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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Wed 6 & Wed 13 Nov 2013 7.30pm Barbican Hall ROMEO AND JULIET Berlioz Romeo and Juliet Valery Gergiev conductor Olga Borodina mezzo-soprano Kenneth Tarver tenor Evgeny Nikitin bass-baritone London Symphony Chorus Guildhall School Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director 6 Nov in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Society 13 Nov supported by LSO Friends BERLIOZ: FANTASY, REALITY, IMAGINATION London’s Symphony Orchestra There will be no interval during tonight’s concert Concert finishes approx 9.20pm 13 Nov filmed by Mezzo for future broadcast across Europe 2 Welcome 6 & 13 November 2013 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Tonight’s concert forms part of LSO Principal LSO PLAY Conductor Valery Gergiev’s exploration of the music of Berlioz, a major series that takes in eight See a different side of the London Symphony concerts at the Barbican and a tour to venues in Orchestra through LSO Play, an innovative online the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and France. platform that allows you to immerse yourself in an orchestral concert. Watch Valery Gergiev conduct This evening, we hear one of the composer’s most Ravel’s Boléro, control views of the performance revolutionary works – the choral symphony Romeo from within the different sections of orchestra, and Juliet, inspired by Berlioz’s love of Shakespeare. and learn more about the instruments and players. To bring the drama of this work to life, it’s a pleasure to be joined by soloists Olga Borodina, Kenneth play.lso.co.uk Tarver and Evgeny Nikitin, along with the London Symphony Chorus and a chorus from the Guildhall School. We are particularly delighted to have the LSO LIVE SALE ON iTUNES opportunity to take this programme to Paris for a performance later this month at the Salle Pleyel, This month, iTunes is holding a world-wide campaign where the LSO is International Resident Orchestra. discounting the entire LSO Live catalogue. Get up to 40% off your favourite recordings by the London I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Symphony Orchestra, including best-sellers Holst’s the Royal Philharmonic Society, whose members The Planets, award-winning Prokofiev’s Romeo and join us on 6 November as part of their bicentenary Juliet and the monumental Berlioz’s Grande Messe celebrations, and LSO Friends, for their support des morts. Sale ends 26 November. of the 13 November concert and their continuing commitment to the work of the Orchestra. iTunes.com/lsolive Thank you also to our media partners for this series, Classic FM, and to our filming and broadcast A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS partner Mezzo, who will record the 13 November concert for later broadcast. The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+ including 20% off standard ticket prices, a dedicated I hope you enjoy tonight’s performance, and will booking phone line and, for bigger groups, free hot join us again for another concert in the series, drinks and the chance of a private interval reception. which continues at the Barbican until 14 November. At these two concerts we are delighted to welcome: The Mariinsky Theatre Trust, The Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Charity and Brook Green UK DMC. Kathryn McDowell CBE DL lso.co.uk/groups Managing Director lso.co.uk 3 Royal Philharmonic Society 200 Years at the Heart of Music ‘For centuries the RPS has been the beating heart and LSO PLAY conscience of British musical life.’ EXPLORE THE ORCHESTRA Richard Morrison, The Times View performances from a new perspective, watch up to four cameras at one time, The UK’s orchestral tradition started in 1813 when and use the orchestra visualisation to the Philharmonic Society of London mounted the learn more about the instruments … first public season of concerts. 200 years on and this unique organisation is still at the heart of music: rps200.org/join supporting and working creatively with talented young performers and composers, championing excellence, and encouraging audiences to listen to, and talk about, great music. New music has always been central to the RPS, and tonight’s concert reminds us that Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet was first introduced to the UK at a Philharmonic Society concert on 10 March 1881, conducted by Mr W G Cousins. The concert took place at St James’ Hall and, according to the programme, the orchestra was increased to precisely 100 members and joined by a chorus of 150 singers from the Upper Choir of the South London Choral Association plus twelve professional vocalists under the direction of Mr Leonard C Venebles. This was the first time that Berlioz’s work had featured in a Philharmonic Society concert in nearly 30 years following his visit in 1853, when he conducted a Get to see what the Orchestra sees programme of his music including Harold in Italy when they make music and explore and the overture Le carnaval romain. Ravel’s Boléro up close. play.lso.co.uk 4 Programme Notes 6 & 13 November 2013 Hector Berlioz (1803–69) Romeo and Juliet Op 17 (1839) Dramatic symphony after Shakespeare’s tragedy Almost from the moment that the 23-year-old Libretto by Émile Deschamps Berlioz saw an English company’s performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Odéon 1 INTRODUCTION – FIGHTING, TUMULT, INTERVENTION Theatre in Paris in September 1827, ideas for some OF THE PRINCE: ALLEGRO FUGATO kind of musical response began to crowd into PROLOGUE: MODERATO his mind. But the article in an English newspaper, STROPHES: ANDANTE AVEC SOLENNITÉ which later reported that as he left the theatre he SCHERZETTO: ALLEGRO LEGGIERO exclaimed, ‘I shall write my grandest symphony on the play’, could not have been more wrong. 2 ROMEO ALONE, SADNESS, MUSIC AND DANCING, THE CAPULETS’ FEAST: ANDANTE MALINCONICO Writing a symphony of any kind was the last thing E SOSTENUTO – LARGHETTO ESPRESSIVO – ALLEGRO Berlioz would have been thinking of at that stage of his career. His musical education, since coming to 3 LOVE SCENE: THE CAPULETS’ GARDEN, SILENT AND Paris from the provinces six years before – a boy of DESERTED: ALLEGRETTO – ADAGIO 17 who had never heard an orchestra – had been largely devoted to the operas and sacred music of 4 SCHERZO: QUEEN MAB: PRESTISSIMO the French classical school. The crucial discovery of Beethoven, and of the symphony as a major 5 JULIET’S FUNERAL PROCESSION: ANDANTE NON TROPPO LENTO art-form, lay several months ahead. 6 ROMEO AT THE CAPULETS’ TOMB – The Revelation of Beethoven INVOCATION, AWAKENING OF JULIET: ALLEGRO AGITATO E DISPERATO CON MOTO – LARGO – Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet comes out of Beethoven ALLEGRO VIVACE ED APPASSIONATO ASSAI almost as much as Shakespeare – out of the revelation of the Beethovenian symphony at 7 FINALE – THE CROWD RUSHES TO THE CEMETERY, concerts at the Paris Conservatoire, where Berlioz BRAWL OF CAPULETS AND MONTAGUES, was a student, in 1828: the symphony as a dramatic FRIAR LAURENCE’S RECITATIVE AND ARIA, medium every bit as vivid and lofty as opera, and OATH OF RECONCILIATION: ALLEGRO – LARGHETTO the symphony orchestra as a vehicle of unimagined SOSTENUTO – ALLEGRO NON TROPPO – ALLEGRO – expressive power and subtlety, of infinite possibility. ALLEGRO MODERATO – ANDANTE UN POCO MAESTOSO From that time on, his aspirations turned in a new direction, towards the dramatic concert work, VALERY GERGIEV CONDUCTOR culminating, twelve years after the epiphany at the OLGA BORODINA MEZZO-SOPRANO Odéon, in Romeo and Juliet. KENNETH TARVER TENOR EVGENY NIKITIN BASS-BARITONE For Berlioz, listening to the Beethoven symphonies LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS and studying the scores in the Conservatoire Library, GUILDHALL SCHOOL CHORUS the sheer variety of their compositional procedures SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR and the clearly distinct character of each work lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 BERLIOZ AND SHAKESPEARE reinforced the lessons of Shakespeare: continual naïve old cackling nurse; the stately hermit, striving Berlioz described his first encounter reinvention of form in response to the demands of in vain to calm the storm of love and hate whose with Shakespeare (when he saw the poetic material. Each of his three symphonies tumult has carried even to his lowly cell; and then Hamlet at the Odéon Theatre in 1827) is cast in a different form, and adopts a different the catastrophe, extremes of ecstasy and despair as a ‘thunderbolt’ that revealed the solution to the problem of communicating dramatic contending for mastery, passion’s sighs turned ‘meaning of dramatic grandeur, content: in the Symphonie fantastique a written to choking death; and, at the last, the solemn oath beauty, truth’. The playwright proved programme, in Harold in Italy movement titles, in sworn by the warring houses, too late, on the bodies an enduring influence on Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet choral recitative, setting out – as in of their star-crossed children, to abjure the hatred the composer wrote works inspired Shakespeare’s ‘Two houses, both alike in dignity …’ – through which so much blood, so many tears, by The Tempest, King Lear, Hamlet the action distilled in the movements that follow. were shed.’ and an opera based on Much Ado About Nothing (Béatrice and Benedict). ‘Beethoven opened before Much of this will feature in the symphony that me a new world of music, Paganini’s princely gift – a cheque for 20,000 francs, which relieved Berlioz of the heavy burden of debt – as Shakespeare had revealed enabled him to write. a new universe of poetry’. The Formal Plan Berlioz, in his Memoirs, on the profound influence of Beethoven and Shakespeare The work finally performed in the Conservatoire Hall in November 1839 was the result of long and careful NICCOLÒ PAGANINI (1782–1840) The project occupied Berlioz for a long time.