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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 24 April 2016 7pm Barbican Hall THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS London’s Symphony Orchestra Elgar The Dream of Gerontius Sir Mark Elder conductor Alice Coote mezzo-soprano Allan Clayton tenor Gerald Finley bass London Symphony Chorus Guildhall School Singers Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 8.55pm Please note that there will be no interval 2 Welcome 24 April 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to tonight’s LSO concert, a performance of BMW LSO OPEN AIR CLASSICS Elgar’s monumental oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by one of the most distinguished The LSO is delighted to announce that this year’s interpreters of Elgar’s music, Sir Mark Elder, BMW LSO Open Air Classics concert will be taking and with a stellar line-up of soloists – Alice Coote, place in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 22 May at Allan Clayton and Gerald Finley – all of whom 6.30pm. Valery Gergiev will once again be at the we are glad to welcome back again to the LSO. helm, conducting works by Tchaikovsky. Remember to arrive early to secure your place in the Square. This performance marks 100 years since World War I and, in particular, a project by the Orchestra during lso.co.uk/openair 1916 to raise funds for the War effort. In May that year, Sir Edward Elgar led the LSO on a tour of England to perform Gerontius, and donated all the proceeds LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2016 from the concerts to the Red Cross. See page 8 for an in-depth history of this ‘Festival Gerontius’. The LSO will be returning to this year’s BBC Proms Festival at the Royal Albert Hall for a performance We are also joined by the London Symphony Chorus of Mahler’s Symphony No 3 on 29 July. This will be tonight, led by the LSO’s Choral Director Simon Halsey. conducted by Bernard Haitink, who marks 50 years The LSC celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and since his first appearance at the Festival, and features you can read more about their history on page 18. mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly as the soloist. For full details, visit: I hope you can join us again on 28 April, when Sir Mark Elder returns with a programme marking bbc.co.uk/proms 100 years since the Battle of the Somme, featuring music by Butterworth, Vaughan Williams, Ravel and Debussy, with soloists Elizabeth Watts and A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS Cédric Tiberghien. The LSO offers great benefits to groups of 10+, including 20% discount on standard tickets. At these concerts we are delighted to welcome: The Elgar Society Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Lydia Frankenburg & Friends Managing Director Gerrards Cross Community Association lso.co.uk/groups London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Leif Ove Andsnes LSO Artist Portrait ‘I have no choice but to make music. I love music so much, it is just so much a part of me, that I just have to do it.’ Leif Ove Andsnes MOZART SCHUMANN LEIF OVE ANDSNES LEIF OVE ANDSNES PIANO CONCERTO NO 20 PIANO CONCERTO SOLO RECITAL & FRIENDS Sun 8 May 2016 7pm Thu 12 May 7.30pm Fri 10 Jun 7.30pm Sat 28 May 7pm, Milton Court Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 Schumann Piano Concerto Sibelius Brahms Bruckner Symphony No 3 Beethoven Symphony No 9 Three Pieces (‘Kyllikki’); The Birch; Piano Quartet No 1 in G major The Spruce; Spring Vision; Piano Quartet No 2 in A major Daniel Harding conductor Michael Tilson Thomas conductor The Forest Lake; Song in the Forest Piano Quartet No 3 in C minor Leif Ove Andsnes piano Leif Ove Andsnes piano Beethoven London Symphony Orchestra Lucy Crowe soprano Piano Sonata No 18 in E-flat major Leif Ove Andsnes piano Christine Rice mezzo-soprano Debussy Christian Tetzlaff violin Toby Spence tenor La soirée dans Grenade; Tabea Zimmermann viola London Symphony Chorus Three Études; Étude in A-flat major Clemens Hagen cello Simon Halsey chorus director Chopin Produced by the Barbican, London Symphony Orchestra Impromptu in A-flat major; not part of the LSO Season. Nocturne in F major; Visit barbican.org.uk for details. Supported by Baker & McKenzie LLP Ballade No 4 in F minor lso.co.uk Leif Ove Andsnes piano 020 7638 8891 4 Programme Notes 24 April 2016 Edward Elgar (1857–1934) The Dream of Gerontius Op 38 (1900) ALICE COOTE MEZZO-SOPRANO once the text had been purged of ‘popish’ elements: ALLAN CLAYTON TENOR the words ‘Jesus’, ‘Lord’ or ‘Saviour’ were substituted GERALD FINLEY BASS for ‘Mary’; ‘souls’ for ‘souls in purgatory’; ‘prayers’ for LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS ‘masses’, and so on. It may seem faintly bizarre now, GUILDHALL SCHOOL SINGERS but in early 20th-century England these were still SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR acutely sensitive issues. PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Today, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is a national As to the music, Elgar was a Wagnerian; and for many STEPHEN JOHNSON is the author monument. That is both a blessing and a curse. English concert-goers in 1900, Wagner was still of Bruckner Remembered (Faber). Few English music lovers would contest its status, difficult modern music. Some of it was too much even He also contributes regularly to BBC but there is a corresponding tendency to take it and for the experienced Birmingham Festival Choir: the Music Magazine and The Guardian, its content for granted. There are some who still ‘Demons’ Chorus’ and much of the semi-chorus and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 dismiss it as a more-or-less conventional expression writing came over poorly at the Birmingham premiere (Discovering Music), BBC Radio 4 of late-Victorian piety. So it’s worth remembering (accusations of sabotage were levelled at some male and the BBC World Service. that at its first performance, just over a century ago, members of the choir). The experience prompted Gerontius was thought by some to be outlandishly one of Elgar’s most bitter outbursts:‘I always said modern, while its subject matter was viewed in other God was against art … I allowed my heart to open LIBRETTO on page 10 quarters with suspicion verging on paranoia. once – it is now shut against every religious feeling and every soft, gentle impulse for ever’. The text of The Dream of Gerontius – by the Roman JOHN HENRY NEWMAN Catholic convert Cardinal John Henry Newman – But the work’s fortunes soon began to change – (1801–1890) started out as an is full of doctrine which had been rejected by the especially when, after the 1901 German premiere of Anglican priest and academic, then Protestant churches during the Reformation. The sole Gerontius, Richard Strauss publicly toasted Elgar as converted to Catholicism in 1845. human character, the dying Gerontius (the name ‘the first English Meister’ – high praise indeed from He is most associated with the derives from the Greek geron, meaning ‘old man’), the world’s most celebrated Wagnerian. Elgar’s close Oxford Movement, which tried to prays for assistance to the Virgin Mary and other friend and musical confidant August Jaeger (the reinstate older traditions of the saints; and after his soul-searching encounter with ‘Nimrod’ of the ‘Enigma’ Variations) was also struck Church into Anglican theology and God at the climax of Part Two, Gerontius doesn’t by the work’s Wagnerian character and ambitions. liturgy. This eventually developed simply pass into heaven, but is committed to While Elgar was still working on the score he wrote: into Anglo-Catholicism. Purgatory for a long and possibly painful process ‘Since Parsifal nothing of this mystic, religious kind of of purification. For some Protestants, this would music has appeared to my knowledge that displays have been dangerous heresy. the same power and beauty as yours. Like Wagner you seem to grow with your greater, more difficult When Gerontius was proposed at the 1902 Three subject and I am now most curious and anxious to Choirs Festival, the Bishop of Worcester objected – know how you will deal with that part of the poem and there were plenty who supported him. where the Soul goes within the presence of the Performance in the Cathedral was only permitted almighty. There is a subject for you!’ lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 IN BRIEF But at that crucial point in the story Elgar’s Some sections – like the Angel’s beautiful lullaby The Dream of Gerontius is an Wagnerian nerve temporarily failed him. ‘Please ‘Softly and gently’ at the end of Part Two – can oratorio, set to a text by the remember that none of the ‘action’ takes place in be performed separately, with the help of a Roman Catholic Cardinal John the presence of God’, he replied to Jaeger. ‘I would little surgery; but there are details (for instance Henry Newman, telling the not have tried that, neither did Newman. The Soul recollections of earlier themes) which only make story of a devout man named says ‘I go before my God’ – but we don’t – we stand complete sense if this music is heard in its proper Gerontius. On his deathbed, outside’. Fortunately, Jaeger was unimpressed, and place. And the sense of sustained symphonic current Gerontius prays with a group of began a campaign to get the composer to have is essential to the work’s message. Early in Part friends, and the music traces the another go: ‘I have tried and tried and tried, but it Two, Gerontius’ disembodied soul describes how ‘a journey from his peaceful death seems to me the weakest page of the work! Do uniform and gentle pressure tells me that I am not to judgement and redemption in re-write it! … It seems mere whining to me and self-moving, but borne forward on my way.’ Elgar’s Purgatory – coming into contact not at all impressive’.