Mahler Symphony No 5

Thursday 5 October 7.30–9.45pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT MAHLER SYMPHONY NO 5 Britten Violin Concerto Interval MAHLER 5 Mahler Symphony No 5 Semyon Bychkov conductor Janine Jansen violin Recommended by Classic FM 6pm Barbican Hall LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists Britten Phantasy Quartet Britten Sinfonietta Guildhall School Musicians Welcome / Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Tonight’s Concert / introduction by Stephen Johnson beautiful work, written in response to the When the young Benjamin Britten PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Spanish Civil War. discovered the music of Gustav Mahler it was deeply unfashionable in this country – Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Earlier tonight, students from the Guildhall for some it was even morally suspect. Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life and School performed chamber music by Britten Music (Naxos). He also contributes regularly in a short concert, free to ticket-holders. This But Britten sensed a kindred spirit in the to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, series seeks to complement and amplify the Austrian-Jewish giant. For Mahler, music and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 repertoire in the Orchestra's programme and could never be simply abstract, a beautiful and the World Service. provide a platform for the musicians of the sound object to be admired at arm’s length: future. For further details visit lso.co.uk. as he said, a symphony ‘must embrace Andrew Stewart is a freelance music everything’. The burning urgency of Mahler’s journalist and writer. He is the author A warm welcome to tonight’s LSO concert. Thank you to our media partners Classic FM, symphonies and songs, the deeply humane, of The LSO at 90, and contributes to Following our 2017/18 launch last month, who have recommended this evening to inclusive vision they communicated with a wide variety of specialist classical which celebrated the arrival of Sir Simon their listeners. such dazzling orchestral brilliance, spoke music publications. Rattle as the Orchestra’s Music Director, to Britten directly. we are delighted to continue the season I hope you enjoy the performance and look tonight with two good friends of the LSO, forward to welcoming you back to another Britten’s Violin Concerto, composed on Semyon Bychkov and Janine Jansen. LSO concert soon. Bernard Haitink joins the the eve of World War II, is Mahlerian in Orchestra for our next three performances on its range of feeling, from intense lyrical Performances of Mahler’s First and Third 10, 15 and 19 October, conducting works by sweetness to biting irony and finally tragic Symphonies have been particular highlights Brahms, Beethoven, Adès and Mendelssohn. anguish. Life, it seems to say, is never more of Semyon Bychkov’s recent collaborations poignantly beautiful than when it is under with the LSO, and we are pleased that he threat. Mahler’s Fifth was written after the will continue this exploration with us in composer had both survived a near-fatal 2017/18 – with the Fifth Symphony tonight haemorrhage and met the love of his life in and the Second later on in February. quick succession – and it sounds like it! Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Progressing from a spectacularly bleak We are also thrilled to be joined by violinist Managing Director Funeral March, via a manic Scherzo, to a Janine Jansen after performances with the radiant hymn of hope, it records thrillingly Orchestra last season as part of her Artist Tonight we are delighted to welcome our a great artist’s struggle to find meaning, Portrait series. This evening she presents group bookers Omega Tours. if not in divine, then in human love. Britten’s Violin Concerto, a grief-stricken yet 2 Welcome 5 October 2017 Celebrating Bernstein October to December 2017 Symphony No 1, 'Jeremiah' Symphony No 3, 'Kaddish' Pre-Concert Talk with Marin Alsop Wonderful Town Symphony No 2, 'The Age of Anxiety' with Sir Simon Rattle Singing Day: Chichester Psalms Family Concert lso.co.uk Benjamin Britten Violin Concerto Op 15 1938–39 / note by Stephen Johnson Moderato con moto already an experienced professional composer dance motif, eventually answered by sighs minor. Does the shadow of the catastrophe Vivace with a growing international reputation. from strings. Above this the solo violin to come fall across this music, as it did in Passacaglia: Andante lento So far he had written no operas – his stage sings a long, high-soaring melody. Later the the poem September 1, 1939 by Britten’s debut, with the opera Paul Bunyan, was to tempo increases and a wilder, more sinister then-close friend WH Auden •? Or is this Janine Jansen violin follow in New York two years later. It was dance episode begins, but eventually the simply the most direct expression to date of with orchestral works such as the Variations opening song theme returns on full strings, a melancholic tendency that was to emerge oday Benjamin Britten’s status on a Theme of Frank Bridge and the Piano the timpani’s original motif now developed repeatedly in Britten’s later work? Life, seems majestically secure. From Concerto that he had made his name, and with full virtuoso panache by the violin. it seems to say, is never more poignantly Europe and America to the Far the following year he had a big (if somewhat beautiful than when it is under threat. • East he is seen as one of the 20th century’s controversial) success with his – again purely A wild, driven scherzo follows, caustically greatest composers of opera, choral and orchestral – Sinfonia da Requiem. brilliant at first, but with a much more soulful, Interval – 20 minutes solo vocal music. But even such a stellar folk-like violin theme at its heart. The return reputation can come with a cost. There still At this stage it must have seemed to Britten of the scherzo material is achieved by a touch seems to be a lingering suspicion in some that concert music offered at least one of grotesque genius: accelerating violin FOR REFERENCE quarters that as a composer Britten needed enticing way ahead. The Violin Concerto in phrases become rapid skittering figures for words to achieve greatness – that his particular shows how much he had learned two piccolos, while in the depths a much • The Passacaglia is a centuries-old orchestral and chamber works, impressive from such 20th-century orchestral masters slower theme rises ominously on tuba, variation form built up over repetitions though they might be, never really reach the as Mahler and Prokofiev. It also shows foreshadowing the Passacaglia theme in of a theme presented in the bass – rather same heights. Why else should it be that, him thinking on a more ambitious scale the finale. The scherzo makes an exciting like the twelve-bar bass in jazz or blues. after the triumphant premiere of his opera than before, both in terms of form and climactic return, from which emerges the Peter Grimes in 1945, Britten produced so expression – particularly in the powerful violin’s solo cadenza – showy at first, but • Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–73) was little purely orchestral and instrumental closing Passacaglia •. Britten was to achieve with a growing note of anguish. an Anglo-American poet, playwright and music? Here, surely, is the proof that with magnificent things in this form in later librettist, and a leading literary voice of the Grimes he had at last found his metier. works, but the Passacaglia in the Violin Then as it rises stratospherically, soft 20th century. He had a particular affinity for Concerto is his first truly great example. trombones intone the Passacaglia theme music, collaborating with Chester Kallman But if that were the case, how would we itself, now no longer grotesque but heavy on texts for Stravinsky and Henze. His most explain the steadily rising popularity of a The Concerto begins with a possibly half-ironic with sadness and foreboding. The variations significant musical collaboration, however, work like the Violin Concerto? Britten wrote tribute to a composer for whom Britten had that follow traverse a wide range of was with Britten; together they worked the Concerto in 1939, completing it not long mixed feelings: Beethoven. Like Beethoven’s moods and characters, but after a noble on the opera Paul Bunyan (1941), several after he arrived in the United States with Violin Concerto, Britten’s opens with a figure full-orchestral climax, the slow coda is films, a play and the song cycle Our Hunting his life-long partner, the tenor Peter Pears. for solo timpani, only here they sound, not a unmistakably elegiac, the violin’s final trills Fathers (1936), although their friendship never Britten was only 25, but by this stage he was march rhythm, but a faintly Latin-inflected ambiguously poised between major and recovered following an argument in 1942. 4 Programme Notes 5 October 2017 Benjamin Britten in Profile 1913–76 / by Andrew Stewart collaborating with such writers as WH Auden LISTEN ON LSO LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES and Christopher lsherwood, and his lifelong relationship and working partnership with • In 1946 the LSO was featured playing Peter Pears developed in the late 1930s. At Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the the beginning of World War II, Britten and Orchestra, conducted and presented by Pears remained in the US; on their return, Sir Malcolm Sargent, in a famous film they registered as conscientious objectors produced by the Ministry of Education, and were exempted from military service. The Instruments of the Orchestra. The first performance of the opera Peter The BFI has made the film available to Grimes in 1945 opened the way for a series view online for free. To watch it, visit: of magnificent stage works mainly conceived goo.gl/XKqo3h for the English Opera Group.

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