Sunday 26 November 2017 7–9.15pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT LISZT Liszt orch Sciarrino Sposalizio Liszt Totentanz TOTAL LISZT Interval Liszt A Faust Symphony Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Alice Sara Ott piano Brenden Gunnell tenor Gentlemen of the London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Supported by LSO Patrons Welcome LSO News On Our Blog we are pleased to welcome her back to the STEP INSIDE THE ORCHESTRA BEHIND THE SCENES LSO. It also a pleasure to be joined by tenor WITH LSO PLAY WITH ALICE SARA OTT soloist Brenden Gunnell and the Gentlemen of the London Symphony Chorus, led by our Our digital platform LSO Play has been On our YouTube channel, Alice Sara Ott plays Choral Director Simon Halsey, for the final re-designed by original developers Sennep a dazzling, explosive excerpt from Liszt’s movement of the Faust Symphony. and can now be viewed on smartphones and Totentanz, and shows us her talent for tablets. Watch the Orchestra’s performances solving a Rubik’s Cube in less than a minute – Tonight we recognise the vital contribution in exquisite detail, choose between multiple part of her warm-up routine before a concert. made by our Patrons, many of whom join us in camera angles, and learn more about the the audience. Patrons share each new step Orchestra and the music at play.lso.co.uk. THE LSO & ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO in our work and become close members of Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert. our family of supporters. As the LSO begins DESIGN TEAM FOR CENTRE FOR MUSIC 98 years ago, in October 1919, the Orchestra We are delighted to welcome conductor an exciting new era under Sir Simon Rattle, performed the world premiere of one of the Sir Antonio Pappano to realise a programme the generosity and passion of our Patrons The Barbican, LSO and Guildhall School, most popular works in the repertoire: Elgar’s devoted to the dramatic music of Liszt – an help us to go even further in our ambitions backed by the City of London Corporation, Cello Concerto. It may be popular now, but idea he has been developing for some time. for world-class music-making. I thank each have announced that design studio Diller that wasn’t always the case … Read the full of our Patrons for their important support. Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with story and view photos and programmes from The concert explores the different architecture firm Sheppard Robson, have been the LSO Archive on our blog. dimensions of Liszt’s musical imagination: I hope you enjoy the concert and will join us appointed to develop a concept design for a artistic inspirations in a recent orchestration again soon. On 3 December, the first Sunday new Centre for Music in the City of London. Read our blog, watch videos and more of his work for piano Sposalizio, his musical of Advent, our combined Choirs and Brass • youtube.com/lso re-telling of Goethe’s powerful drama Faust, Ensemble, led by Simon Halsey, will give our 2018 PANUFNIK COMPOSERS SCHEME • lso.co.uk/blog and Totentanz, a characteristically virtuosic annual Choral Christmas concert, featuring work for his own instrument, the piano. festive music and traditional carols. Applications for the 2018 Panufnik Composers Scheme are open until For Totenanz we are joined by soloist 13 December, offering six composers Alice Sara Ott, who played Liszt in her first the chance to work with the Orchestra appearance with the LSO in 2010, when and composition director Colin Matthews. she stepped in at short notice to deliver a highly acclaimed performance. Since then Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Read our news online she has also given a number of BBC Radio 3 Managing Director • lso.co.uk/news Lunchtime Concerts at LSO St Luke’s, and 2 Welcome 26 November 2017 Tonight’s Concert / introduction by Malcolm Hayes Coming Up he greatest composer-pianist PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Thursday 7 December 2017 7.30pm Thursday 11 January 2018 7.30pm who ever lived? Franz Liszt was Barbican Hall Barbican Hall certainly one of them. In his Malcolm Hayes is a composer, writer teenage years he was already famous across and music journalist, whose books Mozart Violin Concerto No 2 Schubert Symphony No 8, ‘Unfinished’ Europe as a pianist of mesmerising artistry include a biography of Liszt (Naxos) and Mozart Violin Concerto No 3 Mahler Rückert-Lieder and virtuosity. It took longer for Liszt’s The Selected Letters of William Walton Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6, ‘Pathétique’ Handel Three Arias reputation as a composer to match this – (Faber). His BBC-commissioned Violin Rameau Les Boréades – Suite not least because his years of touring as a Concerto was premiered at the Proms in 2016. Nikolaj Znaider violin/conductor concert pianist (from Ireland to Istanbul, Sir Simon Rattle conductor literally), along with passionate romantic Recommended by Classic FM Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano interludes (one serious, others less so), left him short of time to get the music in 6pm Barbican Hall his head written down. This was especially LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists true of his major orchestral works, including Free pre-concert recital the two we hear this evening. Liszt had been thinking about Totentanz Wednesday 13 December 2017 7.30pm (Dance of Death) and the Faust Symphony Sunday 17 December 2017 7pm while still in his 20s. It was only when he Barbican Hall stopped touring and settled in Weimar, with an orchestra conveniently to hand, Strauss Metamorphosen that each work reached its final shape. Mahler Das Lied von der Erde Tonight’s programme opens with Sposalizio, one of Liszt’s loveliest piano pieces, here Sir Simon Rattle conductor played in an orchestral arrangement by Simon O’Neill tenor Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino. Christian Gerhaher baritone Totentanz, with Alice Sara Ott taking on its barnstorming solo piano part, presents the 13 Dec 6pm Barbican Hall Liszt phenomenon at its wildest. And the LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists lso.co.uk/whatson four-movement Faust Symphony is today Free pre-concert recital 020 7638 8891 regarded as one of the supreme orchestral achievements of the 19th century. Tonight’s Concert 3 Franz Liszt Sposalizio S161 No 1 1838–39 rev 1849, orch Salvatore Sciarrino 2015 / note by Malcolm Hayes n 1835 Liszt had eloped from Paris until a decade later that Sposalizio appeared instantly capturing the mood of innocence • LO SPOSALIZIO DELLA VERGINE to Switzerland with Countess in print, as the opening item in a second, and loveliness that Liszt picked up on in Marie d’Agoult, who was seven Italian volume of Années de pèlerinage. Raphael’s painting. After an early climax years older than him, and married with a Liszt would often revise his earlier music comes a second, quietly radiant theme (solo young daughter. Marie was already pregnant extensively for publication, depending on clarinet, accompanied by strings, low flutes with her and Liszt’s first child and the what its new context in a collection required. and harp), combining with the music of the unconventional couple needed to be out of But the final version ofSposalizio remains opening to build towards an outpouring of reach, in legal terms, of her first husband. close to the original: Liszt must have sensed ecstatic adoration. Eventually this calms, The move opened up artistic possibilities also. that the freshness of his response to with descending woodwind arabesques With the Romantic age well under way, Raphael’s painting held up beautifully, leading to a serene conclusion. • the Swiss pastoral scene and mountain and needed only minor reworking. landscapes were ‘good copy’ for writers and artists, and supplied Liszt with the material The process of arranging this music for for what later became the first volume of his orchestra – as Italian composer Salvatore piano cycle Années de pèlerinage (Years of Sciarrino • has, in the version we hear Pilgrimage), subtitled ‘Suisse’ (Switzerland). this evening – raises intriguing issues. Should the arrangement process use Two years later Liszt and Marie moved to Italy, only the style, and the likely choice of staying on the shores of Lake Como. Milan instruments, of that period? Sciarrino has was only 35 miles away; and during one of taken a different approach, equally valid their visits there, they saw the painting Lo from a present-day perspective. We hear sposalizio della Vergine • (The Marriage of the the original piano work through a lens of Virgin Mary) by Raphael of Urbino (1483–1520), sophisticated, modernist orchestration, with • SALVATORE SCIARRINO which hangs in the city’s Brera Gallery. percussion instruments (including bells and glockenspiel) deployed more extensively Salvatore Sciarrino (b 1947) is an Italian Liszt was a supreme improviser, able to sit than would have happened in Liszt’s time. composer. He has composed in almost every down at the piano and create a more or less musical genre, writing works for a number fully-fledged work on the spot, which would The music grows from the two ideas of leading orchestras, opera houses and then be written down with the same kind of heard at the very beginning – a five-note, festivals, including Teatro alla Scala, Teatro instant fluency. His musical response to the descending fragment of melody (here played La Fenice di Venezia, La Monnaie, Frankfurt stylised grace of Raphael’s painting almost by piccolo and bass clarinet), answered by Opera and Suntory Hall, Tokyo, and his certainly began life like that; but it was not an upwards-curling figure (on muted horns), discography encompasses over 100 recordings. 4 Programme Notes 26 November 2017 Franz Liszt Totentanz S126 1839–59 rev 1864 / note by Malcolm Hayes Alice Sara Ott piano In 1839 Liszt drafted some early ideas for the Totentanz begins with sounds so startling • THE DANCE OF DEATH work for piano and orchestra that eventually that they could almost have been written 1 Variation I: Allegro moderato became Totentanz.