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Home , Berlin Philharmonic, Phrygian Gates

Sunday 5 May 2019 7–9.15pm Barbican

LSO SEASON CONCERT SIR

John Adams Interval BERLIOZ Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

Sir Simon Rattle conductor

Streamed live at youtube.com/lso

150 5.30pm Barbican Hall LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists Free entry

John Adams Phrygian Gates

Ben Smith piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog

Prior to the ’s performance tonight THE LSO IN LATIN AMERICA JOHN ADAMS’ HARMONIELEHRE we also hosted a pre-concert recital by Guildhall School student Ben Smith, who This month the LSO tours Latin America In the age of synth pop, Live Aid and performed one of John Adams’ solo piano for the first time in our history. In concerts Madonna’s Material Girl, how was a composer works, Phrygian Gates. These free LSO in Bogotá, Medellín, Lima, Buenos Aires, to write large-scale orchestral music for the Platforms recitals seek to complement the Montevideo and Santiago, Sir Simon Rattle concert hall? Composed in 1985, John Adams’ repertoire in the Orchestra’s main season conducts Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Harmonielehre is one of the most significant as well as showcasing the musicians of the Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. examples of a composer grappling with the future. Visit lso.co.uk/lsoplatforms for Later in 2019, the Orchestra tours to Ireland, idea of a symphony in the 20th century. more information. California, Central Europe and Asia. Follow us on social media for behind- elcome to this evening’s LSO I hope that you enjoy tonight’s performance, the-scenes updates. THE PUBLIC DOMAIN concert at the Barbican. Tonight and that you will join us again soon. Following Sir Simon Rattle conducts two a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No 5 facebook.com/londonsymphonyorchestra On Sunday 24 March 500 singers filled the hugely colourful works for large orchestra – at the Barbican next Wednesday, the LSO instagram.com/londonsymphonyorchestra Barbican foyers for a moving performance of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, one of the and Sir Simon Rattle depart for a two-week twitter.com/londonsymphony David Lang’s the public domain. In a short great orchestral showpieces of the 20th tour of Latin America, the first visit there film on the LSO Blog, we take a look back century, and in the second half of the in the Orchestra’s history. We return to at this extraordinary performance and the concert, Berlioz’s 19th-century masterpiece, London for a concert on Thursday 30 May, a WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS people who brought it to life. Symphonie fantastique. This performance programme of Bartók, Cage and Beethoven forms part of Berlioz 150, a series of events with LSO Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson We are delighted to welcome two groups taking place internationally to mark 150 Thomas and violinist . attending tonight’s concert: ARTIST PORTRAIT: years since the composer’s death. David Squires & Friends The Gerrards Cross Community Association Piano superstar Daniil Trifonov tells us about Those of us here in the Barbican Hall will be his life away from the concert stage and joined by an international audience watching the experiences that made him love music: online as we stream tonight’s concert live from rock and jazz to the films of Andrei around the world on the LSO’s YouTube Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Tarkovsky and Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’. channel, where it will be available to watch Managing Director back for 90 days after the concert. Please ensure all phones are switched off. Photography and audio/video recording Read these articles and more are not permitted during the performance. • lso.co.uk/blog

2 Welcome 5 May 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief / by Liam Hennebry Sir Simon Rattle with the LSO

Thursday 20 June 7.30–9.45pm Sunday 30 June 5–7pm ne good dream and one bad, scene. All is well. But things soon take a dark Barbican Trafalgar Square tonight’s programme explores turn. He imagines he has murdered her and works inspired by the strange that he is being marched to the scaffold to LSO + GUILDHALL SCHOOL: BRUCKNER BMW CLASSICS hallucinations of night time. be executed. Darker still, he finds himself witnessing his own funeral from beyond the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Dvořák Selection of Slavonic Dances John Adams’ Harmonielehre draws on dreams grave. Witches dance around, and the horror Thomas Tallis Bushra El-Turk Tuqus (world premiere) * the composer had as a young man. In one, builds to a quite brilliant climax that, like bad Grainger Lincolnshire Posy for Winds Poulenc Selection from ‘Les biches – Suite’ his daughter rides through the heavens on dreams we’ve all had, leaves the executed Bruckner Symphony No 4 Ravel La valse the shoulder of 13th-century theologian, love, shaken but ultimately unharmed. Eckhart. In another, a vast oil tanker rises Sir Simon Rattle conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor out of the water of the San Francisco Bay, London Symphony Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra before launching itself into the sky like the PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Guildhall School Musicians LSO On Track Young Musicians * Saturn V rocket. One of very few late 20th- Guildhall School Musicians * century pieces to have fully embedded itself David Cairns won the biography category Generously supported by Baker McKenzie in the repertoire, the work uses this vivid of the Whitbread Prize and the Samuel Produced in partnership with BMW imagery to explore the rich tonal harmonies Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for his Thursday 27 June 7.30–9.25pm of late-Romanticism alongside Minimalist second volume biography on Berlioz: Saturday 29 June 7.30–9.25pm developmental techniques. What results is Servitude and Greatness. Working alongside Barbican a lush, swirling sound world that develops Sir Colin Davis since the 1950s, their Berlioz Saturday 14 September 7.30–9.30pm gradually, building bar by bar to such reputation goes before them: ‘Cairns and THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN Barbican exultant climaxes that you can’t help but Davis made Berlioz not just acceptable, smell the rocket fuel. but almost normal, a patient, rational Janáček The Cunning Little Vixen (semi-staged) SEASON OPENING craftsman, a great composer like any other’ Bernstein described Berlioz’s Symphonie (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times). Sir Simon Rattle conductor Emily Howard Antisphere (world premiere)* fantastique as music’s first psychedelic Peter Sellars director Colin Matthews work. Its fever-dream story tells of a restless Lucy Crowe Vixen Walton Symphony No 1 young man. Dejected and sick with despair Gerald Finley Forester (the result of unrequited love), he dreams Sophia Burgos Fox, Chocholka Sir Simon Rattle conductor of being happy with a flawless romantic Peter Hoare Schoolmaster, Cock, Mosquito Leila Josefowicz violin partner. One moment he’s dancing with Jan Martiník Badger, Parson his beloved at a grand ball, the next they *Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO find themselves in a pastoral, countryside Produced by LSO and Barbican by the Barbican

Tonight’s Concert 3 John Adams Harmonielehre 1985 / note by John Adams

1 First Movement mind whose entire life ran unfailingly and European musical festivals is still It is a large, three-movement work for 2 The Anfortas Wound against the grain of society, almost as if potent. Rejecting Schoenberg was like orchestra that marries the developmental 3 Meister Eckhardt and Quackie he had chosen the role of irritant. siding with the Philistines, and freeing techniques of Minimalism with the harmonic and expressive world of fin-de-siècle late armonielehre is roughly translated — Romanticism. It was a conceit that could as ‘the book of harmony’ or ‘Rejecting Schoenberg was like siding with the Philistines, and freeing myself only be attempted once. The shades of ‘treatise on harmony.’ It is the Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy and the young title of a huge study of tonal harmony, part from the model he represented was an act of enormous will power.’ Schoenberg are everywhere in this strange textbook, part philosophical rumination, — piece. This is a work that looks at the past that Arnold Schoenberg published in 1911 in what I suspect is ‘postmodernist’ spirit, just as he was embarking on a voyage into Despite my respect for and even intimidation myself from the model he represented but, unlike or Nixon in unknown waters, one in which he would by the persona of Schoenberg, I felt it only was an act of enormous willpower. China, it does so entirely without irony. more or less permanently renounce the honest to acknowledge that I profoundly laws of tonality. My own relationship to disliked the sound of twelve-tone music. Not surprisingly, my rejection took the The first part is a 17-minute inverted arch Schoenberg needs some explanation. Leon His aesthetic was to me an overripening of form of parody … not a single parody, but form: high energy at the beginning and end, Kirchner, with whom I studied at Harvard, 19th-century individualism, one in which the several extremely different ones. In my with a long, roaming Sehnsucht section in had himself been a student of Schoenberg composer was a god of sorts, to which the , the busy, hyperactive between. The pounding E minor chords at in Los Angeles during the 1940s. Kirchner listener would come as if to a sacramental style of Schoenberg’s own early work is the beginning and end of the movement are had no interest in the serial system that altar. It was with Schoenberg that the ‘agony placed in a salad spinner with Hollywood the musical counterparts of a dream image I Schoenberg had invented, but he shared a of modern music’ had been born, and it was cartoon music. In , had shortly before starting the piece. In the sense of high seriousness and an intensely no secret that the audience for the priggish, disdainful Austrian Woman dream I’d watched a gigantic supertanker critical view of the legacy of the past. during the 20th century was rapidly shrinking, describes how she spent the entire hijacking take off from the surface of San Francisco in no small part because of the aural ugliness hiding under her bed by singing in a Bay and thrust itself into the sky like a Through Kirchner I became highly sensitised of so much new work being written. Sprechstimme to the accompaniment of Saturn rocket. to what Schoenberg and his art represented. a Pierrot-like ensemble in the pit. He was a ‘master’ in the same sense that It is difficult to understand why the At the time (1984–85) I was still deeply Bach, Beethoven and Brahms were masters. Schoenbergian model became so profoundly My own Harmonielehre is parody of a involved in the study of CG Jung’s writings, That notion in itself appealed to me then influential for classical composers. different sort, in that it bears a ‘subsidiary particularly his examination of Medieval and continues to do so. But Schoenberg Composers like and György relation’ to a model (in this case a number of mythology. I was deeply affected by Jung’s also represented to me something twisted Ligeti have borne both the ethic and signal works from the turn of the century like discussion of the character of Anfortas, the and contorted. He was the first composer the aesthetic into our own time, and its Gurrelieder and Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony), king whose wounds could never be healed. to assume the role of high-priest, a creative immanence in present day university life but it does so without the intent to ridicule. As a critical archetype, Anfortas symbolised

4 Programme Notes 5 May 2019 John Adams in Profile b 1947 a condition of sickness of the soul that omposer, conductor, and creative Adams has additionally received honorary curses it with a feeling of impotence and thinker — John Adams occupies doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Northwestern depression. In this slow, moody movement a unique position in the world University, Cambridge University and the entitled ‘The Anfortas Wound’, a long, of American music. His works stand out Juilliard School. Since 2009 he has held elegiac trumpet solo floats over a delicately among contemporary classical compositions the position of Creative Chair with the shifting screen of minor triads that pass for their depth of expression, brilliance of Los Angeles Philharmonic. A provocative like spectral shapes from one family of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed instruments to the other. Two enormous of their themes. autobiography and is a climaxes rise up out of the otherwise contributor to melancholy landscape, the second one Among Adams’ works are several of the Book Review. being an obvious homage to Mahler’s last, most performed contemporary classical unfinished symphony. pieces today: Harmonielehre, , As a conductor Adams has appeared with the Chamber Symphony, Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw The final part, ‘Meister Eckhardt and Quackie’, Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Orchestra, LSO, Wiener Symphoniker, Los begins with a simple berceuse (cradlesong) and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, Angeles Philharmonic, and the of that is as airy, serene and blissful as ‘The in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, Seattle, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Toronto. • Anfortas Wound’ is earthbound, shadowy include , El Niño, The Death and bleak. The Zappa-esque title refers of Klinghoffer, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Reprinted by kind permission of to a dream I’d had shortly after the birth Tree, and the Passion oratorio The Gospel Boosey & Hawkes of our daughter, Emily, who was briefly According to the Other Mary. dubbed ‘Quackie’ during her infancy. In the dream, she rides perched on the shoulder Adams’ most recent opera, Girls of the of the Medieval mystic Meister Eckhardt, as Golden West, set during the 1850s California they hover among the heavenly bodies like Gold Rush, was premiered by the San figures painted on the high ceilings of old Francisco Opera in 2017. His new piano cathedrals. The tender berceuse gradually concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good picks up speed and mass and culminates in Tunes? was premiered in March 2019 by a tidal wave of brass and percussion over a . Interval – 20 minutes pedal point on E-flat major. • There are bars on all levels. Winner of the 1993 Grawemeyer Award for Visit the Barbican Shop to see our his Violin Concerto and the 2003 Pulitzer range of Gifts and Accessories. Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls,

Programme Notes 5 2019/20 with the London Symphony Orchestra ROOTS & ORIGINS 50 YEARS WITH THE LSO RUSSIAN ROOTS ARTIST PORTRAIT Sir Simon Rattle Gianandrea Noseda Antoine Tamestit

Season Opening Concert Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto 14 September 2019 10 November 2019 31 October 2019 with 19 April 2020 Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’Au-delà HALF SIX FIX Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony 15 September 2019 Prokofiev: Symphony No 5 3 & 28 November 2019 Berio Voci with François-Xavier Roth 13 November 2019 11 June 2020 Brahms & Rachmaninov Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony 18 & 19 September 2019 Michael Tilson Thomas, Tchaikovsky 5 December 2019 Walton Viola Concerto & Prokofiev with Alan Gilbert Berg & Beethoven’s Seventh 14 November 2019 Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony 14 June 2020 16 January 2020 30 January & 9 February 2020 BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts: Beethoven: James MacMillan: St John Passion Antoine Tamestit & Friends Christ on the Mount of Olives SMALL SCALE 5 April 2020 8 & 15 May; 5 & 26 June 2020, LSO St Luke’s 19 January & 13 February 2020 LSO Chamber Orchestra Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony 16 February 2020 Mozart Concertos 12 & 13 October 2019, Bartók: Duke Bluebeard’s Castle LSO St Luke’s 23 April 2020 Rameau, Purcell, Handel Mahler’s Fourth Symphony 15 December 2019, 26 April 2020 Milton Court Concert Hall

Grainger 4 June 2020 Produced by the LSO and Barbican. Part of the LSO’s 2019/20 Season and Barbican Presents. Explore the new season at Gershwin, Ives, Harris & Bernstein 6 June 2020 lso.co.uk/201920season Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique 1830 / note by David Cairns

1 Daydreams – Passions: Largo – instrument of undreamed of richness and to Mahler or Shostakovich, but this is the Allegro agitato e appassionato assai flexibility, opened before Berlioz a new world, most remarkable First Symphony ever 2 A Ball: Waltz – Allegro non troppo which he must at all costs enter and inhabit. written’. It was typical of Berlioz’s boldness 3 Scene in the Country: Adagio 4 March to the Scaffold: — Allegretto non troppo ‘Beethoven opened before me a new world of music, 5 Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto – Allegro – Dies Irae – Ronde du sabbat as Shakespeare had revealed a new universe of poetry.’ Berlioz on his first encounter with Beethoven ith all its innovations – including — the introduction of instruments, textures, rhythms and gestures new to symphonic music – the Symphonie It became the springboard for a leap and freedom of spirit that his first major • IN BRIEF fantastique has its roots in other music, past into unknown territory. The influence of orchestral work should comprise a mixture and present. It was influenced by the music Beethoven could only be general, not specific; of genres analogous to what the Romantic The discovery of Beethoven (pictured of Gluck and Spontini, which was for several it was a matter of inspiration, not imitation. dramatists were attempting after the above) – and the full expressive years Berlioz’s main diet and whose melodic So, though Berlioz is deeply concerned with example of Shakespeare, and that in doing possibilities of the symphony – had style he absorbed into his innermost being issues of musical architecture, he works so he should override the normal categories a profound influence on Berlioz. The when he first came to Paris in 1821, a boy of out his own salvation. Though he will learn of symphonic discourse and, in response to composer poured this, and his personal 17 who had never heard an orchestra. A few from Beethoven’s technique of thematic the demands of the musical drama, create his experience of unrequited love, into the years later, the discovery of Weber, and, still transformation, he will not use it as a model. own idiosyncratic version of Classical form bold, innovative Symphonie fantastique. more, of Beethoven at the Conservatoire He composes in melodic spans rather than in and bring the theatre into the concert hall. In the first movement, the dreamy concerts in 1828 (paralleling the impact of motifs. The work’s recurring melody, the idée protagonist’s thoughts move between Goethe and Shakespeare) had an even more fixe, is 40 bars long and its repetition two- Yet the score given at the Conservatoire dejection and imagined happiness. In profound effect upon the young musician, thirds of the way through the first movement Hall in December 1830 was, to him, a logical the second, he encounters his beloved who had, until then, been reared on French represents not a sonata reprise but a stage in consequence of the Beethovenian epiphany amidst a ball, before the third movement Classical opera. The Symphonie fantastique the theme’s evolution from monody (a solo that he had experienced two years earlier takes him to a pastoral scene, where is unthinkable without Beethoven’s line) to full orchestral statement. in the same hall. It was addressed to the he overhears a shepherd song, before a ‘Pastoral’ and Fifth, and without Weber’s Der same eager young public and performed by storm sets in. Finally, in a hallucinogenic Freischütz. Above all, the revelation of the No one had composed symphonic music or many of the same players, under the same dream, he imagines his own march to symphony as a dramatic form par excellence, used the orchestra like this before. As music conductor, François-Antoine Habeneck. It the scaffold, execution and funeral, a and of the orchestra as an expressive critic Michael Steinberg wrote, ‘no disrespect might embody autobiographical elements: demonic witches’ sabbath.

8 Programme Notes 5 May 2019 not just his much-publicised unrequited whose ‘outline, lacking the assistance of like it, presented as a simple melody by flute passion for the Shakespearean actress speech, needs to be explained in advance’. and first violins, then in progressively fuller Harriet Smithson, but his whole emotional But it is not this that holds the symphony textures. Agitated climax, precipitated by and spiritual existence up until then. As together and makes it a timeless record the idée fixe, which later takes on a more he wrote at the front of the manuscript, of the ardours and torments of the young tranquil air (without its characteristic sighing quoting a poem by Victor Hugo, ‘All I have imagination: the music does that. fourth). Dusk, distant thunder. The first suffered, all I have attempted … The loves, shepherd now pipes alone. Drums and solo the labours, the bereavements of my youth THE FIVE MOVEMENTS horn prepare for: … my heart’s book inscribed on every page’. But, for him, all this was not essentially Daydreams – Passions March to the Scaffold different from what Beethoven had done in Slow introduction; sadness and imagined The artist imagines he has killed the beloved his Fifth and Sixth symphonies. happiness, creating an image of the ideal and is being marched through the streets BERLIOZ SOCIETY woman, represented (Allegro) by the idée fixe: to his execution. The dreams of the first Carrying on from Beethoven, he could use a long, asymmetrically phrased melodic span, three movements are now intensified into Join the Berlioz Society for more about intense personal experience, and movement first heard virtually unaccompanied, then nightmare and the full orchestral forces music’s great original. The Society titles, to bring music’s inherent expressivity gradually integrated into the full orchestra. deployed: massive brass and percussion, promotes the music, writings and life still further into the open and at the same The melody, in its alternate exaltation and prominent and grotesque bassoons. The of the composer, with activities including time extend its frame of reference and blur dejection, forms the main argument. At the idée fixereappears forlornly on solo clarinet, an annual Study Weekend in London still more the distinction between so-called end, like a storm that has blown itself out, it but is cut off by the guillotine stroke of the in November, regular meetings, and ‘pure music’ and music associated with comes to rest on a series of solemn chords. whole orchestra. the publication three times a year of a an identifiable human situation. All sorts Bulletin including essays, articles and of extra-musical ideas could go into the A Ball Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath reviews, all for an annual membership composition, yet music remained sovereign. The beloved is present. Waltz, at first Strange mewings, muffled explosions, fee of £30. David Cairns CBE, renowned It could describe the course of one man’s dream-like, then glittering, finally garish. distant cries. The executed lover witnesses author and expert on the composer, is hopeless passion for a distant beloved and Middle section with the idée fixeassimilated his own funeral. The beloved melody, now the Society’s Chairman. still be, as Beethoven said of the ‘Pastoral’, to the rhythm of the dance. a lewd distortion of itself, joins the revels. ‘expression of feeling rather than painting’. Dies irae, parody of the church’s ritual of the For further information contact the Scene in the Country dead. Witches’ Round Dance. The climax, Society’s Membership Secretary Peter The literary programme offered to the A shepherd pipes a melancholy song, after a long crescendo, combines round Payne at [email protected] or visit Conservatoire audience gave the context of answered from afar by another. Pastoral dance and Dies irae in a tour de force of theberliozsociety.org.uk the work; it introduced the ‘instrumental scene: a long, serene melody, with rhythmic and orchestral virtuosity. • drama’ (to quote Berlioz’s prefatory note) similarities of outline to the idée fixeand,

Programme Notes 9 Hector Berlioz in Profile 1803–69 / profile by David Cairns

ector Berlioz was born in south- Messe des Morts (1837), the Shakespearean also the cause of his final disillusionment east France in 1803, the son of a dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet (1839), and the reason, together with the onset doctor. At the age of 17 he was sent the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840) of ill-health, why he wrote nothing of to Paris to study medicine, but had already and Les nuits d’été (c 1841). Some were consequence in the remaining six years of conceived the ambition to be a musician well-received; but he soon discovered that his life. The work was cut in two, and only and soon became a pupil of the composer he could not rely on his music to earn him a part performed in 1863, in a theatre too small Jean-François Le Sueur. living. He became a prolific and influential and poorly equipped. Berlioz died in 1869. • critic – a heavy burden for a composer but Within two years he had composed the one that he could not throw off. Messe solennelle, successfully performed • BERLIOZ ON LSO LIVE in 1825. In 1826 he entered the Paris In the 1840s he took his music abroad and Conservatoire, winning the Prix de Rome established a reputation as one of the four years later. Gluck and Spontini were leading composers and conductors of the important influences on the formation of day. He was celebrated in Germany (where his musical style, but it was his discovery of Liszt championed him), in Russia (where Beethoven at the Conservatoire concerts, receipts from his concerts paid off the debt inaugurated in 1828, that was the decisive from the Parisian failure of The Damnation event in his apprenticeship, turning his art of Faust), in Vienna, Prague, Budapest and in a new direction: the dramatic concert London. These years of travel produced less work, incarnating a ‘poetic idea’ that is music. In 1849 he composed the , ‘everywhere present’, but subservient to which had to wait six years to be performed. musical logic. But the unexpected success of L’enfance du Christ in Paris in 1854 encouraged him His first large-scale orchestral work, the to embark on a project long resisted: the autobiographical Symphonie fantastique, composition of an epic opera on The Aeneid followed in 1830. After a year in Italy he which would assuage a lifelong passion and Berlioz The Damnation of Faust returned to Paris and began what he later pay homage to two great idols, Virgil and called his ‘Thirty Years War against the Shakespeare. Sir Simon Rattle conductor routineers, the professors and the deaf’. The 1830s and early 1840s saw a series Although Béatrice et Bénédict (1860–62) Available to purchase in the Barbican Shop, of major works, including Harold in Italy came later, the opera The Trojans (1856–58) at lsolive.co.uk, on iTunes and Amazon, (1834), Benvenuto Cellini (1836), the Grande was the culmination of his career. It was or to stream on Spotify and Apple Music

10 Composer Profile 5 May 2019 Sir Simon Rattle conductor

ir Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool Music education is of supreme importance et Mélisande, Strauss’ Salome and Bizet’s and studied at the Royal Academy to Sir Simon. His partnership with the Berlin Carmen, a concert performance of Mozart’s of Music in London. From 1980 to Philharmonic broke new ground with the Idomeneo and many concert programmes. 1998, he was Principal Conductor and Artistic education programme Zukunft@Bphil, Adviser of the City of Birmingham Symphony earning him the Comenius Prize, the Schiller Sir Simon has long-standing relationships Orchestra and was appointed Music Director Special Prize from the city of Mannheim, with the leading orchestras in London, in 1990. He moved to Berlin in 2002 and held the Golden Camera and the Urania Medal. Europe and the US, initially working closely the positions of Artistic Director and Chief He and the Berlin Philharmonic were with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic until appointed International UNICEF Boston Symphony Orchestra, and more he stepped down in 2018. Sir Simon became Ambassadors in 2004 – the first time this recently with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music Director of the London Symphony honour had been conferred on an artistic He regularly conducts the Vienna Orchestra in September 2017. ensemble. Sir Simon has also been awarded Philharmonic, with whom he has recorded several prestigious personal honours, which the complete Beethoven symphonies and Sir Simon has made over 70 recordings for include a knighthood in 1994, becoming piano concertos with , and is EMI (now Warner Classics) and has received a member of the Order of Merit from Her also a Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the numerous prestigious international awards Majesty the Queen in 2014, and being given Age of Enlightenment and Founding Patron for his recordings on various labels. Releases the Freedom of the City of London in 2018. of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. on EMI include Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (which received the 2009 Grammy In 2013 Sir Simon began a residency at the During the 2018/19 season Sir Simon Award for Best Choral Performance); Berlioz’s Baden-Baden Easter Festival, embarks upon tours to Japan, South Korea, Symphonie fantastique; Ravel’s L’enfant et Mozart’s and a series of Latin America and Europe with the London les sortilèges; Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker – concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic. Symphony Orchestra. He conducts the Suite; Mahler’s Symphony No 2; and Subsequent seasons have included Czech Philharmonic Orchestra for the first Stravinsky’s . From performances of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, time in Mahler’s and 2014 Sir Simon recorded the Beethoven, Peter Sellars’ ritualisation of Bach’s St John returns to the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Schumann and Sibelius symphony cycles Passion, Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, Berlioz’s the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on the Berlin Philharmonic’s in-house label, The Damnation of Faust, Wagner’s Tristan and the Berlin Philharmonic. In March Berliner Philharmoniker. His most recent and Isolde and, most recently, in 2019 he conducted Peter Sellars’ revival of recordings include Debussy’s Pelléas et 2018. For the Salzburg Easter Festival, Bach’s St John Passion with both the Berlin Mélisande, Turnage’s Remembering, and Rattle has conducted staged productions of Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the Age Ravel, Dutilleux and Delage on Blu-Ray and Beethoven’s Fidelio, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, of Enlightenment. • DVD with the LSO on LSO Live. Britten’s Peter Grimes, Debussy’s Pelléas

Artist Biographies 11 London Symphony Orchestra on stage tonight

Leader Second Violins Flutes Horns Timpani LSO String Experience Scheme Roman Simovic Julian Gil Rodriguez Rebecca Gilliver Gareth Davies Timothy Jones Nigel Thomas Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Thomas Norris Alastair Blayden Sarah Bennett Diego Incertis Scheme has enabled young string players First Violins Miya Väisänen Jennifer Brown Luke O’Toole Angela Barnes Percussion from the London music conservatoires at Carmine Lauri Matthew Gardner Noel Bradshaw Estefanía Beceiro Neil Percy the start of their professional careers to gain Emily Nebel Alix Lagasse Daniel Gardner Piccolo Vazquez David Jackson work experience by playing in rehearsals Clare Duckworth Belinda McFarlane Hilary Jones Patricia Moynihan Jonathan Lipton Sam Walton and concerts with the LSO. The musicians Ginette Decuyper Iwona Muszynska Amanda Truelove Tom Edwards are treated as professional ‘extra’ players Laura Dixon Csilla Pogany Laure Le Dantec Oboes Trumpets Paul Stoneman (additional to LSO members) and receive fees Gerald Gregory Siobhan Doyle Peteris Sokolovskis Juliana Koch David Elton for their work in line with LSO section players. Maxine Kwok-Adams Hazel Mulligan Simon Thompson Olivier Stankiewicz Jason Evans Harps William Melvin Greta Mutlu Rosie Jenkins Robin Totterdell Bryn Lewis The Scheme is supported by Claire Parfitt Philip Nolte Double Basses Niall Keatley Ruth Holden The Polonsky Foundation Laurent Quenelle Alain Petitclerc Enno Senft Cor Anglais Gerald Ruddock Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Harriet Rayfield Erzsebet Racz Colin Paris Christine Pendrill Piano Derek Hill Foundation Sylvain Vasseur Patrick Laurence Trombones Elizabeth Burley Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust Rhys Watkins Violas Matthew Gibson Clarinets Peter Moore Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation Julian Azkoul Edward Vanderspar Thomas Goodman Chris Richards James Maynard Celeste Rod Stafford Morane Cohen- Malcolm Johnston Joe Melvin Chi-Yu Mo Philip Moore Lamberger German Clavijo José Moreira Bass Trombone Performing tonight are: Stephen Doman Jani Pensola Bass Clarinet Paul Milner Emily Turkanik (First Violin), Julie Park Lander Echevarria Katy Ayling (Viola) and Kai Kim (Double Bass) Carol Ella Anthony Pike Tubas Robert Turner Ben Thomson Editor Heather Wallington Bassoons Patrick Harrild Fiona Dinsdale | [email protected] Michelle Bruil Daniel Jemison Editorial Photography Stephanie Edmundson Joost Bosdijk Ranald Mackechnie, Oliver Helbig, Cynthia Perrin Dominic Tyler Margaretta Mitchell Alistair Scahill Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Contra Bassoon Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937 Dominic Morgan Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.

12 The Orchestra 5 May 2019