Bayden Tham, winner of the Adjudicator’s Award at Symphony Central Coast’s Prodigies Concerto Competition last year, will perform as a soloist at the orchestra’s Fast Ride concert on June 26.
Artistic Director and Conductor of the orchestra, Dr Steven Stanke said, the standard of all four soloists from the competition last year was very high.
“Bayden will bring a very special level of performance and understanding to our concert,” he said.
Tham will perform Camille Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto no.1, an elegantly crafted work that needs consummate technique, warm tone and a rhythmic kick.
He performed the first movement at the competition last year and will now perform the entire work.
He began to play the cello at the age of eight and fell in love with it immediately.
He was a member of the Sydney Youth Orchestra Philharmonics, performing at various venues including Llewellyn Hall at Australian National University, Canberra.
He has been a member of the Central Coast Youth Orchestra since 2016 and has also played in the orchestra for Opera in the Arboretum.
Also on the program, and giving it its name, is Katy Abbott’s homage to three blind mice, Fast Ride in a Suave Machine.
Abbott, a Melbourne-based composer and lecturer in composition at the University of Melbourne, said it was while singing Three Blind Mice to her children one day that the grisly nature of the text became apparent.
“Hence, the music is fast paced and ‘fun’ in nature, yet it alludes to the dark side of the text,” she said.
“I imagine the farmers wife chasing mice around her kitchen with a large butcher’s knife!”
The orchestra will also perform Arthur Honegger’s tribute to the steam locomotive, his 1923 work Pacific 231.
Honegger was widely known as a train enthusiast.
“I have always loved locomotives passionately,” he once said.
“For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.”
The 1949 award-winning French film by Jean Mittry based on this work will be shown with music live to screen.
Rounding out the concert will be two works based on national features, Argentina’s ranches, or Estancias, music from Alberto Ginastera, and the mighty Moldau river, as it begins in the highlands of Bohemia and winds its way through the Czech countryside to Prague, courtesy of Bedřich Smetana.
“This concert is all about speed, energy and flow,” Stanke said.
“Perfect music to warm up to on a cold winter’s day.”
Fast Ride will be held at Central Coast Grammar School Performing Arts Centre, Arundel Rd, Erina Heights at 2.30pm on Sunday, June 26.
Tickets are available online at www.symphonycentralcoast.com.au.
Source:
Media release, Jun 20
Symphony Central Coast
