An Afternoon at the Proms 24 March 2018
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AN AFTERNOON AT THE PROMS 24 MARCH 2018 CONCERT PROGRAM MELBOURNE SIR ANDREW DAVIS TASMIN SYMPHONY LITTLE ORCHESTRA Courtesy B Ealovega Established in 1906, the Chief Conductor of the Tasmin Little has performed Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Melbourne Symphony Melbourne Symphony in prestigious venues Sir Andrew Davis conductor Orchestra (MSO) is an Orchestra, Sir Andrew such as Carnegie Hall, the arts leader and Australia’s Davis is also Music Director Concertgebouw, Barbican Tasmin Little violin longest-running professional and Principal Conductor of Centre and Suntory Hall. orchestra. Chief Conductor the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Her career encompasses Sir Andrew Davis has been He is Conductor Laureate performances, masterclasses, Elgar In London Town at the helm of MSO since of both the BBC Symphony workshops and community 2013. Engaging more than Orchestra and the Toronto outreach work. Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending 3 million people each year, Symphony, where he has Already this year she has the MSO reaches a variety also been named interim Vaughan Williams English Folksong Suite appeared as soloist and of audiences through live Artistic Director until 2020. in recital around the UK. performances, recordings, Britten Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra In a career spanning more Recordings include Elgar’s TV and radio broadcasts than 40 years he has Violin Concerto with Sir Wood Fantasia on British Sea Songs and live streaming. conducted virtually all the Andrew Davis and the Royal Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 Sir Andrew Davis gave his world’s major orchestras National Scottish Orchestra inaugural concerts as the and opera companies, and (Critic’s Choice Award in MSO’s Chief Conductor in at the major festivals. 2011’s Classic BRIT Awards) 2013. The MSO also works Sir Andrew’s many CDs and, recently, Szymanowski with Associate Conductor include a Messiah nominated and Karłowicz concertos with Benjamin Northey and for a 2018 Grammy, Bliss’s the BBC Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Tianyi The Beatitudes, and a and Edward Gardner Lu, as well as with such recording with the Bergen Tasmin has premiered eminent recent guest Philharmonic of Vaughan many contemporary works. conductors as Tan Dun, Williams’ Job/Symphony Her awards include a Running time 2 hours, including interval John Adams, Jakub Hrůša No.9 nominated for a 2018 Gramophone Award for In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for dimming the lighting on your mobile phone. and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. BBC Music Magazine Award. Audience Innovation for her The MSO acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are performing. We pay our respects to their It has also collaborated with outreach program, The Naked With the MSO he has just Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be in attendance. non-classical musicians Violin. She is an Officer of the released a third recording including Elton John, Nick Order of the British Empire in the ongoing Richard Cave and Flight Facilities. (OBE). She plays a 1757 Strauss series, featuring the Guadagnini violin. Alpine Symphony and Till Eulenspiegel. mso.com.au 3 PROGRAM NOTES EDWARD ELGAR And yet for all that, the Cockaigne Overture From its quiet but busy and bustling the work is dedicated. The orchestration (1857-1934) remains one of Elgar’s sunniest pieces. opening theme, to the triumphant return of the score was completed in early 1921, He described it in a letter to Hans Richter of the ‘nobilmente’ second subject at the and Hall gave the first performance of this, Cockaigne: Overture, Op.40 as ‘honest, healthy, humorous and strong end of the work, the Cockaigne Overture the more frequently played version, shortly (In London Town) but not vulgar…extremely cheerful like a has never failed to please audiences. It afterwards in London’s Queen’s Hall with miserable unsuccessful man ought to write’; was premiered by the Royal Philharmonic the British Symphony Orchestra under Sir From the turn of the 20th century onwards, and in a letter to Jaeger (‘Nimrod’ of the Society at the Queen’s Hall, London, in Adrian Boult. radical social change began to make Enigma Variations) he called it ‘cheerful and June 1901 with the composer conducting, Despite the work’s lengthy gestation its presence felt in the imaginations of Londony – stout and steaky’. and after meeting immediate success it period and the harrowing, life-changing European composers. In Britain, as the was performed again at the Three Choirs He said that the idea for a descriptive experiences endured by the composer at British Empire began to crumble and as Festival in Gloucester in the September piece about London occurred to him ‘one the time, none of the terror or anguish of political developments in Europe pointed of that year. toward the end of an era, composers (who dark day in the Guildhall: looking at the war is evident in the music. It is, in fact, Martin Buzacott © Symphony Australia could not rely on television to do it for memorials of the city’s great past and an ideal example of Vaughan Williams’ knowing well the history of its unending The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first performed contemplative and nostalgic musical them) set out to document the sights and Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture on 21 August 1939 under sounds of their national capital as they charity, I seemed to hear far away in the baton of conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, and style. The solo violin spins unbroken had known it. Elgar began the trend with the dim roof a theme, an echo of some most recently on 7 May 1999, conducted by arches of melody and swirling arabesques Jonathan Grieves-Smith. his Cockaigne Overture in 1901, and in the noble melody’. That ‘noble melody’ now almost continually throughout, and there decades which followed, Vaughan Williams forms the second theme of the Cockaigne is no contrasting material or abrupt wrote his London Symphony, Gustav Holst Overture, with its characteristic marking of formal changes to disturb the organic composed Hammersmith, John Ireland ‘nobilmente’ (nobly) above it in the score. RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS unfolding and rapturous atmosphere. offered his London Overture and Eric The orchestration is restrained, gently ‘Cockaigne’ is an archaic, humorous (1872-1958) Coates completed two London Suites. supporting the solo violin for most of the term for London – the modern word The Lark Ascending work’s duration. The ‘Romance’ of the ‘cockney’ derives from it – but so as to In Elgar’s case, the composition of the subtitle, perhaps a reference to Beethoven’s avoid any confusion Elgar provided the Tasmin Little violin Cockaigne Overture (which is not an two violin Romances, alludes to Vaughan ‘overture’ as such, but a freestanding tone subtitle ‘In London Town’. While not being The Lark Ascending has undoubtedly Williams’ long-standing love and adoration poem) was written not just in response to programmatic in the strict Straussian sense, become Vaughan Williams’ most popular of nature. the passing of an era, but also, in some the overture nevertheless conjures up the work. It was fully drafted in 1914 as a work sense, the passing of Elgar’s career! sights and sounds of turn-of-the-century The Lark Ascending could be described for violin and piano, but the composition Written in February and March of 1901 London, including the quiet squares, the as a musical reflection upon the poem had to be set aside due to the outbreak of after the notorious failure of The Dream chirpy street-vendors and the processions of the same name written by the English the First World War. Vaughan Williams’ of Gerontius premiere, Elgar at the time of military and brass bands. novelist George Meredith in 1881. Only professional musical life ceased completely of its composition professed himself selected lines from the poem are printed Each passage is marked by its distinctive for the next four years, as he served as an to be suicidal. in the musical score and the poetic orchestration, with passages where bells ambulance driver during the war, shuttling content is used as a point of stimulus for chime, woodwinds snatch pointillistic While his contemporaries attested that wounded and dying soldiers from the the composer’s lyrical reverie. The solo figures, cornets add an edge of brashness, Elgar was at times guilty of excessive battlefront to temporary field hospitals in violin clearly embodies the spirit of a bird and a solo horn against accompanying self-dramatisation, there can be no doubt France and Greece. It was only after the singing and taking flight (with occasional strings provides an element of romance that he was genuinely devastated by the war ended that he was able to return home bird calls also provided by the woodwind and nostalgia. All of these themes merge negative response to his great Oratorio. to England and to his compositional work. instruments), whilst the sustained chords, seamlessly, one into another, giving the He was also in desperate financial trouble One of his first tasks was to revise The Lark played by the strings, could be understood work a broad impressionistic unity rather and he protested in letters (perhaps a little Ascending. It was eventually premiered in as the aural depiction of a flat pastoral than a strict classical development. melodramatically) that he might have to its violin and piano form in December 1920 landscape. become a tradesman to make ends meet. by the English violinist Marie Hall, to whom 4 5 The form of the work is rhapsodic, And, like colleagues such as Gustav Holst, The slow movement uses two tunes: the Education Ministry’ called Instruments with lengthy ornamental solo cadenzas Percy Grainger and Béla Bartók, Vaughan My Bonny Boy who seems to have left of the Orchestra, he returned to Purcell beginning and concluding the piece.