical Institute. He has held a number of organist’s posts in Edinburgh, including that of St. Andrew’s and St. George’s Church. He is currently the Director of Music at Morningside United Church.
ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA
The orchestra was founded by a group of musicians headed by the De Marco sisters with Stuart Deas, the then Scotsman critic and later Professor of Music at Sheffield University, as its first conductor. Led for many years by Jessie Veitch, the Orchestra was conducted from 1949-1964 by the distinguished émigré composer and musicologist Dr Hans Gal, then for a season by Dr Peter Williams (later to become Dean of the Faculty of Music) and from 1965-1975 by Leon Coates. During his tenure the Orchestra reached an excellence that allowed up to 7 concerts within its then 6 month season, with regular concerts in the Reid and others in Galashiels and Livingston. Concerto soloists included a fourteen year old, Susan Tomes, and a student, Peter Evans (with Beethoven’s 3rd), as well as Miles Baster, who was also to become the Orchestra’s conductor in the late seventies. Maestro Massimo has conducted the orchestra since 1991 and is its longest serving Musical Director.
MACAULAY LOCK
Macaulay Lock is a talented young guitarist and composer whose repertoire and inspiration draws from a diverse, eclectic, and colourful musical pallet. Growing up in the musically-thriving and stunning landscape of the western Highlands, his introduction to guitar was through Scottish folk music. This sparked a musical curiosity, which has led him to explore a vast array of musical genres and playing styles. Macaulay is currently studying music at Edinburgh Napier University, with a focus on performance, under the tutelage of acclaimed guitarist Simon Thacker. His studies have not only broadened his musical vocabulary even further, but seen him perform at the Usher Hall as part of a chamber ensemble, as well as premiering a piece for Guitar and Soprano by composer Kenneth Dempster. Having written and performed music in both a solo and ensemble context, he has developed his own style through improvisation, drawing on influences such as the folk and jazz music of Scandinavia and the Balkans.
WILLIAM BOYCE Symphony No 3
(1711-1779) Allegro – Vivace – Tempo di Minuetto
Boyce was a chorister at St Pauls Cathedral and studied under the organist Maurice Greene. Maurice Greene was later to succeed as Master of the King’s Musick in 1755. He also became organist at the Chapel Royal and conductor of the three choirs Festival and worked with Garrick at Drury Lane. With the onset of severe deafness, Boyce worked on completing Greens’ “Cathedral Music”, a collection covering 200 years, and edited the works of Byrd and Purcell, many of which are still in use in Anglican services. He is best known for his brilliant set of eight symphonies in the Italian and French styles. Symphonies 1-4 are in the Italian style whereas symphonies 5-8 are written in the French Style.
MAURO GIULIANI Guitar Concerto Op. 30 in A Major
(1781 – 1829)
Soloist: Macaulay Lock
Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani was born near Bari and studied the cello but the 6 string guitar soon became his preference. Italy at this time was blessed with many excellent guitarists such as Agliati, Carulli, Gragniani and Nava and so Giuliani went north and settled in Vienna where he became the greatest living guitarist. It was in this city in April 1808 that he gave the premiere of tonight’s concerto to great acclaim. He led the classical guitar movement in Vienna, composing over 200 works for the instrument and notated on the treble clef in a new manner by the use of note stem directions and rests. In 1813, Giuliani played the cello in the first performance of Beethoven’s 7th symphony in an orchestra which included Hummel and Spohr. In the following year he was appointed ‘Virtuoso Onorario da Camera’ to the Empress Marie Louise. Because of mounting debt problems, he returned to Italy and was patronised by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until his death in Naples on the 8th of May, 1829..
GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
(1685 – 1759) (from ‘Solomon’)
This piece forms the overture to the 3rd Act of the Oratorio ‘Solomon’, which Handel completed in June 1748. The work, one of his most elaborate scores, was first performed at Covent Garden on 17th March 1749 “with a Concerto”. The original musical idea for this now famous movement was not Handel’s own, but comes from the ritornello of an Air from the opera Numitore by Giovanni Porta (1675 – 1755), commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music in 1720. Handel changes the rhythm substantially to produce music of great vitality – representing not so much the arrival of the Queen, as the general flurry of making ready for her reception.
JOSEPH G. RHEINBERGER First Movement of the Organ Concerto
(1839-1901) No1 in F
Soloist: Alberto Massimo
Joseph Rheinberger composed his Organ Concerto No. 1, opus 137, for organ, strings, and three horns in 18th June 1884 and it received its first performance in St Paul’s Church, Leipzig, in November of that year. Rheinberger is Liechtenstein’s most famous composer. Born in 1839 in Vaduz, son of the Prince of Lichtenstein’s treasurer, he showed prodigious talent by becoming church organist at seven years of age and writing a three-part mass! At 12, through pressure and persuasion, the boy’s father sent him for further study to Munich, where he studied theory, organ, and piano at the conservatory. As early as 1853, Rheinberger was employed as organist of a number of churches and also earned his living as a private teacher. Above all, he devoted himself to composition, writing well over 100 works in a few years – but self-criticism meant he did not release them for publication, waiting instead until 1859 for
his opus 1, four piano pieces.