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Home , Franco Abbiati Prize, Gidon Kremer, Huw Watkins, Joshua Bell, Krystian Zimerman, Kyllikki (Sibelius)

Symphony Orchestra Living Music

Sunday 3 April 2016 7pm Barbican Hall

ALAN GILBERT: LSO DEBUT

Nielsen Overture: Masquerade Sibelius Symphony No 3 INTERVAL Anders Hillborg Exquisite Corpse Tchaikovsky Concerto

Alan Gilbert conductor Joshua Bell violin

Supported by Toshiba

Concert finishes approx 9pm

Thursday 7 April 2016 7.30pm Barbican Hall

Sibelius London’s Symphony Orchestra Prokofiev Concerto No 2 INTERVAL Nielsen Symphony No 4 (‘The Inextinguishable’)

Alan Gilbert conductor piano

Supported by LSO Patrons

Concert finishes approx 9.40pm 2 Welcome 3 & 7 April 2016

Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief

At this evening’s LSO concert we are delighted SIR CH CBE to welcome Alan Gilbert, the Music Director of the (1934–2016) Orchestra, to make his LSO debut with two concerts built around the works of The LSO was deeply saddened to hear of the Sibelius and Nielsen. death of the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on Monday 14 March 2016. Sir Peter had been On 3 April we hear the overture from Nielsen’s working closely with the LSO in recent years, with opera Masquerade and Sibelius’ Symphony No 3, his Tenth Symphony in 2014 and latterly on his new before a contemporary work by the Swedish children’s opera The Hogboon, which the Orchestra composer Anders Hillborg. To complete the will premiere on 26 June. programme, we are delighted that Joshua Bell returns to perform the Tchaikovsky . To read the LSO’s full tribute, please visit our website.

The second concert, on 7 April, opens with an early lso.co.uk/more/news tone poem from Sibelius, En Saga, and closes with Nielsen’s Symphony No 4, a work Alan Gilbert has championed for many years. Between the two, it is THE MONSTER IN THE MAZE NOMINATED a pleasure to welcome back Daniil Trifonov to FOR AN INTERNATIONAL OPERA AWARD perform Prokofiev’s No 2. Jonathan Dove’s The Monster in the Maze, an LSO I would like to take this opportunity to thank our co-commission with the Berliner Philharmoniker and corporate sponsors Toshiba, who support the the Aix-en-Provence Festival, has been nominated concert on 3 April, and the LSO’s Patrons, who for an International Opera Award in the Accessibility support the concert on 7 April. Thank you also to our Category. The winners will be announced on 15 May. media partner Classic FM, who have recommended the 3 April concert to their listeners. operaawards.org

I hope you enjoy the performance and can join us again when Sir , the LSO’s Music A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS Director Designate, returns for a programme of Messiaen and Bruckner on 14 April, and Haydn’s Adele Friedland and Friends The Seasons on 17 April. Faversham Music Club Gerrards Cross Community Association Live Travel and Tours The Grand Tour Redbridge & District U3A

Kathryn McDowell CBE DL lso.co.uk/groups Managing Director BE IN TOUCH

Stay connected with your customers. Wherever they are. With Toshiba’s leading integrated solutions. Be free. Be smart. Be in touch. Be Together Commerce. 4 Programme Notes 3 April 2016

Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) Overture: Masquerade (1906)

PROGRAMME NOTE & Like his contemporary Sibelius, is best Even before the curtain goes up, the Masquerade COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER known for his symphonies. But, also like Sibelius, overture flings wide the doors on the opera’s STEPHEN JOHNSON he too wrote plenty of fine music for the stage: glittering 18th century setting. The bustling energy of during the years 1908–14 Nielsen was a conductor the opening, the swinging waltz theme that follows, at the Royal Danish Theatre. His last years at the aptly convey the excited preparations for the opera’s theatre were stormy and controversial, but even masked ball. A lighter theme in two-time – elegant after his resignation he continued to write theatre 18th century dance music with a Danish folk accent – music, including his colourful and today widely loved provides contrast, but the end is all joyous energy. music for Adam Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin (1918–19). There are also two operas. The Biblical epic Saul and David (1898–1901) has its champions, but the more general view is that Nielsen’s comic opera Masquerade, is the real success story – for many Danes it is simply the Danish national opera, completely upstaging the play by Ludvig Holberg on which it is based. MASQUERADE: IN BRIEF The day after a masquerade Nielsen composed Masquerade surprisingly quickly – ball Leander is reminiscing with most of it was written during 1905. The Overture his valet, and tells him about was added in 1906, just in time for the premiere. Leonora, a girl he met at the 1906 was also the 150th anniversary of the birth ball and summarily got engaged of Mozart, and around the time he was writing to. Leander’s father hears of the overture, Nielsen wrote an essay in which he the drunken arrangement and argued (somewhat controversially in those days) is furious at his son because that the ‘Classical’ Mozart was greater than the great he had already arranged a Romantic hero Beethoven. Something of Nielsen’s marriage for him with a country growing love and admiration for Mozart can be felt in heiress, the daughter of Leonard. Masquerade: the wit, playfulness, the delightful irony Leonard then complains that his could all be described as Mozartean, and so could daughter has also fallen in love the lively, sophisticated vocal ensembles – one area with someone else and refuses in which Mozart unquestionably did put Beethoven to honour her commitment to in the shade. marry Leander. In the final act, at another masquerade, it turns out the Leonora was Leander’s betrothed all along! The opera then finishes with a chorus extolling the virtues of the The poster for the world premiere of Masquerade in masquerade. Copenhagen, on 11 November 1906. lso.co.uk Composer Profile 5

Carl Nielsen Composer Profile

‘If music were to assume human form and explain its essence, it may say something like this: ‘I love the vast surface of silence; and it is my chief delight to break it’’.

Carl Nielsen

Often described as a ‘nationalist’, Nielsen’s role in ’s rise to At 14 Nielsen enrolled in the army as a trumpeter, making himself musical nationhood is without parallel. Indeed, many of the songs useful in military bands by learning a wide range of instruments. How Danish schoolchildren are still taught today were composed by Nielsen. and when he first encountered isn’t clear but by the But after the First World War Nielsen turned against nationalism, age of 19 he had become accomplished enough as performer and describing it pungently as a ‘spiritual syphilis’. Having hymned composer to attend the Copenhagen Conservatory. Throughout his nationhood in his Third Symphony (1911) he portrayed its decline life Nielsen remained a fascinating mixture of earthy simplicity and from the ‘high and beautiful’ into ‘senseless hate’ in the mechanistic intellectual sophistication, reading widely and keeping up to date with strutting march rhythms of the Fifth (1922). musical innovations. Initially he reacted against Wagner’s modernism, but in later years he was fascinated by what progressive-minded Nielsen’s national consciousness was of a very different kind from composers like Bartók, Schoenberg and Hindemith were doing. that of most late 19th and early 20th-century national composers. His very last works show him as keen as ever to extend his musical His family were Danish peasants on the island of Funen (Fyn) and horizons, though without sacrificing the rootedness. his father was leader of a village band. Young Carl soon joined as a violinist, and his first compositional efforts were dance tunes. Thus, unlike the vast majority of nationally inclined composers, Nielsen didn’t have to ‘discover’ his country’s indigenous culture: it was in his blood. If he needed a folk tune in one of his works, all he had to do was compose one; it could hardly have been more authentic. 6 Programme Notes 3 April 2016

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Symphony No 3 in C major Op 52 (1907)

1 ALLEGRO MODERATO the virtuoso and composer Ferrucio 2 ANDANTINO CON MOTO, QUASI ALLEGRETTO Busoni. But Sibelius was probably also thinking 3 MODERATO – ALLEGRO MA NON TANTO of Beethoven, whose Fifth Symphony delivers its epochal message in around half an hour. PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER At the time when Sibelius was labouring on his Third STEPHEN JOHNSON Symphony (1904–7), his home country was FIRST MOVEMENT still a Grand Duchy of . Full independence was The Third Symphony’s opening movement could only to come in 1917, when Finns were able to take be seen as a study in austere Nordic economy. The COMPOSER PROFILE advantage of the upheaval caused by the Russian opening theme – hushed but full of potential energy – PAGE 8 Revolution. After its triumphant premiere in 1902, is presented by cellos and basses alone. Gradually Sibelius’ Second Symphony had been quickly seized the full orchestra enters as the music builds to a upon by Finns as a ‘Liberation Symphony’ – the ardent vigorous climax then, with minimal transition, cellos expression of his people’s yearning for freedom. change the mood with a long, melancholic second But Sibelius had already begun to turn his back on theme. Eventually, after a long, masterfully sustained his romantic nationalist past. The Second Symphony crescendo, the opening theme returns at exactly shows Sibelius wrestling as never before with musical the right moment to announce the beginning of the form: how to evolve a coherent, organic argument recapitulation. At the end the leading motifs broaden from tiny motifs; how one movement can grow out into hymn-like lines for horns, woodwind and strings. of another – just as the Finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Then, with a simple ‘Amen’ cadence, this remarkable Symphony famously emerges in splendour from the movement closes. glowing embers of the preceding Scherzo. SECOND MOVEMENT In the Third Symphony, Sibelius takes these formal If that all sounds rather abstract, the effect is quite THE FIRST RECORDING of explorations to new levels. He also seems to have different. Sibelius liked to compare the symphony Sibelius’ Symphony No 3 was made seen his new symphony as embodying another as a form to a river, and at every stage awareness of by the LSO in June 1932 at Abbey kind of protest – this time against the excesses of nature and its ‘profound logic’ (Sibelius’ own phrase) Road, with conductor , late Romanticism. While his contemporaries Mahler, permeates the music. Sibelius now allows more of in a session organised by the Strauss and Scriabin assembled vast, dazzlingly the sounds of life into the following two movements. Sibelius Society. colour-enhanced orchestras in their symphonies The second movement is a slow-ish nocturnal and tone poems, Sibelius scaled his orchestra down. dance, characterised by muted colours (literally in The Third Symphony is scored for the kind of forces the case of the strings, who keep their mutes on Beethoven or Schumann would have recognised. throughout). The theme emerges gradually out of And while the typical late-Romantic symphony the short pizzicato motifs heard at the beginning continued to loosen its limbs and stretch out over on cellos, basses and violas – as though they were longer and longer time-spans, Sibelius sought ever- the seeds from which the long main melody grows greater concentration. He may have been partly and blossoms. This dance music alternates with influenced by the ideal of Junge Klassizität passages of reflective stillness, in which flickers of (a daunting German tongue-twister meaning light never lead to a brighter dawn. Perhaps Sibelius ‘Youthful Classicism’) championed by his friend, was thinking of those twilit days at the heart of the lso.co.uk Programme Notes 7

Finnish winter when the sun barely shows itself MORE SIBELIUS IN above the horizon. SEASON 2016/17

FINALE The final movement begins like a scherzo. The A SCHERZO (meaning ‘I joke’ or dancing movement is still prevailingly quiet, but now ‘I jest’ in Italian) is a light-hearted much faster. Eventually nasal ‘stopped’ horns quietly piece of music often found as the announce a new figure, full of mystery – echoes here third movement in a traditional of the haunted forest-scapes of Sibelius’ grippingly symphony or sonata form. It consists atmospheric tone poem Nightride and Sunrise. Just of three parts – two similar episodes when it seems that the Scherzo is getting nowhere separated by contrasting musical fast, violas take the mysterious horn figures and material – and is generally both turn them into something more assertive – almost upbeat and humorous. a fully-fledged tune. Then cellos join the first violas and the almost-tune becomes a solid chordal theme in a clear C major. The mood becomes increasingly Sun 25 Sep 2016 7pm energetic until the theme develops into a triumphant VIOLIN CONCERTO hymn with braying brass and vigorously pulsating with Mahler Symphony No 4 strings. But the end is another gesture of masterly Daniel Harding conductor economy: a massive three-note figure, underlined by Nikolaj Znaider violin brass and timpani – and the Third Symphony is over. Christiane Karg soprano

Sun 5 Feb 2017 7pm with Bernstein Serenade

Sir conductor Janine Jansen violin

Sun 9 Jul 2017 7pm, Barbican SYMPHONY NO 2 INTERVAL – 20 minutes with Andrew Norman Children’s Opera There are bars on all levels of the Concert Hall; ice cream Sir Simon Rattle conductor can be bought at the stands on Stalls and Circle level. The Barbican shop will also be open.

Why not tweet us your thoughts on the first half of the 020 7638 8891 performance @londonsymphony, or come and talk to lso.co.uk LSO staff at the Information Point on the Circle level? 8 Composer Profile 3 April 2016

Jean Sibelius Composer Profile

‘Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.’

Jean Sibelius

As a young boy, Sibelius made rapid progress as a violinist and In 1914 Sibelius visited America, composing a bold new work, composer. In 1886 he abandoned law studies at University, The Oceanides, for the celebrated Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut. enrolling at the Helsinki Conservatory and later taking lessons in Berlin and Vienna. The young composer drew inspiration from the Finnish Although Sibelius lived to the age of 91, he effectively abandoned ancient epic, the Kalevala, a rich source of Finnish cultural identity. composition almost 30 years earlier. Heavy drinking, illness, relentless These sagas of the remote Karelia region greatly appealed to Sibelius, self-criticism and financial problems were among the conditions that especially those concerned with the dashing youth Lemminkäinen and influenced his early retirement. He was, however, honoured as a great the bleak landscape of Tuonela, the kingdom of death – providing the Finnish hero long after he ceased composing, while his principal works literary background for his early tone-poems, beginning with the mighty became established as an essential part of the orchestral repertoire. choral symphony in 1892. Composer Profile © Andrew Stewart The Finns swiftly adopted Sibelius and his works as symbols of national pride, particularly following the premiere of the overtly patriotic in 1900, composed a few months after Finland’s legislative rights had been taken away by Russia. ‘Well, we shall see now what the new century brings with it for Finland and us Finns,’ Sibelius wrote on New Year’s Day 1900. The public in Finland recognised the idealistic young composer as a champion of national freedom, while his tuneful Finlandia was taken into the repertoire of orchestras around the world. 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 SIMON RATTLE BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME SIR ANTONIO PAPPANO WITH DANIEL HARDING CONCLUDES THE SEASON CONCERTS: ELGAR UP CLOSE Thu 19 May 7.30pm Sun 5 Jun 7pm Sun 26 Jun 7pm Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 1 Mahler Symphony No 2 Maxwell Davies The Hogboon Thu 14 Apr 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Mahler Symphony No 6 (world premiere; LSO co-commission) with Jennifer Pike violin Daniel Harding conductor Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Peter Limonov piano Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Miah Persson soprano violin Anna Larsson alto Sir Simon Rattle conductor Thu 21 Apr 1pm, LSO St Luke’s London Symphony Chorus LSO Discovery Choirs with LSO String Ensemble Sun 29 May 7pm London Symphony Chorus Beethoven Violin Concerto Thu 9 Jun 7.30pm Guildhall School Musicians Thu 28 Apr 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Elgar Symphony No 2 Dvorˇák Overture: Othello with Elias Quartet Bartók Violin Concerto No 1 Thu 30 Jun 7.30pm Huw Watkins piano Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Dvorˇák Symphony No 8 Ives The Unanswered Question Nikolaj Znaider violin Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 Thu 5 May 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Daniel Harding conductor Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 with Elias Quartet violin Sir Simon Rattle conductor lso.co.uk piano 020 7638 8891 10 Programme Notes 3 April 2016

Anders Hillborg (b 1954) Exquisite Corpse (2002, rev 2005)

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER There is a popular game among children and that follow. There’s a brief interlude for piano, harp MARK PARKER Surrealists that begins by drawing a head on a sheet and percussion. This takes us to the middle of of paper and folding it over so that only the marks of scurrying woodwinds written in strict and complex the neck show through. The next player continues counterpoint but compressed to the extreme, where with the shoulders and folds the page over again ideas ricochet among the instruments in a flurry. THE SURREALISTS emerged in and passes it on, so that each turn adds a new layer The horns swell, give us something of a cadence, the 1920s with a mission to free the to the incoherent anatomy hidden beneath the and a lone oboe holds steady as its section-mates act of creation from the confines of folds. There are no winners, but each player earns continue their dance. The strings and the winds the conscious mind. They were a themselves the reward of revealing their exquisite trade places in the foreground, a strained adagio group of artists and writers, centred corpse in all its grotesque glory once no more moves carries us back to the brass, the orchestral forces mainly around Paris, and including can be made. This becomes their prize. gather together and process slowly before they are Salvador Dalí among their members. unleashed in full and thrown into a brutal onslaught You can imagine that it would be hard to play this of relentless percussion driving hard, punctuated game with only one player, but that’s just what only by violent spasms and swells. This was when ALAN GILBERT Anders Hillborg did to fulfil a commission for the was the music director of the RSPO – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on the The faint echoes of sections past return to haunt he gave the premiere and the work is occasion of its 75th anniversary. He assembled the us like ghosts in the fray, until luminous strings dedicated to him. layers of this 15-minute fantasia from fragments of emerge and reassure us with their lucid and familiar his own music and the music of others, but in such material, material we recognise from the beginning, a way that the seams share more than common which we locate by taking our minds back over the touch-points. Instead the transitions have been wide and varied terrain, across each successive carefully worked out so that you never feel shock section in review, as we pull it all into focus. Through or surprise. The whole collection of disparate recollection, the fragments that make up the piece elements hangs on one continuous thread, where can now find their mutual context – their shared the contrasts only emerge by looking back. identity – not in narrative, drama, form, function or style but simply as they are, as they were and as ‘One must wait until the they are now ceasing to be, all together: nothing evening to see how splendid more or less than this Exquisite Corpse. And here, with this last act of revelation, is the title fulfilled. the day has been.’ Sophocles

The piece opens with a single tone that grows outwards and thicker, into a dense mass made up from the residue of each new note as it enters. The basses anchor the sounds before the surface breaks briefly with brass, who herald a change, and usher in the descending cascade of strings lso.co.uk Composer Profile 11

Anders Hillborg Composer Profile London Symphony Orchestra

Hillborg is that rare composer whose music strikes CONTEMPORARY MUSIC a chord across many different countries and cultures. Born in in 1954, his early interest IN SEASON 2016/17 in electronic music developed from a beginning as a keyboard improviser in a pop band, but contact with Ferneyhough and the music of Ligeti quickly led to a fascination with counterpoint and orchestral writing. Since then, Hillborg’s love of pure sound, and the energy that he gives it, has appealed to many major conductors, such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alan Gilbert, Sakari Oramo, Kent Nagano, David Zinman and , who have taken his music to orchestras across America and Europe.

Sun 6 Nov 2016 7pm Hillborg’s clarinet concerto Peacock Tales displays Steve Reich You Are (Variations); another strand of his large and varied output: a Daniel Variations; The Desert Music COMPOSER PROFILE sense of humour and the absurd. The piece has with Kristjan Järvi conductor COURTESY OF FABER MUSIC been taken up with enthusiasm in several different versions and has had hundreds of performances. Sat 14 & Sun 15 Jan 2017 7pm Mouyayoum for voices from the 1980s is one of his Ligeti Le Grand Macabre most popular works and emanates from his own with Sir Simon Rattle conductor experience singing in a choir as a teenager. In this and Peter Sellars director and other vocal pieces, his ear for the subtleties of the human voice and his natural lyricism is a striking Produced by the LSO and the Barbican. Part of LSO 2016/17 Season and Barbican Presents. feature. Above all, there is always a refreshing stylistic freedom and the ability to communicate. Thu 19 Jan 2017 7.30pm

Mark-Anthony Turnage Remembering In just the last months Hillborg’s music has been (world premiere, LSO co-commission) performed in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Minnesota, with Sir Simon Rattle conductor Taiwan, Seoul, Finland, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Hamburg (where he is Composer-in-Residence Wed 15 Feb 2017 7.30pm with the NDR). A BIS recording released in November Mark-Anthony Turnage Ha˚kan featuring the Stockholm Philharmonic, gives an (UK premiere, LSO co-commission) exhilarating window into Hillborg’s talent; the 30-minute with Daniel Harding conductor Sirens is presented by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Beast Sampler and O Dessa Ögon are conducted by Sakari Oramo, and Cold Heat is conducted by David Zinman. 020 7638 8891 There are already at least 24 recordings that feature lso.co.uk Hillborg’s music, including four portrait discs. 12 Programme Notes 3 April 2016

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93) Violin Concerto in D major Op 35 (1878)

1 ALLEGRO MODERATO the masterpiece Tchaikovsky completed so rapidly at 2 CANZONETTA Clarens that spring. The Violin Concerto is indebted to 3 FINALE: ALLEGRO VIVACISSIMO Kotek’s demonstration of the possible in instrumental technique – the concerto’s Spielbarkeit, as Tchaikovsky JOSHUA BELL VIOLIN later put it; in spite of which the young man did nothing to champion the work in St Petersburg or PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Poor Tchaikovsky, forever typecast as . Nor did its first dedicatee, the much more DAVID NICE of unhappy love and suicidal despair. Even his experienced virtuoso Leopold Auer. Tchaikovsky ballet scores, the greatest ever composed, have was to be eternally grateful to Adolf Brodsky, who been conveniently labelled as escapist. Yet as gave the European premiere in the face of scurrilous his finest critic, Hermann Laroche, wrote around abuse from top Viennese music critic Eduard the time of The Sleeping Beauty’s premiere, the Hanslick, and first performed it in Russia. composer may have been an ‘elegist by nature’ but the ‘other Tchaikovsky’ was just as real – ‘nice, It is hard to see what Auer and Kotek found so happy, brimming with health, inclined to humour’. problematic about the work, since unlike the Tchaikovsky even managed to tap in to that side colossal First Piano Concerto, which caused its after the biggest crisis of his life. The collapse of his dedicatee Nikolay Rubinstein such problems, the ANTONINA MILYUKOVA (1848– disastrous marriage to the unfortunate Antonina Violin Concerto’s lyrical flow of inspired material is 1917) was Tchaikovsky’s student at Milyukova in 1877 sent him abroad to escape very much in the central European tradition. Not that the , before wagging Russian tongues. There he attempted to Tchaikovsky is without his originalities; the smiling she became his wife in 1877. They shuck off his depression in Paris, Montreux, Rome graciousness of the piece is something he derived were together six weeks before and Florence. He succeeded by degrees, until from two French scores he had come to adore just separating for good, though never a heavenly spring by the lakeside at Clarens in before composing the concerto, Delibes’ ballet Sylvia divorced because Tchaikovsky did Switzerland rekindled his creative inspiration. He and Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. not want to give grounds to any returned to Russia in April 1878 as ‘a perfectly sound rumours regarding his sexuality. They and healthy man, full of new powers and energy’. Clever, too, is the way the introductory collective would meet, and exchange letters engage what is to become the principal after the separation, and he even Crucial to his sense of stability was the new-found theme in anticipatory dialogue with the woodwind – supported her when she had a child patronage, and its attendant financial security, a subtle hallmark throughout, close to the world of with another man. She outlived her of the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck, to whom he the pastoral first act in the recently completed opera husband by 24 years, and spent her unfolded the progress of his tormented Fourth Eugene Onegin – before the soloist launches into last 20 in an insane asylum. Symphony. Equally important was the mutual friend it from a soulful cadenza. The opening movement who had introduced them. Josef Kotek, Meck’s has been criticised for its lack of contrasts, but house violinist and a one-time pupil of Tchaikovsky wholesome, seemingly improvisatory charm is at the Moscow Conservatory, travelled with the Tchaikovsky’s aim here, with violinistic fireworks composer – whose former infatuation with him had coming as an afterthought. The second lyrical changed, Tchaikovsky told his brother Anatoly, into subject, even more expressive than the first, a ‘different kind of love’ – and along with another embraces fleeting sadness and the furrowed brows Tchaikovsky brother, Modest, played godfather to of the development are entirely the orchestra’s, not lso.co.uk Programme Notes 13

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Composer Profile

the violinist’s, concern; this is bracketed excitingly Tchaikovsky was born in Kamsko-Votkinsk in the by the only full-blooded ensemble in the piece – Vyatka province of Russia on 7 May 1840. His a swaggering, polonaise-like treatment of the father was a mining engineer, his mother of French main theme. extraction. He began to study the piano at five, benefiting also from the musical instruction of his Even the melancholy of the central Canzonetta is elder brother’s French governess. In 1848 the family that of the conventional Russian romance, scored moved to the imperial capital, St Petersburg, where with extreme refinement. Tchaikovsky wrote it as Pyotr was enrolled at the School of Jurisprudence. an afterthought, prompted by Modest’s and Kotek’s He overcame his grief at his mother’s death in 1854 criticisms of the original Andante molto cantabile by composing and performing, although music was which resurfaces as the Meditation of his Op 42 to remain a diversion from his job – as a clerk at the pieces for violin and piano, Souvenir d’un lieu Ministry of Justice – until he enrolled as a full-time cher. Like the movement it replaces, the substitute student at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1863. Canzonetta offers a pensive woodwind introduction, a melancholy song for the violin and a central His First Symphony was warmly received at its consolation. Yet it goes one further by linking both St Petersburg premiere in 1868 and he completed poetically and literally to the concluding folk-festival, COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER an opera on a melodrama by Ostrovsky, which he which is also connected to the first movement by ANDREW STEWART later destroyed. , the first of Tchaikovsky’s virtue of its bucolic exchanges between soloist, three great ballet scores, was written in 1876 for strings and woodwind. Few listeners, however, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. will have the time or the inclination to mull over such subtleties, so brilliant and intoxicating is Tchaikovsky’s hasty decision to marry an almost Tchaikovsky’s most genuinely vivacious finale. unknown admirer in 1877 proved a disaster, his homosexuality combining strongly with his sense of entrapment. By now he had completed his Fourth Symphony, was about to finish his opera Eugene Onegin, and had attracted the considerable financial and moral support of Nadezhda von Meck, an affluent widow. She helped him through his personal crisis and in 1878 he returned to composition with the Violin Concerto, although his work remained inhibited until the completion in 1885 of the Byron- inspired Manfred Symphony. Tchaikovsky claimed that his Sixth Symphony represented his best work. The mood of crushing despair heard in all but the work’s third movement reflected the composer’s troubled state of mind. He committed suicide nine days after its premiere on 6 November 1893. 14 Programme Notes 7 April 2016

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) En Saga Op 9 (1892, rev 1902)

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Unlike his friend Carl Nielsen, Sibelius could be The opening music, with its misty string figurations STEPHEN JOHNSON remarkably unhelpful when it came to explaining and pungent woodwind is a flavoursome evocation what his works were ‘about’. He said next to nothing of far-northern darkness, from which a more in public about the meaning of his symphonies, heroic theme gradually emerges: tentatively at COMPOSER PROFILE preferring to leave listeners to interpret the music first (bassoons, pizzicato cellos and basses) then PAGE 8 for themselves. And while many of his tone poems with more determination on horns. These themes come with titles, sometimes with stories or poetic go through a variety of adventures, but there’s ideas attached, even here there are riddles. His first no mistaking the tragic character of the ending. truly mature tone poem has a title, En Saga, Swedish The tempo notches up, the horn theme sounds its for ‘A Story’, but as to what that story might be, the heroic challenge for the last time, but at the climax only explanation Sibelius provided was that: it is crushed, and a solo clarinet is left to brood ‘I have no choice but to make music. desolately on the hero’s fate. There is little doubt I love music so much, it is just so much ‘En Saga is the expression of a state of mind. I had undergone what ‘state of mind’ this bleak, poignant music a number of painful experiences at the time and in no other represents. a part of me, that I just have to do it.’ work have I revealed myself so completely. It is for this reason that I find all literary explanations quite alien.’

In other words, work it out for yourself!

In one sense the ‘story’ is a purely musical one. In En Saga – composed in 1892 and substantially revised ten years later – Sibelius made one of his biggest technical breakthroughs as a composer. Here, instead of following the traditional inherited structures of European classical music, he allows the themes to dictate their own form, like a river finding its way to the sea, led only by gravity. But to describe En Saga as an abstract work clearly won’t do. The music is powerfully atmospheric, the themes full of character, their developments emotionally highly charged. London Symphony Orchestra Living Music

Leif Ove Andsnes LSO Artist Portrait

PROGRAMME NOTE AUTHOR LINDSAY KEMP is a senior ‘Iproducer have for no BBC choiceRadio 3, including but to make music. programmingI love music lunchtime so concerts much, it is just so much from LSO St Luke’s, Artistic Director ofa the part Lufthansa of me,Festival that of I just have to do it.’ Baroque Music, and a regular contributorLeif Ove to Andsnes Gramophone magazine.

MOZART SCHUMANN LEIF OVE ANDSNES LEIF OVE ANDSNES PIANO CONCERTO NO 20 PIANO CONCERTO SOLO RECITAL & FRIENDS

Sun 8 May 7pm Thu 12 May 7.30pm Fri 10 Jun 7.30pm Sat 28 May 7pm, Milton Court Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 Schumann Piano Concerto Sibelius Brahms Bruckner Symphony No 3 Beethoven Symphony No 9 Three Pieces (‘Kyllikki’); The Birch; Piano Quartet No 1 in G major The Spruce; Spring Vision; Piano Quartet No 2 in A major Daniel Harding conductor conductor The Forest Lake; Song in the Forest Piano Quartet No 3 in C minor Leif Ove Andsnes piano Leif Ove Andsnes piano Beethoven London Symphony Orchestra Lucy Crowe soprano No 18 in E-flat major Leif Ove Andsnes piano Christine Rice mezzo-soprano Debussy violin Toby Spence tenor La soirée dans Grenade; viola London Symphony Chorus Three Études; Étude in A-flat major Clemens Hagen cello Simon Halsey chorus director Chopin Produced by the Barbican. London Symphony Orchestra Impromptu in A-flat major; Visit barbican.org.uk for details Supported by Baker & McKenzie LLP Nocturne in F major; Ballade No 4 in F minor lso.co.uk LSO Sing is generously supported by Leif Ove Andsnes piano Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement 020 7638 8891 16 Programme Notes 7 April 2016

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor Op 16 (1912–13, rev 1924)

1 ANDANTINO – ALLEGRETTO Prokofiev himself suggested that the Second 2 SCHERZO: VIVACE Concerto was ‘more interesting for the soloist, less 3 INTERMEZZO: ALLEGRO MODERATO for the orchestra’ than the First. By ‘interesting’ he 4 FINALE: ALLEGRO TEMPESTOSO perhaps meant difficult, for its length alone requires great stamina and the piano writing is as demanding DANIIL TRIFONOV PIANO as anything in the repertory. The sequence of movements is unusual. The first, containing some of the most massive writing for keyboard in Prokofiev’s Prokofiev was a formidable pianist, and his piano output, is only moderately paced. It is followed by concertos (apart from the Fourth, for the left hand) the short scherzo, a very fast moto perpetuo where the soloist’s left and right hands scamper away in were designed to display his own wonderful technique: semiquavers in octaves throughout, without a single sharp, accurate, with a steely brilliance and great sense moment’s rest. of rhythmic excitement. The concerto form also suited ‘The charges of surface his dramatic sense, with striking images of contrast and brilliance and a certain ‘soccer’ confrontation, strange juxtapositions of mood, powerful quality in the First led me to rhetoric followed by shy or tender reflection. strive for greater depth of content in the Second.’ PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER The First Concerto, which he introduced in 1912, Prokofiev, on his Second Piano Concerto ANDREW HUTH caused something of a scandal and, with the Second, composed the following year, he clearly The third movement is a march, now brutal, intended to expand on its style, dimensions and now sinister, oddly titled ‘Intermezzo’, though it PROKOFIEV on LSO LIVE emotional range. In the summer of 1913 he went on has nothing restful or in-between about it. This a European holiday with his mother, practising the foreshadowing of Prokofiev’s mechanistic music Prokofiev new concerto whenever possible, and confessing of the 1920s was probably the movement that Romeo & Juliet that it ‘has turned out to be incredibly difficult caused most offence at the Concerto’s premiere. from £9.99 and mercilessly tiring’. Prokofiev gave the first The finale, after a whirling piano-and-orchestra performance on 23 August 1913 at a concert in flourish, launches into a percussive, leaping texture the grounds of the 18th-century palace of Pavlovsk for the piano. But in the centre of the movement near St Petersburg. The audience, no doubt there appears a theme which is very Russian in its conductor expecting soothing entertainment for a summer initially simple texture, limited compass and repeated evening, was thoroughly shaken by what it heard. phrases, an acknowledgement of the tradition that is ‘Gergiev is in his element … a winner’ the backbone of Prokofiev’s art. Gramophone lso.co.uk Programme Notes 17

Sergei Prokofiev Composer Profile

When Prokofiev abandoned Russia early in 1918 Prokofiev was born in the Ukraine and from an early the orchestral score of the concerto was left behind, age showed a prodigious ability both as composer and in 1923 he learned that it had been destroyed: and pianist. He gained a place at the St Petersburg apparently the new tenants in his apartment Conservatory at the age of 13 and shortly thereafter had ‘burned it to cook an omelette’. This was no acquired a reputation for the uncompromising thoughtless vandalism but evidence of the terrible nature of his music. According to one critic, the conditions in Petrograd during the Civil War when audience at the 1913 premiere of the composer’s people were dying of cold and hunger. Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto were left ‘frozen with fright, reconstructed the orchestral score from memory, hair standing on end’. He left Russia after the 1917 and took the opportunity to revise the whole Revolution, but decided to return to Moscow with his concerto. In this new form, he introduced it in wife and family 19 years later, apparently unaware of Paris on 8 May 1924. Stalin’s repressive regime.

Before he left for exile, Prokofiev completed his Classical Symphony, a bold and appealing work that revived aspects of 18th-century musical form, COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER clarity and elegance. He received commissions from ANDREW STEWART arts organisations in the United States and , composing his sparkling opera The Love for Three Oranges for the Chicago Opera Company in 1919–20. His engagements as a recitalist and concerto soloist brought Prokofiev to a wide audience in Europe and the US, and he was in great demand to perform his own Piano Concerto No 3. The ballet Romeo and Juliet and the score for Feinzimmer’s film Lieutenant Kijé were among Prokofiev’s first Soviet commissions. Both scores were subsequently cast as concert suites, which have become cornerstones INTERVAL – 20 minutes of the orchestral repertoire. There are bars on all levels of the Concert Hall; ice cream can be bought at the stands on Stalls and Circle level. ‘The Fifth Symphony was intended as a hymn to free The Barbican shop will also be open. and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.’ Prokofiev’s comments, written in 1944 Why not tweet us your thoughts on the first half of the as the Russian army began to march towards Berlin, performance @londonsymphony, or come and talk to reflected his sense of hope in the future. Sadly, LSO staff at the Information Point on the Circle level? his later years were overshadowed by illness and the denunciation of his works as ‘formalist’ by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1948. 18 Programme Notes 7 April 2016

Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) Symphony No 4 Op 29 (‘The Inextinguishable’) (1914–16)

1 ALLEGRO The motion of that elemental will can be felt 2 POCO ALLEGRETTO throughout the Fourth Symphony. Although 3 POCO ADAGIO QUASI ANDANTE the broad outlines of the four conventional 4 ALLEGRO symphonic movements can be made out, the ‘Inextinguishable’ is really conceived in a single PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Denmark remained neutral throughout the sweep. Nielsen normally identifies the movements STEPHEN JOHNSON international upheaval of the 1914–18 war; but of his symphonies with numbers, but here it would its citizens have always been acutely sensitive to be difficult to know exactly where to put them. the activities of its large and powerful neighbour Transitions between movements are so skilfully COMPOSER PROFILE to the south. For Carl Nielsen there was an added dovetailed that it isn’t always easy to see where PAGE 5 dimension of philosophical crisis. It may be hard one movement ends and another begins. And while to believe now, but many European artists initially each movement has its own themes, the more one welcomed the prospect of war: here was a grand gets to know the symphony the more the family opportunity for ‘spiritual cleansing’, and a celebration resemblances begin to reveal themselves. One of the traditional masculine virtues of courage, senses that the basic thematic material, presented in loyalty and devotion to one’s country. Before the symphony’s early stages, is in a state of continual the hostilities Nielsen had been an enthusiastic evolution. As the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus nationalist. But as he began to realise the horrors put it: ‘All is flux, nothing is stationary’. men could inflict on each other for Kaiser – or King – and Country, his faith was rocked to the The Fourth Symphony begins in chaos, violence core. Nationalism, he wrote not long after the war, and tonal instability, with massed woodwind and had been transformed into a ‘spiritual syphilis’, the string figures clashing aggressively. But as the fury justification for the expression of ‘senseless hate’. subsides a calm, singing woodwind tune (initiated by clarinets) emerges that will be lifted up magnificently Nielsen’s faith in humanity may have suffered a in the bright key of E major at the end of the setback, but rather than give in to despair he felt symphony. After many upheavals, the initial Allegro strongly driven to make some kind of affirmative claws its way to a massive anticipation of that final statement: belief, if not in human beings (still less outcome (only based on the tune’s final phrase – the in nationhood), then perhaps in life itself. This is full glory is yet to come). But this fades into a gentle, an important clue to the meaning of the title of intermezzo-like Poco Allegretto, dominated by the Fourth Symphony (1914–16). Nielsen added woodwind. This has plenty of folkish charm, yet it an explanatory note at the beginning of the score. also has its moments of mystery. ‘Under this title’, he tells us, ‘the composer has tried to indicate in one word what music alone is capable of expressing to the full: The elemental Will of Life. Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable’. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 19

London Symphony Orchestra This too seems to fade, then a sudden anguished LSO Live outburst from strings and timpani begins the Poco adagio. After more fraught struggles this heaves itself up to another massive anticipation of the symphony’s final E major triumph. A moment of Experience the legacy of Sir wonderfully atmospheric, pregnant stillness (oboe and high strings), and a hurtling string passage lead – Two extraordinary cycles on LSO Live after a dramatic pause – into the final Allegro.

This music seems determined to sing of hope, yet it Nielsen meets powerful opposition, as a second timpanist Symphonies Nos 1-6 joins the first to lead a destructive onslaught. After ‘This set of live recordings is a quiet but tense section, the timpani begin their the legacy… and the orchestra attack with redoubled energy, but somehow the first give passionate accounts of movement’s hopeful tune manages to reassert itself all six.’ through the turmoil, now in full E major radiance. And yet the timpanists are not silenced. Their final The Sunday Times hammer blows suggest that the struggle to affirm must go on – there can be no final, utopian resolution. LSO0789 3SACD + 1BDA

Sibelius Symphonies Nos 1-7, Kullervo

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LSO Live – the energy and emotion you only experience live 20 Artist Biographies 3 & 7 April 2016

Alan Gilbert ‘Alan Gilbert has made an indelible mark on the Conductor Orchestra’s history and that of the city itself.’ The New Yorker

New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert York Philharmonic: four albums representing the began his tenure in September 2009, and is the first complete symphonies and concertos on Denmark’s native New Yorker to be appointed to that post. Dacapo label that celebrated the Dane’s 150th He simultaneously maintains a major international birthday. In August 2015 he led the Mahler Chamber presence, making regular guest appearances with Orchestra in the US stage premiere of George orchestras including the , Leipzig Benjamin’s Written on Skin, a special co-production Gewandhaus Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw of the New York Philharmonic and . Orchestra, , , Boston Symphony Orchestra, Munich Gilbert is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Philharmonic, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale Studies and holds the William Schuman Chair in di Santa Cecilia, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Musical Studies at the . He made his Radio France. Gilbert is Conductor Laureate of the Metropolitan Opera debut to great acclaim in 2008 Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, where he served as conducting ’ Doctor Atomic, the DVD of Music Director for eight years, and was Principal which received a Grammy Award. Renée Fleming’s Guest Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, Orchestra (formerly known as NDR Symphony received a 2013 Grammy Award. In May 2010 Gilbert Music Director Orchestra Hamburg) for more than a decade. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from New York Philharmonic Orchestra led operatic productions for the Metropolitan Opera, the Curtis Institute of Music, and in December 2011 Opera, Zurich Opera, Royal Swedish Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for Conductor Laureate Opera, and Santa Fe Opera, where he served as the his ‘exceptional commitment to the performance of Royal Stockholm Philharmonic first appointed Music Director. works by American composers and to contemporary Orchestra music.’ He was elected to The American Academy of At the New York Philharmonic, Gilbert has widened Arts & Sciences in 2014, named an Officier de l’Ordre the artistic reach of the 174-year-old institution. He des Arts et des Lettres by the French government initiated annual residencies for composers (2015/16 in 2015, was honored with the Foreign Policy sees Esa-Pekka Salonen in this position) and leading Association Medal in 2015, and was nominated for performing artists (this season, bass-baritone Eric an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction of Owens and pianist Inon Barnatan), and led staged the New York Philharmonic’s acclaimed production productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janácˇek’s of Sweeney Todd, broadcast on PBS’ Live from Cunning Little Vixen, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, and Lincoln Center in 2015. He also gave the 2015 lecture Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake to great acclaim. for London’s Royal Philharmonic Society, speaking on Gilbert also encouraged the development of two ‘Orchestras in the 21st Century – a new paradigm.’ series devoted to contemporary music: CONTACT!, introduced in 2009, and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, an exploration of today’s music by a wide range of contemporary and modern composers, which was inaugurated in 2014 and returns in 2016. Last season’s release of Nielsen’s three concertos completed Gilbert’s ‘Nielsen Project’ with the New lso.co.uk Artist Biographies 21

Joshua Bell ‘Joshua Bell is the greatest American Violin violinist active today.’ The Boston Herald

Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of Perhaps the event that helped most to transform his era, and his restless curiosity, passion, and multi- his reputation from ‘musician’s musician’ to faceted musical interests are almost unparalleled ‘household name’ was his incognito performance in the world of classical music. Named the Music in a Washington DC subway station in 2007, for a Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Washington Post story by Gene Weingarten, which 2011, Bell is the first person to hold this post since went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, spark an international Sir formed the orchestra in 1958. firestorm of discussion and inspire a children’s book, The Man with the Violin, by Kathy Stinson and An exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded illustrated by Dušan Petricˇic´ from Annick Press. more than 40 CDs since his first LP recording at age 18 on the Decca label, garnering Grammy, Bell has received many accolades: in 2013 he was Mercury, Gramophone and Echo Klassik awards in honoured by the New York Chapter, The Recording the process. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ Academy; in 2012 by the National Young Arts first release under Bell’s leadership, Beethoven Foundation; in 2011 he received the Paul Newman Symphonies Nos 4 and 7, debuted at number one Award from Arts Horizons and the Huberman on the Billboard charts, and was followed up by Award from Moment Magazine. Bell was named Music Director critically acclaimed Bach. Other recent releases ‘Instrumentalist of the Year, 2010’ by Musical Academy of St Martin in the Fields include French Impressions with pianist Jeremy America and received the Humanitarian Award Denk, At Home With Friends, Vivaldi’s The Four from Seton Hall University. In 2009 he was honoured Seasons with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, by Education Through Music and he received the and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Academy of Achievement Award in 2008. He was Philharmonic. His discography encompasses much awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 2007 and was of the major violin repertoire, as well as ground- inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in breaking collaborations across multiple musical 2005. In 2003 Bell was chosen to perform at the genres with respected artists from the worlds of World Economic Forum for an audience of world pop (, Josh Groban), jazz (Chick Corea, Branford leaders and was later recognised by that prestigious Marsalis), bluegrass (, Bela Fleck) and organisation as a Young Global Leader. Convinced film (including ’s Oscar-winning of the value of music as both a diplomatic and soundtrack, , and the Oscar-nominated educational tool, he has performed for three US score to ). Presidents as well as the President of China, and has devoted himself to several charitable causes, most Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell received his first notably Education Through Music, which has helped violin at age four and at 12 began studying with the put instruments in the hands of tens of thousands of legendary at where kids in the inner cities of America. he now serves as a senior lecturer at the . At the age of 14 Bell began his rise to stardom, Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius performing with and the Philadelphia violin and uses a late 18th-century French bow by Orchestra and at age 17 making his François Tourte. debut and touring Europe for the first time. 22 Artist Biographies 7 April 2016

Daniil Trifonov ‘Trifonov’s performance was a marvel, a mixture Piano of exuberance and fabulous subtlety.’

Born in Nizhniy Novgorod in 1991, Daniil Trifonov Daniil Trifonov is also a noted chamber musician came to international prominence in the 2010/11 and will give festival performances with musicians season when he won medals at the Chopin such as Nicholas Angelich, Renaud Capuçon, Competition in (Third Prize), the Rubinstein Gautier Capuçon, and , Competition in Tel Aviv (First Prize) and the a piano duo tour of the US with Sergei Babayan, Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (First Prize and and concerts in London, Paris and Zurich with the Grand Prix). In 2013, he was also awarded the Franco Pavel Haas Quartet. Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by ’s foremost music critics. Daniil Trifonov began his musical studies at the age of five. He studied at Moscow Gnesin School of The 2015/16 season and beyond sees Daniil Trifonov Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman (2000–09). performing with prestigious international orchestras From 2006 to 2009 he also studied composition including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago and has continued to write piano, chamber and Symphony, Vienna Symphony, London Symphony, orchestral music since then. Since 2009, he has London Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music Cleveland and Czech Philharmonic orchestras. In in the class of Sergei Babayan. 2015, Trifonov performed the complete Rachmaninov Piano Concertos with the at In February 2013, the Royal Festival Hall and in December performed announced the signing of an exclusive recording with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Welser- agreement with Daniil Trifonov. Last season saw the Möst as part of the Nobel Prize Awards. release of Trifonov: The Carnegie Recital, his first recording as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon Trifonov’s forthcoming recitals include returns to: artist, which has subsequently won a Grammy Award Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw’s Master nomination. Trifonov’s next release for the label will Piano Series, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Tokyo’s be a recording of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Opera City, , Munich Herkulesaal and Theme of Paganini. His discography also includes a Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica. In spring 2016, disc of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 with Valery Trifonov will be resident at Wigmore Hall where Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra which was he will give one solo recital and three chamber released on the Mariinsky label in 2012. His first CD concerts with , was released on Decca in 2011, featuring a selection and Sergei Babayan. of Chopin solo works. lso.co.uk The Orchestra 23

London Symphony Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra On stage (3 April) On stage (7 April)

FIRST VIOLINS VIOLAS FLUTES TRUMPETS FIRST VIOLINS VIOLAS FLUTES TROMBONES Roman Simovic Leader Andriy Viytovych Gareth Davies Philip Cobb Roman Simovic Leader Andriy Viytovych Adam Walker Dudley Bright Carmine Lauri Gillianne Haddow Alex Jakeman Gerald Ruddock John Mills Gillianne Haddow Alex Jakeman James Maynard Lennox Mackenzie Malcolm Johnston Daniel Newell Lennox Mackenzie Malcolm Johnston Clare Duckworth Lander Echevarria PICCOLO Nigel Broadbent Lander Echevarria PICCOLO BASS TROMBONE Nigel Broadbent Anna Bastow Sharon Williams TROMBONES Ginette Decuyper Anna Bastow Sharon Williams Paul Milner Ginette Decuyper Julia O’Riordan Dudley Bright Maxine Kwok-Adams Julia O’Riordan OBOES OBOES TUBA Gerald Gregory Robert Turner James Maynard Claire Parfitt Robert Turner Marc Lachat Olivier Stankiewicz Patrick Harrild Maxine Kwok-Adams Heather Wallington Elizabeth Pigram Jonathan Welch Rosie Jenkins BASS TROMBONE Rosie Jenkins Claire Parfitt Jonathan Welch Laurent Quenelle Ilona Bondar Paul Milner TIMPANI Laurent Quenelle Elizabeth Butler COR ANGLAIS Colin Renwick Elizabeth Butler COR ANGLAIS Nigel Thomas Harriet Rayfield Francis Kefford Christine Pendrill TUBA Ian Rhodes Steve Doman Christine Pendrill Antoine Bedewi Colin Renwick Caroline O’Neill Patrick Harrild Sylvain Vasseur Caroline O’Neill Ian Rhodes CLARINETS Rhys Watkins CLARINETS PERCUSSION Sylvain Vasseur CELLOS Chris Richards TIMPANI Michael Foyle CELLOS Andrew Marriner Neil Percy Rhys Watkins Rebecca Gilliver Chi-Yu Mo Nigel Thomas Takane Funatsu Rebecca Gilliver Chi-Yu Mo David Jackson Shlomy Dobrinsky Alastair Blayden Jan Regulski Alastair Blayden Sarah Thurlow Jennifer Brown BASS CLARINET PERCUSSION Jennifer Brown SECOND VIOLINS Noel Bradshaw Duncan Gould Neil Percy SECOND VIOLINS Noel Bradshaw BASSOONS Thomas Norris Eve-Marie Caravassilis David Jackson Mia Cooper Eve-Marie Caravassilis Rachel Gough CONTRABASS Miya Väisänen Daniel Gardner Sam Walton Sarah Quinn Hilary Jones Joost Bosdijk CLARINET David Ballesteros Hilary Jones Antoine Bedewi Miya Väisänen Victoria Harrild David Fuest CONTRA BASSOON Matthew Gardner Amanda Truelove David Ballesteros Judith Herbert HARP Dominic Morgan Julian Gil Rodriguez Judith Herbert Matthew Gardner Miwa Rosso BASSOONS Bryn Lewis Naoko Keatley Victoria Simonsen Daniel Jemison Julian Gil Rodriguez Victoria Simonsen HORNS Belinda McFarlane Joost Bosdijk PIANO Naoko Keatley Timothy Jones DOUBLE BASSES DOUBLE BASSES William Melvin Elizabeth Burley Belinda McFarlane Angela Barnes Enno Senft Graham Mitchell Iwona Muszynska CONTRA BASSOON William Melvin Alexander Edmundson Colin Paris Colin Paris Andrew Pollock Dominic Morgan Iwona Muszynska Jonathan Lipton Patrick Laurence Patrick Laurence Paul Robson Andrew Pollock Andrew Budden Ingrid Button Joe Melvin HORNS Paul Robson Thomas Goodman Hazel Mulligan Jani Pensola Timothy Jones Hazel Mulligan Joe Melvin TRUMPETS Helena Smart Marco Behtash Angela Barnes Robert Yeomans Jani Pensola Philip Cobb Edward Francis-Smith Alexander Edmundson Nicholas Worters Gerald Ruddock Nicholas Worters Jonathan Lipton Jose Moreira Daniel Newell Jonathan Bareham

LSO STRING EXPERIENCE SCHEME

Established in 1992, the LSO String Experience The Scheme is supported by London Symphony Orchestra Editor Scheme enables young string players at the Help Musicians UK Barbican Edward Appleyard start of their professional careers to gain The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Silk Street [email protected] work experience by playing in rehearsals The Idlewild Trust London and concerts with the LSO. The scheme The Lefever Award EC2Y 8DS Photography auditions students from the London music The Polonsky Foundation Igor Emmerich, Kevin Leighton, conservatoires, and 15 students per year Registered charity in England No 232391 Bill Robinson, Alberto Venzago are selected to participate. The musicians Performing in these concerts are: Alexandra Details in this publication were correct Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 are treated as professional ’extra’ players Isted, Lisa Bucknell and Ivan Rubido Gonzalez (3 April); Lasma Taimina, Kristiana Ignatjeva at time of going to press. (additional to LSO members) and receive fees Advertising Cabbell Ltd 020 3603 7937 for their work in line with LSO section players. and Jon Mikel Martinez Valganon (7 April). London Symphony Orchestra Living Music

Gianandrea Noseda opens the season with the Verdi Requiem, his first concerts as LSO Principal Guest Conductor

Sir concludes his Mendelssohn symphonies cycle

Two new commissions from Mark-Anthony Turnage receive their world and UK premieres

Janine Jansen performs in three concerts as part of her LSO Artist Portrait

François-Xavier Roth continues his After Romanticism series

Bernard Haitink performs Bruckner, Mahler and Beethoven with

Lang Lang returns to close the season with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No 2

See the full listings, now on sale, at lso.co.uk/201617season