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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Friday 9 October 2015 7.30pm Barbican Hall VALERY GERGIEV: MAN OF THE THEATRE London’s Symphony Orchestra Bartók Dance Suite Bartók Piano Concerto No 2 INTERVAL Stravinsky The Firebird Valery Gergiev conductor Yefim Bronfman piano Concert finishes approx 9.45pm Generously supported by Jonathan Moulds CBE 2 Welcome 9 October 2015 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the THE LSO ON TOUR Barbican, the first in a series exploring the ballet scores of Bartók and Stravinsky. These two Tonight’s concert marks the LSO’s return to London composers redefined the art form with bold, after a two-week tour of Japan with conductor dramatic music, and there are few who can bring out Bernard Haitink, pianist Murray Perahia and soprano these qualities quite like Valery Gergiev. Tonight he Anna Lucia Richter. Together they visited Tokyo, opens the final project of his tenure as LSO Principal Kawasaki and Kyoto, while the LSO Brass Ensemble Conductor with Bartók’s modernist re-imagining of gave a concert in Shizuoka, and the Orchestra the Baroque Dance Suite and Stravinsky’s first major performed three concerts of the music from the ballet score, The Firebird. popular Final Fantasy video games. We are also very pleased to be joined by pianist Yefim Bronfman, who recently appeared with the THE RITE OF SPRING ON LSO PLAY Orchestra at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Tonight, he performs Bartók’s Piano This month, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring comes Concerto No 2. to LSO Play, the award-winning interactive online experience that allows you to get inside the This evening’s concert is generously supported by orchestra. Using HD footage of the LSO in concert, Jonathan Moulds, Chairman of the LSO Advisory LSO Play gives you the opportunity to see up to four Council. We are delighted to welcome Jonathan different camera angles at once, focus in on different this evening, and also his mother Sheila, who is sections of the orchestra, get a close-up view of celebrating a special birthday. the conductor, and find out more about the music and the instruments of the orchestra. LSO Play is I hope that you enjoy the concert and can join us generously supported by The Reignwood Group. again. The series continues with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on Sunday 11 October, and Bartók’s play.lso.co.uk Concerto for Orchestra on Sunday 18 October. A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10 or more, including a 20% discount on standard tickets, a dedicated group booking hotline and the chance to Kathryn McDowell CBE DL meet LSO musicians at private interval receptions. Managing Director At tonight’s concert, we are delighted to welcome: Mariinsky Theatre Trust and Tim Carter & Friends lso.co.uk/groups lso.co.uk Programme Notes 3 Béla Bartók (1881–1945) Dance Suite Sz 77 (1923) 1 MODERATO – RITORNELLO (TRANQUILLO) The Dance Suite is arranged in six sections played 2 ALLEGRO MOLTO – RITORNELLO (TRANQUILLO) without a break. Holding the work together is a 3 ALLEGRO VIVACE Hungarian-inflected Ritornello, often defusing the 4 MOLTO TRANQUILLO – RITORNELLO (LENTO) tensions generated by the intoxicating vigour in 5 COMODO – FINALE (ALLEGRO) many of the movements. The first section begins 6 FINALE (ALLEGRO) with a chromatic, Arab-influenced melody delivered by a pair of bassoons to which strings and piano PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Folk-dance rhythms run strongly through much of respond with aggressive chords leading to an JAN SMACZNY is the Sir Hamilton Bartók’s music, though rarely more pungently than exciting climax. The Allegro molto second section Harty Professor of Music at in the Dance Suite. Completed in August 1923, it generates breathtaking activity before the Ritornello Queen’s University, Belfast. A well- was written to commemorate the 50th anniversary reappears, as at the end of the first section, and known writer and broadcaster, he of the unifying of Buda, Pest and Óbuda (Old Buda) restores calm. specialises in the life and works of to create the Hungarian capital Budapest. Alongside Dvorˇák and Czech opera, and has the Dance Suite were premiered works by Bartók’s The third section is a heady mix of Hungarian published books on the repertoire two great Hungarian composer compatriots: the bagpipe melody and folk violin writing of a Romanian of the Prague Provisional Theatre Festival Overture by Erno˝ Dohnányi and the Psalmus character. The fourth section is a tranquil interlude, and Dvorˇák’s Cello Concerto. Hungaricus by Zoltán Kodály. All three works were at the end of which the now familiar Ritornello leads given in a concert of much grandeur on 20 November into a chromatic section, which in turn introduces 1923 with Dohnányi conducting. the Finale. Here, melodic elements from previous sections are drawn together into an exhilarating A RITORNELLO (from the Italian, From the end of World War I, Bartók’s reputation as climax, held up only briefly by a fleeting meaning ‘little return’) is a recurring a composer and pianist grew markedly with headline reappearance of the Ritornello. passage of music, which alternates performances in Britain, France and Germany. At with sections of contrasting material. home, however, he was facing attacks from the right- wing Hungarian press which criticised his radical style and also questioned his national credentials owing to his use of Romanian folk songs. Against this background, the Dance Suite might have seemed rather ambiguous; while Bartók uses Hungarian folk melodies throughout, he also includes Arab and Romanian native material. 4 Programme Notes 9 October 2015 Béla Bartók Piano Concerto No 2 Sz 95 (1930–31) 1 ALLEGRO The Second Piano Concerto is actually far from light 2 ADAGIO – PRESTO – ADAGIO and popular, and its first movement, like that of 3 ALLEGRO MOLTO the First Piano Concerto, is replete with irregular, mechanistic rhythms and angular folk-inflected YEFIM BRONFMAN PIANO melodies. It also continues Bartók’s preoccupation with exploring the percussive sonorities of the piano. PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER As with Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov But the overall mood is less starkly acerbic: stabbing EDWARD BHESANIA is a writer before him, Bartók’s stimulus for writing piano orchestral chords are replaced by colourful fanfares, and editor who reviews for The concertos was chiefly the need to provide a vehicle and dark-tinged ritual turns towards a brighter vein Strad and The Stage. He has also for his own pianistic skills on concert tours. By the of theatricality. written for The Observer, BBC 1920s his playing career had again taken wing, Music Magazine, International and by the end of the decade he had given tours FIRST MOVEMENT Piano, The Tablet and Country Life, in western Europe, the Soviet Union and the US. The influence of Stravinsky is strong in this and contributed to 1,001 Classical Only his third and final concerto was written for movement. The perky trumpet opening recalls Recordings You Must Hear Before other hands – those of his second wife, Ditta, also the theme from the final scene of The Firebird You Die. a pianist – whom he hoped might make some (1909–10), and the piano’s first entry mirrors the money by performing the work after his death, fast-shifting parallel chords of the ‘Danse russe’ since by the time of its composition (1945) he from Petrushka (1910–11). A fleeting reference was succumbing to leukaemia. to Bachian counterpoint reflects Stravinsky’s later neo-Classicism, and the instrumental colouring BARTÓK on LSO LIVE ‘I wished to compose the Piano of the whole of the first movement – which Concerto No 2 with fewer difficulties dispenses altogether with the orchestral strings – Tchaikovsky: is a homage to Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano Serenade for the orchestra [than the Piano and Wind Instruments (1923–4). & Bartók: Concerto No 1] and more pleasing Divertimento SECOND MOVEMENT £7.99 in its thematic material … Most of The second movement brings a sea-change in the themes in the piece are more sonority, opening with sustained muted strings ‘A reminder – if a reminder were playing a hushed, foggy chorale. The piano needed – of just how world-class light and popular in character.’ (partnered by rumbling timpani) alternates with this the string section of the London music before launching into the scurrying central Symphony Orchestra is … Both Though Bartók was fond of his First Piano Concerto Presto. The three-part layout of this movement, pieces here are given performances (1926), conductors and orchestras found it a challenge, Adagio–Presto–Adagio, lies at the centre of the of great authority.’ and the composer soon recognised a need for a Second Piano Concerto’s symmetrical ‘arch-form’, Classical CD Choice work that was ‘less bristling with difficulties for the which Bartók also employed in his Fourth and Fifth orchestra’ – perhaps something of more immediate String Quartets (1928 and 1934). The outer Adagio Available to buy online at appeal to his growing international audience – and sections, in their tranquillity, spaciousness and lsolive.lso.co.uk or as a digital whose themes were by comparison ‘light and popular’. luminosity, represent notable examples of Bartók’s download on iTunes so-called ‘night music’ style. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 Béla Bartók Composer Profile THIRD MOVEMENT Born in 1881 in Hungary, Bartók began piano lessons A thwack of the bass drum and a primitive alternating with his mother at the age of five. He studied piano pattern on timpani open the finale, which for the and composition at the Royal Academy of Music first time in the concerto draws the whole orchestra in Budapest, where he created a number of works together.