What would make you fall so much in love with an Australian city that you would move halfway across the world, from the heartland of classical music, to lead its orchestra?<\/p>\n
That’s the question Jaime Mart\u00edn, the chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), answered ahead of his first European tour with the group.<\/p>\n
“Melbourne is a city [that asks] you to leave your bed, come into the streets, have breakfast, have coffee, walk around and feel the energy of the city,” Mart\u00edn shares.<\/p>\n
“And it has a wonderful orchestra, so what is not to like?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jaime Mart\u00edn charted a path from a professional flute player to one of Europe’s leading orchestral conductors. (BBC Proms: Chris Christodoulou)<\/p>\n
A native of Santander, a historic port city in Spain, Mart\u00edn fell in love with classical music as a child. He charted a path from being a professional flute player to becoming one of Europe’s leading orchestral conductors.<\/p>\n
He officially took up the reins as chief conductor of the MSO in 2022.<\/p>\n
Since establishing himself in Melbourne, Mart\u00edn has championed prominent Australian composers, including figures such as pioneer Margaret Sutherland and First Nations trailblazer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon.<\/p>\n
We spoke with Mart\u00edn just before the start of the tour, where he shared the significance of the MSO’s long-awaited visit to his hometown.<\/p>\n
Taking an Australian symphony orchestra home<\/p>\n
Mart\u00edn grew up in Santander, on the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.<\/p>\n
Unlike Melbourne and other Australian capital cities, the town didn’t have a resident symphony orchestra when Mart\u00edn was growing up. But since 1952, Santander has hosted a month-long international festival of music and dance every summer.<\/p>\n
“I was not interested in music until my father took me to a concert at the Santander International Festival when I was eight,” Mart\u00edn shares.<\/p>\n
“I loved it so much, the next day I [told] my parents I would like to learn to play an instrument.”<\/p>\n
Mart\u00edn heard Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition during that fateful first concert.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Decades later, after making a career in the music world, including a stint as director of the Santander International Festival between 2012-2020, Mart\u00edn performed the same piece of music with the MSO at the festival where it all began.<\/p>\n
“[This time] instead of being an eight-year-old boy looking at the stage with my father, I was conducting,” Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n
It was a remarkable moment for the audiences at Santander, with an orchestra from the other side of the world making a debut performance with one of their own “son of this land.” They gave a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
Guide to Listening: BBC Proms on ABC Classic <\/a><\/p>\n Your guide to listening to the BBC Proms on ABC Classic through September.<\/p>\n Another milestone for the orchestra during the tour was their appearance at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall.<\/p>\n It’s rare for an Australian orchestra to perform at the world’s biggest classical music festival and only the second time the MSO has performed there. They made their Proms debut in 2014.<\/p>\n Mart\u00edn curated a program including Haunted Hills by Australian Composer Margaret Sutherland, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with soloist Khatia Buniatishvili, and Dvo\u0159\u00e1k’s Sixth Symphony.<\/p>\n The performance of the Sutherland was interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters, and the orchestra restarted the music from the top.<\/p>\n “The London performance was the culmination of the MSO’s successful tour of Europe,” says a spokesperson for the orchestra. “We are so proud of the MSO’s artistry and professionalism. They delivered world-class performances and artistic excellence to sold-out audiences across the UK and Europe.”<\/p>\n Huge trucks and chartered flights<\/p>\n There were more than 100 people on this international tour, Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n The orchestra started in Edinburgh, which might just be one of the longest trips from Australia.<\/p>\n Although most musicians are seasoned travellers, the journey is still quite an undertaking especially for big instrument players like cellos, double bases and timpani.<\/p>\n Once they were in Europe, the orchestra hired huge trucks and chartered flights to get all of those musicians and instruments between cities.<\/p>\n Working out the logistics of a tour like this takes a lot of organisations from a lot of people, Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n A year before the tour, the orchestra sent a team over to scout details like how to get from the hotels to the performance venues, where the stage doors are, even where to get coffee during breaks.<\/p>\n “It’s a big operation, but it’s how it is in the world of orchestra touring,” Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n The orchestra travelled across Europe: from Edinburgh to Santander, S\u00fcdtirol in Italy, Hamburg in Germany and then back to London. They performed to mostly sold-out audiences.<\/p>\n Sharing Australian voices with international audiencesLoading…<\/p>\n Mart\u00edn chose music by Margaret Sutherland and Deborah Cheetham Fraillon to open concerts during the tour. These are composers Mart\u00edn only discovered when he came to Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n He now champions them.<\/p>\n His first concert with the MSO in 2022 was a world premiere of new music by Cheetham Fraillon featuring didgeridoo\/yidaki virtuoso William Barton.<\/p>\n “My first big international tour with the orchestra is a very good opportunity to write another piece as a continuation of what we started,” Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n Mart\u00edn commissioned Cheetham Fraillon to compose Treaty, music which encapsulates the dialogue between the First Nations peoples and the Victorian state government in the process towards reconciliation.<\/p>\n Treaty saw the return of Barton as soloist. The music was premiered at the Edinburgh festival and performed in Hamburg.<\/p>\n Mart\u00edn also discovered Sutherland’s music after moving to Melbourne.<\/p>\n Hear the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform at the BBC Proms<\/a><\/p>\n Jaime Mart\u00edn conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in music by Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, Tchaikovsky and Margaret Sutherland in this performance at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall.<\/p>\n “She was an important musician in Melbourne and because of her, the Art Centre was created,” Mart\u00edn says, referring to Sutherland’s advocacy for a dedicated performance venue in Melbourne.<\/p>\n Now known as Hamer Hall, it is the venue the orchestra calls home.<\/p>\n Sutherland was a prolific composer who had been neglected because she was a woman living in an era when it wasn’t acceptable for women to write music, Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n “It’s important to celebrate the pioneers,” he says.<\/p>\n Haunted Hills was composed in 1950, with Sutherland describing the music as: “A sound picture written in contemplation of the first people who roamed the hills, their bewilderment and their betrayal.”<\/p>\n These are members of the Kulin Nations who lived in the Dandenong Ranges just outside Narrm\/Melbourne.<\/p>\n “[A lot of people] have never heard of the music of Margaret Sutherland,” Mart\u00edn says. “I think that’s very exciting and that’s why we are taking this music on our tour.”<\/p>\n Mart\u00edn attributed the enthusiasm that saw most concerts being sold out to people’s curiosity to hear an orchestra from Australia.<\/p>\n “People are really excited to be challenged and to hear something different,” Mart\u00edn says.<\/p>\n “If you present [the music] with love, people will notice.”<\/p>\n Hear the BBC Proms on ABC Classic<\/a> and the ABC listen app, including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra<\/a> performing music by Margaret Sutherland, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k and Tchaikovsky.<\/p>\n Get the latest classical music stories direct to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What would make you fall so much in love with an Australian city that you would move halfway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,9472,14656,93239,134,93237,93240,93236,93238,5429,93241],"class_list":["post-135035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-classicreads","tag-conductor","tag-deborah-cheetham-fraillon","tag-entertainment","tag-jaime-martin","tag-margaret-sutherland","tag-mso","tag-orchestra","tag-uk","tag-william-barton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}