As a part of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra program in 2010, Beethoven Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 (Eroica) has been led by Tadaaki Otaka , who is the principal guest conductor of MSO, at Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is the oldest orchestra in Australia, established in 1906 with 14 leading international chief conductors, of which Hiroyuki Iwaki was the 12th. MSO has been closely related with Japan.
MSO Official website
Tadaaki Otaka is the one of Japan's leading conductors, born in 1947 in Kamakura, Japan. He studied composition and theory under the tuition of Hideo Saito at Toho-gakuen University.
He has become a professor at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
In 1993 He received an Honorary Fellowship from the Welsh College of Music and Drama and also was awarded the CBE by Queen Elizabeth in 1997.
Additionally, in 1999, he was the first Japanese conductor to be awarded the Elgar Medal by the Elgar Society in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Elgar music.
He has been a Permanent Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo since January, 2010.
Otaka was appointed principal guest conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), effective as of 2010.
Ludwig van Beethoven (16th Dec 1770 – 26th Mar 1827)
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55) known as Eroica (The original title: Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'uomo – “heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man”), was completed in 1804, which is 31 years before his settlement in Melbourne. This symphony is originally to dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte and was firstly conducted in Vienna's Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805.
Repertoire
BEETHOVEN The Creatures of Prometheus: Overture
STRAUSS Metamorphosen
BEETHOVEN Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 (Eroica)
Featuring
Tadaaki Otaka conductor
Beethoven, a passionate libertarian, originally dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon. His decision to delete this dedication, on finding that his hero had crowned himself emperor, marks the work out as a significant political statement. But the Eroica is much more: it was the grandest and most ambitious orchestral work of its time. The world of the symphony was never the same again.
Tadaaki Otaka's next performance is in the repertoire, War Requiem on the 22nd and 23rd of July at Hamer Hall.
Britten wrote his Requiem for the re-consecration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962, which had been destroyed by an air raid during the second World War. A lifelong pacifist, Britten interspersed traditional Requiem texts with poems by World War I poet Wilfred Owen, who died on the Western Front in 1918, aged 25, just one week before the Armistice.
