28-May-Concert-Programme.Pdf

Available to stream online from 7:30pm, 28 May 2021 until midnight, 6 June 2021 At The Ballet Presented by Errollyn Wallen Programme Errollyn Wallen Horseplay Stravinsky Pulcinella (full ballet with narration) London Chamber Orchestra Violin 1 Cello Clarinet Trombone Clio Gould Robert Max Mark van de Wiel Andrew Connington Manon Derome Julia Graham Charles Sewart Rachael Lander Bass Clarinet Percussion Sophie Lockett Becky Knight Jonathan Parkin Julian Poole Anna Harpham Joby Burgess Bass Soprano Saxophone Violin 2 Stacey Watton Simon Haram Kathy Shave Andy Marshall Ciaran McCabe Tim Amherst Bassoon With Alexandra Caldon Martin Ludenbach Meyrick Alexander Christopher Warren-Green, Guy Button Bartosz Kwasecki conductor Harriet Murray Flute Karen Jones Horn and special guests Viola Chris Hankin Alex Wide Errollyn Wallen, presenter & Kate Musker David McQueen narrator Becky Low Oboe Jenny Coombes Gordon Hunt Trumpet Lucy Crowe, soprano Mariam Ruetschi Alison Alty Ross Brown Toby Spence, tenor If you’re joining us in the virtual concert hall, we’d love to know about it! Tag us on your social media using James Platt, bass the hashtag #LCOTogether on to study at London and Cambridge universities. Tom Sapsford for the Royal Ballet, who gave the Errollyn Wallen Her Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra was the premiere that year at the Theatre Royal, Sheffield. Horseplay first work by a black woman to be performed at the Proms. Indeed, she is the UK’s first internationally Sapsford writes: ‘Horseplay is a ballet for four male I. dark and mysterious celebrated black female composer, and has become dancers. The composer’s idea of the horse as archetype II. lively a figurehead for a whole new generation. She was was the impetus of the work. Each movement has its III. larghetto awarded an MBE in 2007 and a CBE in 2020. As for own colour and word or image associated with horses: IV. dark and mysterious - presto! her own role models, the figure she cites most often is the first is ‘dark’ and brooding, the second is ‘swift’ and JS Bach, not least for his intense, down-to-earth work is a winged horse cutting brightly through the sky. The Errollyn Wallen is celebrated both as a singer- ethic. word for the third movement is ‘rocking’ which sways songwriter and for her rigorous and communicative beautifully but uneasily, and the fourth, ‘race’, gallops contemporary music. Her works include operas Wallen has been recognised with commissions for the on to the climactic finishing post.’ of many different sizes (the latest, Dido’s Ghost, is Paralympics opening ceremony in 2012 and the Royal premiered this summer at the Barbican), as well as a Opera House, among many others. She has won an Ivor plethora of chamber music, solo and ensemble piano Novello Award, and teaches at Trinity Laban College pieces and concertos, plus award-winning scores for of Music, Royal College of Music and Birmingham The Guardian described film and TV. Early in her career she started her own Conservatoire, where her students included the group, Ensemble X, with the motto: ‘We don’t break singer-songwriter Laura Mvula. She has recently been the 1998 ballet score Horseplay down barriers...we don’t see any.’ appointed Visiting Professor of Composition at the as ‘one of Wallen’s satisfyingly Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. “ dense dance scores... a four- Born in Belize, Wallen moved to the UK with her family movement array of melodic and at the age of two. Creating music absorbed her even The Guardian described the 1998 ballet score from childhood. Her passion for dance led her to train Horseplay as ‘one of Wallen’s satisfyingly dense dance textural delights.’ with the Dance Theater of Harlem, but she eventually scores… a four-movement array of melodic and textural left in order to concentrate on composition. She went delights.’ It was commissioned by the choreographer himself had operated in earlier” decades. Crossing Igor Stravinsky the Place de la Concorde in Paris with the composer, Pulcinella Diaghilev made the suggestion that he should look at some 18th-century pieces with a view to orchestrating I. Sinfonia them for a ballet. At the mention of Pergolesi, II. Serenata Stravinsky thought the impresario must be out of his III. Scherzino – Allegretto – Andantino mind. IV. Tarantella V. Toccata An examination of the Italian manuscript from 1700 VI. Gavotta (con due variazioni) that Diaghilev sent his way soon convinced him: ‘I VII. Vivo looked and fell in love,’ he later recalled. As it turns out, more than half the music was not at all by Pergolesi; VIII. Minuetto – Finale this Commedia dell’Arte story of wit, deception and mistaken identity unfurls thanks to the additional input Since its launch a century ago, the LCO has given of such composers as Domenico Gallo from Venice, numerous world and UK premieres of new works the Dutch diplomat Count von Wassenaer and a priest ranging all the way from Gabriel Fauré to Graham from Milan, Carlo Iganazio Monza. Fitkin. Perhaps one of the most significant was the UK premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s Suite from the ballet score ‘I began by composing on the Pergolesi manuscripts Pulcinella – and this work has remained associated themselves, as though I were correcting an old work with the orchestra ever since. of my own,’ Stravinsky wrote. ‘I knew that I could not produce a “forgery” of Pergolesi because my motor Tonight, we have not the Suite but the whole ballet, habits are so different; at best, I could repeat him in my complete with three solo singers and a new, specially own accent.’ He therefore retained the melodies and written narration by Freya Johnson, a student at the bass-line and worked that ‘accent’ into the music’s Queen Mary University of London. inner voices. At first it can sound like 18th-century music with ‘wrong notes’ – but there is amply more ‘I began by composing The world premiere of Pulcinella was given on 15 May to it than that. Stravinsky’s own voice twinkles out of on the Pergolesi manuscripts 1920 at the Paris Opéra, by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets every bar. ‘The remarkable thing about Pulcinella,’ he Russes. Following Diaghilev’s principles of employing themselves, as though I were said, ‘is not how much but how little has been added “ the very best artists for every aspect of a new work, the correcting an old work of my or changed.’ designs were by Pablo Picasso and the choreography own,’ Stravinsky wrote. ‘I knew by Leonid Massine. Diaghilev, for whom Stravinsky Diaghilev, who had not expected more than a had written his three most famous ballet scores seven that I could not produce a reorchestration, was somewhat shocked and not a to ten years earlier – The Firebird, Petrushka and Le “forgery” of Pergolesi because little displeased by the result. It triumphed initially – Sacre du Printemps – was responsible for dreaming up Picasso’s designs in particular – but as a theatrical entity my motor habits are so different; the idea, partly in order to repair a relationship with the production was too soon forgotten. Stravinsky, Stravinsky that had turned shaky, and also perhaps to at best, I could repeat him in my who had real affection for this score, made the concert create something in tune with the new cultural mood own accent.’ suite in 1922 and later transformed it again into the emerging in the wake of World War I’s devastation. Suite Italienne for violin and piano. Orchestras were smaller, the music written for them LCO gave the UK premiere of the Pulcinella Suite in inspired by the chamber orchestras of the classical era, 1925. It was described by The Sunday Times as ‘most in marked contrast to the extravagant scale on which admirable fooling’. composers such as Mahler, Debussy and Stravinsky Programme notes by Jessica Duchen ” Christopher Warren-Green Errollyn Wallen Conductor Composer British conductor Christopher Warren-Green is Music Director of both the London Errollyn Wallen is a Belize-born British composer whose output includes twenty Chamber Orchestra and Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina. operas and a large catalogue of works which are performed internationally. Her latest large-scale work, a re-imagining of Parry’s Jerusalem — JERUSALEM — our Warren-Green has worked extensively in North America, with key engagements clouded hills for soprano and orchestra was performed at last year’s Last Night of including The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Detroit, Houston, St. Louis, Toronto, the Proms and broadcast around the world from Royal Albert Hall. THIS FRAME Milwaukee, Seattle and Vancouver symphony orchestras, the Minnesota Orchestra IS PART OF THE PAINTING for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, is a BBC Proms and Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra. In Europe, he has worked with commission for 2019 and was performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic conducted by Elim Chan, to a sold out Royal Albert Hall. Her acclaimed Concerto Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra and Iceland Symphony amongst others. And Grosso was released on the NMC label in January 2020, performed by Chineke! further afield, Warren-Green works with orchestras such as the NHK, Singapore who also premièred the chamber work NNENNA. Her opera The Silent Twins and Sapporo symphony orchestras and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. (libretto by April De Angelis) will receive its US première in New York in 2022. In addition to his international commitments, he has been invited to conduct at the Her arrangement of Johnetta Bryant’s song, I’m a Young Black Man (composed in weddings of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Westminster Abbey in 2011 response to George Floyd’s murder) for Clean Bandit and Friends has received over and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018.

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