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 piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog

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 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 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 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 biography, From 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 – 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 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. was worthless, that it was unplayable … that looks outwards rather than inwards. character of this lively dance that dominates The second subject of the first movement that there were only two or three pages that After a striking horn call, the music moves the movement. That position is held by starts with the notes D-flat–A could be retained, and that the rest would immediately into D-flat, the relative major the second theme, a surging melody that (in German Des–A, reminiscent of Désirée have to be scrapped’. key, for a great swinging melody that is provides a perfectly satisfying balance to the Artôt). Tchaikovsky was known to be an never heard again in the course of the first movement’s long introduction, and at admirer of Schumann, who used the same Rubinstein was usually very well disposed work. After this grand introduction, there the same time confirms the concerto as one device in his own works. towards Tchaikovsky’s music, so what went is something very tentative about the of Tchaikovsky’s most extrovert works. • wrong? The most likely explanation is that appearance of B-flat minor when the soloist Tchaikovsky wasn’t up to giving a convincing introduces the main body of the movement Interval – 20 minutes There are bars on all levels. Visit the Barbican Shop to see our range of gifts and accessories.

4 Programme Notes 5 December 2019 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky In Profile 1840–93

Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony was warmly RUSSIAN received at its St Peters­­burg premiere in 2019/20 1868. Swan Lake, the first of his three great ballet scores, was written in 1876 for Moscow’s . Between 1869 ROOTS and the year of his death, he composed Thursday 30 January 7.30pm Fridays February to April 1pm over one hundred songs, cast mainly in the Barbican LSO St Luke’s impassioned Romance style and textually preoccu­­pied with the frustration and despair PROKOFIEV, MOZART, BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERTS associated with love, con­ditions that MUSSORGSKY & SHOSTAKOVICH characterised his personal relationships. Chamber musicians explore a world of Christian Tetzlaff violin Russian history, folk heritage and rich Tchaikovsky’s hasty decision to marry an Gianandrea Noseda conductor musical tradition through the centuries almost unknown admirer in 1877 proved a disaster, his homosexuality combining Sunday 9 February 7pm Lawrence Power & Pavel Kolesnikov strongly with his sense of entrapment. Barbican Katharina Konradi & Trio Gaspard By now, he had completed his Fourth Gringolts Quartet Symphony, was about to finish his opera PROKOFIEV, MUSSORGSKY Simon Crawford-Phillips & Philip Moore chaikovsky was born in Eugene Onegin, and had attracted the & SHOSTAKOVICH Kamsko-Votkinsk, in the Vyatka considerable financial and moral support Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3 province of Russia on 7 May 1840; of Nadezhda von Meck, an affluent widow. Roman Simovic violin his father was a mining engineer and his She helped him through his personal crisis Gianandrea Noseda conductor mother was of French extraction. In 1848, and in 1878, he returned to composition­ with the family moved to the imperial capital, the Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky claimed that lso.co.uk/201920 St Petersburg, where Tchaikovsky was enrolled his Sixth Symphony represented his best lso.co.uk/lunchtimeconcerts at the School of Jurisprudence.­ After his work. The mood of crushing despair heard mother’s death in 1854, he overcame his in all but the work’s third move­ment grief by composing and performing, and reflected the composer’s troubled state music remained a diversion from his job – of mind. He died on 6 November 1893, nine as a clerk at the Ministry of Justice – until days after its premiere. • he enrolled as a full-time student at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1863. Composer Profile by Andrew Stewart

Composer Profile 5 Symphony No 7 in C Major Op 60, ‘Leningrad’ 1941 / note by David Nice

1 Allegretto the German invasion shattered Stalin’s pact musicians and army personnel, were suspicious resemblance to Danilo’s song 2 Moderato (poco allegretto) with Hitler. Shostakovich’s bad eyesight conducted by an emaciated We’re Off to Maxim’sfrom the Lehár operetta 3 Adagio – prevented him from serving at the front, but – one among many astonishing symbols of The Merry Widow, one of Hitler’s favourite 4 Allegro non troppo he did become a fire brigade auxiliary in his the city that refused to give up the ghost. works. Tragedy ensues as Shostakovich native Leningrad, famously photographed wrenches both the movement’s initial his hard-hitting and often cinematic on the roof of the music conservatory and FIRST MOVEMENT themes into anguished and sombre shapes. hymn to a great city, painted in later appearing on the cover of America’s Clean-cut determination is the keynote at Dignity restored is snidely brushed aside at unusually broad brush strokes for Time magazine in his fireman’s helmet. He the start of the first movement, setting the last moment by a muted-trumpet echo its composer, has become one of the fiercest turned to the first movement of the Seventh it apart from Shostakovich’s previous of the climactic nightmare. battlegrounds in the so-called ‘Shostakovich Symphony in late July, completing it six symphonic beginnings, but acerbic wars’ of recent years. One group of historians weeks later, with the next two movements woodwind harmonies undercut both the SECOND MOVEMENT and musicologists would have us believe following in swift succession before he was muscular opening theme and the swaying Shostakovich’s original title for the next that this is a Leningrad symphony in name airlifted with his wife and children out of the idyll that follows. A bucolic piccolo solo is movement, ‘Memories’, seems apt enough. only, using Hitler’s invasion of Russia as a city on 1 October. He completed his finale called into question by solo violin before First and later second violins attempt a smokescreen for expressing the composer’s in Kuibyshev (now ) on the Volga on the most famous passage of the entire shadowy dance, before the oboe sings a wan feelings about Stalin’s pre-war purges. A 27 December, in response to news of the symphony is launched by a stealthy melody that hints at the painful love-music second group protests that it is nothing Russian victory outside Moscow. side-drum rhythm that will have to be of Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini. (The more than a war symphony without a past, sustained, with increasing volume, for the best-known lines of Dante’s Inferno, from a clear and simple narrative of the terrible conducted the (similarly entire central sequence of a long movement. which Tchaikovsky drew the inspiration for events unfolding in the second half of 1941. evacuated) Bolshoi forces in Kuibyshev in The so-called ‘invasion theme’ takes his ‘Fantasy Overture’, were much quoted The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the triumphant world premiere on 5 March the place of a conventional symphonic by Soviet citizens in the late 1930s: ‘there between; the symphony transcends both the 1942. Moscow took up the cause shortly development and follows its acknowledged is no greater sorrow than to recall times of understandable war time sensationalism afterwards: Shostakovich’s ideal conductor, model, Ravel’s machine-age Boléro, in happiness in misery’.) A shrill woodwind around its premiere and more recent claims , presented the symphony the unvarying repetition of a single tune, storm breaks suddenly across the canvas in to know what it really ‘means’. Shostakovich in Novosibirsk, and microfilmed copies of the starting here with pizzicato strings and the manner of Shostakovich’s beloved Mahler. confided to Flora Livinova in 1942 that score and parts were smuggled to America, woodwind solos and acquiring strength Then the dance returns and the oboe’s ‘National Socialism is not the only form of where the ‘Leningrad’ made international with the blaring panoply of Shostakovich’s memories are now a shadow of their former fascism; this music is about all forms of history under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. large brass section. Supporting the ‘Stalin selves on bass clarinet, supported by three terror, slavery, the bondage of the spirit’. The most remarkable performance of all subtext’ school of thought is the melody’s flutes (the third an alto flute) and a harp. took place in a starving Leningrad that transformation of the movement’s opening The siege of Leningrad began at the end August, when the remaining 14 players of material – the enemy within – while the THIRD MOVEMENT of August 1941, just over two months after the Radio Orchestra, reinforced by retired descending figures at the end bear a Echoes of Stravinsky in the hieratic wind-band

6 Programme Notes 5 December 2019 Dmitri Shostakovich In Profile 1906–75 / profile by Andrew Stewart and two harps at the beginning of the Adagio his Second Symphony was dedicated to the the score to the city. A microfilmed copy are surely intentional. Shostakovich had October Revolution of 1917. was despatched by way of Tehran and an arranged Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms for American warship to the US, where it was four-hand piano in 1939, and always professed Shostakovich announced his Fifth Symphony broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra a deep love for the work. The violins’ of 1937 as ‘a Soviet artist’s practical creative and Toscanini. In 1943 Shostakovich supplicatory recitative is in marked contrast reply to just criticism’. A year before its completed his Eighth Symphony, its to two other ideas. A second melody has a premiere, he had drawn a stinging attack emotionally shattering music compared slightly synthetic pathos about it, and the from the official Soviet mouthpiecePravda , by one critic to Picasso’s Guernica. central sequence, of Mahlerian intensity like in an article headed ‘Muddle instead of its predecessor in the scherzo, is drained by music’, in which Shostakovich’s initially In 1948, Shostakovich and other leading the violent hammering which overwhelms successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk composers, Prokofiev among them, were it. The wind-band returns, undented by this was condemned for its extreme modernism. forced by the Soviet cultural commissar, upheaval, at the end of the movement, and ‘It is leftist bedlam instead of human Andrei Zhdanov, to concede that their leads without a break into the finale. music’, the article claimed. When the Fifth work represented ‘most strikingly the Symphony was premiered in Leningrad, formalistic perversions and anti-democratic FINALE the composer’s reputation and career were tendencies in music’, a crippling blow to The dotted rhythms which powered the rescued. Acclaim came not only from the Shostakovich’s artistic freedom that was passionate heart of the Adagio now play a Russian audience, who gave the work a healed only after the death of Stalin in 1953. major role in a newly defiant theme for strings. reported 40-minute ovation, but also from Shostakovich answered his critics later that They lead, with true symphonic mastery, musicians and critics overseas. year with the powerful Tenth Symphony, regular energetic changes of metre and not fter early piano lessons with his in which he portrays ‘human emotions and much in the way of new melodic invention, mother, Shostakovich enrolled at With the outbreak of war against Nazi passions’, rather than the collective dogma to another crisis. From the movement’s the Petrograd Conservatory in Germany in June 1941, Shostakovich began to of communism. A few years before the central Slough of Despond rises an apotheosis 1919. He supplemented his family’s meagre compose and arrange pieces to boost public completion of his final and bleak Fifteenth which is not quite what fellow musicians income from his earnings as a cinema morale. He lived through the first months String Quartet, Shostakovich suffered his in 1942 had been led to expect. Instead, pianist, but progressed to become a of the German siege of Leningrad, serving in second heart attack and the onset of severe the brass’ triumphant peroration of the composer and concert pianist following the the auxiliary fire service. arthritis. Many of his final works – in symphony’s opening theme is unsettled by the critical success of his First Symphony in 1926 particular the penultimate symphony (No 14) discords of the strings and wind pitted against and an ‘honourable mention’ in the 1927 In July, he began work on the first three – are preoccupied with the subject of death. • it, and the grim, warning nature of the finale’s Chopin International Piano Competition in movements of his Seventh Symphony, own combat theme has the last word. • Warsaw. Over the next decade, he embraced completing the defiant finale after his the ideal of composing for Soviet society and evacuation in October and dedicating

Composer Profile 7 BEETHOVEN 250 conducted by Sir Simon Rattle January & February 2020 BARTÓK & DUKAS conducted by François-Xavier Roth & Sir Simon Rattle December 2019, January & February 2020 ARTIST PORTRAIT & DUKAS with soloist Antoine Tamestit April to June 2020 The LSO’s 2019/20 season PLUS DON’T MISS continues in the new year Sir Antonio Pappano, Karina Canellakis, Susanna Mälkki & Sir Mark Elder conduct Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy & more

lso.co.uk/201920 Gianandrea Noseda On Russian Roots

• SHOSTAKOVICH ON LSO LIVE As we celebrate 20 years of the Orchestra’s own record label, LSO Live, LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda reflects on his Shostakovich symphony cycle and how music speaks to us today.

Conducting a cycle with one orchestra It’s important that we continue to hear and also allows you to grow together, not just perform this music. It’s not superfluous to as artists, but in the knowledge of the create another disc, another cycle, because composer. Shostakovich is one of the most each interpretation tells the story of its own important symphonists. He knows how time. To record Shostakovich in the 1970s to use the orchestra, the instruments, the and to record Shostakovich in 2019 and 2020 combination of sounds, but because of is different, because the world is different, that the music is incredibly demanding. because we are different. It requires stupendous virtuosity, and the LSO is that kind of orchestra. You have to Shostakovich speaks equally to us today. keep the emotional charge without losing I think art has this quality, this strength, Shostakovich Symphony No 4 technical control. to always be fresh. We tell stories that connect with us as human beings. As long Gianandrea Noseda conductor cycle of symphonies gives the In the 2019/20 season, we’ll perform the as humankind occupies this planet, we will ‘ complete picture. It’s storytelling Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies, always love each other, hate each other, Available to purchase in the Barbican Shop, of [Shostakovich’s] life, but also which are three of the four ‘War’ feel compassion, suffer … the infrastructure at lsolive.co.uk, on iTunes and Amazon, of what was going on in the history of the Symphonies written during World War II. of our lives may be different, but we belong or to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. world in the 20th century. It’s fascinating to The Seventh coincided with the siege of to humankind.’ • see how an artist like Shostakovich reacted Leningrad, and you can hear the march of to that – how, with art, he tried to be true the soldiers, the obsessive repetition, a to himself, while also trying to accomplish loop you cannot escape. But with the Ninth, • ON LSO LIVE the dictates of the Soviets. You have to find Stalin wanted a celebration of the victory of your way, to make your personal voice heard. Russia, and Shostakovich came out with a Listen to the cycle so far at lsolive.co.uk When you listen to Shostakovich, it doesn’t sort of opera buffa symphony – short, witty, featuring Symphonies Nos 4, 5 and 8. sound out of fashion – it sounds important lots of sarcasm. I can really feel his wish to for our lives today. go against what was expected of him.

On Russian Roots 9 Gianandrea Noseda conductor

ianandrea Noseda is one of Noseda also serves as Principal Guest Noseda has an extensive discography of over the world’s most sought-after Conductor of the London Symphony 60 recordings for Chandos and Deutsche conductors, equally recognised Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Grammophon, among others. for his artistry in the concert hall and Principal Conductor of the Orquestra de opera house. He was named the National Cadaqués, and Artistic Director of the Stresa He is closely involved with the next Symphony Orchestra’s seventh Music Festival in Italy. In the 2021/22 season, generation of musicians through his work Director in January 2016, beginning his Noseda will become General Music Director as Music Director of the Tsinandali Festival four-year term in the 2017/18 season. of the Zurich Opera House, where he will and Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, which In September 2018, his contract was lead his first Ring cycle. From 2007 to 2018, just concluded its inaugural season, as well extended for four more years through to Noseda served as Music Director of the as with other youth orchestras, including the the 2024/25 season. In May 2019, Noseda Teatro Regio Torino, where his leadership European Union Youth Orchestra. and the NSO earned rave reviews for their and his initiatives propelled the company’s first concert together at Carnegie Hall in global reputation. A native of Milan, Noseda is Commendatore al New York. The 2019/20 season sees their Merito della Repubblica Italiana, marking his partnership continue to flourish with twelve During the 2019/20 season, Noseda contribution to the artistic life of Italy. In 2015, weeks of concerts at the Kennedy Center will guest conduct the Bavarian Radio he was Musical America’s Conductor of the – including performances of Beethoven’s Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Year, and was named the 2016 International nine symphonies – their first appearance Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Opera Awards Conductor of the Year. • together at Lincoln Center in November Scala, Orchestre National de , 2019, and their first overseas tour together Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di to Japan and China in March 2020. Santa Cecilia, Philharmonia Zurich, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra.

10 Artist Biographies 5 December 2019 Khatia Buniatishvili piano

orn in 1987 in , , Khatia’s forthcoming 2019/20 season Symphony, BBC Symphony, Orchestre de French-Georgian pianist Khatia includes a United States tour with the Royal Paris, Filarmonica della Scala and Munich Buniatishvili discovered the piano Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Philharmonic Orchestra. at the early age of three and gave her first Mark Wigglesworth, as well as performances concert with the Chamber Orchestra with the London Philharmonic at Queen An exclusive SONY classical artist, Khatia’s when she was six. Since then, she has Elizabeth Hall with Robin Ticciati, discography includes (2011), established herself as one of today’s most Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrández. Chopin (2012), Motherland (2014) and prominent classical music artists, at home She will also have a recital appearance at Kaleidoscope (2016), as well as piano on the world’s great stages and universally London’s Wigmore Hall. Her 2018/19 season trios with and Giedrė celebrated for her ‘authenticity, charisma, included performances with the Seattle Dirvanauskaitė (2011) and violin sonatas and persuasiveness’ (NZZ) and for ‘playing Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic and (2014) with violinist Renaud Capuçon. She straight from the heart’ (The Guardian). RSO Vienna, as well as international tours also collaborated with rock group Coldplay on with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich in Asia their album A Head Full of Dreams (2015). Following her belief that humanity is at and Orchestre National de Lyon in Germany. Khatia’s most recent recordings unite her the centre of all art, Khatia is involved in with two close musical partners: numerous social rights projects, such as the Khatia made her US debut at Carnegie and the Israel Philharmonic in concertos by DLDwomen13 Conference (2013) in Munich; Hall in 2008 and has since performed at Beethoven and Liszt (2016), and Paavo Järvi To Russia with Love (2013), a concert in the Hollywood Bowl, BBC Proms, and the Czech Philharmonic in Rachmaninov’s Berlin to speak out against the violation of Festival, Verbier Festival, Menuhin Festival Piano Concertos Nos 2 and 3 (2017). human rights in Russia; Charity Concert in Gstaad, La Roque-d‘Anthéron Festival, Kiev (2015) for wounded people in the Anti- Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Progetto Martha Khatia studied in Tbilisi, Georgia, with Terrorist Operation Zone; United Nations Argerich. Among Khatia’s musical partners Tengiz Amirejibi and in Vienna with Climate Change Conference Climate Show are conductors Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, . • (2016) in Marrakech; and the United Nations' Placido Domingo, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 70th Anniversary Humanitarian Concert Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, Long Yu, (2015) in Geneva to benefit Syrian refugees. Gianandrea Noseda, Vladimir Ashkenazy, She is an ambassador of Plan International, Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung a UK-based organisation for children’s and Philippe Jordan. She has appeared rights and equality for girls and the with the Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Paris-based Fondation Cœur et Recherche Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, for cardiovascular research. , Toronto Symphony, China Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, London

Artist Biographies 11 London Symphony Orchestra on stage tonight

Leader Second Violins Cellos Flutes Horns Timpani LSO String Experience Scheme Carmine Lauri Julian Gil Rodriguez Rebecca Gilliver Gareth Davies Timothy Jones Nigel Thomas Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Thomas Norris Alastair Blayden Sarah Bennett Diego Incertis Scheme has enabled young string players First Violins Sarah Quinn Jennifer Brown Angela Barnes Percussion from the London music conservatoires at Clare Duckworth Miya Väisänen Noel Bradshaw Piccolo Alexander Edmundson Sam Walton the start of their professional careers to gain Ginette Decuyper David Ballesteros Eve-Marie Caravassilis Patricia Moynihan Michael Kidd David Jackson work experience by playing in rehearsals Laura Dixon Matthew Gardner Daniel Gardner Tim Ball Tom Edwards and concerts with the LSO. The musicians Gerald Gregory Naoko Keatley Hilary Jones Oboes Kira Doherty Helen Edordu are treated as professional ‘extra’ players Maxine Kwok-Adams Csilla Pogany Laure Le Dantec Olivier Stankiewicz Beth Randell Paul Stoneman (additional to LSO members) and receive fees William Melvin Iwona Muszynska Amanda Truelove Rosie Jenkins Estefanía Beceiro Oliver Yates for their work in line with LSO section players. Elizabeth Pigram Andrew Pollock Francois Thirault Vazquez Matthew Farthing Laurent Quenelle Paul Robson Cor Anglais The Scheme is supported by: Harriet Rayfield Camille Joubert Double Basses Christine Pendrill Trumpets Harps The Polonsky Foundation Colin Renwick Erzsebet Racz David Desimpelaere Philip Cobb Bryn Lewis Derek Hill Foundation Sylvain Vasseur Helena Smart Colin Paris Clarinets Robin Totterdell Helen Tunstall Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Rhys Watkins Patrick Laurence Chris Richards Catherine Knight Thistle Trust Richard Blayden Violas Matthew Gibson Chi-Yu Mo Gerald Ruddock Piano Marciana Buta Rebecca Jones José Moreira Elizabeth Drew David Geoghegan Elizabeth Burley Mariam Nahapetyan Malcolm Johnston Jani Pensola Paul Mayes German Clavijo Benjamin Griffiths Bass Clarinet Kaitlin Wild Stephen Doman Adam Wynter Katy Ayling Julia O’Riordan Trombones Carol Ella Bassoons Dudley Bright Robert Turner Rachel Gough Mark Templeton Editorial Photography Ilona Bondar Daniel Jemison James Maynard Ranald Mackechnie, Chris Wahlberg, Michelle Bruil Joost Bosdijk Philip White Harald Hoffmann, Marco Borggreve, Luca Casciato Stefano Pasqualetti, Esther Haase Stephanie Edmundson Contra Bassoon Bass Trombones Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Heather Wallington Dominic Morgan Paul Milner Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937 Barry Clements Details in this publication were correct Tuba at time of going to press. Ben Thomson 12 The Orchestra 5 December 2019