Low Res Winter Programme.Pdf
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NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF GREAT BRITAIN 5 January, 7.30pm The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester 6 January, 7.30pm Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham 7 January, 7.00pm Barbican, London Liadov THE ENCHANTED LAKE Dukas THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE — INTERVAL — Bartók DUKE BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE ROBERT HAYWARD Bluebeard CLAUDIA MAHNKE Judith DAISY EVANS Director SIR MARK ELDER Conductor 1 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 1 18/12/2017 14:01 SARAH ALEXANDER OBE Chief Executive & Artistic Director Welcome to the NYO Winter concert 2018! auditions in 2017 after having their skills and confidence honed in NYO Inspire NYO is renewed each year through workshops, which are aimed at committed competitive auditions, so our Winter teenage musicians who lack the opportunity concert is always a first for around half our to advance their ensemble skills. Having won musicians. This year it is also a first for NYO: a seat in NYO, they in turn will be helping the first time we have tackled a complete deliver NYO Inspire workshops, in order to opera. Our orchestra could not have a give future audition candidates the same better-qualified guide; Sir Mark Elder is not helping hand that they received. Our only one of the most accomplished operatic 164 NYO Musicians are making a huge conductors in the business, he is also an NYO commitment in 2018, together volunteering alum who has conducted NYO regularly over 1000 days of their time to help inspire over the years, and understands as well as other teenage musicians, and also to take anyone how to get the most from our brilliant orchestral music into secondary schools, teenage musicians. Welcome to Robert where around 3000 teenagers will be given Hayward and Claudia Mahnke, bringing their first ever taste of live orchestral music. valuable experience to their roles, and to Daisy Evans bringing theatrical life NYO is an organisation built on enormous to our performance. passions and commitment of some incredible people. Sadly we lost a key figure in 2017: Our decision to tackle an opera led us Derek Bourgeois who ran the orchestra from indirectly to another first: Chris Riddell is 1984 to 1993. Many of our audiences and NYO’s first-ever Artist in Residence. I spoke supporters will remember his charismatic style to Chris, Children’s Laureate 2015-17, with and unwavering charm. An accomplished the thought that he might make illustrations composer, Derek presided over an era of for Bluebeard’s Castle. Instead, Chris agreed daring programming at NYO, including to take on a far broader role, exploring ways many works from the 20th Century, perhaps of communicating his enjoyment of music the boldest being Schönberg’s Gurrelieder, and musicians through illustration. We’re with Jessye Norman and Pierre Boulez. very much looking forward to sharing his His contribution to NYO and British musical work with you as the year goes on. life is cherished by all who knew him. Just over half our intake of new musicians We do hope you enjoy this – 44 of them to be precise – succeeded in evening’s programme. 2 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 2 18/12/2017 14:01 PATRICK BEVAN Leader 2018 Welcome to the first concert tour of the This evening’s programme consists of National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain three pieces composed within less than 2018. My name is Patrick Bevan and I have 15 years of each other. Although written the huge honour and privilege to lead this over 100 years ago, they share themes and wonderful orchestra in this, our 70th ideas familiar to teenagers today. We were anniversary year. all told fairy tales as children and have more recently read books or watched films about What lies ahead of us as an orchestra is magic and the supernatural. Despite having an amazing year of joyful music-making. themes in common, the three pieces convey The concert you will hear this evening is the a wide range of different stories and culmination of our Winter Residency where emotions. As an orchestra we will need to the 2018 orchestra met together for the first use all our musicality, instrumental technique time, renewing old friendships and making and imagination to produce the full range new ones. The Winter Residency is always of tone colours and moods required. intensive as we have just a week to meld together as an orchestra and to master You can always rely on NYO to bring challenging repertoire before embarking boundless energy to the task! There are on our concert tour. We have undertaken sure to be fireworks this evening! We all a packed schedule of sectionals with really hope you enjoy the performance. individual instrumental tutors and full orchestra rehearsals under the watchful eye and inspirational musical insight of Sir Mark Elder. We can’t wait to perform for you tonight! NYO always brings together an unbelievable pool of talent and this year I will be encouraging all members of the orchestra to put the music right at the centre of what we do, communicate with each other as we play and through that communicate the music out to our audiences. 3 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 3 18/12/2017 14:01 ANATOLY LIADOV THE ENCHANTED LAKE (1909) From Caravaggio’s 16th century paintings Liadov’s skill likes not in how he deploys where candlelit faces glow to the blooming symphonic forces but how he holds them melody of Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ quartet two back. A rumble of distant thunder from the hundred years later, artists have always kettle drums is hushed by a pacifying horn; tried to catch the light. In the late 19th late on, a tentative oboe speaks up, but the century, painters like Monet devoted flute — effectively repeating its words multiple canvasses to charting the change — seems to console it. Eventually, gently of light on a particular surface, be it trilling violins seem to rise and rise, almost haystacks or lily ponds. In music, Debussy evaporating before our very ears. Were found new luminosity in his delicately it not for the vast orchestra in front of us, orchestrated Prélude à l’après-midi we might imagine the whole thing was d’un faune, and others rushed to mimic a mirage. its magic. Linking it to the concert’s other two works, the Russian composer Liadov subtitled his short tone poem ‘a fairy tale scene’. Across its waters, Debussy’s hallmarks sparkle: a sense of serenity is gently conjured by the harp, and strings drift almost imperceptibly from one chord to another in slow motion. The music almost sleepwalks, moving yet often imperceptibly, continually resisting any gestures or climaxes that might cloud its surface. Melodies, it seems, are forbidden. 4 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 4 18/12/2017 14:01 DID YOU KNOW? • Liadov was originally asked by the impresario Diaghilev to write the music for his ballet The Firebird – before the assignment went to Stravinsky and made his name. • The composer is often said to have squandered his promise, being quite the party animal and marrying a rich woman to ease pursuing an income of his own. • In fact, he was a dedicated teacher whose pupils included Prokofiev. He also did much to promote other Russian composers including Glinka and Glazunov. 5 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 5 18/12/2017 14:01 PAUL DUKAS THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (1897) Thanks to Mickey Mouse in Disney’s but then something doubly troublesome Fantasia, it’s easy for us to envisage the emerges: the main riff begins again, not just magical scenario evoked by The Sorcerer’s on bassoons but on clarinets too, just a few Apprentice. But before the birth of cinema, footsteps behind – Dukas’ ingenious means the music alone had to make audiences of suggesting that, by chopping the broom believe in the tale of a trainee wizard who in half, the apprentice has inadvertently summons a broomstick to wash the floor. made two. It’s a sign of Dukas’ inspired orchestration The melody then can’t stop duplicating that you hardly need programme notes to itself, leaping to life on one instrument follow the story. Plucked violins instantly after another, and the entire orchestra plunge us into gothic gloom, flutes flutter hurtles into a musical whirlpool. Finally, like candlelight, and a series of foreboding a triangle resounds like an alarm bell and melodic steps lead us like a spiral staircase furious blasts herald the intervention of deeper into the dark. We suddenly find a higher force: the sorcerer himself has ourselves being tugged along by mischievous returned to clean up the mess. woodwind and trumpet representing the apprentice himself. With him, we watch as something inanimate wakes, its faltering footsteps conjured by contrabassoons and clarinets. Then it lumbers into the light, with the bassoons’ woody hue lending the perfect texture to portray a broomstick brought to life. From the ensuing pace, we get a clear sense that the broom won’t stop bringing water from the well. Violin torrents crash around the main theme, vividly depicting the deluge. When the music stops, we imagine the apprentice has felled the broom in its tracks, 6 NYO083_WINTER_2017_PROGRAMME_FULL_AW.indd 6 18/12/2017 14:01 DID YOU KNOW? • History may regard Dukas as a ‘one hit wonder’ thanks to this piece, but its influence was huge: Stravinsky practically stole its quicksilver strings for his Fireworks and the impish bassoon is clearly echoed in Holst’s Uranus. • The tale of the mischievous apprentice comes from a short story by Goethe, author of Faust. He in turn took inspiration from the ancient Greek tale of Philopseudes in which a farmhand accidentally brings to life a rowdy army of pestles to crush grain.