The Four Winds festival finale for 2022 is a celebratory ritual that physically encompasses the Four Winds Sound Shell, animating the site with a series of unexpected musical, performance and audience experiences. Heading our terrific line-up of performers is one of Australia’s most celebrated musicians: composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist, William Barton. Through his appearances with orchestras around the world, with his prodigious musicality underpinned by his Kalkadunga heritage, Barton has vastly expanded the horizons of the didgeridoo, and the cultures and landscapes it represents. In the shimmering afternoon light of the spotted gum forest, Barton will give a special Four Winds performance of two of his most powerful works, Petrichor and the beautiful Birdsong at Dusk.

Surrounding Barton in this exuberant finale is a star-studded ensemble of musicians, concluding with a stirring performance of Tan Dun’s Prayer and Blessing, created in response to Covid 19, with a message of community within its text by Chinese philosopher Laozi.

Featuring

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Jaime Martín conductor
William Barton yidaki (didgeridoo)

Program

Haydn Symphony No.6 Le matin
Deborah Cheetham Baparripna (World premiere of an MSO Commission)
Mahler Symphony No.1

About this performance

The MSO ushers in a bold new era with Jaime Martín at the helm as Chief Conductor, in this optimistic program exploring new beginnings.

• Joseph Haydn spent thirty years working as resident composer and music director for the Hungarian aristocratic family the Eszterházys. In his first year in the position, Haydn wrote Symphony No.6 Le matin (the morning). This sprightly work is sprinkled with instrumental solos, which will showcase the talented members of the MSO.

• MSO First Nations Creative Chair Deborah Cheetham AO will collaborate with William Barton for the first time to create a new work for orchestra and didgeridoo, Baparripna (Yorta Yorta - Dawn): "Waking beneath our mutual sky, all the sweetness of life’s possibilities laid out before us. Dawn sits peacefully and powerfully on the endless horizon of longing for our return. Time has ceased to be linear, if it ever was and Gorngany’s* carolling fills the air pierced with blue solitude. We walk together with our ancestors in this rare light, as our dreams are carried away by the morning star."
  *Yorta Yorta name for Magpie

• Gustav Mahler described the first movement of his First Symphony as the “awakening of nature from a long winter sleep”. This lyrical symphony continues on with a multitude of inspirations: Mahler drew on everything from past romantic entanglements, a nineteenth century woodcut print, a funeral march, and a nursery rhyme!

Featuring

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Jaime Martín conductor
William Barton yidaki (didgeridoo)

Program

Haydn Symphony No.6 Le matin
Deborah Cheetham Baparripna (World premiere of an MSO Commission)
Mahler Symphony No.1

About this performance

The MSO ushers in a bold new era with Jaime Martín at the helm as Chief Conductor, in this optimistic program exploring new beginnings.

• Joseph Haydn spent thirty years working as resident composer and music director for the Hungarian aristocratic family the Eszterházys. In his first year in the position, Haydn wrote Symphony No.6 Le matin (the morning). This sprightly work is sprinkled with instrumental solos, which will showcase the talented members of the MSO.

• MSO First Nations Creative Chair Deborah Cheetham AO will collaborate with William Barton for the first time to create a new work for orchestra and didgeridoo, Baparripna (Yorta Yorta - Dawn): "Waking beneath our mutual sky, all the sweetness of life’s possibilities laid out before us. Dawn sits peacefully and powerfully on the endless horizon of longing for our return. Time has ceased to be linear, if it ever was and Gorngany’s* carolling fills the air pierced with blue solitude. We walk together with our ancestors in this rare light, as our dreams are carried away by the morning star."
  *Yorta Yorta name for Magpie

• Gustav Mahler described the first movement of his First Symphony as the “awakening of nature from a long winter sleep”. This lyrical symphony continues on with a multitude of inspirations: Mahler drew on everything from past romantic entanglements, a nineteenth century woodcut print, a funeral march, and a nursery rhyme!