London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 18 September 2016 7pm Tuesday 20 September 2016 7.30pm Barbican Hall 2016/17 SEASON OPENING VERDI REQUIEM Gianandrea Noseda conductor Erika Grimaldi soprano Daniela Barcellona mezzo-soprano Francesco Meli tenor London’s Symphony Orchestra Michele Pertusi baritone London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 8.45pm (18 Sep) & 9.15pm (20 Sep) Please note that there will be no interval Generously supported by 2 Welcome 18 & 20 September 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief A very warm welcome to the opening concerts of the SUN 18 SEP: VERDI REQUIEM LIVE STREAM LSO’s 2016/17 season with Gianandrea Noseda, who makes his first London appearance as LSO Principal The concert on Sunday 18 September is being Guest Conductor in these performances of Verdi’s streamed live on the LSO’s YouTube channel, Requiem. We are also joined by a stellar cast of preceded by a backstage tour and introductions Italian soloists, Erika Grimaldi, Daniela Barcellona, from presenter Rachel Leach streamed live on Francesco Meli and Michele Pertusi, as well as the Facebook. Both broadcasts will be available to London Symphony Chorus, which continues its watch again shortly. 50th anniversary celebrations. lso.co.uk/livestream These two concerts are sponsored by Reignwood, and mark the beginning of their new Principal Partnership with the LSO. We thank them for their LSO LIVE LATEST RELEASE: important commitment to our work and we warmly RACHMANINOV SYMPHONY CYCLE welcome them and their guests to tonight’s concert and to the LSO’s community of supporters. The final part of the LSO’s acclaimed Rachmaninov Symphony Cycle was released on 9 September. At these performances we welcome guests from the Coupling Rachmaninov’s First Symphony with City of London Corporation, which, together with Balakirev’s Tamara, the Orchestra’s performance Arts Council England, provides core funding for was described as ‘full-blooded and engrossing’ the LSO to present its annual season as Resident by The Daily Telegraph. Orchestra of the Barbican Centre. We are extremely grateful to all those who support the Orchestra, lsolive.lso.co.uk and offer our thanks to our individual Patrons and Friends, Sponsors, Trusts and Charitable Foundations who do so much to enable the LSO to thrive. A WARM WELCOME TO THE GROUPS ATTENDING THESE CONCERTS Thanks to all those who join us in the audience for this occasion. I hope that you enjoy these Members of the Greater London Lieutenancy performances and will return throughout the Gerrards Cross Community Association 2016/17 season. Marjorie Wilkins & Friends Darren Jameson & Friends lso.co.uk/groups Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director A UNIQUE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN REIGNWOOD GROUP, CHATEAU LATOUR AND FOUR SEASONS HOTELS AND RESORTS OPENING Q1 2017 CLUB.TENTRINITYSQUARE.COM 4 Programme Notes 18 & 20 September 2016 Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Messa da Requiem (1874) 1 REQUIEM AND KYRIE Earlier, Verdi had tried to explain what it was he felt 2 DIES IRAE about him. Manzoni, he said, had written ’not only 3 DOMINE JESU the greatest book of our time but one of the greatest 4 SANCTUS books that the human mind has produced [I promessi 5 AGNUS DEI sposi]. It’s not just a book, it’s a consolation to humanity. 6 LUX AETERNA I was 16 when I first read it. Since then … if anything 7 LIBERA ME my experience of men has made me admire it all the more – because it’s a true book … Oh, if artists could GIANANDREA NOSEDA CONDUCTOR but understand that ‘true’, there would be no more ERIKA GRIMALDI SOPRANO composers of the future or composers of the past, DANIELA BARCELLONA MEZZO-SOPRANO no puristic, realistic or idealistic painters, no poets FRANCESCO MELI TENOR Classic or Romantic, but true poets, true painters, MICHELE PERTUSI BARITONE true composers.’ LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR The Requiem used to be called ’Verdi’s greatest opera’. Why not? PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Verdi did not feel the death of Alessandro Manzoni, DAVID CAIRNS the Italian novelist and poet, any less keenly because What is the text of the ‘Dies Irae’ Volume 2 of David Cairns’ life of Manzoni was a very old man. It was a grievous blow. if not operatic?’ Berlioz (Servitude and Greatness) Verdi had long had a reverence, almost amounting won the biography category of the to idolatry, for the eminent writer. He had admired Whitbread Prize and the Samuel him from a distance and, when a meeting was finally This was Verdi’s creed as an artist, and the Requiem Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in arranged, he was moved to the depths. ’How shall he wrote as a tribute to Manzoni and performed in 2000. Volume 1 (The Making of I describe the extraordinary, indefinable sensation 1874 on the first anniversary of the writer’s death an Artist) has been re-issued in I felt in the presence of your ‘saint’?’ he wrote to is the fruit of it – whatever the critics’ subsequent a revised edition. His most recent Countess Clarina Maffei. ’I would have gone down attempts to reduce it to a category, labelled book, Mozart and His Operas, on my knees if one could worship men.’ theatrical or operatic. The Requiem is true, before was published in 2006. it is anything else. Verdi could only respond to the liturgy as the dramatist he was and by using the ALESSANDRO MANZONI (1785–1873) is widely personal language he had evolved while composing regarded as one of the greatest Italian novelists. a score of operas. But the sound-quality, texture and His 1842 novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), whole feel of the work is as unique and as different is set in northern Italy in 1628, during the years of from La traviata or Don Carlos as they are from each Spanish rule, but is also a critique of the Austrian other. And perhaps none of the works written before Empire that ruled the region in the 19th century. it had been so perfectly fashioned, so consistently Manzoni’s work is a landmark of the Risorgimento strong in inspiration, so lofty in aim and achievement (Resurgence), an ideological and literary movement (even if the gaiety of the ‘Sanctus’ may at first that helped lead to the establishment of the unified disconcert the non-Italian). The Requiem used to be Kingdom of Italy in 1861. called ’Verdi’s greatest opera’. Why not? As a sneer lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 the remark is meaningless; as a splendid compliment outrage that is death. Boito experienced a similar it is not far short of the truth. What is the text of the feeling when he watched Verdi on his death-bed: ‘Dies Irae’ if not operatic? ’Never have I had such a feeling of hatred against death, of contempt for that mysterious, blind, Verdi’s Requiem is certainly not religious in an stupid, triumphant and craven power … He too orthodox way. Neither is Brahms’ A German Requiem, hated it, for he was the most powerful expression nor Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts. Even in of life that it is possible to imagine’. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis God is, in a sense, the projection, the creation of human fears and longings. Like Berlioz, Verdi was a humanist who retained a poignant regret for his childhood beliefs. But he had little use for the historical church (listen to the Grand VERDI’S DON CARLOS (1867) Inquisitor’s scene in Don Carlos or the gloomy, VERDI ON LSO LIVE – AVAILABLE NOW is based on the play Don Carlos, brutish music that accompanies the procession of Infant von Spanien (Don Carlos, condemned heretics in the same work); and the Infante of Spain), telling the story of criticisms that emanated from the Catholic hierarchy VERDI Requiem Carlos, Prince of Asturias, and his when Manzoni died did not dispose Verdi any more Sir Colin Davis conductor tumultuous engagement to Elizabeth gently towards it. ’Not a Catholic in the political of Valois. Verdi returned to the opera and strictly theological sense of the word – nothing £12.99 time and time again over a period could be further from the truth,’ was Boito’s verdict. of 20 years, producing versions in As Verdi’s wife Giuseppina remarked, ’the science, French, Italian, and later ‘Milan’ and the sophisms, the metaphysical subtleties of the ‘Modena’ versions in the 1880s. theologians and the learned of all the religions of all When performed in its entirety it the ages strike vainly against the mystery of death.’ VERDI Otello is the composer’s longest opera, It is too big a subject to be left to the clergy. Sir Colin Davis conductor lasting nearly four hours. Death and fear pervade the work. As someone who, £14.99 in D’Annunzio’s phrase, ’wept for all’, Verdi could express humanity’s feelings about it with ample authority. Hell, he knew, was something human beings can carry in themselves, and inflict on others. And death was in the air: Manzoni palpably a dying VERDI Falstaff man some years before his long life ended in 1873; Sir Colin Davis conductor Rossini dead in 1868 (Verdi’s ‘Libera Me’ originated as a movement contributed to an abortive project for £14.99 a mass in his honour); Verdi’s father dead, followed by his beloved father-in-law and benefactor Antonio Barezzi. The Requiem is, among other things, the lsolive.lso.co.uk passionate protest of a man who rebels against the 6 Composer Profile 18 & 20 September 2016 Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Composer Profile Verdi revolutionised Italian opera, finding a powerful musical expression for such themes as abduction, murder, premature death and seduction in early mature works like Rigoletto and La traviata and, in later life, brilliantly translating Shakespeare’s Othello and Falstaff to the operatic stage.