JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC

Saturday 5 November, 7.30pm

Tragedy and Humour; Darkness and Light

Sibelius Tapiola (18 mins) Notes on Light (28 mins)

Interval: 20 mins

Weill Violin Concerto (28 mins) Britten Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes’ (14 mins)

Jakob Kullberg cello BBC Philharmonic John Storgårds conductor/violin ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN YOUR MUSICAL JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY?

Our Journey Through Music scheme at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall is an affordable and enjoyable introduction to the world of concert-going and classical music. For young people and children from the age of 8, our special scheme is aimed at making our concerts easily accessible for families and anybody who wants to discover orchestral music or to explore it further.

Ready to begin? Join us on this musical journey and discover the unforgettable world of classical music. Three performances will feature a pre-concert session suitable for all ages – but every concert in the 2016/17 season is available at a special family-ticket price. Plus – choose your seat anywhere in the house for the same price: • £7 for children aged 16 and under • £12 for accompanying adults • £35 family ticket, for 4 people (maximum of 2 adults) These prices include a £2 booking fee so you know there’s no extra costs when you book – just be sure to book in advance as these are not available on the day.

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using the hashtag #MyJTM illustrations:All Wright/Nucco Brain Ben AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ORCHESTRA

WHAT IS AN THE CONDUCTOR ORCHESTRA? The person in charge is usually the But there’s more to it than this. The An orchestra is a group of instrumental conductor, who stands at the front and conductor can also help to reveal the players who perform together, usually led directs the orchestra from a podium, changing moods of the music. If they can by a conductor. keeping time either by waving a short create a strong musical image for the stick, called a baton, or sometimes just listener, the effect can make us feel all The modern symphony orchestra usually with his or her hands. One of the earliest sorts of emotions: happiness, sadness, has somewhere between 60 and 90 conductors, the Italian-born Frenchman fear, pride and everything in between. players: around 30 violins, 12 violas, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87), kept his The music might energise you, or it might 10 cellos, eight double basses; two or orchestra together by banging a big stick make you feel you’ve fallen into a dream. three each of flutes, , and on the floor, but one day he accidentally ; four horns, three trumpets, stabbed his foot and soon afterwards died three trombones, a tuba, a harp and an of gangrene. It’s not as dangerous these assortment of percussion instruments. days! You can find out more about the instruments, and where they sit, on Part of the conductor’s job is to show the next two pages after this. the beat (or pulse) of the music so that all the musicians play together in time. He or she also signals when individual musicians or groups have to start or stop playing. All the time conductors are listening to the overall sound- balance, and altering it, to make sure that the important instruments don’t get drowned out by less important ones. Otherwise, like lots of people talking loudly at the same time, the result would be chaos!

1 All illustrations:All Wright/Nucco Brain Ben THE ORCHESTRA O N STAGE

Most orchestras have a similar seating plan, with the strings at the front, the woodwind behind them and the brass and percussion further back still.

PERCUSSION The percussion section sits at the back of the orchestra and centres around the timpani, or kettledrums – between two and four copper drums. They have pedals, which alter BRASS their pitch (or notes). The bass drum is hit with just one Like the strings and woodwind, the brass family has stick; while the metal cymbals are clashed together, often four groups. There are French horns (usually four), when the music gets very loud. The side-drum is a small instruments once associated with hunting, while military drum that can play very quietly or very loudly the trumpets came from military bands, and often indeed. Sometimes composers ask for a variety of other have fanfare-like parts. Trombones are played with percussion instruments, such as the xylophone, the a movable slide but, in spite of their size, they can marimba or even whistles, whips and sirens. play amazingly fast notes; and finally the enormous tuba makes the deepest notes of all.

STRINGS WOODWIND String players sit at the front in a semi-circle, The woodwind section sits behind the strings, often in two rows. usually with the violins on the left and the There are four different instruments, usually in pairs, but in bigger cellos on the right. Each of the string sections orchestras there can be up to three or four players of each (and also the woodwind, brass and percussion instrument. The metal flutes produce a high, bright, silvery sound. sections) has a principal, who leads the The piccolo is like a small flute and plays very high up.Oboes are section. The strings divide into four sections: black wooden instruments with a detachable reed, which gives them violins, violas, cellos and double basses. The a distinctive sharp-edged sound. Before a concert starts, the whole violins are subdivided into first violins and orchestra tunes up to the note ‘A’ sounded by the Principal . second violins, with the Firsts generally having A bigger, lower version of the oboe is the cor anglais, or ‘English horn’. a slightly more difficult and brilliant part. Clarinets have a more hollow, woody sound. The lowest-sounding Violas are bigger than violins, with a deeper, member of its family is the bass . The lowest woodwind mellower sound. The cellos have a rounded, instrument is the , which is long and heavy and has to be bass sound. The huge double basses (which supported by a sling round the player’s neck. The contra-bassoon are played standing up, or perched on a high is so long that it’s bent double. Occasionally a piece will need extra stool) add depth to the string sound. The instruments, such as the saxophone, which is more usually found in harp is played with fingers instead of a bow, a jazz band. and it has a series of complicated pedals that change its pitch (or notes). BRASS

TRUMPETS HORNS TROM NCH BON FRE ES T UB AS

WOODWIND

I N PA IM T

OES C S OB LARIN S UTE ETS L FL B PERCUSSION A AS B SO M O N Y S C

D ON EC S VIOLA S LIN S IO V C E L L HARPS T S O S S IN R I L F O I

DOUBLE

STRINGS V BASSES TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) • Something mysterious: very, very slowly … do you get Tapiola (1926) the feeling there’s something big lurking in the shadows? Watch the brass instruments, at the back of the orchestra – when they have something to say, we’ll know about it! Jean Sibelius came from Finland. It’s a land of endless lakes and forests, stretching right up to the Arctic Circle. In the winter, the lakes freeze, the land is blanketed with snow, and the What else could I listen to? sun rises for only a few hours a day – but when it’s clear the Sibelius’s seven symphonies are full of the spirit of the Far North fabulous shimmering colours of the Northern Lights can fill the – if you enjoyed Tapiola, why not begin with Nos. 2 and 5, which sky. In the summer, the sun almost never sets at all, and the both have great tunes in them. daylight streams through the forests.

Sibelius loved his home country, its landscape and its stories. In 1926, he wrote this piece - a ‘tone poem’, or in other words, a piece that tells a story or creates a mood through music (like a poem often does, but with music instead of words). He called it Tapiola – after Tapio, the mysterious god of the Finnish forests. When a conductor asked him the story behind the music, he sent him this short poem (which is more evocative in its original Finnish):

Widespread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests, Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams; Within them dwells the forest’s mighty god, And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.

And that’s really all you need to know – we’re off on a journey taking us deep into a huge, wild, mysterious forest…

What to listen for • The trees: after a gloomy drumroll, the music moves slowly. Imagine tree trunks as far as you can see, with the light occasionally breaking through the leaves. Long, slow notes in the background make the music feel huge and still. • The elements: the forest is never completely still or quiet. Listen for the woodwind instruments (sitting in the middle of the orchestra). What are they suggesting? A rustle of leaves? Trilling birdsong? Or something more mysterious? TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Kaija Saariaho (born 1952) sweet, singing tunes; at others, such as ‘On fire’, the music Notes on Light (2006) scampers about wildly. • The orchestra: Kaija makes the orchestra seem to glow 1 Translucent, secret – at other times it’s as if it’s in shadow. Watch the string 2 On fire instruments as they put mutes on their instruments 3 A w a k e n i n g – little black devices that make them sound muffled 4 E c l i p s e and mysterious. And listen out for the sounds in the 5 Heart of Light percussion section, at the vey back – there are lots of chimes and glinting noises. Jakob Kullberg cello • Beginnings and endings: every piece of music is a journey. Near the start, the cello and the orchestra seem to slide Who says classical composers are all dead? The Finnish and droop downwards (as if they can’t quite wake up). At composer Kaija Saariaho is alive and well and living in Paris. She the very end, the cello climbs higher and higher and the writes the most wonderful music – as if she’s looking up at the music gets brighter and brighter – as if it’s dissolving into sun, stars or clouds, and then turning what she sees into sound. the light. When she was a girl growing up in Finland, she heard the music of Sibelius, and when she was in bed at night she imagined she could hear her own music coming out of the pillow! She was What else could I listen to? determined to be a composer, even though back then some There’s so much wonderful music by Kajia Saariaho to explore, people still told her she couldn’t because she was a girl. They and she’s writing more all the time! Try her musical portrait of look a bit silly now – today, Kaija is one of the most incredible the constellation Orion. composers in the world.

She wrote Notes on Light in 2006, and it’s for a single (‘solo’) Interval: 20 minutes (time for an ice-cream!) instrument – a cello – with an orchestra questioning it, supporting it and colouring in the background. It’s made up of five separate shorter pieces (or ‘movements’) and Kaija has given each one a title explaining what it’s about. Each piece is about a different kind of light: how it feels, what it would sound like if you could hear it. Let your ears – and imagination – do the rest.

What to listen for • The cello: our soloist Jakob Kullberg is an amazing player, and Kaija asks him to make all sorts of wonderful and strange sounds. Listen for when he double-stops (plays more than one note at a time, which is very tricky) plays sul ponticello (this is Italian for ‘near the bridge’ and it creates a quiet, whispery, silvery sound) and creates ‘harmonics’ (ghostly high notes that seem to gleam as if they’re made of glass). Sometimes he just plays long, TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Kurt Weill (1900 –50) What to listen for Violin Concerto (1924) 1 Andante con moto (At a walking pace) • The music begins slowly and sadly, but soon becomes 1 Andante con moto (At a walking pace) busy and anxious. Listen to how the sound of the violin 2 Notturno – stands out from the orchestra – as if it’s wandering the 3 Cadenza – streets. Where will it go? 4 Serenata 2 Notturno 5 Allegro molto, un poco agitato (Very fast • ‘Notturno’ is Italian for ‘night piece’ – and it’s a night full and a little anxiously) of weird sounds, some far away, some up close. The violin sounds as if it’s curious: it has a conversation with the John Storgårds violin xylophone (the clattering, wooden percussion instrument at the back of the orchestra). The music slows down and Kurt Weill grew up in Germany during the First World War. goes straight into… After the war, it was a time of great change. For over a century 3 Cadenza before that, German composers had written music about love • U s u a l l y , a cadenza is the part in a concerto in which the and nature, but Weill lived in Berlin – a city full of traffic, shops, soloist breaks free to play alone. But he’s not entirely bright lights and nightclubs. He was a young, modern composer alone here – the trumpet seems to be stalking him, and he wanted to write music that sounded like the world he until … lived in. Later, he wrote pop songs and musicals. 4 Serenata • The wind instruments play a quiet, quirky sounding tune, He wrote this piece in 1924, and it’s a concerto – a piece in and the violin sings and sings while they chug away. A which one solo player shows what they can do in front of ‘serenata’ is Italian for ‘serenade’ – a love song traditionally a whole orchestra. The violin is an instrument that makes a sung outside. sweet sound, as if it’s singing. Weill didn’t want things to get 5 Allegro molto, un poco agitato (Very fast and a little too sweet and slushy, so he got rid of all the violins and other anxiously) string instruments in the orchestra, leaving just the wind, brass • It begins quietly, but soon everyone is racing along – as if and percussion instruments. They make a bright, hard, busy- the orchestra is chasing the violin. Who wins? sounding world in which the violin has to sing its song – a bit like the world Weill lived in. The soloist today is our conductor, John Storgårds, and incredibly he’s going to conduct and play at What else could I listen to? the same time. Don’t believe it? Just watch! Kurt Weill’s music sounds like no-one else’s! His ‘Kleine Dreigroschenmusik’ suite (from his ‘play with music’ The Threepenny Opera) is very catchy. TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Benjamin Britten (1913 –76) 3 Moonlight Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes’ • Moonlight: On the beach at night, waves lap gently up and down the sand (listen to the string instruments). The (1945) moonlight catches the waves in little glints – can you hear 1 D a w n the flutes gleaming on each wave? 2 Sunday Morning 4 Storm 3 Moonlight • Storm: Black clouds, screaming seagulls and waves as big 4 S t o r m as houses! The string instruments boil and swirl, and the trombones of the orchestra snarl and sway. Benjamin Britten came from the seaside town of Lowestoft in Suffolk, where his parents’ house looked straight out over the North Sea. So when he was growing up, he saw the sea every What else could I listen to? day of the year, in good weather and bad. In 1945, when he was Every musical young person should hear Britten’s The Young one of Britain’s most famous composers, he wrote an opera Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Yes, it’s really called that (but called Peter Grimes – the story of a lonely fisherman in a town adults are allowed to listen too). not far from Lowestoft. And he put the music of the sea into every scene. Notes © Richard Bratby

How did he manage it? Between the different scenes of the opera – while the scenery was being changed – Britten wrote four ‘Interludes’ (pieces to be played ‘in between’) showing the different moods of the sea. With Britten’s music, plus a bit of imagination, you can almost taste the salt!

What to listen for 1 Dawn • The violins and flutes play alone – like a bright ray of light in a huge empty expanse. Listen out for the sudden breeze that ruffles the water. 2 Sunday Morning • Sunday Morning: The horns pretend to be chiming bells, while people bustle here and there. What kind of Sunday morning would you say this is? Sunny? Breezy? Cold or warm? JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC PRE-CONCERT SESSIONS

This season we have special pre-concert introductions at three concerts. Join us a bit earlier on the concert night to discover more about the orchestra and the music being performed.

Saturday 4 February 2017 Relishing in Revolution Music by Beethoven, Saint-Saëns & Debussy Pre-concert session, 6.30pm

Friday 26 May 2017 Concert Fantastique Music by Arvo Pärt, Berlioz & Mark Simpson Pre-concert session, 6.30pm

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