2017 Concerts

PAUL TERRACINI conductor
BRITTANIE SHIPWAY vocalist

Penrith City Choir, Penrith City Youth Choir, Penrith City Children’s Choir, Warrimoo Chorale,  Academy Singers  chorus
LUCY MCALARY chorus director
Penrith Symphony OrchestraPenrith Strings

In this concert for the whole family, young and old, the orchestra and choir will present music for the festive season featuring Tchaikovsky’s popular Nutcracker Suite, well-known carols from around the world, Australian carols, and Christmas music in a more modern idiom.

Apart from the orchestra and choir, this concert will feature Penrith Strings and Penrith City Children’s Choir, and the return to PSO of local singing sensation, Brittanie Shipway. It is also rumoured that a special guest from the North Pole might make a guest appearance!

Don’t miss this end of year celebration of great music for all age groups.

(This concert is not part of the PSO subscription series, but is available at a special Early Bird Bonus price if booked together with a PSO subscription by 23/12/16.) 

A concert for children and families

starring GEORGE ELLIS, conductor and ex-Wiggle MURRAY COOK, narrator featuring music by SAINT-SAËNS and RAVEL 

Ex-Wiggle, Murray Cook, returns to PSO in this performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. One of the finest works ever written to introduce young people to the orchestra, it is paired in this concert with the highly imaginative Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel. It is certain to have the children enthralled. 

(This concert is not part of the PSO subscription series.)

PAUL TERRACINI conductor
NOËMI NADELMANN soprano
LORENZO ROSITANO tenor

Operatic selections by VERDI, PUCCINI, LEHÁR and others

Western Sydney’s favourite tenor, Lorenzo Rositano, and Swiss opera star, Noëmi Nadelmann, in one of her first appearances in Australia, are the featured soloists on this program of opera classics.

The concert begins with the Overture to Nabucco, the opera that established Verdi’s career. There is music from Verdi, Puccini, Franz Lehár and others, including the famous Nessun Dorma, from Turandot, Habanera, from Carmen, and Vilja, from The Merry Widow.

PAUL TERRACINI conductor

SIMON TEDESCHI piano

STRAUSS II Die Fledermaus Overture
GERSHWIN Piano Concerto in F
ALEX TURLEY Train Window (world premiere)
BIZET Excerpts from Carmen Suites 

The ever popular Overture to Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II leads us into this festive evening of orchestral music.

One of Australia’s most loved pianists, and well-known in western Sydney, Simon Tedeschi, appears with PSO as soloist in George Gershwin’s glittering Piano Concerto in F. Commissioned immediately after Rhapsody in Blue by Walter Damrosch, the work explores more traditional concerto forms than its predecessor.

A new work, Train Window by Alex Turley, the winner of PSO’s Young Composer Award, will be premiered at this concert.

Completing the program is a selection from the two Carmen Suites, drawn from one of the most widely performed operas in the repertoire, Bizet’s Carmen.

SARAH PENICKA-SMITH guest conductor
WAYNNE KWON cello

MENDELSSOHN A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture
SCHUMANN Cello Concerto
MOZART Symphony No. 41, Jupiter

The German violinist and impresario responsible for bringing Haydn to London, Johann Peter Salomon, christened Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” to reinforce its supernatural-like status in the musical firmament. This was Mozart’s final symphony written in a fever of creative activity that included the composition of symphonies 39 and 40 in the summer of 1788.

Soloist Waynne Kwon joins PSO in a work never heard by its composer, Robert Schumann. His Cello Concerto was first performed in Leipzig in 1860, four years after his death. The work is known for its transcendental and enigmatic characteristics. Waynne Kwon was a student at the Sydney Conservatorium before pursuing post-graduate study at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester.

Completing the dream-like nature of this program is some of the most loved incidental music ever written for a Shakespearean play, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a work of youthful brilliance written when Mendelssohn was seventeen years old. Guest conductor, Sarah Penicka-Smith, appears with PSO for the first time. 

PAUL TERRACINI conductor
JESSICA WESTCOTT soprano
BARBARA JIN alto
DAMIAN ARNOLD tenor
JARED LILLEHAGEN baritone

Penrith City Choir, Warrimoo Chorale and Academy Singers
LUCY MCALARY chorus director

BEETHOVEN Leonora Overture No. 3
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9

Beethoven’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, found in the last movement of the ninth symphony, is one of the most well-known passages in the canon of Western classical music. Known also as the “Choral Symphony”, it was the first symphony in which voices were featured. PSO is joined in this concert by the forces of Penrith City Choir, Warrimoo Chorale, and Academy Singers. In a continuation of PSO’s collaboration with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the four soloists, Jessica Westcott, Barbara Jin, Evan Kirby, and Tristan Entwistle, have all studied at that institution.

The Leonora Overture No. 3 was one of four overtures written by Beethoven in connection with his opera, Fidelio. The most popular of the four, Leonora No. 3 sets the scene to perfection in anticipation of the ninth symphony.

PAUL TERRACINI conductor
DANA LEE piano

MOZART Il Seraglio Overture
MENDELSSOHN Piano Concerto No. 1
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4, Romantic

The composers of the two principal works on this program, Mendelssohn and Bruckner, provide examples of early, and fully developed, romanticism in nineteenth century music. Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, the Romantic Symphony, was premiered in 1881, at the height of the Romantic movement in European art. It now enjoys a place in the repertoire as one of the great nineteenth century symphonies.

Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor was composed while Mendelssohn was traveling in Italy, around the same time as he was writing his Symphony No. 4, the Italian Symphony, and premiered in October 1831, in Munich. As one of the great pianists of his time, Mendelssohn lavished his score with passages of luminous virtuosity for the solo pianist. Performing the work in this concert is the brilliant winner of the 2016 Conservatorium High School Concerto Competition, Dana Lee.

The concert gets off to a rollicking start with music of Mozart, one of Mendelssohn and Bruckner’s greatest influences. In this case, his Overture to the opera, Il Seraglio.