Rameau, Purcell & Handel
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Sunday 15 December 2019 7–9.20pm Milton Court Concert Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT RAMEAU, PURCELL & HANDEL Purcell The Fairy Queen – Suite LSO Handel Water Music – Suite No 1 Interval Rameau Two Arias from Castor and Pollux Rameau Dardanus – Suite Emmanuelle Haïm conductor & harpsichord Lucy Crowe soprano Reinoud Van Mechelen tenor CHAMBER LSO Chamber Orchestra Welcome Latest News On Our Blog Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen earlier LSO PANUFNIK COMPOSERS SCHEME: LSO DISCOVERY SINGING DAY: this year, and Reinoud Van Mechelen, who APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES makes his debut with the LSO. Applications for the 2020/21 LSO Panufnik ‘Writing Christ on the Mount of Olives, I hope that you enjoy tonight’s concert Composers Scheme are now open. Generously Beethoven laid the groundwork for oratorios and that you are able to join us again supported by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, and soon. On Thursday, Principal Guest Hamlyn Trust, the scheme offers six emerging Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas!’, explains Conductor François-Xavier Roth conducts composers each year the opportunity to Choral Director Simon Halsey. Read about the Orchestra, joined by soloist Alisa write for the LSO, guided by composers our most recent Singing Day and discover Weilerstein, in Bartók’s pantomime ballet Colin Matthews and Christian Mason. more about Beethoven’s only oratorio ahead The Miraculous Mandarin and Elgar’s Cello of two performances in the New Year. warm welcome to this evening’s Concerto. Looking ahead to the New Year, • lso.co.uk/more/news LSO concert at Milton Court Sir Simon Rattle begins a series of concerts SIX THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Concert Hall. Following two celebrating 250 years since the birth of LSO MERCHANDISE BARTÓK’S THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN performances of Mozart’s concertos for Beethoven with the composer’s Seventh AT THE BARBICAN SHOP woodwind in October, the LSO Chamber Symphony on 15 and 16 January and eagerly Amid the political turbulence of Hungary in Orchestra tonight plays a programme of awaited performances of his rarely heard Tote bags, tea towels, mugs: discover the the early 20th century, Bartók began writing Baroque music, conducted by Emmanuelle Christ on the Mount of Olives. LSO’s range of gifts and keepsakes, plus his pantomime ballet. Discover more about Haïm, who makes her LSO debut. the latest LSO Live releases on CD. this previously censored work ahead of the Emmanuelle Haïm is a specialist in this Available now on Level -1. LSO’s performance on Thursday 19 December. repertoire, with an enviable reputation across Europe, and it is a great pleasure to ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO: welcome her as she brings her considerable 100-YEAR ANNIVERSARY expertise to this performance. Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director On 27 October 1919, the LSO performed the Tonight’s programme features Baroque world premiere of one of the most popular music from both sides of the Channel, from works in the repertoire: Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Purcell and Handel to French composer Jean- One hundred years later, we take a look at Philippe Rameau. We are delighted to be the history of this piece, its current popularity, joined by two soloists for arias by Rameau Please ensure all phones are switched off. and how this wasn’t always the case. and Purcell: Lucy Crowe, who returns to the Photography and audio/video recording LSO after her appearance in the title role of are not permitted during the performance. • lso.co.uk/more/blog 2 Welcome 15 December 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up onight’s concert opens with music writing for strings and woodwind evokes a Thursday 19 December 7.30pm Thursday 9 January 7.30pm from Purcell’s 1692 opera The Fairy place of peace, yet Castor’s anguish over Barbican Barbican Queen, with a libretto adapted his love for Télaïre persists. Rameau’s suite from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s from Dardanus, premiered in 1739 at the ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO Dream. Following Purcell’s untimely death Paris Opéra, concludes the programme. three years later, the score was lost, to be Subsequent re-writes can be considered Sophya Polevaya Spellbound Tableaux* Wagner Overture and Venusburg later rediscovered in the early 20th century. largely the result of a weak libretto, the Elgar Cello Concerto Music from ‘Tannhäuser’ The suite performed tonight features some score itself comprising some of Rameau’s Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin Mendelssohn Violin Concerto of Purcell’s finest music for theatre, from richest music. ‘Lieux funestes’ has since Brahms Symphony No 1 incidental music to aching lovers’ laments. become one of the composer’s most famous François-Xavier Roth conductor arias, sombre and harsh, accenting the Alisa Weilerstein cello Nathalie Stutzmann conductor Handel’s Water Music, supposedly composed suffering of the title character. • London Symphony Chorus Alina Ibragimova violin at the request of King George I to be played Simon Halsey chorus director at one of his riverside concerts on the banks 6pm Barbican Free pre-concert recital of the Thames, follows. Water Music is *World premiere, commissioned through the LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists a collection of 21 movements, now often Panufnik Composers Scheme, generously supported grouped and published as three separate by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust Recommended by Classic FM suites, the first of which is performed PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS tonight. The writing is rich and varied, Friday 3 January 1pm Friday 10 January 12.30pm guiding the audience through the many Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for LSO St Luke’s LSO St Luke’s different faces and abilities of the orchestra. BBC Radio 3, including programming lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall and BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERT LSO DISCOVERY The second half of the concert is dedicated LSO St Luke’s. He is also Artistic Advisor to BACH UP CLOSE FREE FRIDAY LUNCHTIME CONCERT: to the music of Rameau, beginning with York Early Music Festival, Artistic Director of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE excerpts from his third opera Castor and Baroque at the Edge Festival and a regular J S Bach Sonatas for violin and harpsichord Pollux, based on the twin brothers from contributor to Gramophone magazine. No 4 in C minor BWV 1017; No 1 in B minor Musicians from all backgrounds explore Greek and Roman mythology. Of the BWV 1014; No 6 in G major BWV 1019 20th-century Russian responses to the two arias performed tonight, the first Alison Bullock is a freelance writer and Baroque in chamber music by Bach, is impassioned and deeply moving, the music consultant whose interests range Alina Ibragimova violin Stravinsky, Schnittke and Shostakovich. princess Télaïre’s heart-wrenching vocal from Machaut to Messiaen and beyond. A Carole Cerasi harpsichord line soaring above the orchestra. In the former editor for The New Grove Dictionary Rachel Leach presenter second, ‘Séjour de l’éternelle paix’, subdued of Music, she is now based in Oslo. Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3 Tonight’s Concert 3 Henry Purcell The Fairy Queen – Suite 1692 / note by Lindsay Kemp LATER THIS SEASON Sunday 15 March 2020 7pm 1 First Music: Prelude hakespeare was not always the The various musical set-pieces and Barbican 2 Hornpipe revered figure he is today, even in interludes of a work like The Fairy Queen 3 Second Music: Air England. In 1662, Samuel Pepys are not just incidental, however; they are VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 4 Rondeau declared after a rare performance of A designed to reflect the emotions of the main 5 Overture Midsummer Night’s Dream that it was ‘the characters and the overall atmosphere of Vaughan Williams Fantasia 6 ‘If love’s a sweet passion’ most insipid, ridiculous play I ever saw in the play. Thus, while many of the numbers on a Theme by Thomas Tallis 7 The Plaint: ‘O let me weep’ my life’, but there seems to have been little can be extracted from the play without any Britten Violin Concerto 8 Symphony while the swans sense of outrage 30 years later when it next great loss of musical sense, in context they Vaughan Williams Symphony No 6 come forward resurfaced in London in a version which, breathe much of the same atmosphere as 9 Hornpipe were it to hit the stage today, might well Shakespeare’s wondrous play, making not Sir Antonio Pappano conductor 10 Monkey’s Dance rejoice in the title ‘Dream: The Musical’. In a bad job at all of being the nearest thing Vilde Frang violin 11 Symphony and ‘Thus happy and free’ fact, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was just the we have to a meeting of two of Britain’s 12 Chaconne kind of thing London audiences in the 1690s greatest creative minds. Sunday 29 March 2020 7pm wanted: a spectacular musical play with Barbican Lucy Crowe soprano fine costumes, lavish sets, ingenious stage Tonight’s suite starts with four ‘act-tunes’ Reinoud Van Mechelen tenor machinery and a big cast of singers, actors, that were played while the theatre was ELGAR & SIBELIUS dancers and instrumentalists. ‘Dramatic filling up, before the overture to the operas’ was how these entertainments were opera itself. Also included is a symphony Elgar Violin Concerto described, and The Fairy Queen, Purcell’s accompanying a magical transformation of Sibelius Symphony No 4 third following the successes of Dioclesian swans into fairies, and a Monkey’s Dance and King Arthur, scored a hit for the Dorset representative of a tradition of acrobatic Sir Mark Elder conductor Garden Theatre in May 1692, spoilt only by grotesquery which goes back to the Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider violin the fact that production expenses all but elaborate court masques of the early part wiped out the profits.