Paganini Variations
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Thursday 28 February 2019 7.30–9.40pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT PAGANINI VARIATIONS Weill Symphony No 2 Rachmaninov LAHA Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Interval Stravinsky Petrushka (1947 version) Lahav Shani conductor Simon Trpčeski piano HANI This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY Welcome Latest News On our Blog We are grateful to the Kurt Weill Foundation A TRANSATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP RAVEL IN MADRID for Music for their generous support of tonight’s performance, and I would like to In January, the LSO welcomed a team of In 1923, on his first visit to Madrid, Maurice take this opportunity to thank our media young professional musicians – Keston MAX Ravel was hard at work on a piece of music partner Classic FM for recommending Fellows of Santa Barbara's Music Academy which his publishers urgently required. this concert to their listeners. We also of the West – who spent a week working Read more on our blog about Ravel’s welcome guests from the London Chamber alongside the Orchestra and taking part in Spanish influences and inspiration. of Commerce and Industry, a partner rehearsals, a mock recording session and organisation of the LSO. performing in LSO concerts at the Barbican. MEET LAHAV SHANI I hope that you enjoy the performance and CULTURE MILE COMMUNITY DAY Ahead of his LSO debut, we spoke to elcome to tonight’s LSO concert that you will be able to join us again soon. Lahav about Kurt Weill, musical life in at the Barbican for a programme In March we look forward to a trio of concerts On Sunday 17 February, LSO St Luke's Tel Aviv and what it’s like to step into of Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and celebrating Bernard Haitink’s 90th birthday was taken over for a day of performances, Zubin Mehta’s shoes as Music Director Kurt Weill. Lahav Shani, who was recently and his relationship with the LSO, which workshops, music, food and crafts, run by of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. appointed Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam spans more than two decades. Culture Mile to celebrate the irrepressible Philharmonic Orchestra, makes his debut creativity and community spirit of East • lso.co.uk/blog conducting the LSO. London. Join us for free at the next Community Day on 21 July. WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The concert opens with Kurt Weill’s Second Symphony, a work that is a favourite of • lso.co.uk/news At tonight’s concert we are delighted to Lahav Shani’s and which he introduces to Kathryn McDowell CBE DL welcome the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra the Orchestra for the first performance in Managing Director Please ensure all phones are switched off. Foundation, Adele Friedland & Friends and the LSO’s recent history. It is also a pleasure Photography and audio/video recording Linda Diggins & Friends. to welcome back Simon Trpčeski to play are not permitted during the performance. Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, before the concert finishes with Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka. 2 Welcome 28 February 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up: LSO Season Concerts urt Weill was a German Jewish PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Sunday 3 March 7–9pm Thursday 14 March 7.30–9.30pm composer, best know for his Barbican Thursday 21 March 7.30–9.30pm theatre music written between Meirion Bowen has been Director of Music Barbican the wars, which mixes Weimar modernism at Kingston-upon-Thames University and PUCCINI MASS with the sounds of Berlin cabaret. In the worked as a BBC Radio Producer. His books HAITINK AT 90: Second Symphony, Weill’s unique style include a studies on Tippett and the writings Ponchielli Elegia MAHLER SYMPHONY NO 4 is fleshed out into a full-size symphony – of Roberto Gerhard. Verdi String Quartet (version for full strings) a worthy companion to those of Mahler Puccini Messa di Gloria Dvořák Violin Concerto and Shostakovich. James Holmes is a Trustee of the Kurt Weill Mahler Symphony No 4 Foundation, New York, and is currently Sir Antonio Pappano conductor The Second Symphony was composed in editing Weill’s orchestral music for the Benjamin Bernheim tenor Bernard Haitink conductor 1934, around the time Hitler rose to power, Critical Edition of the composer’s works. Gerald Finley bass Isabelle Faust violin and was to become the last of Weill’s London Symphony Chorus Anna Lucia Richter soprano symphonic works. Rachmaninov composed Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and Simon Halsey chorus director his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in the translator who writes extensively on French, 14 March 6pm same year. A swashbuckling success at its Russian and Eastern European music. Streamed live on youtube.com/lso and medici.tv LSO Platforms: Baltimore premiere, the tuneful Rhapsody Guildhall Artists pre-concert recital has lost none of its appeal in the time since. Paul Griffiths has been a critic for nearly Sunday 10 March 7–9.15pm 40 years, including for The Times and Barbican Sunday 17 March 7–9pm Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka tells the The New Yorker, and is an authority on 20th- Barbican story of a puppet who comes to life, set and 21st-century music. Among his books HAITINK AT 90: BIRTHDAY CONCERT at a Shrovetide fair in folkloric Russia. are studies of Boulez, Ligeti and Stravinsky. BARBARA HANNIGAN Reminiscent of the brilliantly orchestrated, He also writes novels and librettos. Mozart Piano Concerto No 22 folk-inflected music of Rimsky-Korsakov Bruckner Symphony No 4 Ligeti Concerto Românesc and Mussorgsky, Petrushka features Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Haydn Symphony No 86 groundbreaking use of orchestral piano journalist and writer. He is the author Bernard Haitink conductor Berg Lulu – Suite and the constantly shifting rhythms that of The LSO at 90, and contributes to Till Fellner piano Gershwin arr Hannigan & Elliot became one of Stravinsky’s fingerprints. a wide variety of specialist classical Girl Crazy – Suite Petrushka was first performed in Paris in music publications. Streamed live on youtube.com/lso and medici.tv 1911, a collaboration with Mikhail Fokine, Recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast on 11 March Barbara Hannigan conductor/soprano Alexandre Benois and Vaslav Nijinsky. Tonight’s Concert 3 Kurt Weill Symphony No 2 1934 / note by James Holmes 1 Sostenuto – Allegro molto — The unusual development sidelines this 2 Largo ‘It was conceived as a purely musical form.’ exposition material; a four-note figure heard 3 Allegro vivace in the coda as a timpani motif heads a new Kurt Weill clarinet melody with an elegant concluding urt Weill maintained that he — turn at its tail. ‘Head’ and ‘tail’ take control; never wrote for posterity; in turn, only when the tempo slackens into spectral posterity has found it hard to distinguished alumni – Ira Gershwin, Alan Sieben Todsünden (Seven Deadly Sins), wind phrases over pulsing timpani is their pin him down – an elusiveness perhaps Jay Lerner and Maxwell Anderson, among his last collaboration with Bertolt Brecht. grip loosened. During a meno mosso interlude encapsulated in his two most widely- others – as well as the ‘Broadway opera’ Yet Weill considered instrumental music with strings playing near the bridge, performed songs. ‘Mack the Knife’ typifies Street Scene, Weill’s own Porgy. 1940s central to his whole aesthetic, turning to sustained wind phrases unfold and interrupt the decadent tang of his collaborations with America was naturally closed to the Weill the stage ‘only when I discovered my music the recapitulation, before the coda and a Bertolt Brecht in late-20s Berlin; yet those of the Weimar Republic, while Europe felt contains the tension of scenic events.’ final defiant statement of the timpani motif. works, inspired by popular music, came he’d sold out on Broadway’s Great White Although conductor Bruno Walter elicited apparently out of nowhere after a decade Way; critics talked of ‘two Weills’, and the subtitle ‘Three Night Scenes’ for the Like a mischievous child, an impish triplet during which Weill distilled a unique, tersely disagreed as to which was the real deal. Second Symphony’s New York premiere, figure disrupts the opening cortège of the neo-Classical style from the forms and The debate may continue – but today Street Weill was clear that ‘It was conceived as Largo, only silenced by a stern trombone idioms of the late 19th century. Scoffing Scene is performed almost as regularly as a purely musical form.’ solo. Taken up by the violins and clinging by at this change of direction, Weill’s mentor Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny its fingertips to a tonal centre, the melody Busoni asked, ‘Do you want to be a Verdi Opera) and Weill’s lifelong efforts to tell There is a darkness to the introduction; lower reaches a climax in which wind instruments of the poor?’ Weill replied, ‘Is that so bad?’ vivid, human stories on the lyric stage have strings and woodwind brood beneath an echo the stoical quality of the introduction’s been deemed significant on both sides of insistent violin motif, and the resolute dotted trumpet solo over surging strings. The The bittersweet sentiment of ‘September the Atlantic. Perhaps it is becoming clearer rhythms of the trumpets are tonally uncertain. central section sees the procession of dotted Song’ came after a turbulent decade when that there is only one Weill; or maybe (as After 20 bars, the Allegro molto launches with rhythms alleviated by the return of the Weill fled the rise of Fascism, stayed long has also been said) – there are a thousand. chromatic string figurations restless beneath ‘head’ and ‘tail’ from the first movement – enough in Paris to compose the Second sparse rhythmic figures in the woodwind, the former turned into a consoling triplet, Symphony and several theatrical works, THE SECOND SYMPHONY one of which – also prominent in the ‘Stolz’ an inversion of the latter lending expressive and finally settled in America.