Thursday 31 October 2019 7.30–9.45pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT SHOSTAKOVICH SIXTH SYMPHONY Britten Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from ‘Peter Grimes’ Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 2 Interval Shostakovich Symphony No 6 Gianandrea Noseda conductor Denis Matsuev piano RUSSIAN Filmed for deferred broadcast on medici.tv. Sunday 3 November 2019 7–9.25pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT TCHAIKOVSKY FIFTH SYMPHONY ROOTS Rimsky-Korsakov The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh – Suite Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3 Interval Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5 Gianandrea Noseda conductor Denis Matsuev piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog cycle. Continuing on from last season, the FRANÇOIS-XAVIER ROTH FIVE REASONS WHY BERLIOZ'S LSO will perform Shostakovich’s Sixth, NOMINATED FOR RPS AWARD ROMEO AND JULIET IS UNMISSABLE Seventh and Ninth Symphonies. As we mark 20 years of the LSO’s own record label, each Earlier this month, the Royal Philharmonic From its influence on Wagner's Tristan und performance will be recorded for LSO Live, Society revealed the shortlist for the 2019 Isolde, to the rise of the sectional rehearsal, with Thursday’s concert also being filmed RPS Awards. These awards celebrate read all about Berlioz’s choral symphony, by medici.tv for deferred broadcast on 'the outstanding, the pioneering and the inspired by the composer's own Juliet. Wednesday 6 November. inspirational in classical music'. We are delighted that Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda conducts more Russian François-Xavier Roth has been shortlisted AUTUMN’S CLASSIC FM music at the Barbican on Thursday 28 for the Conductor Award. RECOMMENDED CONCERTS A warm welcome to these LSO concerts November and Thursday 5 December, and at the Barbican, where we are joined by on tour in Cologne, Dortmund, Frankfurt and • royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk At the LSO, we are proud to have been Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Munich. Also in November, we celebrate LSO Classic FM’s Orchestra in the City of London Noseda. Continuing the season theme of Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas’ for over 17 years. Each season, a selection of ‘Roots and Origins’, these two concerts 50-year relationship with the Orchestra, CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF LSO LIVE our concerts come recommended by Classic explore the history and heritage of starting with a performance of Berlioz’s FM. Don’t miss our round-up of autumn’s Russian music. We are delighted to be Romeo and Juliet on Sunday 10 November Twenty years ago the LSO became the first Classic FM recommended concerts and a look welcoming soloist Denis Matsuev – who alongside the London Symphony Chorus. orchestra to start its own record label, LSO at where the music sits in the LSO’s history. recently joined the Orchestra on tour at I hope that you enjoy the performances and Live. To celebrate, we have launched a new the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest – that you are able to join us again soon. initiative to bring the themes of our 2019/20 • lso.co.uk/more/blog to perform Prokofiev’s Second and Third season to Apple Music via a series of artist- Piano Concertos. Denis Matsuev has been curated radio programming and playlists. a frequent guest soloist with the LSO over the years, notably in 2014 when he was the • lsolive.co.uk subject of our Artist Portrait, and we are • applemusic.com/lso pleased to have him join us at the Barbican Kathryn McDowell CBE DL once again. Managing Director Throughout the 2019/20 season, Gianandrea Noseda celebrates the music of the Russian greats with his Shostakovich symphony 2 Welcome 31 October & 3 November 2019 Contributors Coming Up PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Friday 8 November 1pm Wednesday 13 November 6.30pm LSO St Luke’s Barbican Philip Reed’s publications include a six- David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts volume edition of Britten’s letters (co-edited on music, notably for BBC Radio 3 and BEETHOVEN & TIPPETT HALF SIX FIX with Donald Mitchell, and then with Mervyn BBC Music Magazine. His books include PROKOFIEV FIFTH SYMPHONY Cooke), a Cambridge Opera Handbook short studies of Richard Strauss, Elgar, Beethoven String Quartet in F major Op 135 on Billy Budd (with Mervyn Cooke), Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and a Prokofiev Tippett String Quartet No 3 An early evening fix of great music in just contributions to studies of Peter Grimes, biography, From Russia to the West 1891–1935. one hour, with insights from the conductor, Gloriana, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Heath Quartet projections of the Orchestra on the big screen War Requiem and Death in Venice. He is Jan Smaczny is the Sir Hamilton Harty and electronic programme notes on your phone. also the editor of On Mahler and Britten Professor of Music at Queen’s University, Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears. Belfast. A well-known writer and Prokofiev Symphony No 5 broadcaster, he specialises in the life and Saturday 9 November 6pm Andrew Stewart is a freelance music works of Dvořák and Czech opera, and has LSO St Luke’s Michael Tilson Thomas conductor & presenter journalist and writer. He is the author published books on the repertoire of the of The LSO at 90, and contributes to Prague Provisional Theatre and Dvořák's LSO DISCOVERY Recommended by Classic FM a wide variety of specialist classical Cello Concerto. LSO EAST LONDON ACADEMY music publications. Sunday 15 December 3pm Be inspired by East London's home-grown Barbican Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and talent as we shine a spotlight on musicians translator who writes extensively on French, from our local community. LSO SING Russian and Eastern European music. A CHORAL CHRISTMAS Mozart Divertimento in D major Gerard McBurney divides his time between Mozart Early String Quartet K156 Sing your festive favourites with the LSO Brass composing and arranging, and teaching, Haydn String Quartet No 3 Op 33 Ensemble and a 300-strong choir of singers, writing and broadcasting, especially on Mozart String Quintet No 1 in B-flat major K174 and get the holiday season off to a flying start! the subject of contemporary Russian and Telemann Concerto for Four Violins in A major Soviet music. Piazzolla Libertango Simon Halsey conductor London Symphony Chorus LSO East London Academy Musicians LSO Community Choir LSO Discovery Choirs Programme Contributors 3 Thursday 31 October 2019 Tonight’s Concert in Brief LSO SEASON CONCERT WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S onight’s concert opens with music piano concertos, complete with virtuosic SHOSTAKOVICH SIXTH SYMPHONY GROUP BOOKERS from Britten’s 1944 opera Peter cadenzas and a ferocious finale. Grimes, with a libretto based on Britten Four Sea Interludes and The King’s School the poem of the same name from George Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony concludes Passacaglia from ‘Peter Grimes’ FAIA UK Italian Heritage Trust Crabbe’s book The Borough. Though Britten the programme. Premiered just two years Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 2 had composed operas before, this was his after his Symphony No 5, No 6 is notably Interval first to be a resounding and popular success. different in character and tone, with a Shostakovich Symphony No 6 Brooding, atmospheric and evocative of structure that deviates from what might the coastal town of Aldeburgh, which later be considered the norm. The Symphony Gianandrea Noseda conductor became Britten’s home, Peter Grimes is begins with an introspective and drawn-out Denis Matsuev piano still regularly performed in full today, as first movement, which accounts for over are the Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia half of the work’s full length, followed by performed tonight, which were published two shorter and faster movements. The Artist biographies start on page 20 separately following the opera’s premiere composer himself considered the final performance in 1945. Presto movement to be the most successful, and indeed the finale was encored at the Tonight’s concert is being recorded for LSO Live and Prokofiev’s explosive Second Piano Concerto Symphony’s premiere in November 1939. Yet for deferred broadcast on Wednesday 6 November follows, demanding the utmost in technical set amongst the background of a turbulent by medici.tv. Please ensure all phones are switched off. ability from its soloist. Prokofiev began Stalinist Russia and the solemn first Photography and audio/video recording writing this concerto in 1912, and upon its movement, there is something that does not are not permitted during the performance. completion in 1913 it was dedicated to the ring altogether true in the jovial energy of memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, the the later movements. • composer’s dear friend at the St Petersburg Conservatory. The original score was tragically lost in a fire following the Russian Revolution. The work performed tonight is Prokofiev’s 1923 reconstruction of that original concerto, described by the composer as ‘so completely rewritten that it might also be considered [Concerto] No 4’. With its wild temperament, it is among the most dramatic music to be found in Prokofiev’s 4 Tonight’s Concert 31 October 2019 Benjamin Britten Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from ‘Peter Grimes’ 1944 / note by Philip Reed Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes’ left-wing writer Montagu Slater, with whom ‘Sunday Morning’ (‘Sunny, Sparkling music’) and were heard again later that summer 1 Dawn Britten had frequently collaborated in the is taken from the beginning of Act II of at the BBC Proms conducted by Sir Adrian 2 Sunday Morning 1930s – and serious progress made. the opera, where the schoolmistress Ellen Boult, when they were joined by another of 3 Moonlight Orford sings ‘Glitter of waves/And glitter of the opera’s interludes – the Passacaglia that 4 Storm From the outset, chief among the opera’s sunlight/Bid us rejoice/And lift our hearts precedes Act II Scene 2, the scene in Grimes’ distinctive features was the sequence of on high.’ Britten superimposes overlapping hut at the end of which the boy apprentice Passacaglia from ‘Peter Grimes’ Op33b orchestral interludes (six in all) that introduce chords on the horns with (at first) a spiky falls down the cliff to his death.