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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Thursday 12 May 2016 7.30pm Barbican Hall LSO ARTIST PORTRAIT: LEIF OVE ANDSNES Schumann Piano Concerto INTERVAL Beethoven Symphony No 9 (‘Choral’) Michael Tilson Thomas conductor Leif Ove Andsnes piano Lucy Crowe soprano London’s Symphony Orchestra Christine Rice mezzo-soprano Toby Spence tenor Iain Paterson bass London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 9.50pm Supported by Baker & McKenzie 2 Welcome 12 May 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief A very warm welcome to tonight’s LSO performance BMW LSO OPEN AIR CLASSICS 2016 at the Barbican. This evening we are joined by Michael Tilson Thomas for his first concert since the The fifth annual BMW LSO Open Air Classics announcement of his appointment as LSO Conductor concert will take place on Sunday 22 May at 6.30pm. Laureate from September 2016, in recognition of Conducted by Valery Gergiev, the LSO will perform his wonderful music-making with the LSO and his an all-Tchaikovsky programme in London’s Trafalgar extraordinary commitment to the Orchestra. We are Square, free and open to all. delighted that his relationship with the LSO will go from strength to strength. lso.co.uk/openair This evening is the second concert in our LSO Artist Portrait series, focusing on pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2016 Following his performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 on Sunday, he returns to play Schumann’s The LSO will be returning to this year’s BBC Proms at Piano Concerto. The Orchestra is also joined this the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Mahler’s evening by the London Symphony Chorus, led by Symphony No 3 on 29 July. This will be conducted by the LSO’s Choral Director Simon Halsey, and soloists Bernard Haitink, who marks 50 years since his first Lucy Crowe, Christine Rice, Toby Spence and Iain appearance at the Festival, and features mezzo- Paterson. The performance of Beethoven’s Ninth soprano Sarah Connolly as the soloist. Tickets are Symphony forms part of the LSC’s 50th anniversary on sale now. For full details, visit: season, a great milestone in the history of the Chorus. bbc.co.uk/proms Sincere thanks to Baker & McKenzie for their generous sponsorship of this evening’s concert and invaluable support as the LSO’s legal partner A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS for over 15 years. The LSO offers great benefits to groups of 10+, We hope you enjoy this evening’s concert, and look including 20% discount on standard tickets. forward to welcoming you to the Barbican again At tonight’s concert we are delighted to welcome: soon. The LSO Artist Portrait concludes on 10 June with Leif Ove Andsnes’ solo recital. Farnham U3A Concert Club Gerrards Cross Community Association Witham Choral Society Richard Wimberley & Friends Brett Shirley & Friends West Wickham Recorded Music Society Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director lso.co.uk/groups A law firm of note. Baker & McKenzie has a passion for the Arts, which is why we are proud to sponsor the concert tonight. We hope you enjoy the performance. www.bakermckenzie.com Baker & McKenzie International is a Swiss Verein with member law firms around the world. In accordance with the common terminology used in professional service organizations, reference to a “partner” means a person who is a partner, or equivalent, in such a law firm. Similarly, reference to an “office” means an office of any such law firm. 2916MAR_LSO_April2016.indd 1 08/04/2016 11:24:20 4 Programme Notes 12 May 2016 Robert Schumann (1810–56) Piano Concerto in A minor Op 54 (1841–45) 1 ALLEGRO AFFETTUOSO regain health and stability. And before he started the 2 INTERMEZZO GRAZIOSO – symphony, Schumann added two more movements 3 ALLEGRO VIVACE to the Fantasie, thus creating his Piano Concerto. How long the ideas for these two movements had LEIF OVE ANDSNES PIANO been incubating in his mind is impossible to say, but it is certain that the act of putting them to One of the most impressive paper was a major step forward on his road to features of Schumann’s only psychological recovery. Piano Concerto is its remarkable The result was one of Schumann’s most daring organic unity. and romantically delightful works. It is easy to single out innovatory elements: the piano’s striking, PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER So many ideas in this richly imaginative work stem in downward-plunging opening gesture – after a single STEPHEN JOHNSON one way or another from the lovely first movement’s incisive chord from the full orchestra – is unlike melody (wind, then solo piano) that follows the the beginning of any concerto before. It clearly left Concerto’s arresting opening. So it comes as quite a a strong impression on the Norwegian composer surprise to discover that the concerto was actually Edvard Grieg, who began his famous Piano Concerto written in two separate instalments, and at two (also in A minor) with a strikingly similar gesture. very different times in Schumann’s life. The first And although Schumann’s first movement appears movement was originally written as a self-sufficient to be full of melodic ideas, most of these derive Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra in 1841 – the year directly from the original wind-piano tune – so that also saw the composition of the First Symphony, much so that the movement has been described the original version of the Fourth, and the orchestral as ’monothematic’, also very unusual for an early Overture, Scherzo and Finale. Schumann’s long- 19th-century concerto. thwarted marriage to the brilliant concert pianist CLARA SCHUMANN (1819–96) Clara Wieck the previous year had released a torrent But it is the dream-like quality Schumann brings (née Wieck) was one of the most of creativity: the first years of their life together to this kind of intricate thematic development distinguished pianists of her era and saw the production of some of his finest pieces, that is most original. The piano writing may be a frequent performance partner of often composed at breathtaking speed. challenging, but the real challenge is to the player’s violinist Josef Joachim. Her legacy poetic imagination rather than his or her virtuosity. is still felt today: she was one of Then, in 1844, after Robert and Clara had returned Even the first movement’s solo cadenza is more like the first performers to play from from a concert tour of Russia, Schumann experienced a meditation than a bravura display. In general the memory, and was instrumental in a crippling mental breakdown, followed by a terrible relationship between the piano and the orchestra establishing her husband’s works in plunge into depression. At the end of the year he is neither as one-sided nor as competitive as in the repertoire, as well as works such and Clara moved to Dresden with their two children, most Romantic concertos. Tender intimacy is much as Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, where gradually his spirits began to recover. For a more typical. A couple of years before he began the which had fallen out of favour after long time he was unable to compose, but by the end first movement, Schumann had written of his hope its 1859 premiere. of 1845 he completed his Second Symphony, a work that a new kind of ’genius’ might soon emerge: one which bears powerful witness to his struggles to ’who will show us in a newer and more brilliant way lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 Robert Schumann Composer Profile how orchestra and piano may be combined, how The youngest son of a Saxon bookseller, Robert the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold Schumann was encouraged by his father to study the wealth of his instrument and his art, while music. Soon after his tenth birthday in 1820, young the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may Robert began taking piano lessons in his home interweave its manifold facets into the scene’. town of Zwickau. Although Schumann enrolled as In the Piano Concerto he fulfilled his own prophecy. a law student at Leipzig University in 1828, music remained an overriding passion and he continued to The chamber music-like intimacy continues through study piano with Friedrich Wieck. The early death of the gentle Intermezzo Schumann placed as the his father and two of his three brothers influenced Concerto’s second movement, and again the way Schumann’s appreciation of the world’s suffering, in which one motif seems to unfold from another intensified further by his readings of Romantic poets is achieved with great subtlety and ingenuity. Just such as Novalis, Byron and Hölderlin and his own before the end of the movement comes a wonderful experiments as poet and playwright. Schumann inspiration. Clarinets and bassoons recall the seminal composed a number of songs in his youth, but it was first phrase of the first movement’s original melody – not until he fell in love with and became secretly first in the major key, then in the minor – while the engaged to the teenage Clara Wieck in September piano adds magical liquid figurations (as though COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER 1837 that he seriously began to exploit his song- dreamily recalling the Concerto’s arresting opening). STEPHEN JOHNSON writing gift. Besides welcoming the financial return that published Lieder (songs) could deliver, Schumann Then the finale launches suddenly into an exhilarating, was also able to preserve his intense feelings for seemingly unstoppable waltz momentum. It is hard to Clara in the richly expressive medium of song. believe that the man who wrote this gloriously alive dance music was, at the time, emerging from chronic The personal nature of Schumann’s art even depression.