Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online

Thursday Series Beethoven’s Fifth Thursday 30 January 2020 7.30pm Sponsored by Investec

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) The Love for Three Oranges: Suite, Op.33a

The Ridicules The Magician Tchelio and Fata Morgana Play Cards (Infernal Scene) March Scherzo The Prince and the Princess Flight

Though its popularity peaked during the course of the 17th century, the traditional Neapolitan theatre style of commedia dell’arte enjoyed a minor comeback of sorts in the early decades of the 20th. Presenting a colourful aesthetic and light-hearted distortions of timeless character stereotypes, it offered a zany antidote to the weighty realism dominating theatres. Among its advocates was Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who had taken particular interest in a 1761 play by Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi in which a prince is roused from his tragic-poetry- induced depression by the inelegance of an accident-prone witch, Fata Morgana. The slighted sorceress responds by bestowing upon the prince an infatuation with three oranges (obviously). Fortunately, these fruits also contain princesses, and having tracked them down, the prince promptly falls in love with the third that emerges (the first two die of thirst). Despite the devious efforts of Fata Morgana, the pair are eventually able to wed, allowing the whole absurdity to conclude in celebration.

Confident that his surreal and satirical adaptation of the play would translate for the operatic stage, Meyerhold had thrust a copy into the hands of the young Sergei Prokofiev in 1918 as he embarked upon a trip to the USA. Finding an enthusiastic commissioner in Cleofonte Campanini – artistic director at the Chicago Opera – he completed the work during the course of 1919. After several delays, Prokofiev eventually unveiled the work to a baffled bunch of critics – and, by some accounts, a largely appreciative public – on 30 December 1921. As this six- part selection of lusciously orchestrated episodes from the score shows, the composer meets the sheer lunacy of the plot head on, with the ranting and raving of the opera’s prologue giving way to malevolent hijinks, a grandiloquent march, breathless chivalry, idyllic romance, and a final death-defying whirlwind.

KENNETH HESKETH (b.1968) Uncoiling the River for piano and orchestra Joint Liverpool Philharmonic commission with BBC National Orchestra of Wales English premiere

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” (Jorge Luis Borges, ‘A New Refutation of Time’)

Kenneth Hesketh quotes these words in the score of Uncoiling the River. Profound and paradoxical, they offer an important clue to the metaphysical ideas that permeate this extraordinary piece – and, indeed, the latent cycle of works of which it is a part, including the award-winning In Ictu Oculi.

Of course music is an art of time, founded on growth and decay; movement and stasis; cycles, repetition and change. For Hesketh, such phenomena inspire larger questions about how we perceive and experience time, part of an ongoing fascination with philosophies of existence spanning entropy and mutation; multiplicities and labyrinths; transience; Memento Mori; and Cartesian theories of humans as unreliable machines. These he explores in purely musical, abstract terms from large-scale structure to minute details of harmony, texture and line.

Uncoiling the River comprises a series of labyrinths within labyrinths in which a rapid, toccata-like piano figure forms the spine of a pattern that quickly proliferates, coiling and uncoiling, shifting and mutating through piano and orchestra in ceaseless motion. As listeners, we become a part of this process and the liminal space it generates. Time itself becomes illusory, suspended yet implacable as wave after wave of glittering motifs unfold.

Simultaneously they expand and contract, appear to retrace steps then find pathways forward into tremendous, surging climaxes, only to drop into the centre of another labyrinth. Explosive outbursts punctuate layers of tension-rich dialectic, sometimes momentarily engulfing the piano only for it to re- emerge, rippling through and out.

The piece was composed for tonight’s virtuoso soloist, Clare Hammond, who inspired its sole programmatic element in celebration of the birth of her second child, Emme. Towards the close, she plays a set of desk bells of specific pitches, laid out in the shape of a Kolam. This is a form of impermanent drawing using media such as rice, flour or chalk, practised in many Asian countries and typically handed down from mother to daughter. In effect, the passage is a public-private initiation rite comprising aural patterns linked in spirit and form to the labyrinthine whole.

Uncoiling the River (2018) was co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, with support from the RVW Trust.

Between 2007 and 2009 Kenneth Hesketh was Composer in the House (a Royal Philharmonic Society / PRS Foundation scheme) with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He has received numerous national and international commissions and has worked with leading ensembles and orchestras in the USA, Far East and Europe. His work has been recorded by BIS, NMC, London Sinfonietta, Psappha and Prima Facie labels. He is a professor of composition at the Royal College of Music. Born in Liverpool, he was a chorister at Liverpool Cathedral. kennethhesketh.co.uk

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67

Allegro con brio / Fast, with vigour Andante con moto / At a walking pace, with movement Allegro – / Fast – Allegro – presto / Fast – very fast

What can you say about the most famous symphony ever written? From the day of its first performance, in Vienna on 22 December 1808, everyone has had an opinion on Beethoven’s Fifth. It’s acquired its own myth. Napoleonic soldiers leapt involuntarily from their seats and saluted at the beginning of its finale. Hector Berlioz witnessed fellow audience-members fainting and gasping for breath at its Paris premiere. Its first four notes became the Morse code symbol for ‘V’ – and the musical symbol of Victory in the BBC’s wartime broadcasts to occupied Europe. “Thus Fate knocks at the door”, Beethoven is supposed to have said of them. In 1990, Billy Joel put it slightly differently: “Da Da Da Daaa – it’s Fate knocking at the door. That’s one of the biggest hits in history. There’s no video to it, he didn’t need one!”

And everyone knows those first four notes. There’d never been a symphonic opening like them, or anything in music to match the sheer elemental power of what follows. Everything in Beethoven’s Fifth can be explained in terms of traditional musical forms and processes. But despite its stupendous formal strength, that alone is not what makes this symphony such a phenomenon. In music, different key signatures create distinct emotions – put simply, ‘minor’ is negative, ‘major’ is positive. This symphony is a journey from C minor to C major. Other composers had done this, including Beethoven’s own teacher Haydn. But in the civilised 18th century, the change from minor to major was simply a matter of courtesy – a way of ending a serious discussion with a friendly smile. No-one in their right mind would describe Beethoven’s Fifth like this. Beethoven’s C minor first movement isn’t just serious, it’s a human tragedy portrayed in music of torrential force. If you doubt that this is an emotional drama rather than just an exciting series of notes, listen out for the tiny, heartbroken oboe solo Beethoven slips into one of the music’s few moments of hesitation.

The lilting Andante seems to offer a gentle respite, but ringing trumpets keep sounding a very different note. The struggle continues; the third movement, traditionally the lightest in a classical symphony, instead surges from an eerie gloom, and trumpets ring out again, now threatening. Finally the orchestra sinks to a hush, drums rumble ominously and time seems suspended until with a sudden, glorious crescendo, C minor changes to C major to launch the finale in a great blaze of brass. In case there’s any doubt what he meant, for the first time in any symphony (or at least in any symphony that is still performed), Beethoven introduces the trombones – instruments then used only in sacred or dramatic music. Piccolo and contrabassoon also join in – the instruments of the wind-bands of Revolutionary France. Beethoven wasn’t just battling his own deafness; the whole of Europe was engulfed in war and revolutionary struggle. Let the music sweep you to its supremely stirring finish, and you’ll agree – this isn’t just a classical key-change, it’s a triumph of the human spirit.