Mt Albert War Memorial Hall
2:30pm Sunday 30 November 2025
Leys Orchestra's final concert for 2025 opens with the overture to a once controversial opera by the German early Romantic composer Louis Spohr. Highly popular through the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, 'Jessonda' was banned by the Nazis because it depicted a European hero in love with an Indian princess. A grand tale of love and sacrifice, the overture sets the scene for clashes of will and of military forces in an exotic land.
One of the most important composers of the early twentieth century, Béla Bartók collected and studied folk music of Hungary and surrounding countries, becoming one of the founders of ethnomusicology. The integration of these ethnic musical traits into his own musical style can be seen in his tuneful and exuberant 'Rumanian Dances', a suite of six contrasting melodies from Transylvania: 'Stick Dance', 'Sash Dance', 'In One Spot', 'Romanian Polka', 'Fast Dances'.
Andrea Gabrieli and his more famous nephew Giovanni Gabrieli were at the forefront of changes to the contrapuntal style of late Renaissance music. The ricercar by Andrea Gabrieli in this programme has eight independent instrumental lines, which have been arranged for modern orchestra.
'Old Folks at Home and in Foreign Lands' is a light-hearted transcription from 1913 of Stephen Foster's American folksong in the musical idiom of France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Scotland and Spain.
The concert includes an arrangement for Leys Orchestra of the national spiritual anthem 'Prayer for Ukraine' by Mykola Lysenko, and wraps up with the spritely and ever popular 'Radetzky March' by Johann Strauss Sr.
Admission is free.
Programme
Spohr: Jessonda Overture
Bartók: Rumanian Folk Dances
Lysenko: Prayer for Ukraine
Gabrieli: Ricercar per Sonar a 8
Foster/Roberts: Old Folks at Home and in Foreign Lands
Strauss Sr: Radetzky March
