17-04Web.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 17 April 2016 7pm Barbican Hall THE SEASONS Haydn The Seasons Interval after ‘Summer’ Sir Simon Rattle conductor London’s Symphony Orchestra Monika Eder soprano Andrew Staples tenor Florian Boesch baritone London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 9.55pm Recorded by Sky Arts for broadcast in May 2 Welcome 17 April 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief A very warm welcome to this evening’s LSO concert BMW LSO OPEN AIR CLASSICS 2016 at the Barbican. We are delighted to be joined by Sir Simon Rattle, LSO Music Director Designate, as The LSO is delighted to announce details of the 2016 he conducts Haydn’s nature oratorio, The Seasons. BMW LSO Open Air Classics concert on Sunday 22 May at 6.30pm. Conducted by Valery Gergiev, the Tonight’s concert features an outstanding cast of LSO will perform an all-Tchaikovsky programme in international soloists, including Monika Eder, who London’s Trafalgar Square, free and open to all, with makes her LSO debut, and returning artists Florian the Orchestra joined on stage by young musicians Boesch and Andrew Staples. The Orchestra is also from LSO On Track and students from the Guildhall joined this evening by the London Symphony Chorus, School for a special arrangement of the composer’s led by the LSO’s Choral Director Simon Halsey. The Swan Lake Suite. performance forms part of their 50th anniversary season, a great milestone in the history of the choir. lso.co.uk/openair I would like to take this opportunity to thank our media partner Sky Arts, who will be filming tonight’s LSO LIVE NEW RELEASE: performance for broadcast in the UK in early May. PANUFNIK LEGACIES II We hope that you enjoy the concert, and look LSO Live presents an album of new works by forward to welcoming you to the Barbican again soon. emerging composers, all of whom have been The London Symphony Chorus return to continue members of the Panufnik Composers Scheme. their 50th anniversary celebrations on 24 April, Following on from The Panufnik Legacies, which conducted by Sir Mark Elder in Elgar’s oratorio, showcased works by composers from the first five The Dream of Gerontius. years of the Scheme, this recording brings together music by selected composers from the programme’s first decade, conducted by François-Xavier Roth. lso.co.uk/lsolive Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+, including a 20% discount on standard tickets. At tonight’s concert we are delighted to welcome Marjorie Wilkins & Friends lso.co.uk/groups London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Summer 2016 Highlights ‘The LSO at full tilt is a terrifying, glamorous beast.’ The Times on the LSO with Daniel Harding MAHLER AND ELGAR WITH MAHLER AND DVORˇ ÁK SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES: BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME SIR ANTONIO PAPPANO WITH DANIEL HARDING THE HOGBOON CONCERTS: ELGAR UP CLOSE Thu 19 May 7.30pm Sun 5 Jun 7pm Sun 26 Jun 7pm Thu 21 Apr 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 1 Mahler Symphony No 2 Maxwell Davies The Hogboon with LSO String Ensemble Mahler Symphony No 6 (‘Resurrection’) (world premiere; LSO commission) Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Thu 28 Apr 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Daniel Harding conductor with Elias Quartet Viktoria Mullova violin Miah Persson soprano Sir Simon Rattle conductor Huw Watkins piano Anna Larsson alto LSO Discovery Choirs Sun 29 May 7pm London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Chorus Thu 5 May 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Beethoven Violin Concerto Simon Halsey chorus director Simon Halsey chorus director with Elias Quartet Elgar Symphony No 2 Guildhall School Musicians Thu 9 Jun 7.30pm Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Dvorˇák Overture: Othello In memory of the late Nikolaj Znaider violin Bartók Violin Concerto No 1 Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CBE CH 1934–2016 Dvorˇák Symphony No 8 Generously supported by David HS Hobbs Daniel Harding conductor lso.co.uk Lisa Batiashvili violin 020 7638 8891 4 Programme Notes 17 April 2016 Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) The Seasons (1801) 1 SPRING Haydn, though, worked on The Seasons with 2 SUMMER increasing reluctance, protesting that he was too INTERVAL weary and that the libretto was banal by comparison 3 AUTUMN with The Creation. Still smarting at attacks on The 4 WINTER Creation’s animal imitations, he derided the frogs and crickets in ‘Summer’, so delightful to us, as PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER SIR SIMON RATTLE CONDUCTOR ‘Frenchified trash’; and he summed up the relative RICHARD WIGMORE is a writer for MONIKA EDER SOPRANO merits of the two oratorios by remarking that while BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone ANDREW STAPLES TENOR the solo voices in The Creation were those of angels, and other journals, lecturer and FLORIAN BOESCH BARITONE in The Seasons ‘only [the peasant] Simon speaks’. broadcaster, specialising in the LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS Viennese Classical period and in SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR ‘Silent devotion, astonishment Lieder. His Pocket Guide to Haydn and loud enthusiasm relieved was published by Faber in 2009. After the triumph of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, the librettist, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, was quick one another with the listeners … to propose another text to the composer, again with the immeasurable quantity a British source: an adaptation of James Thomson’s famous pastoral epic, The Seasons, published in of happy ideas surprised and 1730. Jettisoning most of Thomson’s moralising, overpowered even the most Van Swieten shifted the scene to Haydn’s own Burgenland, complete with wine harvest, inserted daring of imaginations.’ a couple of popular German poems to jolly up A report on the first performance of The Seasons ‘Winter’ (the spinning song, and Hanne’s quasi-folk in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung tale), and in the spirit of Enlightenment optimism omitted tragic details such as the wanderer frozen Yet for all Haydn’s strictures, Van Swieten’s text gave to death in a snowstorm. him plenty to fire his imagination, and he responded with music of unquenchable vitality and freshness of The self-opinionated Baron was no poet. Time and observation. First heard in the Palais Schwarzenberg again he dulled and flattened Thomson’s imagery, on 24 April 1801 ‘with the same unanimous approval BARON GOTTFRIED VAN SWIETEN compounding the problem with the English ‘back- as The Creation’ (Haydn’s words), The Seasons is a (1733–1803) was a diplomat, translation’ of his German text (The Seasons was joyous evocation of the world in which the composer, librarian and government official actually published with words in German, English and a master-wheelwright’s son, had grown up. Essentially who served the Austrian Empire French). But, working closely with the composer, he a series of lovingly painted frescoes, this least during the 18th century. He was an was shrewd in his choice of which details to include solemn of oratorios fuses pastoral innocence with enthusiastic amateur musician and and which to omit. In many ways the libretto was right the most sophisticated harmonic and orchestral is best remembered today as the up Haydn’s street: akin to The Creation in its celebration language. Indeed, like Mozart’s The Magic Flute, patron of several great composers of an idyllic, divinely ordered world, yet embracing an another great celebration of Enlightenment values, of the Classical era, including Haydn, even wider range, from the stag hunt and the wine The Seasons effortlessly incorporates a wide array Mozart and Beethoven. harvest to paeans of praise to the Almighty. of styles, from Viennese Singspiel to exhilarating lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 fugal choruses that reflect Haydn’s encounter with SUMMER Handel’s music in London. ‘Summer’ falls into two large, virtually continuous sections. The first moves from the atmospheric SPRING orchestral portrayal of ‘the meek-eyed morn’, via Each of the four ‘cantatas’ that make up The the oboe-as-cockerel and Simon’s bucolic aria with Seasons opens with an orchestral tone poem. horn (a foretaste here of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ The splendid G minor introduction ‘depicts the Symphony), to an exhilarating chorus in praise of the passage from winter to spring’, the former evoked sun that culminates in a riot of fugal laughter. in blustery, densely contrapuntal music, the latter in airy exchanges between violins and wind. In the In the second part of ‘Summer’, drought and recapitulation Haydn omits this ‘spring’ music and torpor, graphically evoked in the Lukas’ recitative sweeps directly into the recitative for the peasants: and cavatina, find relief in Hanne’s enchanting Simon (bass), Lukas (tenor) and Simon’s daughter woodland scene: first in a pictorial recitative, then Hanne (soprano). Tonal resolution only comes with in a two-section aria, beginning as a languorous the lilting G major chorus, ‘Komm, holder Lenz’. duet for soprano and oboe and ending with ecstatic coloratura flourishes. The scene darkens in a baleful In the jaunty ploughman’s song – one of the oratorio’s recitative, punctured by distant thunder. instant hits – Haydn resisted van Swieten’s attempts to get him to include a tune from a popular German Then, with forked lightning on the flute, the opera and instead had Simon whistle the famous tempest erupts. In this, the first great Romantic melody from his ‘Surprise’ Symphony. Two solo- picture-in-sound of the warring elements, Haydn HAYDN’S SYMPHONY NO 94 choral complexes make up the second half of creates a musical counterpart to the cataclysmic (‘SURPRISE’) is one of the ‘London’ ‘Spring’. The Prayer ‘Sei nun gnädig’ begins with storms that Turner would depict a quarter of a Symphonies, written during a visit serene, hymnic melody and ends with a fervent century later.