Sunday 14 January 2018 7–9.05pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT 20TH CENTURY MASTERS Janáček Overture: From the House of the Dead Carter Instances Berg Violin Concerto Interval RATTLE Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle conductor Isabelle Faust violin 5.30pm Barbican Hall LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists Free event Scriabin Two Poèmes Op 32 Janáček Sonata 1 X 1905 Rachmaninov Variations on a Theme of Corelli Op 42 Ryan Drucker piano Welcome LSO News On Our Blog Earlier tonight, soloist Ryan Drucker from BRITISH COMPOSER AWARDS FOR FAREWELL TO NIGEL BROADBENT, the Guildhall School performed piano music SOUNDHUB AND PANUFNIK COMPOSERS FIRST VIOLIN by Scriabin, Janáček and Rachmaninov in a short concert, free to ticket-holders. Five of the 13 BASCA British Composer On Thursday 21 December we said goodbye This series seeks to complement and Awards this year were won by alumni of to one of the stalwarts of the LSO, First Violin amplify the repertoire in the Orchestra’s the LSO’s composer development schemes. Nigel Broadbent, who retired after 38 years programme and provide a platform for Congratulations go to Cevanne Horrocks- in the Orchestra. On our blog we look back the musicians of the future. For further Hopayian (Panufnik 2010, Soundhub over his career. details visit lso.co.uk/lsoplatforms. Associate), Emily Howard (Panufnik 2007), Robin Haigh (Soundhub 2017), Deborah MEET DAVID ELTON, I hope that you enjoy this evening’s Pritchard (Panufnik 2015) and Philip OUR NEW PRINCIPAL TRUMPET A warm welcome to tonight’s LSO concert. performance and that you can join us Venables (Panufnik 2005). This evening the Orchestra’s Music Director again soon. Our next concert on 21 January We get to know our newest member of the Sir Simon Rattle conducts the last of three launches our Debussy centenary celebration THE LSO’S 2018/19 SEASON Trumpet section, who comes to the LSO innovative programmes that have launched with LSO Principal Guest Conductor from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. the new year, underlining his commitment François-Xavier Roth, and features the Details of the LSO’s 2018/19 season will to the music of the 20th century with late UK premiere of a previously lost work be announced on Tuesday 23 January, with Read our blog, watch videos and more works by four masters – Janáček, Carter, written by the composer in his youth. public booking open from Friday 2 February. • youtube.com/lso Berg and Bartók. Visit lso.co.uk to find out what’s in store. • lso.co.uk/blog LSO Friends will receive priority booking This evening we welcome Isabelle Faust, for the 2018/19 season. If you would like who performs Berg’s Violin Concerto. to find out more about joining, visit As a soloist who is renowned for her lso.co.uk/support-us. interpretations of a wide-ranging repertoire, Kathryn McDowell CBE DL it is a great pleasure to be joined by her Managing Director WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS once again this evening, and we greatly anticipate her performance of this concerto. This evening we are delighted to welcome: The Queen’s College, Oxford Read our news online • lso.co.uk/news 2 Welcome 14 January 2018 Tonight’s Concert / introduction by Paul Griffiths Spring 2018: Elgar, Tippett & Helen Grime our last songs, as it were. We hear PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Thursday 8 February 2018 7.30pm Thursday 19 & 26 April 2018 7.30pm some of the last works of four Barbican Hall Barbican Hall masters of the 20th century, one Paul Griffiths has been a critic for nearly of whom – Elliott Carter – wonderfully went 40 years, including for The Times and SIR MARK ELDER HELEN GRIME WORLD PREMIERE on to become also a master of the 21st. The New Yorker, and is an authority on 20th- Surviving, indeed, is the key. Janáček, in the and 21st-century music. Among his books Janáček Schluck und Jau Helen Grime Woven Space * overture to his Dostoevsky opera, stares at are studies of Boulez, Ligeti and Stravinsky. Bartók Piano Concerto No 3 (world premiere) the cold metal of imprisonment, but finds He also writes novels and librettos. Elgar Symphony No 1 Mahler Symphony No 9 reflected in it the sky. Carter, creating his Instances at the age of 103, still has the Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Sir Mark Elder conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor mind of someone many decades younger, journalist and writer. He is the author Francesco Piemontesi piano curious and inventive, creating keen moments. of The LSO at 90, and contributes to * Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the a wide variety of specialist classical LSO by the Barbican Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory music publications. Sunday 11 February 2018 7pm of a young person: Manon Gropius, the Barbican Hall 26 April generously supported by Baker McKenzie daughter of Mahler’s widow, taken at 18. Lament and outrage are inevitably part SIR MARK ELDER of the picture, but, more than an elegy, the work is a love song. Manon’s spirit, Dvořák Overture: Othello spinning in the violin part, is entwined Bruch Violin Concerto No 1 Sunday 22 April 2018 7pm with those of others in Berg’s life: his Elgar Symphony No 2 Barbican Hall daughter, his first love, and the woman he most adored as a mature adult. Sir Mark Elder conductor TIPPETT’S THE ROSE LAKE Nikolaj Znaider violin Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra has no Tippett The Rose Lake † subject other than that of making music Mahler comp Cooke Symphony No 10 as colourful, strong and direct as possible. Seriously ill at the time, dejected by the slow Sir Simon Rattle conductor progress of the war against Nazism, lacking money and opportunities in the United † Supported by Resonate, a PRS Foundation States, homesick, Bartók yet created music lso.co.uk/whatson initiative in partnership with the Association of of exuberance, humour and joy. Surviving. 020 7638 8891 British Orchestras, BBC Radio 3 and the Boltini Trust Tonight’s Concert 3 Leoš Janáček Overture: From the House of the Dead 1927–28 / note by Paul Griffiths etween 1919 and 1925 Janáček presented by violins perched two octaves • DOSTOEVSKY’S • LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928): composed three operas in quick above the supporting horns, with lower FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD IN PROFILE succession, quite different from strings further below. one another in subject but alike in revolving The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky around a female protagonist: a tragedy But there is also the yelp of freedom. (1821–81) had only just begun his career of love in conflict with the rulebook, As it goes on, the overture brings this when he was exiled to Siberia. He had Katya Kabanova; a nature fable, The Cunning theme back many times, always differently, completed his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1845, Little Vixen; and a strange fantasy of legal interleaved with and superimposed on and his second The Double in 1846, and had investigation and extended longevity, other material. After the solo violin – itself joined the Petrachevsky Circle of progressive The Makropulos Case. He took a break from an image of liberation – has had a spin, intellectuals who opposed the Tsarist the stage to write his Glagolitic Mass and a massive restatement brings with it the autocracy. The group was denounced to the Sinfonietta, and to begin a violin concerto, noise of chains, in a typical touch of graphic Ministry of Internal Affairs and Dostoevsky then returned with a new idea again, but instrumentation. Later comes a walloping was arrested in April 1849. Leoš left the family home in 1865 to become this time without a woman at the centre. fanfare of jubilation, twice over. What ends a chorister in Brno, and in 1869 received a His last opera – and he knew it was to be the piece, though, is more of the main The group was sentenced to death by scholarship to study at the Czech Teachers’ his last – would be set in a prison camp theme, and more of the chains. • firing squad, the sentences commuted Training Institute. He moved to Prague and virtually all-male. It would be based by the Tsar at the last minute (quite literally – in 1874 and studied at the Organ School, on Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical the group was standing in line waiting for and pursued further studies in Leipzig and Notes from the House of the Dead •. their death sentence to be carried out as Vienna from 1879 to 1880. During this period During the final 18 months of his life the the execution was aborted). Dostoevsky he helped to found the Brno Organ School, opera absorbed him, and much of what subsequently served four years of exile which later became the Brno Conservatory. he had written for the violin concerto in Omsk, Siberia, which inspired his novel was reconfigured as its overture – hence Notes from the House of the Dead, a brutal Moravian folk music increasingly fascinated the dizzying violin solos here. depiction of life in prison, published after his Janáček, influencing a style that reflected the release in 1860. This time in Dostoevsky’s musicality of his native tongue. Following the From the House of the Dead is an opera life had a critical impact on his literary success of his first opera Jenůfa (1904), his of brutality, cruelty and mistrust, yet output and would serve as the basis for next operas including The Cunning Little Vixen gleaming with urgent humanity, and all many of his later works, including secured his international reputation. The this – the black and the gold – appears right Crime and Punishment (1866).