Wednesday 19 September 2018

LSO SEASON CONCERT A WARM WELCOME TO SIBELIUS SYMPHONY NO 5 TONIGHT’S GROUPS

Janáček Sinfonietta Felsted School Szymanowski Violin Concerto No 1 St Albans School Interval Sibelius Symphony No 5

Sir Simon Rattle conductor Janine Jansen violin SIBELIUS London Symphony Orchestra Sibelius Symphony No 5 streamed live on youtube.com/lso and medici.tv

5 Concert ends approx 9.35pm

52 Leoš Janáček Sinfonietta 1926 / note by Jan Smaczny

1 Fanfares: Allegretto fortunes changed completely, engendering his spiritual beauty and joy, his courage, on a telegraphic trumpet figure leads to 2 The Castle, Brno: Andante one of the most extraordinary personal strength and determination to fight for the finale. Starting quietly, as a memory of 3 The Queen’s Monastery, Brno: renaissances in the history of music. victory’. Janáček gave a further hint of the the Town Hall in Brno, this final movement Moderato Self-doubt and depression all but vanished pictorial content of the Sinfonietta with swells toward a triumphant return to the 4 The Street Leading to the Castle: and Janáček produced a succession of titles for each movement, written on his opening fanfares which in turn create the Allegretto masterpieces for the stage and concert hall. programme at the premiere, referring to Sinfonietta’s blazing conclusion. • 5 The Town Hall, Brno: Allegro landmarks in Brno: Fanfares; The Castle; Coincidental with personal artistic success The Queen’s Monastery; The Street; The • KAMILA STÖSSLOVÁ ew composers communicated an was his new-found love for a much younger Town Hall. He added that the whole work drew energetic enthusiasm for life as woman, Kamila Stösslová •, and also the its inspiration from a vision of the growing successfully as Janáček. It is strange rising fortunes for Janáček’s homeland. For greatness of the city of Brno in the days after to reflect, however, that had it not been for nearly 300 years Bohemia and Moravia had the independence of Czechoslovakia. a happy concatenation of circumstances been a political backwater of the Hapsburg the world might have been denied such Empire. World War I made it clear that The immediate musical stimulus for the masterpieces as The Cunning Little Vixen, Austrian power was at an end and, even tremendous fanfares which open and Kátya Kabanová, the Glagolitic Mass, his before 1918, Janáček was turning his hand conclude the Sinfonietta was Janáček’s two string quartets and, perhaps best known to writing the music of a ‘new era’ for recollection of a military band performance and most popular of all, the Sinfonietta. his nation. The first fruit of his growing in a park in the south Bohemian town of enthusiasm was the second part of the Písek. The succeeding movements outline, The early 1910s had seen Janáček increasingly opera, The Excursions of Mr Brouček; set if rather loosely, the shape of a sinfonia gloomy about the prospects for his music; in late medieval Prague, it celebrated the in four movements. But nothing from this Janáček met Kamila Stösslova in 1917, and although he was an important and influential triumphs of the passionately nationalist period in Janáček’s life is conventional, and fell in love with her despite being nearly figure in the Moravian capital Brno, he had Czech religious warriors, the Hussites. the climax of the second movement is an 40 years her senior. His passionate feelings failed to make significant impact in Prague. exhilarating and breezy Maestoso which seemed to encourage a flourishing of Viewed by many in the musical establishment The Sinfonietta started life in 1926 as brass introduces a new theme, albeit one with a musical creativity, and they entered into a in Prague as incomprehensible and hopelessly and percussion fanfares for a gymnastics distant relationship to the fanfares of the correspondence reaching over 700 letters, provincial, performances of Janáček’s music festival, but these soon grew into the introduction. The third movement begins as which inspired Janáček to write his String in the Czech capital were few and far between, work as it exists today. Dedicated to the a reflective idyll, but after some threatening Quartet No 2, ‘Intimate Letters’. and his most important work to date, the Czechoslovak Armed Forces – Janáček often gestures from the trombones the temperature opera Jenůfa, was virtually ignored. However, referred to it as a ‘Military Sinfonietta’ – it rises toward a wild Prestissimo before with the successful premiere of Jenůfa was written to express, in the composer’s the return to the calm of the opening. Interval – 20 minutes in Prague’s National Theatre in 1916 his own words, ‘contemporary free man, A chattering and insistent scherzo based

48 Programme Notes 18 September 2018 Leoš Janáček Sinfonietta 1926 Karol Szymanowski in profile 1882–1937

FULL PROGRAMME NOTES & COMPOSER PROFILE JANÁČEK SINFONIETTA – IN BRIEF • On Pages 46 & 47 Composed in 1926, when the composer 1 Fanfares: Allegretto was 72. He died two years later in 1928. 2 The Castle, Brno: Andante 3 The Queen’s Monastery, Brno: Commissioned for a gymnastics Moderato festival. The composer referred to it 4 The Street Leading to the Castle: as a ‘Military Sinfonietta’, intended Allegretto to express ‘contemporary free man, 5 The Town Hall, Brno: Allegro his spiritual beauty and joy, his courage, strength and determination to fight for victory’. Janáček’s love of musical tradition is evident in the dancing strings and celebratory brass. arol Szymanowski was born in Szymanowski’s output falls loosely into three Tymoszówka (modern-day Ukraine) periods. Before World War I he followed the The five movements refer to landmarks in the former kingdom of Poland. style of Strauss and Wagner, with big, densely in Brno, where the composer grew up, He was first taught music by his father, who chromatic symphonies. By 1914 he was moving and each is scored for a different – often instilled in the young composer an acute towards an exotic aesthetic similar to that unusual – combination of instruments, and ardent sense of patriotic duty which explored by Debussy and Scriabin, which came including twelve trumpets in the first would influence his entire life and career. of his growing fascination with Arabic cultures. and fifth movements. At 19 he began composition and piano When Poland gained its independence in lessons in Warsaw but struggled to find 1918, this rekindled Szymanowski’s patriotic Inspired by Janáček Haruki Murakami’s a suitable outlet in a city that was, by all sentiments and suddenly his works were novel 1Q84 (2009–10) features the accounts, far from a thriving cultural capital. infused with elements of traditional Polish Sinfonietta as a recurring motif. In an Until 1911 Szymanowski published his own folklore – the Stabat Mater, Symphony No 4 interview the writer recalled, ‘I heard works under the auspices of the Young and Violin Concerto No 2 are prime examples. that music in a concert hall … There Polish Composers’ Publishing Company, a The enduring characteristic of his works is were 15 trumpeters behind the orchestra. group founded by him and some friends in undoubtedly their intense expressionism, Strange. Very strange … And that 1905. He supported Polish music throughout tempered by a deep-seated spirituality. • weirdness fits very well in this book.’ his life and served as Director of the Warsaw Conservatoire from 1927 to 29. Composer Profile by Fabienne Morris

Programme Notes & Composer Profile 53 Karol Szymanowski Violin Concerto No 1 Op 35 1916 / note by Adrian Thomas

violin cultures. Coupled with his new-found love of companionship, now mischievous and fast Janine Jansen SZYMANOWSKI VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 2 contemporary French music, this experience moving, now introverted, now impassioned. efore his death, Polish composer sustained him through the dark months Thursday 25 October 2018 7.30–9.35pm Karol Szymanowski had of the war and he produced over a dozen A substantial reflective section occurs Barbican Hall commented bitterly how he felt luminous compositions in rapid succession. after the first proper orchestral tutti and isolated from and neglected by Polish features not only a part-stepwise, part-triadic Mussorgsky Night on the Bare Mountain culture, although he rightly predicted that One of these was his First Violin Concerto melodic figure, which subsequently informs Szymanowski Violin Concerto No 2 he would have a magnificent funeral. He (1916). This is no ordinary concerto. It is cast the Concerto’s major tuttis, but also an Interval died of tuberculosis in Lausanne on the in a single span, lasting some 25 minutes. accompanied improvisation for the soloist. Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5 night of 28/29 March 1937 and was accorded Rather than follow any familiar structural Here, as elsewhere, the interplay between two funerals, one in Warsaw and one in pattern, it weaves a fantasy-like web of solo violin and solo orchestral instruments is Philippe Jordan conductor Kraków, where he was buried in the Crypt of associated themes in a way which defies intimate and recalls his chamber music of the Nikolaj Znaider violin the Distinguished in St Stanisław’s Church conventional analysis. A strong influence time, such as ‘The Fountain of Arethusa’ from London Symphony Orchestra alongside other Polish luminaries. may well have been a poem by his near- Myths for violin and piano. The moments contemporary Tadeusz Miciński, whose of deepest intimacy come after the central Twenty years before that, he had been poetry he had first set a decade earlier. climax, in a second reflective section led off isolated in a quite different way. He and The poem in question is ‘May Night’, a by a repeated-note figure. This culminates in his family had been cut off in their home fantastical evocation of faeries, ephemerae a sweet lullaby motif in solo violin harmonics in Ukraine by the events of World War I and nereids, with ‘Pan playing his pipes in which also concludes the work. and subsequently the Russian Revolution. the oak wood’. It opens: ‘Donkeys in crowns Yet, remarkably, Szymanowski produced settle on the grass – Fireflies kiss the wild The cadenza was written by Szymanowski’s some of his most enduring masterpieces rose – While death flickers over the pond – friend, the Polish violinist Paweł Kochański, during 1914–18. His early works, particularly And plays a wanton song’. to whom the Concerto is dedicated. those for orchestra such as the Concert Kochański advised him on the violin writing Overture and First and Second Symphonies, Szymanowski’s newly developed orchestral both in this work and in the Second Concerto had drawn on current Austro-German skill is evident from the outset, the darting (1932–33). After the premiere, which did Interval – 20 minutes soundworlds, but in the years immediately instruments providing a wonderful backdrop not take place until 1922, Szymanowski There are bars on all levels of the preceding the Great War he had also for the soaring lyricism of the solo violin. wrote to Kochański: ‘It is my greatest concert hall. Ice cream can be bought travelled to the Mediterranean (Italy and Compared with his previous orchestral triumph’. It is a testament to Szymanowski’s at the stands on Stalls and Circle level. North Africa). There he had soaked up works, the orchestral palette is delicate, the creative imagination that a work of such Visit the Barbican Shop on Level -1 to not only its exotic atmosphere but also musical ideas fleet of foot. This is a concerto enchantment could have emerged at a time see our range of Gifts and Accessories. the many cross-currents of its ancient not of conflict but of almost conspiratorial of such darkness. •

54 Programme Notes 19 September 2018 Janine Jansen violin Violinists in 2018/19

Thursday 14 & 21 March 2019 7.30pm Barbican Hall

iolinist Janine Jansen works Orchestra and Simon Rattle in September, Janine has won numerous prizes, including ISABELLE FAUST regularly with the world’s and a European recital tour with pianist four Edison Klassiek Awards, the Preis (pictured above) most eminent orchestras and Alexander Gavrylyuk. The concert series der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, NDR conductors. This season she is Artist-in- Münchenmusik and the Bodenseefestival Musikpreis, the Concertgebouw Prize, the Dvořák Violin Concerto Residence with Tonhalle Orchester Zurich have both programmed special series VSCD Klassieke Muziekprijs, the Royal and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, featuring Janine Jansen in 2018/19, with Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award Bernard Haitink conductor and Featured Artist at the Mozartwoche events ranging from solo recitals to concertos. and the Bremen MusikFest Award. Janine Salzburg where she will perform with the studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philipp Vienna Philharmonic under Bernhard Haitink. Janine records exclusively for Decca Hirshhorn and Boris Belkin. Thursday 30 May 2019 7.30pm Classics, and she has been extremely Barbican Hall Orchestral highlights this season include successful in the digital music charts since Janine Jansen plays the 1707 Stradivarius engagements with the Royal Concertgebouw her release of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in ‘Rivaz – Baron Gutmann’ violin kindly on JULIA FISCHER Orchestra (Gergiev), Bavarian Radio Symphony 2003. Her discography includes Bartók’s loan from Dextra Musica. • Orchestra (Fischer), Orchestre de Paris Violin Concerto No 1 with the LSO and Beethoven Violin Concerto (Harding), and Leipzig Gewandhaus (Bychkov). Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the Orchestra A regular soloist with the LSO, she embarks dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Michael Tilson Thomas conductor on a tour of Japan and South Korea with the both conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano.

Artist Biography 55 Jean Sibelius Symphony No 5 in E-flat major Op 82 1914–19 / note by Stephen Johnson

1 Tempo molto moderato – that clearly evokes ‘life’s Angst’ in grinding to determine what kind of picture it was’. But then Sibelius was struck by a Allegro moderato (ma poco a poco dissonances and abrasive orchestration. To those who admire the organic continuity magnificent idea – why not make the stretto) – Presto – Più Presto This isn’t the only passage in the Fifth of Sibelius’ symphonies this may come as a scherzo emerge from the Tempo molto 2 Andante mosso, quasi allegretto Symphony where shadows fall across the surprise. A symphony like the Fifth seems moderato, as though it were a continuation 3 Allegro molto music: the long plaintive bassoon solo, to grow inexorably from its musical seed of the first movement rather than a separate (a distinctive motif that appears to set the entity? So another elemental crescendo — process in motion) to the final triumphant begins; the original horn motif (the ‘seed’) ‘Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! flowering; and yet here is Sibelius telling returns brilliantly on trumpets, then – us that he only discovers that ideal organic almost imperceptibly at first – the music Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into logic by moving the parts around. However, starts to accelerate. By the time we reach the solar haze like a gleaming solar ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type if you compare the familiar final version of the final Più Presto, the energy and pace are as that of cranes. The swan-call closer to the trumpet … Nature mysticism and the Fifth Symphony with its original 1915 hair-raising. And yet the whole process is version (now available in a fine commercial seamless – like a speeded-up film of a plant life’s Angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: Legato in the trumpets!’ recording) you can hear that this is exactly growing from seed to full flower. It’s hard to — what he did. The way a piece of music believe that this could have been achieved appears to ‘think’ should not be confused by the moving around of musical ‘tiles’. ew composers have responded so heard through weird whispering string with the way its composer himself thought vividly to the sounds of nature as figurations in the first movement is another as he wrote it down. The two processes On the surface, the Andante mosso, quasi Jean Sibelius. Birdcalls (particularly unsettling inspiration. Certainly it isn’t all can be strikingly different. allegretto is more relaxed. Broadly speaking those of swans and cranes), the buzzing of solar glory. But that only makes the final it is a set of variations on the folk-like theme insects, the sounds of wind and water all triumphant emergence of what Sibelius The Fifth Symphony begins with a splendid heard at the beginning (pizzicato strings and fascinated him; at times he seems to have persisted in calling his ‘Swan Hymn’ all the example of a Sibelian musical ‘seed’: a motif flutes). But there are tensions below that heard something mystical in them. The more convincing: the symphony has had to led by horns rises then falls expectantly. surface, momentarily emerging in troubled sight and sound of swans inspired the most struggle to achieve it. Two huge crescendos grow organically from string tremolandos or in the menacing famous theme in Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, this, each one culminating in a thrilling brass writing towards the end. There are as he recorded in his diaries, not long after In another diary entry from around this time two-note trumpet call. Then shadows begin also subtle hints of themes to come in the he began sketching the symphony. Sibelius tries to understand the composing to fall, and we hear the plaintive bassoon finale – again added in the later revised process as he experiences it: ‘Arrangement solo and eerily rustling strings mentioned version of the symphony. Tension is In fact the finale theme doesn’t appear of the themes. This important task, which above. In the symphony’s first version (1915) released as action in the final movement, on the trumpets until near the end of the fascinates me in a mysterious way. It’s as if the first movement came to a strangely which begins as a fleet-footed airborne symphony, where it is marked nobile (noble). God the Father had thrown down the tiles of premature ending not long after this, to dance for high strings and continues into It inaugurates the long final crescendo a mosaic from heaven’s floor and asked me be followed by a faster scherzo. the ‘Swan Hymn’ (swaying horn figures

56 Programme Notes 19 September 2018 Jean Sibelius in Profile 1865–1957 and a chant-like theme for high woodwind). The Finns swiftly adopted Sibelius and SIBELIUS After a short development and a hushed ON LSO LIVE his works as symbols of national pride, return of both themes, the tempo broadens particularly following the premiere of the and the mood darkens. But then the overtly patriotic Finlandia in 1900, composed Swan Hymn returns, in a slower tempo, on a few months after Finland’s legislative trumpets, initiating a long, slow crescendo. rights had been taken away by Russia. For a moment, ‘life’s angst’ seems to prevail; ‘Well, we shall see now what the new but it’s only for a moment. Finally we hear a century brings with it for Finland and us series of sledgehammer chords punctuated Finns,’ Sibelius wrote on New Year’s Day by long silences – the music seems to hold 1900. The public in Finland recognised the its breath, then a brusque two-note cadence idealistic young composer as a champion brings the symphony to an abrupt close. • of national freedom, while his tuneful Finlandia was taken into the repertoire of orchestras around the world. In 1914 Sibelius visited America, composing a bold new work, s a young boy, Sibelius made The Oceanides, for the celebrated Norfolk Box Set rapid progress as a violinist and Music Festival in Connecticut. Symphonies Nos 1 to 7 composer. In 1886 he abandoned Kullervo law studies at Helsinki University, enrolling Although Sibelius lived to the age of 91, The Oceanides at the Helsinki Conservatory and later taking he effectively abandoned composition Pohjola’s Daughter lessons in Berlin and Vienna. The young almost 30 years earlier. Heavy drinking, composer drew inspiration from the Finnish illness, relentless self-criticism and financial Sir Colin Davis conductor ancient epic, the Kalevala, a rich source of problems were among the conditions that Finnish cultural identity. These sagas of the influenced his early retirement. He was, ‘There is so much about these remote Karelia region greatly appealed to however, honoured as a great Finnish hero performances that is ear-opening – Sibelius, especially those concerned with long after he ceased composing, while his or just plain magnificent.’ the dashing youth Lemminkäinen and the principal works became established as an BBC Music Magazine bleak landscape of Tuonela, the kingdom of essential part of the orchestral repertoire. • death – providing the literary background lsolive.co.uk for his early tone-poems, beginning with the Composer Profile by Andrew Stewart mighty choral symphony Kullervo in 1892.

Programme Notes & Composer Profile 57 London Symphony Orchestra on stage 19 September

Leader Second Violins Cellos Flutes Contra Bassoon Trombones LSO String Experience Scheme Giovanni Guzzo David Alberman Rebecca Gilliver Gareth Davies Dominic Morgan Peter Moore Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Thomas Norris Alastair Blayden Joshua Batty James Maynard Scheme has enabled young string players First Violins Miya Väisänen Jennifer Brown Amy-Jayne Milton Horns Philip White from the London music conservatoires at Michelle Ross David Ballesteros Noel Bradshaw Phillip Eastop the start of their professional careers to gain Lennox Mackenzie Matthew Gardner Eve-Marie Caravassilis Piccolos Angela Barnes Bass Trombones work experience by playing in rehearsals Clare Duckworth Julian Gil Rodriguez Daniel Gardner Patricia Moynihan Alexander Edmundson Paul Milner and concerts with the LSO. The musicians Ginette Decuyper Naoko Keatley Hilary Jones Julian Sperry Jonathan Lipton Barry Clements are treated as professional ‘extra’ players Gerald Gregory Iwona Muszynska Amanda Truelove Alex Wide (additional to LSO members) and receive fees Maxine Kwok-Adams Paul Robson Peteris Sokolovskis Oboes Tuba for their work in line with LSO section players. William Melvin Dmitry Khakhamov Deborah Tolksdorf Juliana Koch Trumpets Peter Smith Claire Parfitt Hazel Mulligan Olivier Stankiewicz Philip Cobb The Scheme is supported by: Laurent Quénelle Csilla Pogany Double Basses Rosie Jenkins David Elton Timpani The Polonsky Foundation Colin Renwick Erzsebet Racz Colin Paris Richard Blake Nigel Thomas Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Sylvain Vasseur Jan Regulski Patrick Laurence Cor Anglais Niall Keatley Mark Robinson Derek Hill Foundation Julian Azkoul Matthew Gibson Christine Pendrill The Thistle Trust Laura Dixon Violas Thomas Goodman Fanfare Trumpets Percussion Idlewild Trust Shlomy Dobrinsky Edward Vanderspar Joe Melvin Clarinets Philip Cobb Neil Percy Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation Alain Petitclerc Malcolm Johnston Jani Pensola Andrew Marriner Simon Cox David Jackson Anna Bastow Matthias Bensmana Chris Richards Jason Evans Sam Walton German Clavijo José Moreira Chi-Yu Mo David Geoghegan Stephen Doman Andrew Mitchell Harps Lander Echevarria Bass Clarinet Gerald Ruddock Bryn Lewis Carol Ella Lorenzo Iosco Gareth Small Eluned Pierce Robert Turner Toby Street May Dolan E-Flat Clarinet Robin Totterdell Piano Stephanie Edmundson Chi-Yu Mo Catherine Edwards Cynthia Perrin Bass Trumpets Alistair Scahill Bassoons Andy Fawbert Celeste Rachel Gough James Maynard Philip Moore Daniel Jemison Details in this publication were correct Joost Bosdijk at time of going to press.

58 The Orchestra