Sinfonia Viva with Guy Johnson

About the Orchestra Sinfonia Viva is a virtuoso ensemble delivering original and extraordinary creative musical experiences. Founded in 1982, Sinfonia Viva has a national reputation as a leader in creative music activity in the UK. Its work offers relevant and enriching possibilities for all. Sinfonia Viva: in association with Embraces new opportunities and ways of working whilst nurturing the Orchestras Live best of existing practice, making music accessible to the widest audience presents Connects participants, communities and professional musicians through shared creative activities and performances Creates exciting and imaginative performance experiences for audiences and participants Collaborates with partners to devise, develop and deliver original Sinfonia Viva musical opportunities Is an ambassador for music making with Guy Johnson The Orchestra has toured to Ireland and Berlin, has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and has been part of a project for Granada Television. The Orchestra made its London debut as part of an Indian music festival in London’s Kings Place, building on its partnership with top Indian classical violinist Kala Derby Assembly Rooms Ramnath. One of the Orchestra’s tracks on the Gorillaz’ album Plastic Beach was nominated for a nd Grammy award. The Orchestra has hosted the Association of British Orchestras’ national conference. Wednesday 2 April 2014, 7.30pm It took part in the BBC Radio 3 co-ordinated Music Nation week-end which was a countdown event to the London 2012 Festival and the performance was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The Orchestra was the local content producer for the Olympic Torch Evening Celebration event in June 2012 in Derby. Sinfonia Viva prides itself on its project development activity and partnership working, often bringing together musicians from other musical styles, genres and traditions. It also has extensive experience in event management activity and delivery. Sinfonia Viva is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and receives funding from Derby City Council. Feedback on any Sinfonia Viva event is welcome via the contact details below. Sinfonia Viva, Beaufort Street Business Centre, Beaufort Street, Derby, DE21 6AX Tel: 01332 207570 Fax: 01332 207569 Email: [email protected] www.vivaorch.co.uk www.facebook.com/sinfonia.viva https://twitter.com/sinfoniavivauk Viva Chamber Orchestra Ltd is a company limited by guarantee registered in England No.187955. Registered address 22-26 Nottingham Road, Joseph Haydn Stapleford, Nottingham. Registered Charity No.291046 VAT No.385367024 Overture to Il Ritorno di Tobia This concert is supported by Rolls-Royce plc, Derby City Council, Derby LIVE and Orchestras Live. Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 129 Wagner Siegfried Idyll Sibelius Incidental music to Kuolema, Op 44, Valse Triste and Scene with Cranes Beethoven Symphony No.1 in C, Op 21 Overture to Il Ritorno di Tobia Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Il Ritorno di Tobia (The Return of Tobias) was Haydn’s first oratorio, composed in 1775, some twenty years or so before the much better-known The Creation. Written for a Viennese musical society, it sets a libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini, brother of the cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini. It was a success at its first performance, and it was revived in 1784, when Haydn cut some of the arias and added two new choruses, including a storm chorus which has since taken on a life of its own, fitted to a new Latin text, as Insanae et Vanae Curae. The oratorio has rarely been heard since, however, for which weaknesses in the libretto have been held largely responsible. It is based on the story from the Apocrypha (biblical texts sometimes considered peripheral to the Old Testament) in which the elderly Tobit is cured of his blindness. The overture (Haydn used the then current term ‘Sinfonia’) begins with a slow minor-key introduction, leading to the spirited, energetic main section. Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 129 Robert Schumann (1810-1849) 1. Nicht zu schnell (not too fast) - 2. Langsam (slow) - 3. Sehr lebhaft (very lively). When Brahms first heard Dvořák’s Cello Concerto he expressed amazement that it was possible to write a cello concerto like that, and said that if he had known, he would have done so himself long ago. He must have known Schumann’s Concerto; he was, after all, a close colleague in the last few years of Schumann’s life, and it was the first major concerto for the instrument written in the nineteenth century. But where Dvořák’s is a big-boned, heroically-scaled work, of the kind we tend to think of as the typical nineteenth-century concerto, Schumann’s works for solo instrument and orchestra rarely aim for all-conquering heroism; the relationship is generally conceived in more equal terms, and nowhere more so than in his intimate, almost chamber-like Cello Concerto. He implied as much when he first entered it in his own catalogue of his compositions as a Konzertstück (Concert-piece), which suggests more modest aims. After damaging his right hand in 1832 Schumann took up the cello for a while, and this was enough to give him some grasp of how to write effectively for it. In particular, he understood the problems of balance involved in keeping the cello part audible against a full orchestra. As a result, he limits the concerto’s instrumentation, with just two each of horns and trumpets, omitting trombones altogether. Lightly scored accompanying passages allow the cello plenty of space to make itself heard, particularly in its lower register. Schumann sketched the concerto in two weeks in October 1850, during a particularly productive period following his move to Düsseldorf to take up the post of director of music there, and immediately before the first signs of his mental breakdown. The work is a particularly striking example of his attention to an extended composition’s overall unity. Themes recur across the entire, remarkably compact, three-movement structure, and each movement runs seamlessly into the next. After just four bars of orchestral introduction, the soloist enters with a characteristically broad, lyrical main theme which soars and swoops through several octaves. Time and again Schumann catches our attention with a typically poetic turn of phrase. In fact he is so concerned with exploring the music’s lyrical qualities that the return of the opening theme at the recapitulation, often the point at which the dramatic tension of a piece is at its height, here slips by almost unnoticed. A brief transition passage, hinting at the first movement’s opening bars, leads into the tender, song-like slow movement. This is Schumann the introverted dreamer, the side of his personality he called ‘Eusebius’, in contrast to ‘Florestan’, the impulsive, fiery extrovert. As the movement draws to its haunting close the tempo begins to revive, the first movement’s opening theme returns, and a short unaccompanied passage for the soloist runs into the perky, rhythmically incisive finale. The music drives impetuously towards its climax, and it is here, rather than the more conventional point at the end of the first movement, that Schumann places the soloist’s cadenza. That in itself was a stroke of great originality for its time, but he also gives it a discreet orchestral accompaniment. It is typical of his whole approach that both the cadenza and the exuberant final pages should be more concerned with musical values than virtuoso display. Schumann’s uncertainty as to what to call the work looks not so much like indecision on his part as doubt as to how it would be received by the public, an impression reinforced by its subsequent comparative neglect. Schumann directed a run-through with the Düsseldorf orchestra and its principal cellist in March 1851, but the concerto was not performed in public until 1860. Even now, in spite of the advocacy of cellists of the stature of Pablo Casals, it still tends to be all too rarely played, though the current re-assessment of Schumann’s later music may yet see it taking its rightful place in the repertoire. Siegfried Idyll Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Wagner and Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, became lovers in 1864, and two years later decided to set up home in Tribschen, a house overlooking Lake Lucerne, near Geneva. They were formally married in August 1870. In June 1869 their third child, Siegfried, was born and, except for a few pages of the full score, Wagner also completed Siegfried, the third opera of the four- part Niebelung’s ring cycle the same year. Cosima celebrated her birthday on 25th December, even though the actual day was the 24th. To mark the occasion in 1870 Wagner planned a surprise present, extravagant even by his standards, a twenty-minute work for an ensemble of thirteen players, to be performed on the staircase outside her room. The work was rehearsed in secret by the conductor Hans Richter, who also played the trumpet part, having learned the instrument specially for the occasion. The title page of the manuscript score read “Tribschen Idyll with Fidi-Birdsong and Orange Sunrise, presented as a symphonic birthday greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870.” Fidi was their nickname for Siegfried and the orange sunrise was the phenomenon noted by Cosima in her diary the day he was born when the sun shone in on the orange wallpaper of the room creating “an incredibly beautiful, fiery glow”. The piece draws on themes from Siegfried, and a traditional lullaby, ‘Sleep, baby, sleep’. The result was so intensely personal to Wagner and Cosima that it was only with extreme reluctance, for financial reasons, that they agreed to “the secret treasure” being published. Incidental music to Kuolema, Op 44 Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) 1.

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