London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Thursday 2 July 2015 7.30pm Barbican Hall SIR SIMON RATTLE Brahms Piano Concerto No 1 INTERVAL Dvorˇák The Wild Dove Dvorˇák Slavonic Dance Op 72 No 4 London’s Symphony Orchestra Dvorˇák The Golden Spinning Wheel Sir Simon Rattle conductor Krystian Zimerman piano Concert finishes approx 10pm Please ensure that mobile phones are switched off during the performance. No photography, audio or video recording is permitted in the Hall. 2 Welcome 2 July 2015 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s concert conducted by SIMON HALSEY APPOINTED CBE Sir Simon Rattle, his first since the LSO announced in March his appointment as its Music Director from Congratulations to the LSO’s Choral Director September 2017. Simon Halsey, who has been awarded a CBE for services to music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Sir Simon is joined by pianist Krystian Zimerman to Halsey, who became Choral Director of the LSO perform Brahms’ monumental First Piano Concerto. and London Symphony Chorus in 2012, was also Mr Zimerman is one of the great interpreters of the awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music in March Romantic piano repertoire, and we are delighted that in recognition of his significant contribution to the he returns this evening for his first concert with the musical life of the nation. Orchestra at the Barbican since 1986. In the second half of the concert, Sir Simon conducts the Orchestra lso.co.uk/more/news in performances of three of Dvorˇák’s folk-inflected works: the symphonic poems The Wild Dove and The Golden Spinning Wheel, and one of his Slavonic THE SOUTH BANK SKY ARTS AWARDS Dances, which were inspired by Brahms. The LSO and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies have won I hope you enjoy this evening’s concert, and that a prestigious South Bank Sky Arts Award in the you can join us for the season finale on Sunday. Classical category for Maxwell Davies’ Symphony This special performance will feature the UK No 10, which was commissioned and given its world premiere of Jonathan Dove’s children’s opera premiere by the LSO. The performance was recorded The Monster in the Maze, performed by the LSO by LSO Live and is available on our website. with the LSO Discovery and Community Choirs. This is followed by Walton’s First Symphony, with lsolive.lso.co.uk LSO players and musicians from the Guildhall School playing side-by-side. A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+, including 20% discount on standard tickets. Tonight we are delighted to welcome: Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director Redbridge & District U3A, Hertford U3A, Gerrards Cross Community Association, Ian Fyfe & Friends and Richard Wimberley & Friends lso.co.uk/groups London Symphony Orchestra Sat 9 & Sun 10 Jan 2016 Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande (semi-staged) Produced by the LSO and the Barbican Sir Simon Rattle conductor Peter Sellars director London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Wed 13 Jan 2016 Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin Dutilleux L’arbre des songes Delage Four Hindu Poems Dutilleux Métaboles Ravel Daphnis and Chloe – Suite No 2 Sir Simon Rattle conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin Thu 14 Apr 2016 Messiaen Couleurs de la cité céleste Bruckner Symphony No 8 Sir Simon Rattle conductor 2015/16 with Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano SIR SIMON RATTLE Sun 17 Apr 2016 Haydn The Seasons (sung in German) Sir Simon Rattle conductor London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Thu 30 Jun 2016 Ives The Unanswered Question Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 Sir Simon Rattle conductor Krystian Zimerman piano 020 7638 8891 lso.co.uk 4 Programme Notes 2 July 2015 Johannes Brahms (1833–97) Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor Op 15 (1854–58) 1 MAESTOSO Such incomprehension may be surprising today; 2 ADAGIO nevertheless it’s possible to feel some compassion 3 RONDO: ALLEGRO NON TROPPO for the Leipzigers. However much they may have prided themselves on their musical sophistication, KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN PIANO they simply weren’t prepared for what Brahms was offering them. Here was a piano concerto conceived ‘My Concerto has had here a brilliant and decisive in much grander terms than most contemporary failure’. Brahms was writing to his friend, the violinist symphonies. Not since Beethoven had anyone and composer Joseph Joachim, the morning after attempted anything on this scale in concerto the Leipzig premiere of his First Piano Concerto in form. And while the piano writing may have been PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER January 1859. He wasn’t exaggerating. A performance hugely challenging, it wasn’t the kind of glamorous STEPHEN JOHNSON is the in Hannover a few days earlier had been received display-piece that mid-19th century audiences had author of Bruckner Remembered politely, though without enthusiasm. But this come to expect. The orchestral contribution was (Faber). He also contributes performance, in Germany’s unofficial musical capital, much weightier than normal in a concerto, and the regularly to BBC Music Magazine, could not have been less like the breakthrough the harmonic language must have seemed exceptionally and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 25-year-old composer had been hoping for. In the dissonant to its first hearers. And in place of the (Discovering Music), Radio 4 same letter, Brahms described the audience’s usual scintillating acrobatic solo cadenzas, Brahms and the World Service. reaction to both his music and his playing (Brahms had provided a series of intensely serious dramatic himself played the solo part): ‘At the conclusion three monologues for the piano. pairs of hands were brought together very slowly, JOSEPH JOACHIM (1831–1907) whereupon a perfectly distinct hissing from all sides It wasn’t that Brahms had set out with the intention was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, forbade any such demonstration. There is nothing of writing something difficult. Even as a young composer and teacher. He is noted more to say about this episode, for not a soul has composer he showed little interest in novelty for for reviving interest in the Violin said a word to me about the work!’. its own sake. For an explanation we have to look at Sonatas and Partitas of J S Bach, the First Piano Concerto’s history. Initially Brahms as well as Beethoven’s Violin ‘My Concerto has had here a hadn’t intended to write a concerto at all. His first Concerto, both now key pieces brilliant and decisive failure’. plans were for a symphony – a massively ambitious in the repertoire. Joachim’s close orchestral work that would justify the composer collaboration with Brahms produced Johannes Brahms Robert Schumann’s prophecy that Brahms would the Violin Concerto in D major, and become Germany’s leading symphonist. A four- several other major violin works Unfortunately the critics weren’t so restrained. movement sketch was nearly completed in 1854. were written for him, including For the reviewer Edward Bernsdorf, the Concerto had But Brahms was plagued by doubts and insecurities: Schumann’s Concerto in D major ‘nothing to offer but hopeless desolation and aridity … was this an orchestral work at all, or might it be and Dvorˇák’s Concerto in A minor. for more than three-quarters of an hour one must more effective as a sonata for two pianos? The endure this rooting and rummaging, this straining example of Beethoven’s symphonies was just and tugging, this tearing and patching of phrases and too intimidating. As he put it years later, ‘You’ve flourishes! Not only must one take in this fermenting no idea how discouraging it is with such a giant mass; one must also swallow a dessert of the marching behind you’. shrillest dissonances and most unpleasant sounds’. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 BRAHMS on LSO LIVE Eventually the last two movements were discarded, conflict, until at the beginning of the recapitulation and the theme for the original slow Scherzo became it is pitted against the orchestra in the return of that Brahms box set the starting point for the movement ‘Denn alles first theme, the harmonies clashing more strikingly Symphonies Fleisch es ist wie Gras’ (For all flesh is as grass) than ever. The ending is as stormy as the beginning. Nos 1–4 from his German Requiem. Brahms realised that £17.99 combining piano and orchestra in a concerto SECOND MOVEMENT lsolive.lso.co.uk of symphonic proportions might be the ideal The slow movement is mostly peaceful and compromise. The first movement was reworked otherworldly. When Brahms sketched out the Bernard Haitink conductor with Joachim’s assistance, and a new slow orchestra’s first theme he wrote above it the words movement and finale were composed. ‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini’ (Blessed is ‘Polished playing and finely he who comes in the name of the Lord). Brahms was judged phrasing made everything But something of the original conception remained. no believer; in fact the text suggests another link fall into place.’ Brahms could with justice have called the result with Schumann, whom Brahms nicknamed ‘Mynheer The Independent (Symphony No 1) ‘Symphony for Piano and Orchestra’. It wouldn’t Domini’ – which has led some writers to interpret have been completely unprecedented: Berlioz the movement as a wordless requiem for Schumann ‘[An] exceptional new disc … had composed a large-scale symphony with a (the words appear in the text of the Latin Requiem imposing and beautifully shaded.’ prominent solo part in his Harold in Italy as early mass). Brahms said nothing further on this subject, Gramophone (Symphony No 2) as 1834. But, unlike Berlioz, Brahms provided no though the hushed ending could certainly be heard literary programme to help the audience.