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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 25 September 2016 7pm Barbican Hall Jack Sheen Lung * Sibelius Violin Concerto London’s Symphony Orchestra INTERVAL Mahler Symphony No 4 Daniel Harding conductor Nikolaj Znaider violin Christiane Karg soprano Concert finishes approx 9.25pm * An LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme commission, supported by Lady Hamlyn and the Helen Hamlyn Trust 2 Welcome 25 September 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the LSO ON TOUR Barbican, where we are delighted to welcome back LSO Principal Guest Conductor Daniel Harding for Surrounding the LSO’s next appearances at the his first performance of the 2016/17 season. Barbican with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir in October, the Orchestra will Opening the programme is the world premiere of embark on a short tour to Central Europe, taking Lung by Jack Sheen, commissioned as part of the in Bonn, Essen, Düsseldorf and Mannheim. For Panufnik Composers Scheme. The Scheme, currently up-to-date information on all tours, please visit: in its eleventh year, offers six emerging composers each year the opportunity to write for the LSO, with lso.co.uk/whats-on two participants going on to receive commissions to write works for the Orchestra to perform in a concert at the Barbican. We are extremely grateful LSO LIVE LATEST RELEASE: to Lady Hamlyn and the Helen Hamlyn Trust for RACHMANINOV SYMPHONY CYCLE their continued support of the Scheme. The final part of the LSO’s acclaimed Rachmaninov The Orchestra enjoys a long-standing relationship Symphony Cycle was released on 9 September. with Nikolaj Znaider, as a soloist and more recently Coupling Rachmaninov’s First Symphony with as a conductor. So it is with great pleasure that we Balakirev’s Tamara, the Orchestra’s performance welcome him back this evening to perform Sibelius’ was described as ‘full-blooded and engrossing’ Violin Concerto. Concluding tonight’s programme by The Daily Telegraph. is Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, for which we will be joined by soprano Christiane Karg as the soloist in lsolive.lso.co.uk the final movement. We hope you enjoy the concert and can join us again A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS as the 2016/17 season continues. The LSO returns to the Barbican on 16 and 20 October for two concerts The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+, with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. He completes his ongoing including a 20% discount on standard tickets. Mendelssohn cycle, conducting the composer’s Tonight we are delighted to welcome: Symphony No 2 (‘Lobgesang’) and Violin Concerto, with soloist Alina Ibragimova. Adele Friedland & Friends lso.co.uk/groups Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director lso.co.uk Programme Notes 3 Jack Sheen (b 1993) Lung (World Premiere) (2016) PROGRAMME NOTE & Lung began life in 2014, when Jack Sheen took part In fact, every performance of Lung will present a COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER in the LSO Panufnik Scheme for emerging composers. slightly altered version of the work, depending on JO KIRKBRIDE is a freelance Its lucid scoring and imaginative structure so the whims and preferences of Sheen’s trio of string writer on classical music, whose impressed the LSO team that Sheen was invited to principals, who play independently of both orchestra broad roster of clients includes the expand his initial ideas into the ten-minute work you and conductor. Given only simple cues that indicate London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, hear today. Like much of his music, Lung first took where to start and stop, the trio cycles through a Aldeburgh Productions, Cheltenham shape from a huge collection of individual ideas. series of animated loops that fade in and out of the Festival, and the Scottish Chamber ‘Often I write lots of music on lots of small sheets broader texture – sometimes dipping beneath the Orchestra. She holds a masters of paper,’ he says, ‘arranging them around my desk surface, at other times coming to the fore. It is just from Cambridge University and a and imagining them all happening at once in a looser one of several ‘playful games’ that remove total doctorate from Durham University. way than a full score would allow …’ composer control. ‘I don’t think that linear composition There are discernible motifs within Sheen’s score – methods really suit me.’ a jittering five-note figure in the string trio; a swooping chromatic descent in the winds and piano; and a Jack Sheen persistent, pulsing undercurrent – but how these PANUFNIK COMPOSERS motifs ‘work’ is less important than the shapes and WORKSHOP It is a fitting process for a work that is centred on sensations that these create for the listener. ‘All of Thu 20 Apr 2017 ideas of expansion and contraction. Lung is not a these concepts, processes, and games are just in 10am–6pm, LSO St Luke’s linear piece in the traditional sense of a beginning, place to act as a catalyst for me to make hypnotic, middle and end. There are no obvious vertical or visceral, emotive music in a way that’s coherent,’ Witness a pivotal point in the linear hierarchies here, nor is there a developing says Sheen. ‘I want to set up enough open-ends for process of putting together a thematic thread for the listener to follow. Instead, people to have their own individual perspective on new piece of music as the Sheen selects a series of unusual instrumental what they can hear, what they think the piece is and LSO works with the latest groupings – alto flute and harp; piano, flute, clarinet how they feel towards it.’ group of Panufnik Composers, and trumpets; horns, a quartet of violas and double under the guidance of Colin bass – which present his ideas as ‘a collection of Commission supported by Lady Hamlyn Matthews and conductor objects which are constantly revolving and appearing and the Helen Hamlyn Trust as part of the François-Xavier Roth. in a variety of different ways as one collective LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme whole.’ What begins as a 2D work gradually becomes To book your free tickets, three-dimensional, revealing its curves and angles as phone the Barbican Box the ideas recur, reflect and refract. How you hear the Office on 020 7638 8891 music depends on your perspective. 4 Composer Profile 25 September 2016 Jack Sheen Composer Profile I’m convinced that the only thing any piece of music can say is about the composer’s love for what they are doing. In less than a decade, Jack Sheen has grown into a composer of I’d ever been around other people my age who were as certain as I remarkable stature. Originally from Manchester, Sheen always knew felt I was that they wanted to make music for the rest of their lives.’ he wanted to create music of some kind, but was never a keen A string quartet written during his second NYO residency would go instrumentalist and was 15 before he learned to read music. He was, on to win him BBC Young Composer of the Year. he says, ‘a pretty late starter. I still always feel slightly on the back-foot and I don’t think that will ever go away. But in some ways I think that’s Sheen’s unusual career trajectory is reflected in a slightly unorthodox quite healthy’. In 2011 he won BBC Young Composer of the Year and in approach to composition. He never composes at the piano and 2016 was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for composition. rarely even begins with ‘music’ at all. ‘I often start on huge sketching He has written music for the LSO, BBC Philharmonic, Manchester pads,’ he says, ‘writing down ideas in words rather than notes onto Camerata, Aurora Orchestra, Aldeburgh Festival, BBC Young Artists manuscript paper. So much of my music can be expressed through just Day, EXAUDI, Psappha, Plus Minus Ensemble and Opera North. describing how a particular piece ‘works’ rather than reducing it to just And he is co-founder and curator of ddmmyy, a series dedicated sounds.’ For Sheen, music is not a narrative but an object, a thing to to experimental music, installation and performance. be inspected, interrogated and explored. He likens his works to ‘giant hanging children’s mobiles that slowly revolve’ – and ‘slowly’ is the key His interest has always lain with the experimental. As a teenager, he word here, as Sheen has become increasingly fascinated with ‘slow, began to look for ‘more and more unusual music’, seeking anything immersive art’ as an antidote to the frenetic pace of the everyday. He novel outside the musical mainstream. This growing passion led him is not given over to grand, dramatic gestures. Rather, his focus is on to the likes of Reich, Ligeti and Stravinsky, and he soon taught himself communicating his own sense of passion and curiosity: ‘I’m convinced to read and write music by studying their scores. Just a few years later, that the only thing any piece of music can say is about the composer’s he joined the National Youth Orchestra as a composer, having sent love for what they are doing.’ them the first three pieces he had ever composed. ‘It was the first time lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Violin Concerto in D minor Op 47 (1903, rev 1905) 1 ALLEGRO MODERATO Yet there is little evidence of ‘weakness’ in the 2 ADAGIO DI MOLTO Violin Concerto. Nowhere is this the kind of music 3 ALLEGRO, MA NON TANTO one would describe as self-indulgent or rambling. The violin writing is superb – an indication of how NIKOLAJ ZNAIDER VIOLIN thoroughly Sibelius understood his instrument.