2025 is the 75th anniversary of the Preston Symphony Orchestra and the opening concert for the year marks the occasion with a bang. Shostakovich is frequently requested by the orchestra’s players and his Festive Overture makes for a celebratory start. A core part of the orchestra’s identity is the annual Youth Concerto Competition – and the first concert of the year features violinist Anne-Marie Johnson, the winner of the Youth Concerto Competition in 2008, now Acting Associate Concertmaster at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. She is returning to Preston in 2025 as the soloist in Bruch’s awe-inspiring first violin concerto. Contemporary Australian music is also an important part of PSO. The concert concludes with Katy Abbott’s recent work Hidden Thoughts 3: Stories of Awe in a version specially commissioned for community orchestra.
The Music
Shostakovich
Festive Overture
Bruch
Violin Concerto No.1
Katy Abbott
Hidden Thoughts: Stories of Awe
Shostakovich Festive Overture
The Festive Overture has become of Shostakovich’s most frequently played works, and yet it was written in only three days. It was commissioned by the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow to mark the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution, the beginning of the Russian revolution in 1917. According to later sources, couriers were sent to Shostakovich’s apartment to collect pages while he worked on it, so that parts could be copied for the orchestra in time for the premiere on November 6, 1954. It opens with a brass fanfare and continues in an exuberant vein, ‘its vivacious energy spilling over like uncorked champagne’ said one enthusiast at the time.
Bruch Violin concerto no 1
Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1, premiered in 1866, has earned its place as one of the most popular works for solo violin. It is quintessential Romanticism, pulling on the listener’s emotions with beautiful melodic lines and rich orchestration. Its three movements have contrasting colours: from the earthiness of the first movement, to the lushness of the second, before the dance-like finale of the third. Considerable demands of the soloist are made throughout, requiring them to balance virtuosic technique with passion.
Katy Abbott Hidden Thoughts: Stories of Awe
Katy Abbott is an established composer of works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and voice. She has received a succession of awards, undertaken residencies in Australia and overseas, and is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
The Hidden Thoughts series consists of three works, each of which incorporates written text from the public. The first, titled ‘Do I matter?’ and composed in 2017, was based on anonymous women’s responses to questions about their own ‘hidden thoughts’. The second, called ‘Return to Sender’ and written in 2020, is based on letters sent by members of the Australian public in 2013 to asylum seekers detained in Nauru, an initiative proposed by human rights lawyer Julian Burnside. When the intended recipients were not permitted to receive the letters, they were returned to Australia where many were collected by Burnside and later made available to Katy Abbott.
The third in the Hidden Thoughts series had its world premiere in Melbourne in August 2024. Its composition began with a survey asking the public for their ‘stories of awe’. These responses became the basis for the work’s libretto, which is performed by two singers and spoken narration, alongside a varied role for the orchestra – from supportive accompanist to spirited accomplice, it shines brightly with a succession of solos by different instruments. The work traverses a range of emotions and experiences, from the extraordinary to the everyday, sometimes bleak and at other times joyous.
Anne-Marie Johnson
Anne-Marie was the winner of the Preston Symphony Orchestra Youth Concerto Competition in 2008, playing the first movement of the Bruch Violin Concerto No 1. Looking back, she says ‘it was a pivotal point in my career and remains one of my most cherished memories’. She returns to perform the complete concerto in 2025 as the Acting Assistant Concertmaster, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Anne-Marie joined the 1st violin section of the MSO in January 2018, after completing a master’s degree in Geneva, Switzerland. This followed studies at the Australian National Academy of Music, with William Hennessy, and the Sydney Conservatorium. Anne-Marie has participated in masterclasses and had lessons with many extraordinary artists including James Ehnes, Christian Tetzlaff, Donald Weilerstein, Arabella Steinbacher, Tasmin Little, Dong Suk-Kang, the Borodin Quartet, the Tokyo String Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet and the Takacs Quartet.
Anne-Marie has won a succession of awards in Australia and overseas, and appeared as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Corpus Medicorum and the ANAM orchestra. She was a founding member of the Australian Octet and has performed chamber music in the Musica Viva, Vasse Felix, Port Fairy Spring Music and Melbourne Festivals.
Andrew O’Connor (Bass-Baritone)
Perth-born Andrew O’Connor appears regularly with many of Australia’s leading music organisations in a career that encompasses opera, the concert platform, vocal chamber music, and the classroom. He has been praised for his ‘remarkable musicianship’ (Limelight Magazine) and ‘textured, fine-wine bass baritone’ (Arts Hub).
This year, he appears in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Sydney Opera House, in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Handel’s Messiah with Pinchgut Opera, as well as touring projects for the Australian Vocal Ensemble and The Song Company. He is a Lay Clerk at St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney which tours to Rome, Vienna, and Munich this year.
Other recent highlights Bach’s St John Passion with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Faure’s Requiem with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Harapha in Handel’s Samson for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.
In 2023 he joined the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco. In an educational capacity he teaches at Sydney Grammar School and the award-winning regional arts program, Moorambilla Voices.
Sunny Kim
Sunny Kim is an award-winning vocalist, composer, and improviser based in Australia. Her artistic evolution has taken her through cities like Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Denver, Boston, New York, and Melbourne, reflecting her deep dedication to exploring the intricate interplay between culture, identity, and human connection through music.
As a member of renowned ensembles such as Hand to Earth, Cloud Maker, and Tower Divas and leads Ensemble Ochaye, Sunny weaves multicultural diasporic stories into musical performances. Her intercultural collaborations feature long-term work with First Nations artists, including Yolngu musicians Daniel and David Wilfred and Gambirra Illume, and Māori musicians Te Kahureremoa and Whaia Sonic Weaver.
Her accolades include wins in the Jazz People’s Magazine Reader’s Poll for Best Vocalist and the APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Performance of the Year in Jazz/Improvised Music (2023).
In addition to her artistic practice, Sunny lectures at the University of Melbourne, shaping the next generation of musical innovators while championing creative exchange and cultural dialogue through her interdisciplinary work.