Sunday 8 April 2018 7–9.15pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT BEETHOVEN & SHOSTAKOVICH Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 Interval NOSEDA Shostakovich Symphony No 8 Gianandrea Noseda conductor Nikolai Lugansky piano Recommended by Classic FM Welcome LSO News Online I would like to take this opportunity to THE LSO’S 2018/19 SEASON YOUTUBE LIVE STREAMS thank our media partner Classic FM, who have recommended tonight’s The LSO’s 2018/19 season is now on sale. If you cannot make it to the Barbican, concert to their listeners. Highlights include Music Director Sir Simon tune in to the LSO’s YouTube channel Rattle’s exploration of folk-inspired music on Sunday 22 April 2018 at 7pm to watch I hope that you enjoy the performance, in his series Roots and Origins; the the LSO’s Music Director Sir Simon Rattle and that you are able to join us again continuation of Gianandrea Noseda’s conduct Mahler’s Symphony No 10 soon. Gianandrea Noseda continues his Shostakovich cycle; Artist Portraits alongside Tippett’s The Rose Lake live Shostakovich cycle with the First Violin with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan from the Barbican Hall. Concerto and Symphony No 10 on Sunday and pianist Daniil Trifonov; and eight world 24 June with soloist Nicola Benedetti. premieres across the season. Full listings Our last live stream (from Sunday 11 March), A warm welcome to tonight’s LSO concert On Sunday 15 April the Orchestra will perform are available at lso.co.uk/201819season. featuring Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducting at the Barbican. Following highly successful the world premiere of Patrick Giguère’s a programme of Schumann and Berlioz with performances across Europe earlier in Panufnik commission, Revealing, alongside mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg, is also the season, and a concert in Warsaw on Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Sibelius’ GRUPPEN AT TATE MODERN available to watch in full now. Friday, we are delighted to be joined by Symphony No 5 with Susanna Mälkki. youtube.com/lso. Gianandrea Noseda, the LSO’s Principal The LSO has announced two performances Guest Conductor, as he continues this of Stockhausen’s Gruppen in Tate Modern’s series of Shostakovich symphonies. Turbine Hall with Sir Simon Rattle on RINGING AN ORCHESTRA LIKE A BELL Saturday 30 June 2018. Tickets will go on In tonight’s programme of light and shade, sale in April; visit lso.co.uk/tate for details. In his article on the LSO Blog, Panufnik we hear one of the central works of piano Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Composer James Hoyle explains the concert repertoire, Beethoven’s Piano Managing Director inspiration for his piece Marangona and Concerto No 4, alongside Shostakovich’s WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS the influence that bell ringing has had on colossal Symphony No 8. For the concerto his compositional process. it is a pleasure to welcome Nikolai Lugansky, Tonight we are delighted to welcome who returns after making his LSO debut Il Sipario Musicale under Gianandrea Noseda’s baton in 2013. Mrs Adele Friedland & Friends Read our news, watch videos and more • lso.co.uk/news • youtube.com/lso • lso.co.uk/blog 2 Welcome 8 April 2018 Tonight’s Concert / by Liam Hennebry Coming Up his evening’s concert presents PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Sunday 15 April 2018 7pm Sunday 22 April 2018 7pm two contrasting visions of the Barbican Hall Barbican Hall future. The first is optimistic and Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for nonchalant, the other rather more bleak BBC Radio 3, including programming ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO MAHLER’S TENTH and uncertain. Written in his mid-30s, lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto displays LSO St Luke’s; Artistic Advisor to York Patrick Giguère Revealing Tippett The Rose Lake * the confident, relaxed and optimistic Early Music Festival; Artistic Director of (world premiere, Panufnik Commission *) Mahler comp Cooke Symphony No 10 manner into which the composer was Baroque at the Edge Festival; and a regular Elgar Cello Concerto entering during the middle phase of his contributor to Gramophone magazine. Sibelius Symphony No 5 Sir Simon Rattle conductor career. Absent is the drama and stormy turbulence of the symphonies. Instead, the Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and Susanna Mälkki conductor * Supported by Resonate, a PRS Foundation initiative concerto oozes sanguine optimism – making translator who writes extensively on French, Daniel Müller-Schott cello in partnership with the Association of British Orchestras, it one of the most sublimely elegant and Russian and Eastern European music. BBC Radio 3, The Foyle Foundation and the Boltini Trust beautiful works in the composer’s output. * The Panufnik Composers Scheme is generously Andrew Stewart is a freelance music supported by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust Thursday 17 May 2018 7.30pm Buoyancy is followed by darkness in the journalist and writer. He is the author Barbican Hall more pessimistic and emotional work by of The LSO at 90, and contributes to Thursday 19 & 26 April 2018 7.30pm Shostakovich. The Eighth Symphony reveals a wide variety of specialist classical Barbican Hall SIBELIUS a composer whose confidence had been music publications. deeply shaken by World War II. Rather than MAHLER’S NINTH Sibelius Violin Concerto the triumphant and nationalistic work many Sibelius Symphony No 6 expected would follow the Seventh Symphony, Helen Grime Woven Space * (world premiere) Sibelius Symphony No 7 we hear a bleak and ambiguous expression Mahler Symphony No 9 of the composer’s post-war uncertainties. Michael Tilson Thomas conductor The tide may have turned for the Red Sir Simon Rattle conductor Janine Jansen violin Army and fascism might have been on the road to defeat, but many sources * Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle Recommended by Classic FM of authoritarianism would yet remain – and the LSO by the Barbican a fact that Shostakovich would have confirmed to his cost following the 26 April generously supported by Baker McKenzie symphony’s premiere and his subsequent condemnation by the Soviet state. • Tonight’s Concert 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 in G major Op 58 1804–06 / note by Lindsay Kemp 1 Allegro moderato violent concentration, and puts it much to haunt the music, and it is no surprise Third Movement 2 Andante con moto more in line with the Violin Concerto and that when the piano finally re-enters it is Beethoven now makes another radical 3 Rondo: Vivace ‘Razumovskys’. This relaxed demeanour was with material derived from it. No less a gesture, moving stealthily and smoothly a new facet of Beethoven’s style, one that characteristic of the movement is the way into the finale without a break. As in all his Nikolai Lugansky piano came with the added confidence and mastery that at those places where the music does concertos, it is a Rondo, its returning theme of his so-called ‘middle period’, and in its seem to be getting agitated, the tension being a tidy, fanfare-like tune which prompts he Fourth Piano Concerto was way it is no less typical or radical than his is soon diffused; not even the climactic the introduction of trumpets and drums for composed during a particularly rich more familiar stormy side. The Fourth Piano fortissimo return of the main theme, in the first time in this concerto. After the high phase in Beethoven’s life. Begun Concerto, a work of surpassing beauty and massive chords batted between the pianist’s concentration of the slow movement, the in 1804, it was completed two years later poetry, is one of its most sublime examples. hands, can maintain its bombast for long. mood here is expansive again: the piano’s and thus dates from the same time as the suavely soaring second theme is subjected Fifth Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the First Movement Second Movement to elaborate contrapuntal treatment from three ‘Razumovsky’ String Quartets, and the Without doubt the boldest stroke in the The second movement is another departure the orchestra; the main theme appears original version of the opera Fidelio. It was whole concerto is also one of the utmost from convention, discarding the usual formal in a ravishing smoothed-over version for premiered, with the composer as soloist, gentleness. Normally at this time, a models in favour of a dramatic interlude of the violas; and there is space for a spot at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on concerto would begin with a long passage operatic directness and power. Beethoven of cat-and-mouse between the cadenza 22 December 1808, in a concert that also for the orchestra, who would introduce liked to think of his instrumental music in and the accelerated, headlong finish. • included the first performances of the the movement’s main themes before the narrative terms, and although we do not know Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, parts of the soloist joins in later. Beethoven followed this what inspired this movement, the comparison Mass in C major, and the Choral Fantasy. etiquette in his first three piano concertos, of it by his early biographer A B Marx to but in the Fourth it is the piano which begins Orpheus taming the Furies is convincing. Beethoven often worked on more than one the piece on its own, with a touchingly quiet composition at a time, so it is interesting to and simple chordal theme. For any audience Certainly there is some kind of confrontation see the first movements of both the Fourth expecting a grand extrovert opening, or at occurring here between the stern unison Piano Concerto and the Fifth Symphony the very least a sturdy one, it is a heart- denouncements of the orchestral strings and being dominated by the same four-note stopping moment, and though the orchestra the sweetly harmonised, emollient responses Interval – 20 minutes rhythmic cell (short–short–short–long).