St Cecilia ORCHESTRA Ripon’s own Symphony Orchestra Concert Sponsored by Saturday 12 October 2019 - 7.45pm Gustav Mahler Trevor & Elizabeth Ingham Ripon Cathedral Symphony No. 2 - Resurrection Symphony Supported by: Pre-concert drinks will be available to With Cleveland Philharmonic Choir and ...and generous purchase from 7pm Darlington Choral Society. Individual & Soloists: Soprano, Fflur Wynn Corporate Friends Please note that there will be no interval Mezzo Soprano, Caitlin Hulcup at this concert. Xenophon Kelsey MBE Conductor Charity No: 1049842 2 Welcome 12 October 2018 Welcome Andrew Palmer, Chairman St Cecilia Orchestra Good Evening and welcome to our last concert of 2019. Time flies by so quickly. At the beginning of the year we were welcoming a guest conductor and in April celebrating Xen’s 70th birthday. For tonight’s concert, we are delighted to be collaborating with two partners to bring you music that would not necessarily be heard due to the phenomenal resources required. It is always a pleasure to welcome Cleveland Philharmonic Choir and Darlington Choral Society for a glorious partnership in performing Mahler’s monumental great second symphony. Never one to shy away from a big idea, in his Resurrection symphony Mahler examines the meaning of life itself, so what a great venue for to perform this work. Our thanks to everyone who has helped us stage tonight’s performance and for all their hard work. Thank you for your support. It is, as always, very much appreciated by everyone associated with St Cecilia Orchestra. As we get ready for 2020, look out for next year’s programme. Our June concert sees us try something completely different as we explore ways to widen our audience participation and build new audiences. I look forward to welcoming you to the first 2020 concert but for now let’s sit back and hear Mahler’s prodigious symphony. Xenophon Kelsey (conductor) Xen Kelsey is passionate about music and education and anyone who knows him or has read his Andante report will find a discourse on the state of music education in 21st century Britain. Born in Ripon, Xen an alumnus of Ripon Grammar School, studied horn, double bass, piano and conducting in Manchester and was principal horn and conducting student on the European Summer Schools for Young Musicians in Vienna, Salzburg and Montreux from 1967-71. As conductor, and guiding spirit, he has specialised in working with young musicians and through his encouragement has promoted young and talented students through many ventures not least St Cecilia Orchestra, Ripon Youth String Orchestra and Ripon Youth Choirs Association and he is the founder and director of the outstandingly successful Vacation Chamber Orchestras organisation, promoting residential courses and performing throughout Europe as well as in the UK. He has brought to his many orchestras a remarkable reputation for excellence. His entrepreneurial drive and commitment has meant that schools in the area have had the good fortune of live music having been presented in their schools. His most recent enterprise is the setting up of the Ripon Youth Music Network, a website to provide as much help, encouragement, advice and information as possible for young people and their parents across North Yorkshire. www.riponyouthmusic.net st-cecilia.org.uk Programme Notes 3 Gustav Mahler Symphony No.2 - Resurrection Symphony In 1888, while in Budapest where he The tempestuous funeral rite is followed by a flowing, had just been appointed conductor of the graceful Ländler in A flat, “a recollection of brief happiness Royal Opera, Mahler began a Symphony in in the past life of a hero”, Mahler said. It is characteristically C minor. He completed the first movement Mahlerian in its lilting style, the ‘cello’s theme, contrasted with but progressed no further. Deleting the part of the main theme on muted violins, being a particularly title and substituting Totenfeier (Funeral attractive example of his piquant scoring. The second subject is Rite), he tried unsuccessfully in 1891 more agitated, a reminder perhaps that the past happiness was to have the movement published as a not unclouded. symphonic-poem describing the funeral For the rondo-form Scherzo, Mahler returns to C minor and of the hero of his First Symphony. In gives us one of his satirical movements in which he draws on 1893 he added the Andante and Scherzo the melody of his Wunderhorn song about St Anthony preaching and revised the orchestration and shape of the first movement to the fishes, who listen but take no notice and live their lives (quite considerably, as can be heard from a recording of the original exactly as before. The ironic mood is suggested by burlesques version). Another delay followed while he puzzled how to end the of dance tunes, bizarre solos for E flat clarinet, a nostalgic work. Then, in March 1894, he attended the Hamburg memorial trumpet tune in the trio and chattering col legno strings. service for the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow at which a As the Scherzo fades away, the contralto soloist, accompanied boys’ choir sang a chorale setting of verses by Friedrich Klopstock: by strings, enters in D flat with the three ascending notes of (Thou shalt rise again after a short sleep). This gave him the idea Urlicht, after which the trumpets intone a Brucknerian chorale. of resurrection for his finale. He added some stanzas of his own The brief movement is in three sections, the second beginning to Klopstock’s text and completed the score in December 1894. with a clarinet ostinato figure beneath a violin solo, the third He conducted the first three movements in Berlin in March 1895 being a variation of the first verse. The text is: and the complete work there the following December. The fourth movement, an introduction to the finale, he included Urlicht, a O rosebud red! setting of a poem from the folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Man lies in greatest need, Wunderhorn which he had composed and orchestrated separately in Man lies in greatest pain. 1892-3 but not as it is scored in the symphony. I would rather be in Heaven. The first movement is in a variation of sonata-form with a Then I came upon a broad highway; secondary development section. Its debt to Beethoven’s Ninth There came an angel who wanted to send me back. Symphony is obvious and was deliberate. Throughout its complex O no! I would not be sent away! progress two elements are in contention, the stormy, fierce I am from God and wish to return to God! thematic group heard at the start and the gentler E major theme The dear God will give me light, first heard on strings and horns. After a re-statement in C minor Will light my way into eternal blissful life! of the opening section, there is a brief anticipation of a chorale theme (Dies Irae) which will return in the finale. This is heard again The huge fresco of the finale begins with a violent outburst, in the second development section, where the restless music of the a cry of despair, anticipated in the Scherzo. Woodwind and opening becomes even more ferocious. The movement ends with a horns quietly sound the ‘Redemption’ theme in C major. From descending chromatic scale and pizzicato Cs. off-stage come further horn-calls described by Mahler as “the By tradition, there will be a five minute silence after this first voice of him that crieth in the wilderness”. For this drama of section to allow for contemplative reflection. heaven and earth, the number of horns is increased to ten, .....cont.) 4 Programme Notes trumpets to eight, and two sets of timpani are required. Themes With wings which I have won, derived from motifs heard in the first movement precede the In ardent Love’s endeavour arrival of a new theme in B flat minor on flutes and oboes over I shall soar upwards, To the light! tremolando violins. This is later to be associated with the words To which no eye has soared! O glaube (O believe). I shall die, to live again! Fanfares and trills lead to a tremendous crescendo for brass Rise again, yea thou shalt rise again! and percussion as the graves open and the resurrected dead My heart, in a flash of time! march to Judgement. The recapitulation which follows ends What thou hast striven for with the Last Trumpet. Horns and trumpets fill the air with their Will bear thee to God! calls and the intervening silences are broken by birdsong on Programme notes provided by Michael Kennedy, April 1999 flute and piccolo. Now the chorus enters softly, unaccompanied, with the first lines of Klopstock’s hymn. The contralto and Budapest soprano soloists become ecstatic in O glaube and the soprano sings a direct quotation from Urlicht. With the entry of the organ the music moves majestically towards its inspired peroration. RESURRECTION Thou shalt rise again, yea, rise again My dust, after brief repose! Immortal life Tonight’s Soloists He who has called thee will give thee! Again to blossom as thou art sown! Welsh Soprano Fflur Wyn is quickly The Lord of the Harvest goes forth establishing herself as one of the And gathers in, like sheaves, country’s foremost young singers on Us who have died! the operatic and concert platform. She was elected an Associate of the Royal O believe, my heart, O believe: Academy of Music (ARAM). Trenberth Photo: Sian Naught is lost to thee! Some of her most notable concert performances include Thine, yes thine, is all you yearned for! Bach Christmas Oratorio (Combattimento Consort/Jan Willem Thine what you loved and what you fought for! de Vriend); Haydn Harmoniemesse, Mozart Mass in C Minor and Handel Messiah (Royal Northern Sinfonia/Thomas Zehetmair); O believe: Thou wast not born in vain.