ROMANTIC FIRE, MODERN EDGE
Johannes Brahms – Sonata for Violin and Piano No.3 Op. 108
I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Un poco presto e con sentimento
IV. Presto agitato
Henri Wieniawski – Scherzo Tarentelle Op. 16
Dave Xiao, violin
Hanns Eisler – Sonata for Violin and Piano "Reisesonata" (Journey Sonata)
I. Con spirito
II. Intermezzo (Andante semplice)
Beethoven - Violin Concerto in D Op. 61
I. Allegro ma non troppo
Archie Lamont-Bowden, violin
Dave Xiao
Dave Xiao is currently studying for a Master of Music degree in Violin Performance at the University of Auckland, under the tutelage of Mark Bennett. He also completed his Bachelor of Music at the University of Auckland. As an active performer, he has appeared with various chamber and orchestral ensembles within the university and across Auckland. His musical interests span a wide range of repertoire, with a particular focus on the Classical and Romantic eras.
Throughout his studies, Dave has worked under the guidance of distinguished teachers, refining his approach to tone, phrasing, and stylistic interpretation. Dedicated to both performance and artistic growth, he continues to expand his musicianship through collaborations and concert appearances.
Archie Lamont-Bowden
Archie is an environmental science and violin performance student at the University of Auckland under the tutelage of violin professor, Mark Bennett. He enjoys playing solo, orchestral, and chamber music, and regularly performs in various groups including the Auckland Youth Orchestra and his string quartet—the Passione Quartet. He believes classical music has immense transformative powers that are enduring and relevant. The two works he will play today, which together he has loosely titled “emergence,” he hopes will speak to the audience, lift hearts, and remind us of the power of humanity in an increasingly troubled world.
Camila De Oliveira
Camila De Oliveira is a Brazilian pianist and educator who began her musical journey at the age of six. Her passion for the piano blossomed into a lifelong dedication. Camila completed her undergraduate studies in piano performance at the Faculdade de Artes Alcântara Machado in Brazil. She later broadened her musical horizons with a Postgraduate Diploma and a Master’s degree in Piano Performance with First Class Honours from the University of Auckland in 2021.
Currently pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Auckland, Camila’s research focuses on ergonomically scaled piano keyboards. A passionate collaborative pianist, she has performed with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and is a founding member of the Auckland Chamber Music Collective. Camila also teaches piano and chamber music at the University of Auckland and has received awards including the Llewelyn Jones Prize in Music for Piano and the APO Aspiring Musician Scholarship.
In 2024, she presented a lecture-recital at the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference in Melbourne and in July 2025 she presented at the National Piano Keyboard Conference in Chicago. Her career reflects her commitment to both performance and education, as well as her dedication to fostering diversity and inclusion in music.
Programme Notes
The key of D minor was one that Brahms rarely used in his large-scale instrumental works, and one is left to wonder whether the towering shadow of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—in D minor—had anything to do with his caution in settling into that tonality. Clearly the tonality aroused Brahms’ most dramatic instincts, yielding music of great urgency, strength, and emotional intensity.
The D-minor Sonata (1888), Brahms’ last of three works for the violin-piano duo and the most muscular of the set, represents the composer at the height of his powers. With all of his symphonies and concertos behind him, and with only a relatively small number of compositions yet to come from his serious and still careful pen, Brahms shows himself to be a master intellect and craftsman, here in complete control of his distinctive materials.
Scherzo-Tarantella for violin and piano op. 16, a sparkling, glittering virtuoso miniature, was written in 1855, when Wieniawski’s violin career and fame were approaching their peak, at a time when, after two years spent on a concert tour of Europe with his brother, he returned to his native Lublin to spend some time there, and then set out on further concert tours, this time alone. Scherzo was dedicated to Lambert Massart, a professor at the Paris Conservatory, who had been Wieniawski’s teacher. The work is written with panache, and provides the soloist with an opportunity to display his technical skills, but it also contains a lyrical, sweet cantilena, so characteristic of Wieniawski’s work.
Hanns Eisler's Sonata for Violin and Piano, "Reisesonate" (Journey Sonata), was composed in 1937–1938. The piece is characterized by its themes of mobility and travel, incorporating ironic allusions, and references to both political and personal contexts.
The four taps that open Beethoven’s Violin Concerto represent one of the most surprising and audacious ideas that the composer ever committed to paper. What was he thinking? Are they an echo of the military music that emanated from the French Revolution and heard all over Vienna during those warlike years? Are they setting the tempo, like those audible 1-2-3-4 counts that jazz musicians rely on? Are they a suggestion of menace or coming thunder? A way to attract the audience’s attention? Or a tune?
What makes Beethoven’s concerto different from all the other violin concertos of his time is its enormously enlarged sense of space. With four symphonies behind him, he now thought instinctively in the extended paragraphs of symphonic structure and was able to create a broad horizon within which his themes could be extended in leisurely fashion and adorned by graceful elaborations from the soloist. The four drum taps are a theme, or at least a crucial part of a theme, to be taken up by the soloist and the orchestra at various points, sometimes soft, as at the opening, sometimes brutally loud, and always highly distinctive. The other themes are elegant, often built out of rising or falling scales and sustaining a calm dignity.
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