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Thursday 5 December 2019 7.30–10pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT LENINGRAD SYMPHONY Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 Interval Shostakovich Symphony No 7, ‘Leningrad’ NOSEDA Gianandrea Noseda conductor Khatia Buniatishvili piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog siege of Leningrad in World War II. The LSO DISCOVERY AT HOME AND ABROAD LSO DISCOVERY SINGING DAY: performance will be recorded for future CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES release on LSO Live, the Orchestra’s record After a series of three concerts last month label, which celebrates its 20th anniversary celebrating a 50-year relationship with the ‘Writing Christ on the Mount of Olives, this year. LSO, Michael Tilson Thomas also worked Beethoven laid the groundwork for oratorios with young musicians from the Guildhall by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, I hope that you enjoy tonight’s concert and School of Music & Drama, directing a and Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas!’ Read that you are able to join us again soon. workshop-performance exploring the about our September Singing Day with Choral Gianandrea Noseda returns to conduct the works of Stravinsky. Director Simon Halsey and discover more Orchestra in more music from the Russian about Beethoven’s only oratorio ahead of repertoire in January, with Shostakovich’s On the other side of the world in Tokyo, two performances in the new year. warm welcome to this evening’s Symphony No 9 and music by Prokofiev LSO musicians Robert Turner and Amanda LSO concert with Principal Guest and Mussorgsky. In the weeks leading up Truelove, together with animateur Rachel SIX THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Conductor Gianandrea Noseda, to the festive season, we look ahead to our Leach and our partners at the British Council, BARTÓK’S THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN who tonight continues his exploration annual Choral Christmas concert, featuring ran workshops for adults, young people and of music by Russian composers. The the LSO’s massed choirs, and a performance those with disabilities. Amid the political turbulence of Hungary in programme begins with Tchaikovsky’s from the LSO Chamber Orchestra with the early 20th-century, Bartók began writing Piano Concerto No 1, for which we are Baroque specialist Emmanuelle Haïm, his pantomime-ballet. Discover more about delighted to be joined by soloist Khatia both on 15 December. this previously censored work ahead of the Buniatishvili, following concerts on tour WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS LSO’s performance on Thursday 19 December. in Frankfurt and Munich earlier this week. The Orchestra’s relationship with Khatia Ardingly College ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO: Buniatishvili dates back to 2011, with Gerrards Cross Community Association 100-YEAR ANNIVERSARY performances at the Barbican, Royal Albert Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Foundation UK Hall and LSO St Luke’s, and we are very Kathryn McDowell CBE DL On 27 October 1919, the LSO performed the pleased to welcome her back tonight. Managing Director world premiere of one of the most popular works in the repertoire: Elgar’s Cello Concerto. In the second half, Gianandrea Noseda One hundred years later, we take a look at continues his cycle of Shostakovich’s the history of this piece, its current popularity, complete symphonies, conducting the Please ensure all phones are switched off. and how this wasn’t always the case. composer’s landmark Seventh Symphony, Photography and audio/video recording which was written and premiered during the are not permitted during the performance. • lso.co.uk/more/blog 2 Welcome 5 December 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up onight’s concert opens with and across the West. To this day, it is often Sunday 15 December 7pm Wednesday 15 January 6.30pm Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, performed at Piskaryovskoye Memorial Milton Court Concert Hall Barbican composed in 1874. Now one of the Cemetery, the burial place of the siege’s half composer’s most popular works, and equally a million victims. The opening movement RAMEAU, PURCELL & HANDEL HALF SIX FIX among the best-known piano concertos, is rousing and majestic, underscored by BEETHOVEN & BERG the piece was initially disparaged by its increasingly chaotic passages reminiscent of Purcell The Fairy Queen – Suite intended soloist and Tchaikovsky’s friend, the movement’s original ‘War’ title. Slower, Handel Water Music – Suite No 1 Berg Seven Early Songs Nikolai Rubinstein. This may well be more as more lyrical writing in the inner movements Rameau Two Arias for Castor and Pollux; Beethoven Symphony No 7 a result of Tchaikovsky’s own piano abilities is interspersed with fierce and frantic Dardanus – Suite than anything else, and Rubinstein soon sections that recall the symphony’s opening, Sir Simon Rattle conductor & presenter became a great admirer and champion of the leading to the final movement, at first Emmanuelle Haïm conductor Dorothea Röschmann soprano concerto. The version most often performed poignant and searching, before the ferocious Lucy Crowe soprano in concert halls today, with its passionate finale, which leaves a sense of foreboding Reinoud Van Mechelen tenor Supported by the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne lyricism in the opening theme and lively hanging in the air. • LSO Chamber Orchestra Part of Beethoven 250 at the Barbican Ukrainian folk-inspired writing in the final Recommended by Classic FM movement, is the result of numerous revisions PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Thursday 19 December 7.30pm from 1879 to 1888. Notably different are Barbican Thursday 30 January 7.30pm the opening chords in the piano, originally Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and Barbican arpeggios, which have found a place in translator who writes extensively on French, THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN popular culture from Olympic ceremonies Russian and Eastern European music. SHOSTAKOVICH NINTH SYMPHONY to Monty Python. Sophya Polevaya Spellbound Tableaux* Andrew Stewart is a freelance music journalist Elgar Cello Concerto Prokofiev Symphony No 1, ‘Classical’ Shostakovich’s Seventh ‘Leningrad’ and writer. He is the author of The LSO at 90, Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin Mozart Violin Concerto No 3 Symphony concludes the programme, an and contributes to a wide variety of specialist Mussorgsky Prelude to ‘Khovanshchina’ epic work with a premiere that has gone classical music publications. François-Xavier Roth conductor Shostakovich Symphony No 9 down in history for taking place while the Alisa Weilerstein cello siege of Leningrad was raging on across David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts London Symphony Chorus Gianandrea Noseda conductor the work’s namesake, now St Petersburg. on music, notably for BBC Radio 3 and Simon Halsey chorus director Christian Tetzlaff violin The symphony’s popularity during the early BBC Music Magazine. His books include 1940s was unprecedented: it was received short studies of Richard Strauss, Elgar, *World premiere, commissioned through the 6pm Barbican as a symbol of resistance to totalitarianism Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and a Prokofiev Panufnik Composers Scheme, generously supported LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists and militarism both in the Soviet Union biography, From Russia to the West 1891–1935. by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust Free pre-concert recital Tonight’s Concert 3 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 in B-flat Minor Op 23 1874–75 / note by Andrew Huth 1 Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – impression of this hugely demanding work. at a quicker tempo with a delicate tripping • NOCTURNE Allegro con spirito He was a competent pianist – but no virtuoso theme based on a Ukrainian folksong, and 2 Andantino semplice – Prestissimo – and Rubinstein probably heard more wrong towards the end of the movement the minor Since the 19th century, a nocturne has 3 Allegro con fuoco notes than right ones in the composer’s mode is banished with almost nervous haste. typically been understood to be a piece in nervous performance. Rubinstein soon one movement for solo piano. Tranquil and Khatia Buniatishvili piano changed his opinion, though, for not only The slow movement is a nocturne-like • lyrical, nocturnes are often inspired by the did he conduct the first Moscow performance meditation, one of Tchaikovsky’s great night. In the 18th century, however, the his concerto is now so famous and less than a year later, he then learned the melodic inspirations. At its centre lies a term described ensemble pieces in several popular that it comes as something solo part and eventually became one of its fast section in which, beneath the soloist’s movements that were played towards the of a surprise to hear about the most persuasive champions. figurations, the strings play another borrowed end of an evening party, similar to a serenade. impression it made on its first listener. We tune: a French song called ‘Il faut s’amuser, don’t know what prompted Tchaikovsky to The concerto has puzzled many other people danser et rire’, apparently a great favourite • DÉSIRÉE ARTÔT compose it towards the end of 1874, but we since then, usually the people who expect of the Belgian singer Désirée Artôt •, with know only too well what happened when he a minor-key piece by Tchaikovsky to be whom Tchaikovsky had for a time fancied Tchaikovsky briefly considered marriage to played it to his friend Nikolai Rubinstein, full of anguish and self-revealing pathos. himself in love. Belgian soprano Désirée Artôt in 1868–69, hoping for some friendly technical advice In fact, this work seems more to be about but ultimately, it was not to be. As well as on the solo piano writing. As Tchaikovsky avoiding darkness by underplaying the The opening of the finale recalls the music the tune to ‘Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire’, later recalled, Rubinstein was at first silent, tonic minor key as much as possible. The vigorously to the tonic minor key with Tchaikovsky may also have included her then began to shout that ‘… my concerto concerto’s opening announces it as a work another Ukrainian tune; but it is not the name in code in the First Piano Concerto.