HOUGH PLAYS SAINT-SAËNS Symphony Hall, Birmingham Wednesday 19 May 2021, 2.00pm & 6.30pm Edward Gardner – Conductor Stephen Hough – Piano Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No.4 25’ Mazzoli Violent, Violent Sea 9’ Debussy La Mer 23’ OUR CAMPAIGN FOR MUSICAL LIFE IN THE WEST MIDLANDS OK, so we’ve got a summer of staycations ahead – but today we’re off Your support of the CBSO’s The Sound of the to the Mediterranean without even leaving Symphony Hall! Former Future campaign will raise £12.5m over five CBSO Principal Guest Conductor Edward Gardner is always a welcome years to: visitor here in Birmingham, and he’s our tour guide on a voyage that Accelerate our recovery from the takes us to the sun-kissed seascapes of Claude Debussy’s La Mer Covid-19 crisis so that we can get back to (you’d never guess that he composed it in Eastbourne). As for Stephen enriching people’s lives through music as Hough – well, the man whom critics have called “our greatest living quickly as possible pianist” is another old friend of the CBSO. Today he brings energy, Renew the way we work for our second elegance and genius-level insight to Saint-Saëns’ passionate Fourth century, opening up the power of Piano Concerto – you’ll wonder why we don’t hear it more often. music to an even broader cross-section of society whilst securing our tradition of artistic excellence. Support your CBSO at cbso.co.uk/donate You are welcome to view the online programme on your mobile device, but please ensure that your sound is turned off and that you are mindful of other members of the audience. Any noise (such as whispering) can be very distracting – the acoustics of the Hall will highlight any such sound. If you use a hearing aid in conjunction with our infra-red hearing enhancement system, please make sure you have collected a receiver unit and that your hearing aid is switched to the ‘T’ position, with the volume level appropriately adjusted. Audiences are welcome to take photographs before and after the concert, and during breaks in the music for applause. If you would like to take photos at these points please ensure you do not use a flash, and avoid disturbing other members of the audience around you. Please note that taking photographs or filming the concert while the orchestra is playing is not permitted as it is distracting both for other audience members and for the musicians on stage. Keeping you safe: Please ensure that you are following all of the covid-safe measures that are in place, facebook.com/thecbso including: arriving at the time indicated on your ticket, wearing a face covering whilst in the building (exemption excluded), keeping a social distance from other audience members and staff, following twitter.com/thecbso signage and/or guidance from staff, and using the hand sanitising stations provided. Thank you. instagram.com/thecbso Supported by Supported by 1 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) mainly to recall the secondary theme of the previous Andante but also to issue a reminder, just once, of the chorale melody from that Piano Concerto No.4 in C minor, same section. Then, on a change of tempo to Allegro and after a brief fanfare on horns and trumpets, the peroration begins. Set proudly in Op.44 C major, it is based, inevitably, on the chorale theme, which is repeated in a variety of orchestral and piano colours, alternated with Allegro moderato – Andante some not very interesting subsidiary material, and elevated as far as it Allegro vivace – Andante – Allegro will go before a sparkling coda finishes it off. The verdict of the apprehensive Parisian public was that, while they Having only recently been horrified by his Danse macabre and didn’t like it quite as much as the Second Piano Concerto in G minor, having long hated his Third Piano Concerto, the Parisian public must the Concerto in C minor was a very acceptable if eccentric addition have been more than a little apprehensive about what they would to the repertoire. hear when Saint-Saëns gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto No.4 in C minor at the Concerts Colonne in October 1875. Programme note © Gerald Larner But no concerto begins less sensationally. Without so much as a preliminary flourish from either the piano or the orchestra, the first violins enter quietly and almost hesitantly with a theme of modestly classical character and the piano just as quietly repeats it in slightly varied rhythms and harmonies. What is going on here? Missy Mazzoli (b.1980) In fact, as anyone who recognised the kinship between the theme of this Allegro moderato and that of the last movement of Mozart’s Violent, Violent Sea Piano Concerto in C minor might already have guessed, a theme and variations is going on here. However, although the variations proceed in a classically regular cycle of eight-bar phrases, shared evenly at first Violent, Violent Sea was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment between soloist and orchestra, the piano figuration becomes ever and the League of Composers Chamber Orchestra, and was more extravagant, more Lisztian than Mozartian, and the harmonies premiered at Miller Theater in New York City in June 2011. more chromatic. This work began with more of an emotional impression than a Just at the point where the variation structure seems to be breaking precise musical idea. My early notes for the piece look something down, activity ceases and the tempo changes to Andante for what is, like this: in effect, a slow movement in A flat major. Beginning with one of those prophetic passages one sometimes finds in Saint-Saëns, in LOUD BUT SLOW. LIGHT BUT DARK. VIBRAPHONE. HOW TO DO THIS? spite of his alleged conservatism, an atmospheric episode that could almost have been written by Rachmaninov precedes the entry of the To my relief I eventually did figure out “how to do this.” The work main theme on woodwind. If this chorale-like melody is not simple evolved significantly from these early sketches but my idea of enough to grasp on first hearing, it should certainly be familiar by the creating a loud, dense work with conflicting light and dark sides end of a movement designed specifically – though by no means unpoetically and not without the introduction of a seductive remained intact. The result is a ten-minute piece with a deceptively secondary theme on the piano – to fix it firmly in the memory. sparkling exterior and dark, slow-moving chords at its core. These chords grind against each other, dissolve into glissandos and The Allegro vivace in C minor, which follows the Andante after a short crescendo into surprising dissonances under the glistening patina of pause while the strings remove their mutes, is the scherzo section of vibraphone and marimba. This work is dedicated to Sheila Mazzoli, the work. Brilliantly written and neatly constructed in three parts, with who loves the sea more than anyone. a middle section that gallops away on one note, the scherzo is not so self-contained as to exclude frequent references back to the theme of the opening Allegro moderato. Another Andante intervenes, Programme note © Missy Mazzoli 2 Claude Debussy The central scherzo, “Games of Waves,” is so flexibly constructed that it seems to proceed on spontaneous impulse and so (1862–1918) resourcefully scored that it seems to reflect every chance change of wind, current or light. Broadly, however, it is in three parts, the first of La Mer which presents an apparently infinite variety of thematic ideas – a dance on the cor anglais, a quicker flight of trills and triplet figures De l’aube à midi sur la mer on the violins, a kind of bolero with its melodic line carried by cor Jeux de vagues anglais again under a rhythmic ostinato on flutes and clarinets. Dialogue du vent et de la mer These are developed in the middle section, where another new theme makes its entry in the form of a trumpet call to urge the Debussy completed the orchestration of La Mer at Eastbourne in movement towards its climax. Debussy’s melodic invention is still 1905. He had started the work two years earlier while on holiday at not exhausted: in what might otherwise be called a recapitulation Bichain in Burgundy, which is about as far from the sea as one can second violins and cellos introduce a waltz that rises through the get in France. But, as the composer explained, he had “an endless strings in ever increasing animation before the wind drops and store of memories of the sea and, to my mind, they are worth more leaves the sea comparatively becalmed. than the reality, whose beauty weighs down thought too heavily.” There is little calm in the last movement, which opens with the low Besides, La Mer is not just an exercise in observation. Declared rumble of an approaching storm on cellos and basses and a gust of enemy of the symphony though the composer was, Debussy’s “three wind on woodwind. As well as its descriptive function, however, the symphonic sketches” are at least as symphonic as picturesque. At “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea” has a long-term structural duty to the same time, while the imagery is clearly inspired by the movement perform. Within a few bars it recalls two motifs from the beginning of of the sea and the changing light, it is more often a case of the work, including the muted trumpet theme which was converted generalised atmosphere than specific detail.