Monday 10 June 2019 7.30–9.50pm Barbican

LSO SEASON CONCERT ARTIST PORTRAIT

Beethoven Andante Favori Beethoven Piano Sonata No 18 TRIFONOV Schumann Bunte Blätter Schumann Presto Passionato Interval Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 8

Daniil Trifonov piano Welcome Latest News On our Blog

After the interval, Daniil Trifonov performs BMW CLASSICS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP: Prokofiev's Eighth Piano Sonata in B-flat WORKS IN PROGRESS major – the last and most expansive of his On 30 June, the LSO takes over Trafalgar three 'War’ Sonatas. Square as Sir Simon Rattle conducts a This month’s LSO Discovery Showcase, dance-inspired programme of music by ‘One Night, One Thousand and One Daniil Trifonov completes his LSO Artist Dvořák, Poulenc, Ravel and Bushra El-Turk. Stories’, featured pieces for electronics, Portrait series on Sunday 16 June in There will also be performances by young live performance and video presented Shostakovich's Concerto No 1 for Piano, musicians from the LSO On Track scheme in by Ife Olalusi and Ken Burnett, members Trumpet and Strings, conducted by East London and from the Guildhall School, of the LSO Digital Technology Group. Gianandrea Noseda. I hope that you enjoy who join the Orchestra on stage. We spoke to Ken and Ife about their the concert and that you will join us again inspirations and influences, and how elcome to tonight’s concert at soon for the remaining concerts in the they produced music for the concert. the Barbican, a recital of music LSO’s season. LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2019 by Beethoven, Schumann and Prokofiev played by pianist Daniil Trifonov, The LSO and a 300-strong choir perform ‘TO BE SOMEONE ELSE IS A BATTLE’ which forms the penultimate performance Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast on Tuesday of his LSO Artist Portrait series. 20 August at the BBC Proms, conducted LSO Jerwood Composer+ Amir Konjani by Sir Simon Rattle. The programme also discusses To Be Someone Else is a Battle The programme begins with Beethoven’s Kathryn McDowell CBE DL includes Varèse’s Amériques and French at LSO St Luke’s, his first event of the Andante Favori, originally composed as the Managing Director composer Charles Koechlin’s Les bandar-log. 16-month LSO Jerwood Composer+ Scheme, slow movement of the famous ‘Waldstein’ sharing thoughts on art, artists and how he Sonata, followed by the last of his three Op created this immersive installation. 31 sonatas, an understated and forward- WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS looking work. Following this, he performs Read these articles and more Robert Schumann's Bunte Blätter, a collection We are delighted to welcome • lso.co.uk/blog of miniatures written across the composer's Jelena Nehodova and Friends life. The extrovert Presto Passionato who join us in the audience tonight. completes the first half, another displaced piece which was first composed as the finale Please ensure all phones are switched off. of Schumann’s G minor Piano Sonata. Photography and audio/video recording are not permitted during the performance.

2 Welcome 10 June 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up

he first two pieces in tonight’s quietly in the bass and rising uncannily to Sunday 16 June 7–8.50pm Sunday 30 June 5–6.30pm recital show a less familiar side of the piano’s upper register. The following Barbican Trafalgar Square Beethoven’s musical personality: Andante sognando is dance-like, using a the tuneful Andante Favori, which was theme from Prokofiev’s abandoned opera ARTIST PORTRAIT: DANIIL TRIFONOV BMW CLASSICS rejected as the central movement of Eugene Onegin, and the finale is majestic. Beethoven’s heroic ‘Waldstein’ sonata for In the final reprise of its main theme, the Beethoven Overture: Egmont Dvořák Selection of Slavonic Dances being too long, and the E-flat major Sonata. music reaches a fearsome peak of intensity, Shostakovich Concerto No 1 for piano, trumpet Bushra El-Turk Tuqus (world premiere) * Opening on a dissonant seventh chord, before subsiding to an ambivalent ending. and strings Poulenc Selection from ‘Les biches – Suite’ the Sonata’s oddity and understatement Berlioz Harold in Italy * Ravel La valse anticipates the enigmatic music of Beethoven’s final years. Gianandrea Noseda conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Daniil Trifonov piano London Symphony Orchestra Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blätter were Philip Cobb trumpet LSO On Track Young Musicians * published late in the composer’s career, Wendy Thompson studied at the Royal Antoine Tamestit viola* Guildhall School Musicians * and reflect different times in his life. Unlike College of Music, before taking an MMus London Symphony Orchestra his collections of piano pieces Carnaval or in musicology at King’s College, London. Free entry, early arrival recommended Waldszenen, the pieces make up an album In addition to writing about music Thursday 27 June 7.30–9.25pm with no thematic thread woven through. she is Executive Director of Classical Saturday 29 June 7.30–9.25pm Produced in partnership with BMW The pieces nevertheless showcase Arts Productions, a major supplier of Barbican Schumann’s unique inventiveness and independent programmes to BBC Radio. rich palette. The Presto passionato which THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN follows was meant as the finale for his Piano Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Sonata in G minor, but was replaced after his Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life Janáček The Cunning Little Vixen (semi-staged) wife Clara suggested it was too difficult for and Music (Naxos). He contributes regularly pianists wanting to buy and learn the sonata. to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, Sir Simon Rattle conductor and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and Peter Sellars director Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata is his the World Service. Lucy Crowe, Gerald Finley, Sophia Burgos, Peter longest piano sonata, written after he Hoare, Jan Martiník, Hanno Müller-Brachmann, returned to a war-torn Stalingrad. The Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Paulina Malefane, Anna Lapkovskaja soloists opening movement uses two themes: the journalist and writer. He is the author of The London Symphony Orchestra first lyrical and mysterious, the second LSO at 90 and contributes to a wide variety starkly desolate, its melody beginning of specialist classical music publications. Produced by LSO and Barbican

Tonight’s Concert 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Andante Favori & Piano Sonata No 18 / note by Wendy Thompson

Andante Favori in F major WoO 57 first gracious, the second featuring running ultimately reveals itself as the unifying • THE OPUS 31 SONATAS 1804 octaves in the bass. motto of the Allegro, recurring at the start of the development, in the recapitulation, Written early in Beethoven’s maturity, the Piano Sonata No 18 in E-flat major, The three sonatas • composed in 1802 and and again in the coda. The movement never three sonatas of Opus 31 each have a unique Op 31 No 3, ‘The Hunt’ published in 1803/4 as Beethoven’s Op 31 really settles, with frequent pauses, abrupt character. The first of the three, in G major, 1802 date from a critical period in his life. He had changes of tempo, and constant harmonic is playfully extrovert, with crashing chords, for some time been suffering from ill-health side-slipping through different keys. flashy runs and an elaborate Adagio in the 1 Allegro with a persistent stomach complaint, but style of a decorative aria. 2 Scherzo: Allegretto vivace even worse for a musician, his hearing The brittle, duple-metre Scherzo with its 3 Minuetto: Moderato e grazioso was rapidly deteriorating. In the spring incredibly fast staccato texture anticipates The second of the set, in D minor, is 4 Presto con fuoco and summer of 1802, while staying on his Mendelssohn: once again, its progress is nicknamed ‘The Tempest’. Although not doctor’s advice at the medicinal spa village interrupted by abrupt changes of tempo, as stormy as its name suggests, the eethoven’s Andante Favori in of Heiligenstadt, he wrote a remarkable while elfin horn-calls foreshadow Weber’s sonata is dark and brooding. Tense, slowly F major was composed between letter to his brothers confessing that his Oberon. It’s followed by an elegant minuet transforming harmonies are the focus of 1803 and 1804, and was originally humiliating disability would henceforth and trio, both in the tonic key. The trio, its opening movement, which is broken up intended as the central movement of his condemn him to live ‘like an outcast’, and which later formed the basis of Saint-Saëns’ with passages of melancholic recitative. C major ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. According to saying that he had seriously contemplated Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for two Beethoven’s friend and pupil Ferdinand suicide. The letter was never posted, and pianos, consists largely of alternating chords Ries, an acquaintance of Beethoven Beethoven returned to Vienna in the autumn in opposing registers of the piano keyboard. complained that the sonata was too long, determined to come to terms with his The lively Presto con fuoco is a sonata-rondo an opinion which inevitably provoked an affliction and pursue a ‘new path’ in his work. finale. With its galloping 6/8 rhythm in irritable outburst. But after considered tarantella style, it gave rise to the Sonata’s reflection, Beethoven accepted the criticism The last of the three Op 31 sonatas, unlike nickname, ‘The Hunt’. • as valid, and replaced the Andante, which its tempestuous D minor predecessor, bears he published as a separate piece. He often little trace of struggle and conflict, nor of the included it in his recitals, and its popularity ‘heroic’ mood that would soon be associated gave rise to the title of ‘Favoured Andante’. in Beethoven’s mind with the key of E-flat major. This sonata thrives on ambiguity, This charming rondo is marked ‘Andante veering between restless interrogation grazioso con moto’. Its theme recurs with and a wry playfulness. The introduction increasingly elaborate decorations, and opens with a question on an ambiguous there are two interpolated episodes, the harmonic note, while a falling fifth motif

4 Programme Notes 10 June 2019 Ludwig van Beethoven in Profile 1770–1827 / by Andrew Stewart

with his renowned mentor when the latter discovered he was secretly taking lessons from several other teachers. Although BEETHOVEN 250 Maximilian Franz withdrew payments for Beethoven’s Viennese education, the Marking Beethoven’s 250th Anniversary at the Barbican and LSO St Luke’s talented musician had already attracted support from some of the city’s wealthiest arts patrons. His public performances in 1795 were well received, and he shrewdly negotiated a contract with Artaria & Co, the largest music publisher in Vienna. He was soon able to devote his time to composition and the performance of his own works.

In 1800 Beethoven began to complain eethoven showed early musical bitterly of deafness, but despite suffering promise, yet reacted against his the distress and pain of tinnitus, chronic Singing Day: Discovery Day father’s attempts to train him as stomach ailments, liver problems and an Christ on the Mount of Olives 19 January 2020 a child prodigy. The boy pianist attracted embittered legal case for the guardianship 22 September 2019 Barbican & LSO St Luke’s the support of the Prince-Archbishop, of his nephew, Beethoven created a series of LSO St Luke’s who supported his studies with leading remarkable new works, including the Missa Christ on the Mount of Olives musicians at the Bonn court. By the early Solemnis and his late symphonies and piano HALF SIX FIX 19 January & 13 February 2020 1780s Beethoven had completed his first sonatas. It is thought that around 10,000 Beethoven Symphony No 7 compositions, all of which were for keyboard. people followed his funeral procession on & Berg Seven Early Songs HALF SIX FIX With the decline of his alcoholic father, 29 March 1827. 15 January 2020 Beethoven Symphony No 9, 'Choral' Ludwig became the family breadwinner 12 February 2020 as a musician at court. Certainly, his posthumous reputation Beethoven Symphony No 7 developed to influence successive & Berg Early Works Beethoven Symphony No 9, 'Choral' Encouraged by his employer, the Prince- generations of composers and other 16 January 2020 16 February 2020 Archbishop Maximilian Franz, Beethoven artists inspired by the heroic aspects of travelled to Vienna to study with Joseph Beethoven’s character and the profound Part of Beethoven 250 at the Barbican lso.co.uk/201920season Haydn. The younger composer fell out humanity of his music. •

Programme Notes 5 Robert Schumann Bunte Blätter & Presto Passionato / note by Wendy Thompson

Bunte Blätter Op 99 daughter Clara, persuaded him to redirect entitled ‘Jugendschmerz’ (Sorrow of Youth). A THEME BY ROBERT SCHUMANN his energies into composition. Next comes a ternary-form Novelette, a 1 Stücke I short, dramatic Prelude, and the longest • In 1854, Clara Schumann gave birth to 2 Stücke II Up to 1840, when he married Clara after piece in the album, a slow, sinister March in her seventh child with Robert, at a time 3 Stücke III a prolonged and stressful courtship, the funereal key of D minor with a quicker when he was an inmate at an asylum near 4 Albumblätter I Schumann’s compositions were primarily central section. The last three pieces are Bonn. She was not able to visit him while 5 Albumblätter II for solo piano. They included short brighter in tone: ‘Abendmusik’ (Evening she recovered, and to offer consolation 6 Albumblätter III individual pieces such as waltzes, romances, Music) dates from 1841, as does a G minor Brahms began a series of variations which 7 Albumblätter IV intermezzi and études, as well as character Scherzo, originally destined for a symphony; he brought to Clara each time he visited, 8 Albumblätter V pieces, many grouped into larger themed and the collection ends with a burlesque making use of a theme which Clara had 9 Novelette collections such as the Davidsbündlertänze, ‘Geschwindmarsch’ (Quick March), evoking adopted for her own Op 20 variations the 10 Präludium Carnaval, Phantasiestücke, Kinderszenen the atmosphere of a carnival procession year before. The combined product of his 11 Marsch and Kreisleriana. that disappears into the distance. efforts became the Op 9, where Brahms 12 Abendmusik pays homage to Robert Schumann with 13 Scherzo In 1852, the year in which Schumann’s Schumann’s output of the 1830s also allusions to his piano pieces and imitations 14 Geschwindmarsch physical and mental health began a dramatic included three piano sonatas – a genre of his contrapuntal style. decline, he swept up 14 miscellaneous which had fallen out of fashion in Germany Presto Passionato Op 22 pieces, mostly dating from around the time since Beethoven’s death. The second of of his marriage, into a single publication these, eventually published in 1839 as Op 22 he piano was central to Robert entitled Bunte Blätter (Coloured Leaves). in G minor, occupied him intermittently Schumann’s life as a composer. They open with three charming ‘Little for eight years. In 1838 Clara wrote that At the age of 21 he finally Pieces’, his gift to Clara (‘my beloved bride’) she was ‘endlessly looking forward to the persuaded his widowed mother to allow him on Christmas Eve 1838. The third, in E major, second sonata. Your whole being is so clearly to abandon law studies for his chosen path was originally entitled ‘Hunting Piece’. Then expressed in it.’ Nevertheless, when it finally as a concert pianist, and moved in to live follow five ‘Album leaves’, predominantly arrived, Clara persuaded Robert to replace with his piano teacher in Leipzig, Friedrich introspective and melancholic in tone. the original finale, as she considered it Wieck. His dreams of glory on the concert The first, in F-sharp minor, later provided was too difficult. The rejected movement, platform lasted only about two years, before Brahms with the theme for his Op 9 •, a technical tour de force marked ‘Presto Interval – 20 minutes an apparent injury to the middle fingers of Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann Passionato’, was published as a stand- There are bars on all levels. his right hand, combined with the realisation for solo piano; the third, in A-flat major, alone concert piece. • Visit the Barbican Shop to see our that his pianistic abilities would never equal was originally intended for Carnaval; and range of Gifts and Accessories. those of Wieck’s prodigiously talented the fourth, in E-flat minor, was originally

6 Programme Notes 10 June 2019 Robert Schumann in Profile 1810–56 / profile by Stephen Johnson

he youngest son of a Saxon Besides welcoming the financial return • SCHUMANN’S VOCAL MUSIC bookseller, Robert Schumann was that published Lieder (songs) could deliver, encouraged by his father to study Schumann was also able to preserve his Schumann wrote hundreds of songs and music. Soon after his tenth birthday in 1820, intense feelings for Clara in the richly his cycles Dichterliebe, Liederkreis, Frauen- young Robert began taking piano lessons expressive medium of song. The personal Liebe und Leben and Myrthen continue to in his home town of Zwickau. Although nature of Schumann’s art even influenced enjoy pride of place in recital repertory. Schumann enrolled as a law student at his choice of certain themes, with the notes Less well-known is his one opera, Genoveva, Leipzig University in 1828, music remained A–B–E–G–G enshrined as the theme of premiered in 1850 around the same time as an overriding passion and he continued to one set of piano variations in tribute to Wagner’s Lohengrin and similarly inspired study piano with Friedrich Wieck. his friend Countess Meta von Abegg. by Germanic legend. Unfortunately, negative criticism in the press was instrumental in the composer’s decision not to write — a second opera. ‘To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.’ — Robert Schumann

The early death of his father and two of Schumann also developed his skills as his three brothers influenced Schumann’s a composer of symphonies and concertos appreciation of the world’s suffering, during his years in Leipzig. intensified further by his readings of Romantic poets such as Novalis, Byron Four years after their marriage in and Hölderlin and his own experiments as September 1840, the Schumanns moved poet and playwright. Schumann composed to Dresden where Robert completed a number of songs in his youth, but it was his C major Symphony. In the early 1850s not until he fell in love with and became the composer’s health and mental state secretly engaged to the teenage Clara Wieck seriously declined. In March 1854 he decided in September 1837 that he seriously began to enter a sanatorium near Bonn, where to exploit his song-writing gift. • he died two years later. •

Composer Profile 7 Sergei ProkofievPiano Sonata No 8 in B-flat major Op 84 1944 / note by Wendy Thompson

1 Andante dolce – Allegro moderato — • PROKOFIEV ON LSO LIVE 2 Andante sognando ‘The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. 3 Vivace – Allegro ben marcato – Andantino – Vivace, come prima Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience.’ rokofiev, like many of his fellow- — composers, left Russia in the aftermath of the Revolution for the relative safety of Europe. He unwisely chose to return in 1936, expecting to be This was the backdrop against which brilliant, spiky with a slower middle treated as a celebrity. Within a few months, Prokofiev composed a trilogy of anguished section that, for some commentators, Stalin had launched a purge of the Soviet and dissonant piano sonatas. The last of evokes marching troops inexorably pressing intelligentsia, and over the next few years, these, No 8, was completed in 1944 and forward. After a reminiscence of the opening many of Prokofiev’s friends and professional dedicated to Mira. It was first performed in Andante dolce, the toccata rhythm picks collaborators disappeared into Soviet the Grand Hall of the Conservatory up once more, propelling the sonata to a jails, never to emerge. At the same time, on 30 December that year by Emil Gilels, thrilling conclusion. • Prokofiev’s marriage was disintegrating, and was awarded a Stalin Prize (First Class). Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet and in 1941 he left his wife Lina and their described it as the richest two sons for Mira Mendelson, a young of all Prokofiev’s sonatas, comparing it to a Valery Gergiev conductor literature student half his age. ‘tree heavy with fruit. It has a complex inner life with profound contra-positions. At times Containing much of the composer’s most That June, Nazi Germany launched it seems to freeze, as if listening to the instantly appealing music, this 2010 ‘Operation Barbarossa’, a devastating inexorable march of the times.’ recording of Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and onslaught on the . By the Juliet was captured live at the Barbican. autumn of 1942 the Germans had reached Prokofiev himself described it as primarily the strategically vital city of Stalingrad, lyrical, and the opening Andante dolce Available at lsolive.co.uk, where the Red Army mounted a heroic section, which returns after a faster, more in the Barbican Shop, five-month defence. Despite the loss of turbulent and dissonant Allegro, is almost online on iTunes & Amazon or around one million Soviet soldiers, their song-like in character. The central Andante, on Apple Music and Spotify victory at Stalingrad proved the turning marked to be played ‘dreamily’, has a folk- point of the war, and by the spring of 1944 like simplicity, as if recalling an innocent, the German army was in full retreat. untroubled world, while the finale is a

8 Programme Notes 10 June 2019 Sergei Prokofievin Profile 1891–1953 BARTÓK & STRAVINSKY

Before he left for exile, Prokofiev completed PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR his ‘Classical’ Symphony, a bold and appealing FRANÇOIS-XAVIER ROTH work that revived aspects of 18th-century CONDUCTS THE LSO AT THE BARBICAN musical form, clarity and elegance. He received commissions from arts organisations Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin in the United States and France, composing 19 December 2019 his sparkling opera The Love for Three Oranges for the Chicago Opera Company HALF SIX FIX in 1919–20. His engagements as a recitalist Bartók The Wooden Prince and concerto soloist brought Prokofiev to 18 March 2020 a wide audience in Europe and the US, and he was in great demand to perform his own Bartók The Wooden Prince Piano Concerto No 3. The ballet Romeo and & Stravinsky Violin Concerto Juliet and the score for Feinzimmer’s film 19 March 2020 Lieutenant Kijé were among Prokofiev’s rokofiev was born in Ukraine and first Soviet commissions, dating from the Dukas Symphony in C was encouraged to study music early 1930s. Both scores were subsequently 22 March 2020 from an early age by his mother, cast as concert suites, which have become a keen amateur pianist. The young Sergei cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire. Stravinsky’s The Firebird showed prodigious ability as both composer 11 June 2020 and pianist, gaining a place at the St ‘The Fifth Symphony was intended as a Petersburg Conservatory at the age of 13 and hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty shortly thereafter acquiring a reputation for powers, his pure and noble spirit.’ Prokofiev’s the uncompromising nature of his music. comments, written in 1944 as the Russian According to one critic, the audience at the army began to march towards Berlin, 1913 premiere of the composer’s Second reflected his sense of hope in the future. Piano Concerto were left ‘frozen with fright, Sadly, his later years were overshadowed hair standing on end’. He left Russia after by illness and the denunciation of his works the 1917 Revolution, but decided to return as ‘formalist’ by the Central Committee of Explore the 2019/20 season to Moscow with his wife and family 19 the Communist Party in 1948. • lso.co.uk/201920season years later, apparently unaware of Stalin’s repressive regime. Composer Profile by Andrew Stewart

Composer Profile 9 Daniil Trifonov piano

aniil Trifonov, winner of During a multi-faceted, season-long Last season, Trifonov released Chopin Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the residency with the Berlin Philharmonic, Evocations, his fourth album for Deutsche Year Award, has made a rapid Trifonov also plays Scriabin’s F-sharp minor Grammophon, which pairs works by Chopin ascent as a solo artist, chamber musician Piano Concerto under Andris Nelsons later with those of the 20th-century composers and composer. Combining consummate this month. Other orchestral highlights he influenced. Trifonov performed a similar technique with a rare sensitivity and depth, included a return to Carnegie Hall for programme throughout the US, Europe and his performances are recognised for their Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Met Asia, including at the Philharmonie de Paris, profound musical insight and expressive Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, Prokofiev’s Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, intensity. Trifonov recently added a Grammy Piano Concerto No 3 with Marin Alsop and and Wigmore Hall. At Carnegie Hall, Trifonov Award to his already considerable string of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and curated his season-long Perspectives series, honours, winning Best Instrumental Solo Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3 which included a performance of his own Album of 2018 with Transcendental, a double with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Piano Concerto with Valery Gergiev and the album of Liszt’s works which marks his third Symphony. Trifonov also releases his Mariinsky Orchestra, as well as a similar title as a Deutsche Grammophon artist. new Deutsche Grammophon recording series at the Vienna Konzerthaus and a Destination Rachmaninov: Departure, on concert with the San Francisco Symphony. In September 2018, Trifonov launched the which he performs the Russian composer’s New York Philharmonic’s 2018/19 season, Second and Fourth Piano Concertos, again Born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1991, Trifonov playing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the with the Philadelphia Orchestra and began his musical training at the age of opening night gala under incoming Music Yannick Nézet-Séguin, his partners on five, and went on to attend Moscow’s Director Jaap van Zweden before rejoining the his 2015 disc Rachmaninov: Variations. Gnessin School of Music as a student of Orchestra the following night for Beethoven’s Tatiana Zelikman, before pursuing his Piano Concerto No 5. Trifonov performed the In recital this season, Trifonov has played piano studies with Sergei Babayan at the same concerto as part of his residency at Beethoven, Schumann and Prokofiev in Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also Vienna’s Musikverein, which also included New York and Berlin, where his Berlin studied composition, and continues to ALSO AT THE BARBICAN the Austrian premiere of his own Piano Philharmonic residency features multiple write for piano, chamber ensemble and Concerto. His final performance as part of his solo and chamber concerts. These include orchestra. When he premiered his own Beethoven, Berlioz & Shostakovich LSO Artist Portrait Series is Shostakovich’s performances of his own Piano , of Piano Concerto in 2013, the Cleveland Plain Sunday 16 June Concerto No 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings which he also gives the Cincinnati premiere Dealer commented, ‘Even having seen it, with Gianandrea Noseda. with the Ariel Quartet and a duo recital one cannot quite believe it. Such is the with his frequent partner Matthias Goerne. artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov.’ •

10 Artist Biographies 10 June 2019 Daniil Trifonov in conversation

Advice to aspiring pianists … But I think it’s good to start with something unexpected. That could be a piece from I would say that it’s good to explore, to go the early 20th century, maybe something beyond just piano literature and understand like Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ or one of that the piano does not exist in a vacuum. Shostakovich’s Symphonies. I’ve heard from There are other arts and other musics. It’s people who have come to classical music very important to listen widely, to orchestral for the first time to hear one of these pieces music and opera. Also to enjoy other art and they’ve said ‘Oh, we didn’t imagine that forms: movies, literature, and of course it would be something like that.’ painting – it all helps. Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ … Movies … That’s the piece which started my love for One of my favourite directors is Andrei classical music. I was already playing the Listening to music … Downtime … Tarkovsky. He made only a few movies piano when I first heard it. Once I did, I had in the 1970s but he has his own language Scriabin fever! I think that for the next five Outside of classical music, one of the most I really enjoy hiking and walking, especially which is immediately recognisable. years I played more than half of the piano interesting experiences for me is listening in the mountains. I like long trips, 10 to 30 music that Scriabin wrote. • to King Crimson, especially the early albums kilometres. I enjoy exploring cities on foot; The 1970s … from the 1970s, like In the Court of the that’s one of my favourite activities while in Crimson King and Larks’ Tongues in Aspic. London. I’m interested in the way cities are I think it’s an era when people weren’t afraid It’s very instrumental. My father used to be planned and laid out. I also sometimes do to do unique things. There was so much in a rock band. He played keyboards in an some light coding. variety in art. Culturally it was an extremely underground band back in the 1980s when abundant time. he was studying. I like to tinker with technology, I guess. I think it’s actually quite a common thing Introducing a friend to classical music … Jazz … for classical musicians to be interested in technology. Take the piano, the piano If they already have some knowledge of the I really like listening to Art Tatum, a jazz is probably the most complex of acoustic difference between the Baroque, Classical, pianist who played in Cleveland for a long musical instruments. and Romantic then it is best to pick time. That was where I used to study, so I something in the style they prefer. found out about him that way.

In Conversation with Daniil Trifonov 11 LSO Artist Portrait in 2019/20

Jörg Widmann Viola Concerto with Daniel Harding 19 April 2020

Berio Voci with François-Xavier Roth 11 June 2020

Walton Viola Concerto with Alan Gilbert ANTOINE 14 June 2020

BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts: Antoine Tamestit & Friends 8 & 15 May; 5 & 26 June 2020, LSO St Luke’s TAMESTIT Explore the new season at lso.co.uk/201920season