Sunday 8 March 2020 7–9.05pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT RAVEL & STRAUSS Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten – Symphonic Fantasy CANELLAKIS Ravel Piano Concerto in G major Interval Strauss Death and Transfiguration Ravel La valse Karina Canellakis conductor Cédric Tiberghien piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog In the second half, Karina Canellakis 2020/21 SEASON ANNOUNCED VILDE FRANG ON continues her pairing of these composers BRITTEN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO with Strauss’ tone poem Death and The LSO’s 2020/21 season has been Transfiguration and Ravel’s choreographic announced, and opens for public booking ‘It is one of the most important pieces I have poem La valse. online on 16 March, with LSO Friends ever played and it has enriched my life. I’m receiving priority booking. In Sir Simon very much looking forward to working with I hope that you enjoy tonight’s concert and Rattle’s words, ‘In the 2020/21 season we the LSO, especially as it is the Orchestra that you are able to join us again soon. Later are launching something completely new. I first heard playing the concerto.’ Vilde Frang this month, Sir Antonio Pappano continues Our theme is ‘Dancing on the Edge of a introduces Britten’s Violin Concerto ahead to explore the music of British composers Volcano’, a phrase Alban Berg and others of her performance on 15 March. with a programme of Vaughan Williams used to describe the atmosphere in Germany warm welcome to this evening’s and Britten, and Principal Guest Conductor in the 1930s, as Europe lay on the cusp of ON SPRING’S STRAD CONCERTS LSO concert at the Barbican. François-Xavier Roth returns for a series of fascism. It’s an extraordinary expression AND THE ‘EX KREISLER’ DEL GESÙ We are delighted to welcome concerts featuring the music of Bartók and that inspires us to explore what was Karina Canellakis, who tonight makes her Dukas, including presenting a Half Six Fix happening in the musical world in the We turn our attention to some of the violins LSO conducting debut with a beautifully performance on 18 March. • first half of the 20th century.’ (and violinists) that will be gracing the crafted programme of music by Richard Barbican stage with the LSO in spring. Strauss and Ravel, opening the concert • lso.co.uk/2021 with the suite from the former’s opera • lso.co.uk/more/blog Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow). GROUP BOOKERS Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major follows, Managing Director Groups of ten or more receive exclusive for which we welcome soloist Cédric discounts to LSO concerts, with 20% off all Tiberghien. Since making his debut with ticket prices, or 30% off when booking two Please ensure all phones are switched off. the Orchestra in 2011, Cédric Tiberghien or more concerts within the season at the Photography and audio/video recording has built a strong rapport with the LSO same time. Extra benefits are available to are not permitted during the performance. and its audiences through his numerous larger groups. appearances both at LSO St Luke’s and on the Barbican main stage, and it is a pleasure Find out more at to have him join us again tonight. • lso.co.uk/groups 2 Welcome 8 March 2020 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up onight’s programme explores PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Thursday 12 March 7.30pm Sunday 15 March 7pm themes of life, love, the soul and Barbican Barbican mortality in the works of Richard David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts Strauss and Ravel, opening with the suite on music, notably for BBC Radio 3 and LA MER VAUGHAN WILLIAMS & BRITTEN from the former’s opera Die Frau ohne BBC Music Magazine. His books include Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow). studies of Strauss, Elgar, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák Violin Concerto Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme Composing in parallel with librettist Hugo Stravinsky, and a Prokofiev biography, Kaija Saariaho Laterna Magica by Thomas Tallis von Hofmannsthal, who drew on material From Russia to the West 1891–1935. Debussy La mer Britten Violin Concerto from The Arabian Nights and the Grimm Vaughan Williams Symphony No 6 brothers’ fairy tales, Strauss displays in Andrew Stewart is a freelance music journalist Susanna Mälkki conductor this opera, and indeed its suite, some of his and writer. He is the author of The LSO at 90, Gil Shaham violin Sir Antonio Pappano conductor most complicated and colourful music. His and contributes to a wide variety of specialist Vilde Frang violin tone poem too, Death and Transfiguration, classical music publications. 6pm Barbican is vivid and changing, depicting an artist LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists 5.30pm Barbican reminiscing on his whole life, with all its Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Free pre-concert recital LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists innocence, struggles and dreams, in the Remembered (Faber). He also contributes Free pre-concert recital moments before his death. regularly to BBC Music Magazine and The Friday 13 March 1–2pm Guardian, and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 LSO St Luke’s Recommended by Classic FM Ravel is Strauss’ companion in tonight’s (Discovering Music), BBC Radio 4 and the concert, the Piano Concerto in G major BBC World Service. BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERT Wednesday 18 March 6.30pm blending the Basque and Spanish sounds of RUSSIAN ROOTS Barbican Ravel’s youth with the jazz influences of his Jeremy Thurlow is a composer whose music travels around the US. La valse concludes ranges from chamber and orchestral to video- Katharina Konradi takes us on a journey HALF SIX FIX the programme; a work which, with all its opera. Author of a book on Dutilleux and a through Russian song, from the romance BARTÓK musical and emotional turbulence and frequent broadcaster on Radio 3, Jeremy is a of Rachmaninoff to intimate settings of brilliance, has been analysed as a metaphor Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. Russian poetry, and a selection of evocative Bartók Dance Suite for Europe in the aftermath of World War I, songs without words. Bartók The Wooden Prince though the composer himself denied it. It sees the orchestra gradually moving Katharina Konradi soprano François-Xavier Roth conductor & presenter through a series of waltzes, each with their Gaspard Trio own individual character, whirling their way Recommended by Classic FM towards a final dismissive cadence. • Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3 Tonight’s Concert 3 Richard Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten – Symphonic Fantasy 1946 / note by David Nice trauss’ most Wagnerian opera Work on Die Frau ohne Schatten was Passing over the crisis at the end of that • COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE came on the rebound from the interrupted by Hofmannsthal’s military act, we hear the noble duet of new-found touch of Mozart in his incidental service in World War I. Strauss lost some devotion between Barak and his wife in Popular in Europe between the 16th music for an adaptation of Molière’s Le interest in what he called this ‘massive and limbo at the beginning of Act 3, the baritone and 18th centuries, commedia dell’arte Bourgeois gentilhomme, and the ‘little artificial fairy story’ and longed to return to voice taken by trombone. Another trial is originated in Italy as an early form of chamber opera’ – Ariadne auf Naxos – comedy; he also felt that it was irresponsible skipped and the happy end becomes ever theatre characterised by masked figures, embedded within, its first version completed to go for grandeur in an atmosphere of more elaborate in its counterpoint, mostly pantomime and exaggerated characters. in 1912. There, mythological figures clashed post-war austerity. As a result, the work of themes not encountered in the fantasia with characters from the Italian commedia is a mixture of first-rate Strauss and, in up to this point; it ends, like the opera, • MEPHISTOPHELES dell’arte • in a theatrical misalliance. In Die Act Three, some of that note-spinning he with the twittering hymn of unborn children Frau ohne Schatten, they are archetypes could produce to order. He wasn’t entirely celebrating two now-happy couples. • Mephistopheles is a fictional character and created by the same literary genius, Strauss’ happy with the fantasia he pieced together demon in German folklore, who originated house poet, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The in 1946 either, though it contains some of in the legend of Faust. He appears to Faust, ‘woman without a shadow’ of the title is the the opera’s best music. We first hear the acting as the devil’s representative, and fairy Empress in a so-far infertile marriage to massive intoning of the spirit god Keikobad’s makes a bargain with him so he can indulge an unimaginative earthly ruler; she must win motif in the depths of the orchestra, and in pleasure and knowledge of the world. a shadow or he will turn to stone. The source a hint of the Nurse’s deviousness, before Faust’s soul and eternal enslavement is recommended by her Mephistophelian • jumping to the beautiful Schubertian the bargaining chip. nurse is a discontented woman married to a interlude depicting Barak’s goodness, benevolent if over-complacent dyer, Barak. which will be crucial in the Empress’s choice. Will the other woman give up her shadow? His wife’s fantasies are catered for as the Can the Empress purchase her happiness Nurse conjures them up in an iridescent, at the price of someone else’s suffering? silk-and-spangles vision, which leads us on The message turns out to be about love to the woman’s weird dance in Act 2: part and compassion, like so much in Wagner; Salome, part Witch from Humperdinck’s the two couples must respectively become Hansel and Gretel.