Programme, first 1969 Youth concert 1969

Summary

Programme for the first of the 1969 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Youth concerts. Performed at the Melbourne Town Hall on 22 and 23 April, 1969. Conducted by Helen Quach with solo pianist Roger Woodward. This programme is one of over 300 Town Hall music programmes held in the collection. Dating from the 1920s until the 21st Century, these programmes document performances by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir, the annual Sun Aria Competition, as well as the performances of visiting soloists and conductors from around the world. The advertisements within the programmes are equally fascinating, featuring adverts for TAA Airlines, Berlei, Benson and Hedges cigarettes, and local Melbourne businesses selling everything from records to furs. This programme is significant because the conductor, Helen Quach, is one of the very few women to ever conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Quach was a pioneering Australian musician and conductor who had an immensely successful international career. In 1958, while still a student at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, Quach was one of two female students to win a scholarship to study under revered conductor Nikolai Malko, an achievement which is all the more impressive given that the initial announcement of the competition had specifically excluded women from competing. Quach would win further competitions to study in Italy, and in 1967 she won the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition, earning herself a position as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein famously said of Quach that “if there can be such thing as a Maestra, Miss Quach could well be it.” Throughout her career Quach conducted major orchestras all over the world, spending large amounts of time in Hong Kong, Paris, and Manilla, while also travelling as a guest conductor. Quach died in Canberra in 2013, leaving behind a legacy of immense musical success, an artist who proved that “male directors no longer have a monopoly on the podium.”