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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music A WARM WELCOME TO Wednesday 3 February 2016 7.30pm OUR GROUPS Barbican Hall The LSO offers great benefits LSO STRING ENSEMBLE for groups of 10+, including 20% discount on standard Elgar Introduction and Allegro tickets. We are delighted Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis to welcome: INTERVAL Vaughan Williams Phantasy Quintet Hannah Dummett and Britten Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Friends Roman Simovic director LSO String Ensemble lso.co.uk/groups Concert finishes at approx 9.30pm 2 Welcome 3 February 2016 Programme Notes 3 Welcome Sir Edward Elgar (1837–1934) Kathryn McDowell Introduction and Allegro for Strings Op 47 Welcome to the Barbican for this evening’s concert with the LSO PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER The sound of a string orchestra seems to possess a uniquely String Ensemble, directed by the Orchestra’s Leader Roman Simovic. WENDY THOMPSON ‘English’ flavour. Elgar’s two masterly examples – the early Serenade The string section’s sound is a defining feature of the LSO, and we Having studied at the Royal College of 1892 and the later Introduction and Allegro – in turn inspired works are delighted to present the strings following recent concerts by their of Music, Wendy took an MMus by Vaughan Williams, Holst, Warlock, Lennox Berkeley, Britten and colleagues in the woodwind, percussion and brass sections. in musicology at King’s College, Tippett, among others. The key to this love affair with string timbre London. In addition to writing may lie in Elgar’s own response, when asked for the secret of his Tonight’s programme consists entirely of British music for strings about music she is Executive understanding of string instruments: ‘Study old Handel. I went to written during the first half of the 20th century by composers Director of Classic Arts Productions, him for help ages ago’. whose work was championed by the LSO in their day. We open with a a major supplier of independent work by Sir Edward Elgar, a former Principal Conductor of the LSO. programmes to BBC Radio. In October 1904 Elgar’s friend and editor August Jaeger suggested The Introduction and Allegro was premiered by the LSO, but it was that the composer should write a new piece for the newly formed only later on tour with the Orchestra that Elgar confided in a friend London Symphony Orchestra. By late January 1905 Elgar told Jaeger: that he had ‘at last’ got it played as he wished. ‘I’m doing that string thing in time for the Sym. Orch. concert. Intro. & Allegro – no working-out part but a devil of a fugue instead …’. Vaughan Williams also had a strong relationship with the LSO – The new piece incorporated a theme with a falling third which Elgar especially through recordings of his symphonies. Tonight we play his had sketched down some years earlier after hearing some distant well known Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and the lesser singing during a holiday on the Cardiganshire coast, but he confessed known Phantasy Quintet. We conclude the programme with Britten’s that ‘the work really is a tribute to that sweet borderland Malvern Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, a tribute to the composer’s where I have made my home’. former teacher. Elgar conducted the premiere of the Introduction and Allegro with I hope you enjoy tonight’s concert and can join us again on EDWARD ELGAR was largely the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra at the Queen’s Hall in 16 February, when the Orchestra returns with conductor Sir John self-taught as a player and London on 8 March 1905. To his dismay it did not go down well at first, Eliot Gardiner for an all-Mendelssohn programme that opens our composer and during his early and only gained true recognition as a much-loved masterpiece in the Shakespeare 400 concert series. freelance career, which included second half of the 20th century. work conducting the staff band at the County Lunatic Asylum The Introduction and Allegro is designed as a concertante piece in Powick, he suffered many for string orchestra, highlighting a solo quartet within the main body setbacks. It was not until he wrote of strings. After a powerful, majestic Introduction comes a gently Kathryn McDowell the Variations on an Original undulating theme which forms the basis of the Allegro, and which LSO Managing Director CBE DL Theme ‘Enigma’ (1898–99) and his Elgar described in Shakespearean terms as ‘Smiling with a sigh’. oratorio The Dream of Gerontius The ‘Welsh tune’, with its characteristic falling third, is given to a ENJOY MORE ELGAR AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMS THIS APRIL (1900) that he cemented his solo viola. But instead of a development section Elgar worked the position as England’s finest material up into his ‘devil of a fugue’, which eventually leads to a Sun 24 Apr 7pm, Barbican Thu 28 Apr 7.30pm composer. Elgar, who was knighted return of the opening Allegro section. in 1904, became the LSO’s Elgar The Dream of Gerontius Butterworth A Shropshire Lad Vaughan Williams A Pastoral Symphony* Principal Conductor in 1911 and Sir Mark Elder conductor Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand premiered many of his works with with Alice Coote, Allan Clayton and Gerald Finley Debussy La Mer the Orchestra. Sir Mark Elder conductor Composer Profiles © Andrew Stewart with Elizabeth Watts* and Cédric Tiberghien Book now lso.co.uk | 020 7638 8891 4 Programme Notes 3 February 2016 lso.co.uk/lunchtimeconcerts Programme Notes 5 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910) Phantasy Quintet (1912) Vaughan Williams’ most famous Fantasia sprang from a combination 1 PRELUDE: LENTO MA NON TROPPO – of passions: his absorption in Tudor music and English folk song, 2 SCHERZO: PRESTISSIMO – collecting, and from his editorship of The English Hymnal, which 3 ALLA SARABANDA: LENTO – THE ENGLISH HYMNAL was, as occupied him almost exclusively from 1904 to 1906. Several of 4 BURLESCA: ALLEGRO MODERATO – POCO PIÙ MOSSO – ANDANTE – it said in the preface, ‘A collection the tunes included in the Hymnal influenced his own subsequent TEMPO DEL PRELUDIO – POCO PIÙ MOSSO – ANDANTE of the best hymns in the English compositions, including the third of nine Psalm tunes by the language’ published by the Church Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis, originally printed in Archbishop Vaughan Williams’ modest output of chamber music includes two of England in 1906. Parker’s metrical Psalter of 1567. This melody, in the Phrygian mode, string quartets and this Phantasy Quintet for two violins, two violas is set in the English Hymnal to Addison’s words ‘When rising from the and cello. The Quintet was composed in 1912 at the suggestion bed of death’. of the wealthy amateur violinist and chamber music enthusiast WW Cobbett, who, apart from publishing a Cyclopaedic Survey of In 1910, Vaughan Williams was commissioned to write a piece for the Chamber Music in 1929, established a composition prize in 1905 for Three Choirs Festival. His piece was to be performed in Gloucester chamber works he described as ‘phantasies’. These were inspired by Cathedral alongside Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and Elgar’s the sectional Elizabethan instrumental fantasy, and usually comprised Introduction and Allegro probably inspired Vaughan Williams to single-movement works or else several short movements played use the same forces in a Fantasia based on Tallis’ psalm melody. continuously, like a compressed sonata. He conducted the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra at the work’s premiere on 6 September 1910. On the whole, the critics Distinguished winners of the Cobbett prize included Bridge, Britten received it coolly, and after its London premiere in February 1913, and Ireland, but Vaughan Williams’ Quintet, although it falls into this Vaughan Williams withdrew it for substantial revision. It took another category, was never entered for the competition. It comprises four two decades for the work to be recognised as a minor masterpiece, ATTACCA, meaning ‘to tie’ short movements, played ‘attacca’, and woven together by a single, and it has since been one of the composer’s most popular and in Italian, is a performance pentatonic theme of a folksong-like quality, which is introduced frequently performed pieces. direction to indicate that the next by a solo viola (an instrument much loved by Vaughan Williams). movement of a piece of music is RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Fantasia is scored for double string orchestra of unequal size to begin immediately after the end The Prelude unwinds quietly and slowly, with the theme largely was born in Gloucestershire on (the second consists of only nine players), from which the section of the previous one, sometimes passed between first viola and first violin, returning at the end to the 12 October 1872 and enjoyed a leaders emerge as a solo quartet Vaughan Williams took as his even taking the form of a musical viola. The ensuing Scherzo begins with a spiky cello ostinato, over musical upbringing. In 1890 he starting point Tallis’ original harmonisation of his modal melody, elision. which the jaunty, syncopated theme is passed between the other enrolled at the Royal College of and based his structure on the sectional concept of the Tudor instruments. The cello is silent and the other instruments muted Music, becoming a pupil of Sir fantasia. The theme itself appears in various embellished guises, during the slow Sarabanda, in which the first violin and first viola Hubert Parry. Weekly lessons before reappearing in its original grandeur in the closing section. engage in dialogue through a long-breathed melody. The cello returns at the RCM continued when he to open the final Burlesca with a pompous ostinato bass, over which entered Trinity College, Cambridge, the other instruments enter in counterpoint, becoming increasingly in 1892.