London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 25 January 2015 7.30pm Barbican Hall MAHLER’S FOURTH SYMPHONY Toshio Hosokawa Blossoming II Ravel Piano Concerto in G major INTERVAL London’s Symphony Orchestra Mahler Symphony No 4 Robin Ticciati conductor Simon Trpcˇeski piano Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano Concert finishes approx 9.50pm Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 2 Welcome 25 January 2015 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the Barbican. 2015/16 SEASON LAUNCH Following performances in Vienna and Linz, Robin Ticciati and the Orchestra bring the programme We’re delighted to announce details of a brand back to London, beginning with a work by Japanese new season of LSO concerts, taking place between composer Toshio Hosokawa, followed by Ravel’s September 2015 and June 2016. The concerts jazz-inspired Piano Concerto and Mahler’s Fourth are now available to browse on lso.co.uk; online Symphony. Robin Ticciati has been a regular guest booking will open on 4 February, with telephone on the podium since his LSO debut in 2010, and this booking available from 18 February. LSO Friends get performance and tour mark a welcome return. priority booking, along with a range of other benefits; find out more at lso.co.uk/lsofriends. The Orchestra is also joined on stage this evening by two soloists: pianist Simon Trpcˇeski and mezzo- lso.co.uk/201516season soprano Karen Cargill. Both artists are long-standing friends of the LSO and last appeared in the 2013/14 season, with Karen Cargill performing with us again CONTESSA YOKO CESCHINA (1932–2015) in June this year in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with conductor Bernard Haitink. The LSO was greatly saddened to learn of the death over the weekend of 10/11 January of Contessa I hope you enjoy tonight’s concert, which is also being Yoko Ceschina, a loyal supporter of the Orchestra. broadcast live by our media partner BBC Radio 3, A trained classical harpist, Yoko supported a large whom I would like to thank for their continued support. number of classical music organisations and Following the concert, you will be able to listen back to held close relationships with some of the world’s the performance on BBC iPlayer. leading artists, most notably Valery Gergiev. Yoko was a wonderful friend of the LSO, offering Next Sunday, 1 February, David Afkham, a previous generous support to the organisation and players. Assistant Conductor of the LSO and winner of the She will be greatly missed, and our deepest 2008 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, will sympathies are with her friends and family. conduct the Orchestra in a programme that includes works by Beethoven, Brahms and Webern. Do join us then. A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+ including a 20% discount on tickets. Tonight we are delighted to welcome: Mrs E Budd & Friends and Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Merchant Taylors’ School Managing Director lso.co.uk/groups Something for every mood with the London Symphony Orchestra To roll our online dice, visit: lso.co.uk/findmeaconcert London Symphony Orchestra London’s Music lso.co.uk/findmeaconcert 4 Programme Notes 25 January 2015 Toshio Hosokawa (b 1955) Blossoming II (2011) PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER I have composed many works on the theme of I have also given this Blossoming another meaning. TOSHIO HOSOKAWA ‘blossoming’; expressing musically the energy of In a lecture on the theme of ‘The Westernisation of a flower’s blossoming is deeply significant for me. Present-Day Japan’ by the first master of modern I perceive music as having plant-like development Japanese literature, Natsume So¯seki (1867–1916), and growth, and I want to continue composing So¯seki severely criticises the fact that Japan in his SEASON 2014/15: with a different viewpoint from that of European day, on suddenly encountering western civilisation, CONTEMPORARY VOICES composers, who tend to construct their music accepted it as it was (a superficial blossoming) rather architecturally. Although Blossoming II is a chamber than letting it slowly mature in its own internal world. Thu 23 Apr 7.30pm, Barbican orchestra version of Blossoming for string quartet, Even today, over a hundred years since So¯seki’s Pierre Boulez: it is not an exact arrangement of the original work time, we Japanese, rather than reflecting on our 90th Birthday Festival and many parts have been rewritten. own roots and creating our own culture from them, Peter Eötvös conductor maintain an interest only in culture coming from ‘Music is the place where notes outside. We have become obsessed by pursuing with Aftershock and silence meet.’ western civilisation as if, were we not to adopt it, Post-Concert Club Night featuring we would fall behind the times: we have forgotten LSO musicians and Toshio Hosokawa our own point of departure. In creating my own music, LSO Soundhub composers I want to base it firmly in my own musical and cultural A distinctive feature of the Blossoming pieces is roots, and from there let it blossom internally. Fri 5 Jun 10am–1pm & 2–6pm, that at the beginning there is one long, sustained LSO St Luke’s note in the middle register, out of which develops Blossoming II was commissioned by the Edinburgh LSO Discovery: the mother’s body; from which is born a song International Festival and is dedicated to its first Panufnik Composers Workshop (a fragment of melody) – the flower. This sustained performers, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth conductor note symbolises the surface of a pond; sounds that Robin Ticciati. are lower than the note represent what is under Sun 5 Jul 7.30pm, Barbican the water, while those that are higher portray the Jonathan Dove: world above. The flower grows from the womb of The Monster in the Maze harmony, lying dormant deep beneath the surface, Sir Simon Rattle conductor and continues to rise towards it. The inspiration for this series came from a book on Buddhism about the lso.co.uk/contemporary-voices way in which the lotus blossom comes into flower. lso.co.uk Composer Profile 5 Toshio Hosokawa Composer Profile Toshio Hosokawa, Japan’s pre-eminent living A number of Hosokawa’s large-scale works have composer, constantly explores the boundaries been premiered in the last few years, including between cultures. His distinctive compositions the opera Matsukaze, staged by Sasha Waltz in 2011 examine the relationship between western avant- at La Monnaie in Brussels; Singing Garden, inspired garde art and traditional Japanese culture, and are by Vivaldi‘s concertos for recorder; his monodrama influenced by the static structures of the Gagaku The Raven for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, music of the Japanese court. Nature and its inherent premiered in Brussels in 2012; Meditation, dedicated transience also greatly influence his compositions. to the victims of the Tsunami disaster in Fukushima, ‘Transience is beautiful’, says Hosokawa, who uses premiered in 2012; Klage for soprano and orchestra, the Buddhist notion of balance between life and based on a text by Georg Trakl, first performed at the death to describe his musical language: ‘The tone 2013 Salzburg Festival; and the trumpet concerto comes from silence, it lives, it returns to silence’. Im Nebel, premiered in 2013. Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Toshio Hosokawa moved The 2014/15 season started with the world to Berlin in 1976 to study composition with Isang Yun. premieres of two pieces for orchestra: Aeolus He continued his studies with Klaus Huber and Brian for harp and orchestra (Naoko Yoshino and the Ferneyhough. Initially Hosokawa based his music Scottish Chamber Orchestra), followed by Fluss on the western avant garde, but he soon began to for string quartet and orchestra (Arditti Quartet explore new musical terrain, composing his first and WDR Symphony Orchestra). Following its world opera Vision of Lear in a style that brought together premiere in Cologne, Fluss was performed at the eastern and western influences to great critical Concertgebouw Bruges, which dedicated a three- acclaim. His second opera Hanjo (2004) is regularly day festival to the works of Hosokawa. programmed by opera houses and festivals. Toshio Hosokawa has received numerous awards Hosokawa made a name for himself at new and prizes. He has been a member of the Academy music festivals in the early 1990s with chamber of Fine Arts Berlin since 2001 and a fellow of the music works such as Landscapes I–V. Following Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin since 2006. the success of his oratorio Voiceless Voice and He is the Artistic Director of the Takefu International his orchestral work Circulating Ocean, which Music Festival and a frequent guest at prominent was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic at contemporary music festivals, such as the the Salzburg Festival in 2005, his music began to Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, Salzburg be performed in concert halls around the world. Biennale, Rheingau Musik Festival and the MITO Chamber music is still a big part of Hosokawa’s SettembreMusica Festival in Milan and Turin. compositional output; in 2008 he wrote Stunden- In spring 2012 he was Composer-in-Residence Blumen, a quartet with the same instrumentation as at the Tongyeong International Music Festival. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Japanese In summer 2012, he began a three-year appointment instruments are utilised in many of his works, often as Artistic Director of the Suntory Hall International combined with traditional European instruments. Program for Music Composition. 6 Programme Notes 25 January 2015 Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) Piano Concerto in G major (1929–31) 1 ALLEGRAMENTE Classical forms. The opening Allegramente is built 2 ADAGIO ASSAI upon a pair of themes, the first announced by a solo 3 PRESTO piccolo after an initial whip-crack and some bitonal murmurings from the piano, the second given to SIMON TRPCˇ ESKI PIANO the horn and punctuated by wood-block, while the piano constantly tries to subvert the music to its own PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER The two concertos for piano, this one in G major, improvisational ends.