A5 Programme
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Welcome the Spring PROGRAMME Tuesday 18 May 2021 St George’s Hanover Square Firebird Friends & Benefactors Firebird Circle Rory Graham (Principal Horn) David & Susie Turner Nick & Debbie Barton Professor Thomas Hale & Martin & Alison Walshe Rory Graham Dr Sam Webster (Principal Andrew Willey Howard de Walden Estates Trumpet) Limited Flying Sparks Hyde Park Place Estate Golden Firebird Friends Humphrey Avon Charity The Rt Hon Sir Richard & Dr David Daniels London Chamber Music Lady Aikens Society Misako Akane Performance Partners The Morris-Venables Robert & Jane Bell Bärenreiter (UK) Limited Charitable Foundation Emily Bohill Fazioli Pianoforti Robert Venables QC & Gary Michael Manning Clark FisherBroyles Morris Jeanie Hirsch Gladwell & Patterson The Williams Charitable Christopher Humphry Knightsbridge Trust John Naulls Jaques Samuel Pianos Guy Palmer London Benefactors of the Chair Brian Read Kings Place London Endowment Scheme Edwin & Harold Robson London Chamber Music Michael & Helen Brown Thomas Sharpe QC & Society (Principal First Violin) Mrs Phillis Sharpe Middlesex University Jenny Jones (First Violin) Stephen & Kate Wilson SJE Arts Oxford Anatoly Savin (Principal Mike Souch Second Violin) Silver Firebird Friends St George’s Hanover Square, Philip & Suzy Rowley Martin Amherst-Lock Mayfair (Principal Cello) Jim & Olivia Cook Jarrod Henderson & Tonia Leon Corbett-Weaver Trusts & Foundations Sue Sinclair (Cello) Ness Cowdrey The Barton Trust Stephen & Susan Yarnold Chris & Howard Fielding Hyde Park Place Estate (Cello) Maria Gouveia Charity David & Eillis Baty Allasonne Lewis The Morris-Venables (Principal Double Bass) Martin Melville Charitable Foundation Trevor & Elizabeth Gore Doreen Munden The Williams Charitable (Principal Oboe) James Saunders Trust Ken Watters & Robin Nicholas Sokolow Wilkinson (Principal Clarinet) John & Rowena Tubby Become a Firebird Friend at londonfirebird.com 2 Welcome ear Friends, Last autumn our orchestra If you are not yet a member, do please performed twice, in October to a consider joining us as your support would be Dsocially-distanced audience and in extremely valuable to the orchestra - particularly November without a live audience. in these challenging times. Both concerts were filmed and released Just join online by visiting out online. We focused on music for strings. website at www.LondonFirebird.com. Tonight, we are delighted to be able to present Details of the rest of the concerts of the our first concert of the calendar year now that season are viewable there too. COVID restrictions are gradually easing. It is also now possible to send a one-off This concert features wind and brass players donation via the site too. as well as strings and percussion. Our next concert takes place on Thursday 24 We are very pleased to welcome a socially- June, again to a socially-distanced audience. distanced live audience. We very much hope to see you there. Once again the performance will be filmed, to be enjoyed by others at home. Kindest regards, Tonight’s performance would not have been Marc Corbett-Weaver possible without the unstinting support of our Artistic Director & Chief Executive Friends & Benefactors Society. I would like to thank each and every one of our donors who have provided support to the charity. 3 Programme notes by Michael Manning Clark Frederick Delius (1862-1934) On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring n Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is The pastoral opening showcases the a tone poem composed in 1912 by the woodwind section, which shares exchanges of OEnglish composer Frederick Delius. cuckoo calls – a theme which is also taken up by It premiered in Leipzig, Germany, on 23 the strings. October 1913. It is the first of Two Pieces for The string section then introduces and Small Orchestra, the second being Summer develops a rich second theme, which was based Night on the River, although for many years these on the Norwegian folk song In Ola Valley, which have been often been performed, and recorded, was introduced to Delius by the Australian separately. composer, Percy Grainger. As a tone poem (a musical work that tells a As the final cuckoo calls are heard from the story or describes a scene), the piece is a vivid clarinet, the piece ends quietly, in a gentle, serene depiction of the hearing of the first cuckoos mood. emerging at springtime. Delius uses the woodwind, namely the clarinets, to portray the cuckoo call. 4 Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) Siegfried Idyll WWV 103 I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! “After it had died away, R. [Richard] came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of this ‘symphonic birthday greeting’. I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R. had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever!” Sources drawn upon in this unique he great operatic composer Richard work include from Wagner wrote the one-movement, Wagner’s opera Siegfried, from which he Tsymphonic piece Siegfried Idyll for his borrowed the horn motif and the melody of the second wife, and love of his life, Cosima forest bird as well as the major love theme, (daughter of the composer Frans Liszt), both as melodies from an uncompleted string a surprise birthday present and to celebrate the quartet sketched some years before and a lullaby recent birth of their son, Siegfried. composed in 1868 (heard in the oboe solo). She awoke on Christmas morning, 1870 (her In its original form, the Siegfried Idyll was birthday was the 24th but she was to celebrate it scored for a domestic-sized orchestra of under 16 on Christmas day) to the sound of music. players. Her husband had set up a small orchestra on To Cosima’s disappointment, who wanted to the front stairs of their home, in the lakeside keep the work private as her romantic gift, district of Tribschen (near Lucerne in Wagner later sold the piece as a result of debt Switzerland). Cosima recorded in her diary for problems (as was typical with him). that day: In so doing, to make it commercially viable, “When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, he scored it for a larger orchestra. 5 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony no. 36 in C, K. 426 Linz I Adagio - Allegro spiritoso light and shade that follows, leading from II Andante tender longing to intense agitation. The III Minuetto following allegro is thematically rich and large- IV Finale (Presto) scale. ozart’s Symphony No. 36 in C Among other features it contains quirky Major Linz, opens the series of the ‘Turkish’ themes (tutti in E minor) and Mcomposer’s five great final development in solo-dialogue texture. symphonies. In the second adagio movement, the Mozart was travelling through the city of presence of trumpets and drums, never before Linz in Austria in Autumn 1783 and while featured in Mozart’s slow movements, there was asked to give a concert. transforms what might otherwise have been a The problem was, he did not have any merely gracious instrumental aria into symphony scores with him. So he had to write something darker. a new one. On 31 October he wrote in a letter The minuet is conventionally courtly but to his father: the trio, with its duet for oboe and bassoon, is “On Tuesday, 4 November, I am giving a concert in Mozart at his most wittily elegant. the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony The dazzling and slightly frenzied finale, with me, I am writing a new one at breakneck speed, instructed to be played “as fast as possible”, is which must be finished by that time …”. a movement containing a conglomerate of The symphony contains four movements: thematic ideas, each subtly developed from its adagio, adante, menueto, and finale-presto. predecessor, alternating between mirthful Every movement except the minuet is in sonata exuberance and poignant lyricism. form. The Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein The slow introduction to the first movement observed that the symphony would be quite in is a new idea for Mozart, and it seems to the style of Haydn were it not that it contains presage the music’s impending seriousness. “typically Mozartian chromaticism, agitation, and By that time Joseph Haydn (and also his pliancy – qualities quite foreign to Hadyn, but which composer brother, Michael) had pioneered the Mozart could not avoid even when he composed ‘at feature of a solemn slow introduction in his breakneck speed’.” own symphonies. But what marks out Mozart’s as quite original is the heroic beginning and play of 6 7 PROGRAMME Welcome the Spring Tuesday 18 May 2021 St George’s Hanover Square Frederick Delius (1862-1934) On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) Siegfried Idyll WWV 103 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony no. 36 in C, K.426 Linz I Adagio - Allegro spiritoso II Andante III Minuetto IV Finale (Presto) George Jackson conductor 10 Conductor George Jackson rmed with insatiable artistic curiosity, a true performer’s instincts and the Aadvantages of a rigorous central European training, George Jackson has earned critical acclaim for the authority and eloquence of his music-making. Winner of the 2015 Aspen Conducting Prize, Jackson came to attention after stepping in at short notice with Orchestre de Paris, where he stepped in for Daniel Harding. Recent highlights include leading Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg and Festival D’Automne in Paris, as well as conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of Opéra de Rouen, and the world premiere of Tscho Theissing’s Genia with Theater an der Wien. His varied operatic experience includes performances at Opera North, Hamburg State Opera and Opera Holland Park, as well as conducting a new production of Hänsel und Gretel at Grange Park Opera, where he was described in review as ‘a young conductor to watch'.