Bernard Haitink

Tuesday 10 October 7.30–9.35pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT BERNARD HAITINK Brahms Symphony No 3 Interval HAITINK Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5, 'Emperor' Bernard Haitink conductor Emanuel Ax piano Welcome / Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Tonight’s Concert / introduction by Lindsay Kemp Concerto. The pair will be repeating tonight’s wo heavyweight works of the powerfully extrovert gestures of the outer performance on a short tour to Madrid in a repertoire fill this programme, movements provide its most immediately fortnight’s time. each with its own special character. striking moments, the hushed, awe- It took Brahms until he was into his 40s inspiring serenity of the central slow If you have the opportunity to explore more to present a symphony to the world, so movement is no less memorable. at the Barbican this evening, there are two daunted was he by the task of following in foyer exhibitions that were commissioned Beethoven’s footsteps. Having climbed the PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS by the Barbican with the LSO for the launch mountain once, however, he clearly found of our 2017/18 season. Interlock: Friends the altitude no problem, for within ten years Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for Pictured Within is a modern-day artistic he had written another three symphonies. BBC Radio 3, including programming response to the theme of friendship, with lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall Welcome to the first of three LSO concerts over 150 participants from across East The Third shows the vigorous, warm lyricism and LSO St Luke’s, Artistic Advisor to conducted by the Orchestra’s long-standing London, and Less Than Thirteen takes the of a composer in complete command of his York Early Music Festival, and a regular friend and collaborator, Bernard Haitink. motion of the conductor and distils it to a resources, and if its mood is perhaps not contributor to Gramophone magazine. beautifully simple form. Both exhibitions as easy to pin down as that of the ‘tragic’ The LSO’s performances with Bernard Haitink can be seen on Level G. First or the ‘pastoral’ Second, its apparent Andrew Stewart is a freelance music are always very special occasions for the references to happy former times – hinted journalist and writer. He is the author musicians and audience members alike. I hope you enjoy this evening’s performance at in musical mottos relating to his earlier of The LSO at 90, and contributes to We are delighted that he will focus particularly and that you will join us again soon. After life and friendship with Robert Schumann a wide variety of specialist classical on the music of Brahms in this series and this short series with Bernard Haitink, the but presented without mawkish nostalgia music publications. look forward to his interpretations of two Orchestra returns to the Barbican on 26 or sense of regret – perhaps suggest that at of the composer’s symphonies – the Third, October to play the orchestral score for the age of 50 Brahms was looking back on Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and which is performed this evening, and the Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days That Shook his life and finding himself robustly content. translator who writes extensively on French, Second on 15 and 19 October. His 2003/04 the World alongside a screening of the film. Russian and Eastern European music. cycle of Brahms’ symphonies on LSO Live Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto was his last. has long been held in high regard and it is His increasing deafness had made public We are delighted to welcome tonight’s groups: a pleasure to revisit these works with him. performance with other musicians impossible, Adele Friedland & Friends, Farnham U3A and this was the first piano concerto that he Concert Club, Isis Arts, King’s College School, A warm welcome also to pianist Emanuel Ax, did not premiere himself. The Concerto marked Guildford U3A, Gerrards Cross Community who is a regular performer alongside Bernard Kathryn McDowell CBE DL the end of his own career as a concert pianist Association, Redbridge & District U3A, Haitink and the LSO. He joins us tonight Managing Director and the achievement of a new level of heroic University of North Carolina, Arber Shirley as the soloist in Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ grandeur for the concerto form. Yet if the & Friends, Ken Chaproniere & Friends 2 Welcome 10 October 2017 Celebrating Bernstein Family Concert 4 November Symphony No 3, ‘Kaddish’ Pre-Concert Talk with Marin Alsop 5 November Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ 8 November Wonderful Town Symphony No 2, ‘The Age of Anxiety’ with Sir Simon Rattle 16 December Johannes Brahms Symphony No 3 in F major Op 90 1883 / note by Andrew Huth 1 Allegro con brio thing Brahms had ever composed. Just as sonata composed jointly by Brahms, composed two moderately paced lyrical 2 Andante Hans von Bülow, in 1876, had famously Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich movements of the sort that he called 3 Poco allegretto dubbed the First Symphony ‘Beethoven’s in 1853 as a greeting to Joachim. ‘Intermezzo’ in his piano music (another 4 Allegro Tenth’, Richter now called the Third term harking back to Schumann). Brahms ‘Brahms’ Eroica’, equally embarrassing to The surging main theme that follows on had just turned 50 when he composed this rahms took something like 20 years the composer and equally misleading, for the violins bears a strong resemblance to Symphony, and it is in every sense what over the composition of his First Brahms’ and Beethoven’s Third really have that of Schumann’s Third Symphony, the one would call a ‘middle-period’ work. Symphony, but once he had broken very little in common. But it was perhaps ‘Rhenish’, and indeed Brahms’ Third was But just as middle age seemed to have through the psychological barrier that his an understandable reaction to the new composed in a studio in Wiesbaden that come upon Brahms at the age of 43, with awe of Beethoven had erected in his mind, symphony’s emotional range and power. overlooked the Rhine. But these are private the appearance of the First Symphony the Second followed in just over a year. and the heavy beard, now he seemed to The Third came six years after that, crowning — be hovering on the threshold of that last, a period that had seen the composition of the ‘Frei aber froh’ autumnal phase of his life that would be Violin Concerto, the Second Piano Concerto, characterised by the melancholy of the the First Violin Sonata, the C major Piano ‘Free but happy’, Brahms’ musical motto, spelled out using the notes F–A–F late piano music and the chamber works Trio and F major String Quintet – all works of — featuring the clarinet. This is certainly the composer’s fullest maturity, displaying part of the impression conveyed by these complete mastery and confidence. As was his custom, Brahms never revealed matters, of importance to the composer central movements, which also display an what lay behind the music, and neither his himself perhaps, but hardly the sort of thing orchestral sensitivity that Brahms rarely The Third Symphony may have been ripening letters nor his reported conversations give that will strike the symphony’s listeners. receives enough credit for. In fact he took in Brahms’ mind for some time before he us any help in discovering what personal Far more significant than these oblique considerable trouble over the Symphony’s committed anything to paper, but there significance the symphony might have held references to Brahms’ relations with Robert orchestration and continued making subtle is no evidence of any actual work on the for him. There are a few clues, however. and Clara Schumann is the immediate adjustments to balance and texture for composition until 1883, when the whole The stark wind chords at the opening outline impact of this main theme, and the way in some time after the first performance. Symphony appears to have been written a melodic pattern of a rising third and a which it acquires great expressive flexibility down during the summer months. The first sixth: the notes F–A–F •, which in Brahms’ through the movement, mainly by a subtle The finale breaks the spell of reflective, performance took place soon after its private world stood for the words ‘Frei aber blending together of major and minor modes. pastoral Romanticism cast by the central completion, under Hans Richter in Vienna froh’ (free but happy), a motto he adopted intermezzo movements, returning to the on 2 December. Several other performances as a reply to the one used by his friend The dramatic action of the Symphony is high dramatic style of the first movement. soon followed throughout Europe, all of the violinist Joseph Joachim •, ‘Frei aber contained in the outer movements. Instead Its overall design leads from the suppressed them acclaimed by audiences and critics, einsam’ (free but lonely), whose cyphered of either a true slow movement or a fast excitement of the opening bars, through who generally agreed that it was the finest notes F–A–E had been used in a violin scherzo in second and third place, Brahms some of the most vigorous music Brahms 4 Programme Notes 10 October 2017 ever composed, to a surprisingly resigned FOR REFERENCE and calm ending. • Brahms wasn't the only composer to There is always a high degree of motivic incorporate a musical motto or cryptogram integration in Brahms’ music, but it into his works. The device, which involves is often to be found just beneath the encoding names and other messages in surface, as though intended to be heard music, often using the association between only subliminally.

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