Wednesday 8 November 2017 7.30–9.30pm Barbican Hall

LSO SEASON CONCERT BERNSTEIN 100

Bernstein Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ Interval Mahler Symphony No 1, ‘Titan’

Marin Alsop conductor Jamie Barton mezzo-soprano

Part of Bernstein 100 at the Barbican

6pm Barbican Hall LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists Free Pre-Concert Recital Songs by Bernstein and Copland Welcome Coming Up LSO News

alongside the music of a composer he BERNSTEIN 100 CONTINUES DESIGN TEAM FOR CENTRE FOR MUSIC admired greatly, Gustav Mahler. For ‘Jeremiah’ we are delighted to be joined by soloist Saturday 16 December 7.30pm The Barbican, LSO and Guildhall School, Jamie Barton, making her LSO debut. Barbican Hall backed by the City of London Corporation, have announced that design studio Diller These concerts are part of both the Bernstein Symphony No 2, Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Barbican’s Bernstein 100 series and a ‘The Age of Anxiety’ architecture firm Sheppard Robson, have been worldwide celebration of the composer’s Bernstein Wonderful Town (concert version) appointed to develop a concept design for a centenary. For more information visit new Centre for Music in the City of London. leonardbernstein.com/at100. Sir Simon Rattle conductor Krystian Zimerman piano 2018 PANUFNIK COMPOSERS SCHEME Welcome to this LSO concert, which continues A pre-concert performance of songs Danielle de Niese Eileen our celebration of as by Bernstein and Copland was given by Alysha Umphress Ruth Applications for the 2018 Panufnik we approach his centenary year in 2018. Guildhall School singers this evening. David Butt Philip Lonigan Composers Scheme are open until Bernstein was one of the 20th century’s These recitals, which are free to ticket- Nathan Gun Bob Baker 13 December, offering six composers most influential musicians and a great holders, take place on selected dates Duncan Rock Wreck the chance to work with the Orchestra friend of the LSO; in 1986 the Orchestra throughout the season and provide a Ashley Riches Guide/First Editor/Frank and composition director Colin Matthews. marked his contributions with a large-scale platform for the musicians of the future. London Symphony Chorus Bernstein Festival, and he later held the title Simon Halsey chorus director HALF SIX FIX CONTINUES of President, a position reserved for the most I hope you enjoy tonight’s performance distinguished collaborators of the Orchestra. and can join us again soon. Our Bernstein The LSO’s first Half Six Fix event took series continues on 16 and 21 December, Thursday 21 December 6.30pm place on 1 November, featuring an hour In our series, which began on Saturday and when Sir Simon Rattle conducts the musical Barbican Hall of music conducted and introduced by continues in December, we focus on one of Wonderful Town and Symphony No 2, Gianandrea Noseda, with screens to showcase the lesser-known sides of Bernstein’s output, ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Bernstein Wonderful Town (concert version) the performers and digital programme his symphonies. Following a performance of notes. Join us for the next instalment on his Third Symphony on Sunday, it is a pleasure Sir Simon Rattle conductor 21 December, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. to welcome back conductor Marin Alsop, a cast as 16 December pupil and close friend of Bernstein’s, who • Read news, articles and interviews, has championed his music throughout her Recommended by Classic FM watch videos and more online career. Today we hear two first symphonies, Kathryn McDowell CBE DL lso.co.uk/news with Bernstein’s own ‘Jeremiah’ placed Managing Director lso.co.uk/blog

2 Welcome 8 November 2017 Tonight’s Concert / introduction by David Gutman Bernstein and Me / by Marin Alsop

wo symphonic debuts fill this At the time of their composition both eonard Bernstein was a thinker, musicians magically turn into four-year-olds evening’s programme, each with these masterpieces represented a career teacher, author, television star, with that sparkle of anticipation in their eyes its own special character but departure for relatively junior conductors. provocateur, humanitarian – that says, ‘Yes, please tell us that story!’. sharing certain preoccupations. Completed Of course it was Bernstein whose prowess and he was my hero. Bernstein taught me in short order during World War II and on the podium played such a major part in much more than a craft. He showed me – In 1986 the LSO presented a festival inspired by the biblical lamentations of transforming perceptions of Mahler, for the and the world – that classical music is a honouring Bernstein, which included the prophet Jeremiah, Leonard Bernstein’s last half century rated perhaps the greatest powerful force that can transform lives as works by others whom Bernstein admired, First Symphony was his earliest major symphonist of the modern age. well as inspire and move people, and he championed or was influenced by – orchestral work. You can hear the imprint lived by those principles. Mahler, Stravinsky, Ives, Britten, Blitzstein, of mid-century American concert music Shostakovich – along with film screenings, in the opening movement but Bernstein’s PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Seeing Bernstein conduct when I was an exhibition and a Royal Gala Performance unmistakable ‘biological’ personality is nine years old at a New York Philharmonic in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen. revealed more fully in the jazzy, fractured David Gutman is a writer of CD and Young People’s Concert convinced me that As a result of the festival, the LSO and rhythms of the extended scherzo. programme notes who has provided conducting was the only thing in the world Bernstein became much closer, and he The element he derives from traditional extensive commentary for the BBC Proms that I wanted to do. That alone would have became President of the Orchestra in 1987. Hebrew chant blooms most overtly since 1996. His books cover subjects as been enough of a gift – but then, when I It was through Bernstein that I first met in the nobility and pathos of the final wide-ranging as Prokofiev and David was 31, he took me under his wing and the LSO, at the Pacific Music Festival in ‘Lamentation’. Here age-old concerns Bowie and he is a regular contributor to imparted to me the heart and soul of the craft. Japan in 1990, while he was already suffering confront the reality of the Holocaust. Gramophone and The Stage. Bernstein’s total engagement with the from the lung disease that would lead to music, the orchestra and the audience was his death three months later. In his opening By contrast Mahler’s 19th-century epic, Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner beyond thrilling. I fell in love with him on the remarks, he said that he had decided to a young man’s all-embracing statement Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life and spot and adored his rebellious embracing devote what time he had left to education, about life which took some 14 years to reach Music (Naxos). He also contributes regularly of every genre of music. because mentoring young people was its final form, could end in heroic jubilation. to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, the most rewarding way to spend his The music famously reflects an abiding and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 One of the greatest gifts Bernstein shared remaining time. love of nature but its parody funeral and the World Service. with me was the significance of story; march is an early indication of his own that every piece has an inherent story Those of us there on that day understood obsession with fate and death. The several and that every composer spends his life the profound gift Bernstein was giving episodes of ethnically alien, klezmer-ish WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS trying to articulate his own personal story. to each of us. But my gift from Bernstein village band music must have been the I was always delighted when he would stop started that day so long ago, when I most shocking element for well-heeled Tonight we are delighted to welcome a rehearsal and say, ‘Must I tell you the story was just nine years old and first dreamed contemporary audiences. British Emunah Entertains. of this Haydn Symphony?’, only to have 70 of becoming a conductor. •

Tonight’s Concert 3 Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ 1942 / note by David Gutman

1 Prophecy him about a mooted Tchaikovsky biopic in Bernstein had begun the work as early as 1939 Even in his early 20s, a high seriousness 2 Profanation which he would have played the composer with ideas for a Lamentation for soprano and underpinned the podium acrobatics. 3 Lamentation opposite Greta Garbo’s Madame von Meck! orchestra which only later morphed into the In 1977 Bernstein would remark that all The young polymath had already moved final movement of a fully-fledged symphony. his larger works shared a common theme: Jamie Barton mezzo-soprano from the periphery of American cultural life The finished score was dedicated as a ‘the struggle that is born of the crisis of to its very core. conciliatory gesture to the composer’s father our century, a crisis of faith’. Nothing if any of today’s composers avoid not ambitious, he meant not only religious symphonic form. Or at least they — faith, but faith in the individual, in mankind, say they do, labelling their large ‘The symphony does not make use to any great extent of actual in the future. orchestral works with some name less likely to needle the avant-garde by invoking Hebrew thematic material … As for the programmatic meanings, It is possible to view ‘Jeremiah’ as a outmoded tradition. To the uninitiated it the intention is not one of literalness, but of emotional quality.’ programme symphony with a concrete may come as a surprise to discover that story to tell about that self-inflicted loss of Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein wrote three symphonies, faith. Viewed this way the first movement, of various degrees of orthodoxy, but as he — ‘Prophecy’, depicts the prophet Jeremiah later observed, ‘I have a deep suspicion that warning of imminent devastation; the every work I write, for whatever medium, On 14 November 1943 he made his acclaimed who had not always been supportive of his second, ‘Profanation’, shows the people and is really theatre music in some way’. New York Philharmonic conducting musical aspirations. The bulk of it was set their priests desecrating the Temple with In life, he was both praised as the ultimate debut when, as the orchestra’s Assistant down in the dog days of 1942 with Bernstein pagan ritual; while the finale, ‘Lamentation’, Renaissance man and criticised as a jack- Conductor, he replaced at short notice enlisting the help of friends and family is self-explanatory. With lost, the of-all-trades. And the ‘Jeremiah’ Symphony an ailing Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall. to meet the deadline for a competition mezzo-soprano sings a Hebrew text drawn comes from a period of unparalleled activity Then, on 28 January 1944, he set out his sponsored by the New England Conservatory from the anguished poetry of the Book after which there was no turning back. stall as a ‘serious’ composer with this first of Music. Serge Koussevitzky, a key mentor, of Lamentations •. Meanwhile thematic foray into large-scale orchestral abstraction. was chairman of the jury but it was Reiner allusions to the first movement indicate If the premiere of his one-act ballet Fancy Bernstein himself directed the Pittsburgh who got it programmed. In Pittsburgh it that the Prophecy has been fulfilled. Free, bringing nascent ‘crossover’ to the old Symphony Orchestra, presided over by went down a storm with local journalists Metropolitan Opera House on 18 April 1944, Fritz Reiner, his conducting teacher at the who also commented on the choreography. Then again, Bernstein explained his seemed like icing on the cake, On the Town Curtis Institute. The soloist was Jennie Tourel, ‘Mr Bernstein’s conducting is unlike anything intention as ‘not one of literalness, but was enjoying its own Boston preview run Russian-born to Jewish parents, recently I have seen,’ wrote Arthur Peterson for the of emotional quality.’ He resisted Reiner’s before the year was out. The following June arrived in the US via Lisbon after escaping Toledo Blade. ‘Someday he will destroy request for a positive add-on finale, not only an entranced Bette Davis was writing to from Paris just ahead of the Nazis. himself on the podium,’ he suggested. because it would have violated his narrative

4 Programme Notes 8 November 2017 Leonard Bernstein in Profile 1918–1990 scheme at a time when the Holocaust was • Lamentations is a book of the Hebrew mould by being the first person to give a under way but also because the existing Bible and Christian Old Testament, public performance with that orchestra structure can be seen as his own take on the containing poetic laments that tell of wearing a grey lounge suit. His progress exposition, development and recapitulation the desolation of Jerusalem, following its as a conductor was rapid, and in 1958 he of classical sonata form. Fragmentary destruction by Babylon. In the Hebrew Bible, was appointed Music Director and Chief ideas borrowed from liturgical sources the book’s title is ‘Ekah’, meaning ‘How’. Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. grow organically into longer melodies, The author of Lamentations is not identified the thematic material of each new section in the text, although some scholars have In the same year he launched a series of developing from that of the preceding one. attributed it to Jeremiah, a belief that has televised children’s concerts. Bernstein been challenged but is also reflected in was also active as a writer and regular The first movement begins with Stravinskian much Jewish tradition. Jeremiah, a prophet, broadcaster, although he managed to find dissonance and an ominous theme condemned for its unfaithfulness time to create a large output of works. intoned by solo horn; the strings favour and worship of false gods, and foretold It could be reasonably argued that his work the declamatory, neo-Classical vein of of the destruction of Jerusalem. as a composer, performer and educator has such American symphonists as Roy Harris had a greater influence on current trends and William Schuman. Rowdy rather than Interval – 20 minutes in contemporary music than, for example, academic, the rhythmically asymmetrical the avant-garde compositions of Stockhausen second movement invites conducting and Texts on page 6 or Boulez. Unlike many of his contemporaries, playing of real pizzazz. Critic David Hurwitz Bernstein kept faith with the aesthetic hears this as ‘a sort of Bar Mitzvah in Hell’. ideals and artistic concerns of composers Only the third movement is explicit, in ernstein was a gifted scholar, from an earlier age, reaching audiences with the composer’s words, representing ‘the taking his first piano lessons at powerful, often dramatic scores and crafting cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved the age of ten and continuing to memorable, heart-on-sleeve melodies. Jerusalem, ruined, pillaged, and dishonoured study the instrument when he enrolled at after his desperate efforts to save it’. Harvard University in 1935. From 1939 to 1941 He posed music that was approachable However minimal the expectations of future he pursued graduate studies at the Curtis without being banal, sentimental without redemption, sensitivity and a beautiful tone Institute, emerging as a star pupil in Fritz being mawkish. Above all, he knew how can bring a different kind of intimacy to Reiner’s conducting class. Bernstein made to write a good tune. • the writing. Laying hopes and fears to rest, front-page news on 13 November 1943 when the ending, scored for orchestra alone, he deputised for Bruno Walter as conductor Composer Profile by Andrew Stewart brings a sort of consolation. • of the New York Philharmonic, achieving instant critical success and breaking the

Programme Notes 5 Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 1, ‘Jeremiah’ – Texts

LAMENTATION Chapter 4: 14–15

Chapter 1: 1–3 Na’u ivrim bachutzot They wander as blind men in the streets, N’go’alu badam; They are polluted with blood, Ēicha yashva vadad ha’ir How doth the city sit solitary, B’lo yuchlu So that men could not Rabati am That was full of people! Yig’u bilvushēihem. Touch their garments. Hay’ta k’almana; How is she become as a widow? Suru tamē! kar’u lamo, Depart, ye unclean! they cried unto them, Rabati vagoyim She that was great among the nations. Suru, suru! al tiga’u … Depart, depart! Touch us not … Sarati bam’dinot And princess among the provinces. Hay’ta lamas. How is she become tributary! Chapter 5: 20–21

Bacho tivkeh balaila She weepeth sore in the night, Lama lanetzach tishkachēnu … Wherefore dost Thou forget us forever, V’dim’ata al lechēiya; And her tears are on her cheeks; Lanetzach ta’azvēnu … And forsake us so long time? … Ēin la m’nachēm Among all her lovers; Hashivēnu Adonai ēlecha … Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord … Mikol ohaveiha; She hath none to comfort her Kol re’eha bag’du va; All her friends have dealt treacherously with her, King James Version Hayu la l’oyevim. They are become her enemies.

Galta Y’huda mē’oni Judah is gone into exile because of affliction. Umērov avoda; And because of great servitude; Hi yashva vagoyim, She dwelleth among the nations, Lo matz’a mano’ach; She findeth no rest. Kol rod’feha hisiguha All her pursuers overtook her Bēin hamitzarim. Between the straits.

Chapter 1: 8

Chet hat’a Y’rushalayim … Jerusalem hath grievously sinned … Ēicha yashva vadad ha’ir How doth the city sit solitary … almana. … a widow.

6 Texts 8 November 2017 Gustav Mahler in Profile 1860–1911 / by Stephen Johnson

ustav Mahler’s sense of being a presence from early on: six of Mahler’s Alma Schindler in 1902. Alma’s infidelity – an outsider, coupled with a siblings died in infancy. This no doubt which almost certainly accelerated the penetrating, restless intelligence, partly explains the obsession with mortality final decline in Mahler’s health in 1910/11 – made him an acutely self-conscious searcher in Mahler’s music. Few of his major works has earned her black marks from some after truth. For Mahler the purpose of do not feature a funeral march: in fact biographers; but it is hard not to feel some art was, in Shakespeare’s famous phrase, Mahler’s first composition (at age ten) sympathy for her position as a ‘work widow’. to ‘hold the mirror up to nature’ in all its was a Funeral March with Polka – exactly bewildering richness. The symphony, he the kind of extreme juxtaposition one Nevertheless, many today have good cause told Jean Sibelius, ‘must be like the world. finds in his mature works. to be grateful to Mahler for his single- It must embrace everything’. minded devotion to his art. TS Eliot – another artist caught between the search for — faith and the horror of meaninglessness – ‘If a composer could say what he had to say in words wrote that ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’. But Mahler’s music suggests he would not bother trying to say it in music.’ another possibility. With his ability to — confront the terrifying possibility of a purposeless universe and the empty finality Mahler’s symphonies can seem almost For most of his life Mahler supported himself of death, Mahler can help us confront and over-full with intense emotions and ideas: by conducting, but this was no mere means endure stark reality. He can take us to the love and hate, joy in life and terror of death, to an end. Indeed his evident talent and edge of the abyss, then sing us the sweetest the beauty of nature, innocence and bitter energetic, disciplined commitment led to songs of consolation. If we allow ourselves experience. Similar themes can also be successive appointments at Prague, Leipzig, to make this journey with him, we may find found in his marvellous songs and song- Budapest, Hamburg and climactically, that we too are the better for it. • cycles, though there the intensity is, in 1897, the Vienna Court Opera. if anything, still more sharply focused. In the midst of this hugely demanding Gustav Mahler was born the second of schedule, Mahler composed whenever he 14 children. His parents were apparently could, usually during his summer holidays. ill-matched (Mahler remembered violent The rate at which he composed during these scenes), and young Gustav grew dreamy and brief periods is astonishing. The workload introspective, seeking comfort in nature in no way decreased after his marriage to rather than human company. Death was the charismatic and highly intelligent

Composer Profile 7 Gustav Mahler Symphony No 1 in D major, ‘Titan’ 1884–88, rev 1893–96 / note by Stephen Johnson

1 Langsam. Schleppend [Slow. Dragging] – hen Gustav Mahler began his First was first performed it had a title, ‘Titan’, he could be blunt: when someone raised Immer sehr gemächlich Symphony in 1884, ‘modern music’ taken from the once-famous novel by the the subject at an evening drinks party, [Always at a very leisurely pace] meant Wagner, while the standard German Romantic writer Jean Paul (the pen Mahler is said to have leapt to his feet and by which new symphonies were judged was name of Johann Paul Richter). For Richter shouted, ‘Perish all programmes!’. But for 2 Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell that of Brahms, the arch ‘Classical-Romantic’. the ‘Titan’, the true genius, is a ‘Heaven- most listeners, music that is so passionate, [With strong movement, but not In a Brahmsian symphony there was little room Stormer’ (Himmelsstürmer) an obsessive, dramatic and so full of the sounds of nature too fast] for Wagnerian lush harmonies or sensational almost recklessly passionate idealist. can’t be fully explained in the detached Trio: Recht gemächlich [Quite leisurely] – new orchestral colours. In fact the orchestral The idea appealed strongly to Mahler, terms of ‘pure’ musical analysis. Fortunately Tempo Primo forces Brahms employed were basically but so too did Richter’s vividly poetic the First Symphony is full of pointers to the same as those used by Beethoven descriptions of nature. possible meanings beyond the notes. 3 Feierlich und femessen, ohne zu and Schubert in their symphonies, three- schleppen [Solemn and measured, quarters of a century earlier. For the premiere, Mahler set out his version FIRST MOVEMENT without dragging] of the Titan theme in an explanatory The main theme of the first movement – So for audiences brought up on Brahms, programme note, which told how the heard on cellos and basses after the slow 4 Stürmisch bewegt [Stormy] hearing Mahler’s First Symphony would symphony progressed from ‘the awakening atmospheric ‘dawn’ introduction – is taken have been like stepping into a new world. of nature at early dawn’, through youthful from the second of Mahler’s four Lieder eines The opening can still surprise even today: happiness and love, to the sardonic gloom fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), one note, an A, is spread through almost the of the funeral march, and then to the finale, written as a ‘memorial’ to his affair with entire range of the string section, topped subtitled ‘From Inferno to Paradise’. And it the singer Johanna Richter (no relation of with ghostly violin harmonics. Other unusual was clear that Mahler’s interest in Richter’s the novelist, but the name connection is colours follow: distant trumpet fanfares, theme was more than literary. Behind the striking). In the song, a young man, jilted in high clarinet cuckoo-calls, a plaintive cor symphony, he hinted to friends, was the love, sets out on a beautiful spring morning, anglais, the bell-like bass notes of the harp. memory of a love affair that had ended, hoping that nature will help his own heart All this would have been startlingly new in painfully, at about the time he began work to heal. For most of the first movement, Mahler’s time. And there’s nothing tentative on the symphony. Mahler seems to share the young man’s or experimental about this symphonic hope. The ending seems cheerful enough. debut: at 24, Mahler knows precisely the But Mahler soon began to lose faith in But at the heart of the movement comes sound he wants, and precisely how to get it. programmes. ‘I would like it stressed that a darkly mysterious passage, echoing the the symphony is greater than the love affair ‘dawn’ introduction, but adding sinister Still, there’s much more to Mahler’s First it is based on’, he wrote. ‘The real affair new sounds: the low, quiet growl of a tuba, Symphony than innovative orchestral became the reason for, but by no means ominous drum-beats, and a repeated sighing colours and effects. When the symphony the true meaning of, the work.’ In later life figure for cellos. For a moment, the music

8 Programme Notes 8 November 2017 FIND THE PERFECT GIFT seems to echo the final words of the song: of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. ‘So will my joy blossom too? No, no; it will The song tells in soft, gentle tones of how FROM OUR NEW RANGE never, never bloom again’. a young man, stricken with grief at the loss of the girl he loves, finds consolation in the SECOND MOVEMENT thought of death. This is the dark heart of Tote Bags Dance music dominates the second the First Symphony. movement, especially the robust, earthy Tea Towels vigour of the Ländler (the country cousin of FINALE Mugs the sophisticated urban Waltz). There are But this is not the end of the story. In hints here of another, earlier song, Hans und the finale Mahler strives onward – in Grete, in which gawky young Hans finds a the words of the discarded programme, sweetheart at a village dance – all innocent ‘From Inferno to Paradise’. At first all happiness. But the slower, more reflective is turbulence, but when the storm has Trio brings more adult expression: nostalgia died down, strings present an ardent, and, later, sarcasm (shrill high woodwind). slower melody – unmistakably a love theme. There’s a brief memory of the THIRD MOVEMENT first movement’s ‘dawn’ music, then the The third movement is in complete contrast. struggle begins again. Eventually massed This is an eerie, sardonic funeral march, horns introduce a new, radiantly hopeful partly inspired by a painting by Jacques theme, strongly reminiscent of ‘And he Callot, ‘The Huntsman’s Funeral’, in which shall reign’ from Handel’s oratorio Messiah. a procession of animals carry the hunter More reminiscences and still more heroic to his grave. One by one, the orchestral struggles follow, until dark introspection is instruments enter quietly, playing a famous finally overcome, and the symphony ends in old nursery tune, Frère Jacques – which jubilation. Mahler’s hero has survived to live, sounds like another interesting name and love, another day. • connection, except that Austrians like Mahler would have known the tune to the words ‘Brother Martin, are you sleeping?’. Available now on Level -1 At the heart of this movement, Mahler makes a lengthy quotation from the last

Programme Notes 9 Marin Alsop conductor

arin Alsop is an inspiring and Marin Alsop conducts the world’s major recent performances of Brahms, Schumann powerful voice in the international orchestras, with recent and forthcoming and Verdi on period instruments. In 2013, music scene, a Music Director who European highlights including appearances Marin Alsop made history as the first female passionately believes that ‘music has the with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, power to change lives’. She is recognised Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Filarmonica which she returned to conduct in 2015. across the world for her innovative della Scala, Orchestre National de France, approach to programming and for her London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and Her extensive discography has led to Grammy deep commitment to education and to the the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In the US, and Gramophone awards, and includes highly development of audiences of all ages. Alsop regularly conducts the Philadelphia, praised Naxos cycles of Brahms with the Cleveland and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, LPO and MDR Leipzig, Dvořák with the BSO, Alsop’s outstanding success as Music including at their summer residencies at Prokofiev with OSESP, and further recordings Director of the Baltimore Symphony Saratoga, Blossom and Ravinia. Further for Decca Classics, Harmonia Mundi and Orchestra (BSO) since 2007 has been highlights of the 2017/18 season include Sony Classical. She is dedicated to new music, recognised by two extensions in her tenure, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre born out in her 25-year tenure as Music now confirmed until 2021. As part of her de la Suisse Romande, Danish National Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of artistic leadership in Baltimore, Alsop has Symphony Orchestra, and a second residency Contemporary Music. created several bold initiatives: OrchKids, at Aldeburgh’s Snape Maltings with the for the city’s most deprived young people, Britten-Pears Orchestra. Marin Alsop is the only conductor to receive and the BSO Academy and Rusty Musicians the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, is an for adult amateur musicians. She became As one of Leonard Bernstein’s best known Honorary Member of the Royal Academy Principal Conductor and Music Director of pupils, Alsop is central to his 100th of Music and Royal Philharmonic Society, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) anniversary global celebrations in 2018: and was recently appointed Director of in 2012, with her contract now extended in addition to opening the LSO’s tribute, Graduate Conducting at the John Hopkins to the end of 2019, where she continues to she conducts performances of Bernstein’s Peabody Institute. She attended the steer their highly creative programming and Mass at the Ravinia Festival, where she Juilliard School and Yale University, who outreach activities. Alsop led the orchestra has been appointed Musical Curator for awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in 2017. on European tours in 2012, 2013 and 2016, 2018 and 2019, and at Southbank Centre, Her conducting career was launched in with critically acclaimed performances at where she is Artist-in-Residence. Also at 1989, when she won the Leopold Stokowski the BBC Proms, the Edinburgh International Southbank Centre she conducts a Beethoven International Conducting Competition and Lucerne festivals, the Concertgebouw programme with the Orchestra of the Age of and was the first woman to be awarded Amsterdam and further concerts in Berlin, Enlightenment (OAE), as part of a UK tour. the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from Paris, Salzburg and Vienna. She conducts the OAE most seasons, with the Tanglewood Music Center. •

10 Artist Biographies 8 November 2017 Jamie Barton mezzo-soprano

ince winning both First and Song This season Jamie makes her debut at Teatro An outstanding recitalist, Jamie has appeared Prizes at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Real Madrid as Leonor in special concert at both the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals Singer of the World Competition, performances of Donizetti’s La favorite and at New York’s Carnegie Hall in an all-star Jamie Barton has established herself as a under Daniel Oren, and makes a number of event celebrating Marilyn Horne’s 80th major dramatic talent on both sides of the high profile returns in the US: to Washington birthday. She returned to the Hall to perform Atlantic. She was named the recipient of the National Opera as Eboli under Philippe a specially commissioned new work by Jake 2015 Richard Tucker Award, subsequently Auguin, San Francisco Opera as Fricka, Heggie, and appears there again this season performing in a star-studded televised gala Waltraute and Second Norn (Wagner’s Ring in Zankel Hall with pianist Kathleen Kelly, as at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in the Cycle) under Donald Runnicles, and both well as in the Celebrity Series in Boston and same year, and the Metropolitan Opera’s Houston Grand Opera and The Metropolitan Matinée Musicale Cincinnati. In Europe, 2017 Beverly Sills Artist Award. Opera as Adalgisa, under Patrick Summers Jamie has recently given debut recitals at and Joseph Colaneri respectively. Wigmore Hall and Oper Frankfurt. • At home in the US, Jamie has made an impressive succession of critically On the concert stage, Barton has already acclaimed debuts in the principal houses, collaborated with a number of major from Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma at the conductors including Marin Alsop for Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody with the Orchestra Opera, to Fricka in Wagner’s Das Rheingold of the Age of Enlightenment in her BBC for Houston Grand Opera. Last season, Proms debut; Sir Andrew Davis for Verdi’s Jamie continued to make impressive Requiem with the Melbourne Symphony debuts at Deutsche Oper Berlin in her first Orchestra; Franz Welser-Möst for Britten’s Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo under Roberto Spring Symphony with the Cleveland Rizzi Brignoli, and as Ježibaba in Mary Orchestra; Osmo Vänskä for Mahler’s Zimmerman’s new production of Dvořák’s Symphony No 3 with the Iceland Symphony Rusalka for The Metropolitan Opera. Orchestra; and, most recently, with Alan Other recent highlights include her debuts Gilbert for Fricka with the New York at Oper Frankfurt as Cornelia in Handel’s Philharmonic. This season, Jamie joins the Giulio Cesare, the Royal Opera House, Covent Philadelphia Orchestra for Handel’s Messiah, Garden as Fenena in Verdi’s , Los and performs Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder with Angeles Opera as Adalgisa, and Washington the Oulu Sinfonia. National Opera as Waltraute and Second Norn in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

Artist Biographies 11 London Symphony Orchestra on stage tonight

Leader Second Violins Cellos Flutes Contra Bassoon Tuba LSO String Experience Scheme Roman Simovic David Alberman Tim Hugh Adam Walker Dominic Morgan David Kendall Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Thomas Norris Alastair Blayden Alex Jakeman Scheme has enabled young string players First Violins Sarah Quinn Jennifer Brown Gareth Davies Horns Timpani from the London music conservatoires at Lennox Mackenzie Miya Väisänen Noel Bradshaw Timothy Jones Nigel Thomas the start of their professional careers to gain Clare Duckworth Matthew Gardner Eve-Marie Caravassilis Piccolo Nicolas Fleury Tom Edwards work experience by playing in rehearsals Nigel Broadbent Belinda McFarlane Daniel Gardner Sharon Williams Angela Barnes and concerts with the LSO. The musicians Ginette Decuyper Paul Robson Hilary Jones Alexander Edmundson Percussion are treated as professional ‘extra’ players Gerald Gregory Ingrid Button Morwenna Del Mar Oboes Jonathan Lipton Neil Percy (additional to LSO members) and receive Maxine Kwok-Adams Siobhan Doyle Alexandra Mackenzie Rosie Jenkins Jonathan Bareham David Jackson fees for their work in line with LSO section Claire Parfitt Esther Kim Peteris Sokolovskis Steven Hudson John Davy Sam Walton players. The Scheme is supported by The Colin Renwick Hazel Mulligan Maxwell Spiers James Pillai Tom Edwards Polonsky Foundation, Lord and Lady Lurgan Sylvain Vasseur Katerina Nazarova Double Basses Trust, Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Rhys Watkins Jan Regulski Colin Paris Cor Anglais Trumpets Harp and The Thistle Trust. Shlomy Dobrinsky Eugenio Sacchetti Patrick Laurence Christine Pendrill Philip Cobb Bryn Lewis Eleanor Fagg Matthew Gibson Gerald Ruddock Takane Funatsu Violas Thomas Goodman Clarinets Joseph Atkins Piano Alain Petitclerc Scott Dickinson Joe Melvin Chris Richards David Geoghegan Philip Moore Erzsebet Racz Malcolm Johnston Jani Pensola Chi-Yu Mo David Hilton Anna Bastow Marco Behtash Sonia Sielaff Martin Hurrell Julia O’Riordan Nicholas Worters Joe Sharp Robert Turner E-Flat Clarinet Toby Street Editor Heather Wallington Chi-Yu Mo Edward Appleyard | [email protected] Jonathan Welch Trombones Fiona Dinsdale | [email protected] Ilona Bondar Bass Clarinet Peter Moore Editorial Photography Michelle Bruil Arthur Stockel James Maynard Ranald Mackechnie, Rebecca Fay, Stephanie Edmundson Dan Jenkins Adriane White Felicity Matthews Bassoons Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Caroline O’Neill Daniel Jemison Bass Trombone Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937 Christopher Gunia Paul Milner Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.

12 The Orchestra 8 November 2017