Thursday 22 February 2018 7.30–9.35pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT BRINGUIER & IBRAGIMOVA Brahms Violin Concerto Interval Dutilleux Métaboles DAPHNIS & Ravel Daphnis and Chloé – Suite No 2 Lionel Bringuier conductor CHLOÉ Alina Ibragimova violin Welcome LSO News On Our Blog I hope that you enjoy this evening’s concert, THE LSO’S 2018/19 SEASON INTRODUCING LIONEL BRINGUIER and that you will be able to join us again soon. Following performances of this programme The LSO’s 2018/19 season is now on sale. Visit our blog to find out more about tonight’s in Bristol and Vienna, the Orchestra will Highlights include Music Director Sir Simon conductor – from his early conducting give a Family Concert on 25 February, Rattle’s exploration of folk-inspired music success to making history in LA and his before a European tour and the opening in his series Roots and Origins; Artist Portraits collaborations with pianist Yuja Wang. of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Schumann with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan cycle at the Barbican on 11 and 15 March. and pianist Daniil Trifonov; and eight premieres across the season. ON YOUTUBE: MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO 2 Plus there’s much more to explore with Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at LSO Discovery’s free lunchtime concerts, Watch Semyon Bychkov conduct Mahler’s the Barbican, which sets French music by Discovery and Singing Days, as well as Symphony No 2, recorded on Sunday Ravel and Dutilleux alongside Brahms’ Kathryn McDowell CBE DL BBC Radio 3’s concerts at LSO St Luke’s. 4 February 2018, on the LSO’s YouTube Violin Concerto. Tonight’s performance Managing Director channel. The broadcast will be available is a welcome opportunity for conductor Visit lso.co.uk/201819season for full listings. to watch back for 90 days. Lionel Bringuier, who has been building a significant reputation across Europe as Music Director of the Tonhalle Orchestra, and NEW ON LSO PLAY: DEBUSSY WELCOME TO TONIGHT'S GROUPS who has a special affinity for the music of PRÉLUDE À L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE Dutilleux, to make his debut with the LSO. Tonight we are delighted to welcome: Watch Principal Guest Conductor Queenswood School For Brahms’ Violin Concerto, we are pleased François-Xavier Roth conduct Debussy’s Waltham Forest Music Service to welcome back Alina Ibragimova. Alina has Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune from Hertford U3A become a close friend of the Orchestra since multiple camera angles on our interactive making her debut with the LSO in the 2007 platform LSO Play. Available at play.lso.co.uk. BBC Proms, appearing regularly in subsequent Read our news, watch videos and more seasons. It is a pleasure to see her return for LSO Play is generously supported • lso.co.uk/news one of the great works of the violin repertoire. by Reignwood. • youtube.com/lso • lso.co.uk/blog 2 Welcome 22 February 2018 Tonight’s Concert / by Jeremy Thurlow Coming Up his concert is a tale of two cities, two By the 1960s the glorious heritage of Ravel Sunday 11 March 2018 7pm Sunday 8 April 2018 7pm traditions. By building his career in and Debussy had been radically contested Barbican Hall Barbican Hall Vienna, Brahms chose to work in the by a fiery young avant-garde. In his dazzling shadow of the great classical composers, Métaboles (1964) Henri Dutilleux found ways SCHUMANN AND BERLIOZ SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO 8 Beethoven above all. Brahms’ Violin Concerto, to re-imagine the older composers’ ravishing written in the same key as Beethoven’s and refinement of timbre and harmony, infusing Schumann Overture: Genoveva Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 programmed alongside that work by soloist it with some of the electrifying new ideas Berlioz Les nuits d’été Shostakovich Symphony No 8 Joseph Joachim at its premiere (1878), takes with which Paris was once again leading the Schumann Symphony No 2 Beethoven’s challenge head on. Early listeners musical world. Gianandrea Noseda conductor were struck by the darkness and drama – Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor Nikolai Lugansky piano notably when the soloist first enters – Ann Hallenberg mezzo-soprano and the piece was famously dubbed Recommended by Classic FM ‘a concerto against the violin’. But it overflows Recommended by Classic FM with heartfelt melody too, and ends with Thursday 19 & 26 April 2018 7.30pm a finale bursting with gypsy high spirits. Barbican Hall PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS As a cultural and artistic centre Paris Sunday 25 March 2018 7pm MAHLER SYMPHONY NO 9 already posed a formidable challenge to Jeremy Thurlow is a composer; his music Barbican Hall Vienna, but it took a little longer to become ranges from string quartets to video-opera Helen Grime Woven Space * Europe’s musical capital, a position it could and won the George Butterworth Award DEBUSSY AND BEYOND (world premiere) surely claim for much of the 20th century. 2007. Author of a book on Dutilleux, he Mahler Symphony No 9 A powerful boost came from Serge Diaghilev’s broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and is a Fellow Boulez Livre pour cordes Ballets Russes, which commissioned and of Robinson College, Cambridge. Bartók Violin Concerto No 2 Sir Simon Rattle conductor staged an astonishing series of masterpieces Ewan Campbell Frail Skies (world premiere) * throughout the first decades of the century. Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and Stravinsky Chant du rossignol * Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the Initially somewhat overlooked, Ravel’s translator who writes extensively on French, Debussy La mer LSO by the Barbican sumptuous Daphnis and Chloé (1912) is Russian and Eastern European music. now cherished as his most richly imagined François-Xavier Roth conductor 26 April generously supported by Baker McKenzie depiction of an idyllic classical Neverland; Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Renaud Capuçon violin the second suite contains perhaps the journalist and writer. He is the author of The most sensual and exhilarating scenes of LSO at 90, and contributes to a wide variety * Panufnik commission generously supported by the whole ballet. of specialist classical music publications. Lady Hamlyn and the Helen Hamlyn Trust lso.co.uk/whatson Tonight’s Concert 3 Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D major Op 77 1878 / note by Andrew Huth 1 Allegro non troppo there a clearly symphonic cast to the music, Joachim played, of course, and Brahms violin concertos in which the composer left 2 Adagio but also the open lyricism that Brahms conducted. It was entirely Joachim’s it to the soloist to provide the expected 3 Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace associated with the key of D major. Both decision, though, to begin the concert with cadenza; tonight, Alina Ibragimova plays works were composed at the same lakeside the Beethoven Concerto, of which he was the cadenza written by Joachim. Alina Ibragimova violin village in Carinthia; coincidentally, 50 years the most famous player of the day. Brahms later Alban Berg would write his Violin didn’t care for the idea. ‘A lot of D major’, he After so symphonically conceived a first rahms didn’t play the violin, but Concerto on the shores of the same lake. commented, but his unspoken objection was movement, the other movements are his understanding of it was second that he always disliked inviting comparisons more relaxed in mood and structure. The only to that of his own instrument, Since Brahms tended to cover his tracks with Beethoven, who was a very different Adagio is coloured by the sound of the wind the piano. When he left his native Hamburg and say little about the gestation and type of composer. The only real similarities instruments, the soloist weaving delicate for the first time, it was to accompany the composition of his music, we usually know between the two concertos are that they traceries around the main theme, but never Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi on a very little about its background. It is quite are roughly equal in length and proportion, playing it in its full form. The rondo finale concert tour during which a famous episode possible that ideas for the concerto had with a first movement longer than the other pays tribute to Joachim’s own concerto demonstrated the 20-year-old composer’s been in his mind for some time; but during two together. ‘in the Hungarian style’, which he had astonishing musicianship: one evening he its composition there was a revealing dedicated to Brahms. • discovered that the only available piano correspondence with Joachim. We learn, for Brahms misses no opportunity to show off was tuned a semitone flat, and coolly example, that the concerto was originally to the essential character of the violin. There transposed Beethoven’s C minor sonata up have had four movements rather than the is brilliance, power and lyricism in the solo into C-sharp in order to play it at the right expected three (an idea Brahms reserved for part, which makes enormous demands on pitch. It was through Reményi that Brahms his Second Piano Concerto, composed three the player. For all its depth and subtlety of met the violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom years later). Joachim was himself a gifted construction, though, the overall form of the he formed one of the closest friendships of composer, and in the past Brahms had often concerto is almost obstinately traditional, his life, and whose playing was at the back sought his advice on compositional matters. ignoring the innovations of Mendelssohn of his mind whenever he composed for the Now it was the solo violin part that Brahms in his famous concerto or even those found violin.