London Symphony Orchestra Living Music AFTER ROMANTICISM Thursday 21 January 2016 7.30pm Barbican Hall Wagner Prelude to Act I from ‘Parsifal’ Berg Seven Early Songs INTERVAL Mahler Symphony No 5 François-Xavier Roth conductor Camilla Tilling soprano Concert finishes approx 9.55pm Sunday 24 January 2016 7pm London’s Symphony Orchestra Barbican Hall Webern Im Sommerwind Berg Violin Concerto INTERVAL Strauss Ein Heldenleben François-Xavier Roth conductor Renaud Capuçon violin Concert finishes approx 9pm 2 Welcome 21 & 24 January 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to the LSO for the first set of concerts in LSO LIVE WINS GRAMOFON AWARD ‘After Romanticism’, a series exploring the changes and innovations that took place in music during LSO Live, the Orchestra’s record label, is delighted to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of announce that its release of Mendelssohn’s Symphony the 20th. We are delighted to be joined for this by No 3 with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Schumann’s conductor François-Xavier Roth, who introduces the Piano Concerto with Maria João Pires was named series on page 4. Foreign Classical Compact Disc of the Year by the renowned Hungarian quarterly Gramofon. Order In the first concert on 21 January, we will trace the your copy through the LSO Live website. journey from the Prelude to Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, through Mahler’s Symphony No 5, on to lsolive.lso.co.uk the musical innovations found in Berg’s Seven Early Songs, sung tonight by Camilla Tilling. THE LSO JANUARY SALE For the second concert on 24 January, we begin with two works from composers of the Second Viennese Nothing beats the January blues like a good concert! School, taken from different points in their careers: The LSO January Sale is now on, giving you the an early orchestral work by Webern, followed by chance to save 20% on selected LSO concerts in the Berg’s final composition – the Violin Concerto – new year. For full details of the events included in for which we are delighted to welcome back French the sale, visit the LSO website. violinist Renaud Capuçon. Closing the programme is Richard Strauss’ musical ode to the heroic life, lso.co.uk/januarysale written in the final years of the 19th century: Ein Heldenleben. A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS We hope you can join us again on 31 January when Sir Antonio Pappano will conduct Respighi’s The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+, Roman Trilogy, and pianist Alice Sara Ott joins us for including 20% discount on standard tickets. Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Tonight we are delighted to welcome: Conservatorio Profesional de Musica Benjamin Brody and Friends lso.co.uk/groups Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Shakespeare 400 His words come to life in music PROGRAMME NOTE AUTHOR LINDSAY KEMP is a senior producer for BBC Radio 3, including ‘Gianandreaprogramming lunchtime Noseda concerts fromwhipped LSO St Luke’s, up Artistic a demonic Director storm.’ of the Lufthansa Festival of BaroqueThe Independent Music, and a regular contributor to Gramophone magazine. A MIDSUMMER MACBETH, RICHARD III & FAMILY CONCERT: BBC RADIO 3 NIGHT’S DREAM ROMEO AND JULIET PLAY ON, SHAKESPEARE! LUNCHTIME CONCERTS Tue 16 Feb 7.30pm Thu 25 Feb 7.30pm Sun 7 Feb 2.30pm Thu 28 Jan 1pm, LSO St Luke’s Mendelssohn Symphony No 1; Smetana Richard III Shakespeare needs the help of Puck BBC Singers & David Hill A Midsummer Night’s Dream Liszt Piano Concerto No 2 and the LSO to get over his writer’s Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet block. With music by Mendelssohn, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor Strauss Macbeth Prokofiev, Walton, Sibelius and Monteverdi Choir Shostakovich Actors from the Guildhall School Gianandrea Noseda conductor LSO DISCOVERY: Simon Trpcˇeski piano LSO DISCOVERY DAY: FREE LUNCHTIME CONCERT BERLIOZ AND SHAKESPEARE ROMEO AND JULIET Fri 26 Feb 12.30pm, shakespeare400.org Sun 28 Feb 10am–5pm LSO St Luke’s Sun 28 Feb 7pm Barbican & LSO St Luke’s Korngold Nine Shakespeare Songs Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 2 Watch a morning rehearsal with Guildhall School Musicians Berlioz Romeo and Juliet – Suite Gianandrea Noseda before spending the afternoon exploring lso.co.uk Gianandrea Noseda conductor Berlioz and Shakespeare with guest Janine Jansen violin speaker Julian Rushton 020 7638 8891 4 Interview with François-Xavier Roth 21 & 24 January 2016 François-Xavier Roth After Romanticism François-Xavier Roth introduces his After Romanticism Strauss, and you can very easily hear how different series, and tells us more about this fascinating period in languages come from these composers. Even if you look at someone like Arnold Schoenberg, or the history of music. even Webern at the beginning, you can hear how they changed over the course of their career, how the same composer produced different musical languages during their life. What is especially exciting in this music is hearing how the composers extended or abandoned the musical language that was known at the time. With some composers, it was an extension of tonality, while others ignored this language to go in completely different directions. So from this point of view, and the architectural and structural point of view, there was so much exploration taking place, maybe more than at any other time in music history. New perspectives MORE INTERVIEWS ONLINE he idea for this series is something that has programmed these two concerts in a balanced Visit the LSO Blog to read more interested me for years and years: how the way. In fact that’s really the purpose of this theme, interviews with conductors Tmusic at the end of the 19th and beginning I ‘After Romanticism’, which is to say that during and soloists. of the 20th centuries progressively and radically the same period in Europe you could hear so many lso.co.uk/blog changed to reflect ongoing developments in society. different directions in music. You had composers Also in this period you had what might have been looking towards the past and trying to develop the end of something old, but the beginning of what they had inherited. Or you had people who LSO DISCOVERY DAY something new in music – new directions, new were really reconsidering the musical language Sun 24 Jan 2016, 10am–5.30pm languages and new perspectives. So for me it’s really and opening up new perspectives. So it’s a balance Barbican & LSO St Luke’s one of the most fascinating periods in music history. between the two. Find out more about the series in New languages For the audience, I have featured some of the our LSO Discovery Day. Watch a works from this period that they might already morning rehearsal with the LSO wanted to explore these different – I can’t know, like Mahler’s Fifth Symphony or Richard and François-Xavier Roth, engage say solutions, there are no solutions in music – Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, but then combined these in discussions about the era with I proposals with the LSO. I wanted to explore the with lesser-known works written around the same writer Stephen Johnson in the different proposals put forward by composers in time. So they’ll get to hear the spirit of these new afternoon, and enjoy chamber these two programmes. So we have music by Alban areas of music on the same evening, and immerse music by Webern from LSO players. Berg, Anton Webern, Gustav Mahler and Richard themselves in the spirit of exploration from that time. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 Richard Wagner (1813–83) Prelude to Act I from ‘Parsifal’ (1882) PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Parsifal was Wagner’s final work, first seen at This epic tale opens with a Prelude featuring GAVIN PLUMLEY specialises in Bayreuth on 26 July 1882. In the planning since the the work’s primary musical ideas, such as the the music and culture of Central 1840s, the piece was effectively a prequel to his 1850 initial monodic theme in A-flat major, signifying Europe and has written for The opera Lohengrin, which centres on the character Communion or the Last Supper. Within this is hidden Independent on Sunday and The of Parsifal’s son. Unlike Lohengrin, however, another motif associated with the spear that pierced Guardian. He appears frequently Wagner did not refer to Parsifal as an opera; it Christ’s side on the Cross and which is now in the on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and was a Bühnenweihfestspiel, a stage consecration clutches of the malevolent Klingsor. Other prominent he commissions and edits the festival play, with which he reopened the Bayreuth motifs include a brass chorale, linked to the idea of English-language programme Festspielhaus after the critically successful but faith, and the ‘Dresden Amen’, composed by Johann notes for the Salzburg Festival. financially ruinous 1876 performances of Der Ring Gottlieb Naumann for the Saxon Royal Chapel and des Nibelungen. quoted, with mystical connotations, by Wagner in his earlier operas, as well as by Mendelssohn and The religious air that hangs around Parsifal, Bruckner. Beyond such motivic associations, the encouraged by Wagner and his family’s insistence Prelude heralds this mystical drama’s yearning that it could only be performed at Bayreuth, stems tones and breadth of scale. from the story itself. The Kingdom of the Holy Grail, ruled by Amfortas, has fallen into decay. A young man called Parsifal is found shooting down one of the sacred swans in the surrounding forest and is interrogated by the community. But Gurnemanz, one THE INSPIRATION FOR PARSIFAL of the oldest knights, wonders whether Parsifal is Wagner noted in his autobiography how the idea to the promised ‘pure fool, enlightened by compassion’ write an opera on the story of Parsifal came to him who can purify the kingdom.