Dear MPYO Members,

I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks when we embark on our tour to East Malaysia. In the meantime I hope you enjoy listening to the three new works we will perform during the evening concerts: Berlioz, ‘Roman Carnival Overture’, Dvorak Cello Concerto and the Symphony No.2 by Tchaikovsky, otherwise known as the ‘Little Russian’. Three great composers, three great works.

We’ll also be performing a couple of matinee concerts featuring works previously performed, all of which will be squeezed into the camp alongside chamber music and… singing!

The camp follows a couple of weeks of national auditions where, together with friends from the MPO, I will be listening to over 200 musicians; all hopeful of gaining a place in the MPYO starting camp in 2009. I am looking forward to seeing what and more importantly, who is out there. If you are one of those auditioning later this month, good luck!

We do not have time, sadly, to pursue the conducting workshops at this camp. I am aware that some of you wish to make a more formal footing for this class and to that end; I am waiting to hear back from senior management on how to best organize and proceed.

Apart from your usual preparation for the forthcoming camp I would also like you to think about an aspect that has risen from a work I will be conducting with the MPO, the Saturday before our camp starts: John Adams’, ‘Naïve and Sentimental Music’ which is a huge tour de force for orchestra and his biggest orchestral work to date.

But what about the title of the work? From a composer who writes a second chamber symphony entitled: ‘Son of Chamber Symphony’, you wouldn’t expect anything ‘usual’ like a numbered opus or symphony. In fact, ‘Naïve and Sentimental Music’ could be called ‘Godfather of Chamber Symphony’!’

Like another American composer, Dominic Argento, Adams is opening a new file and placing composers in one of two categories; either the ‘Naïve’ box or the ‘Sentimental’ box. Argento suggests that composers either write for the brain or the heart, here Adams is suggesting composers and artists in general either write subconsciously and free from ego: Naïve, (Bach, Shakespeare, Goethe for example) or consciously in pursuit of the naïve – as an ideal to be realized - and therefore: Sentimental.

Until we meet, I want you to think about the works we are to perform in December and place each composer in a Naïve or Sentimental box - whichever you individually think - and we’ll collect the data and see what the consensus is.

Until then, take care.