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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 18 October 2015 7pm Barbican Hall VALERY GERGIEV: MAN OF THE THEATRE London’s Symphony Orchestra Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin Stravinsky Chant du rossignol INTERVAL Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Valery Gergiev conductor Concert finishes approx 9pm 2 Welcome 18 October 2015 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s concert, which marks THE LSO ON TOUR Valery Gergiev’s final appearance at the Barbican as LSO Principal Conductor. Gergiev’s time with This evening we welcome the Orchestra back from the Orchestra has been defined by ambitious a tour to Vienna, Luxembourg and Paris with Valery programming and imaginative music-making. His Gergiev and pianist Yefim Bronfman. Next week, comprehensive cycles of Prokofiev, Mahler, Berlioz they depart to the US for Gergiev’s last concerts as and Brahms have won critical acclaim across the LSO Principal Conductor, taking place in Newark and globe. He brought the music of Shchedrin, Scriabin, New York. Follow the LSO on Facebook, Twitter and Dutilleux and Szymanowski to London audiences, Instagram for the latest tour news and updates. all the while staying close to the core Russian repertoire that he knows so well. THE RITE OF SPRING ON LSO PLAY Across the world, and indeed in London, Gergiev has expanded our audience, leading the Orchestra’s first This month, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring comes tour to Australia in 30 years and initiating our annual to LSO Play, the award-winning interactive online free BMW LSO Open Air Classics performances in experience that allows you to get inside the Trafalgar Square. He is one of our most recorded orchestra. Using HD footage of the LSO in concert, artists on LSO Live and his performances have been LSO Play gives you the opportunity to see up to four used to break new digital ground through LSO Play different camera angles at once, focus in on different and Digital Theatre. sections of the orchestra, get a close-up view of the conductor, and find out more about the music But what has made the partnership between Valery and the instruments of the orchestra. LSO Play is Gergiev and the LSO truly special is the quality of generously supported by the Reignwood Group. their live performances. Tonight’s concert will be a showcase of their abilities, culminating in Bartók’s play.lso.co.uk virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra, a fitting capstone to a remarkable relationship. A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS We are delighted that Valery Gergiev will return as a regular conductor in our future seasons and we The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+ wish him much success as he begins his new role as including 20% discount on standard tickets. Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. At tonight’s concert, we are delighted to welcome: Mariinsky Theatre Trust Scancoming UK lso.co.uk/groups Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director London Symphony Orchestra Season 2015/16 2015/16 Autumn Highlights PROGRAMME NOTE AUTHOR LINDSAY KEMP is a senior producer for BBC Radio 3, including programming lunchtime concerts from LSO St Luke’s, Artistic Director ‘Aof theperformance Lufthansa Festival ofof superb mentalBaroque Music, and and physical a regular control.’ contributor to Gramophone magazine. The Times on Hélène Grimaud JOHN ADAMS: NIKOLAJ ZNAIDER A WHOLE NEW WORLD BBC RADIO 3 AMERICAN PIONEER CONDUCTS STRAUSS WITH MANFRED HONECK LUNCHTIME CONCERTS AT LSO ST LUKE’S Thu 29 Oct 7.30pm Thu 12 Nov 7.30pm Thu 19 Nov 7.30pm London Resounding Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte Beethoven Symphony No 5 Jana´cˇek Jenu˚fa – Suite Thu 22 Oct Ronald Brautigam Ravel Mother Goose Strauss Death and Transfiguration Ravel Piano Concerto in G major Thu 12 Nov Fretwork John Adams Scheherazade.2 Strauss Closing Scene from ‘Capriccio’ Dvorˇák Symphony No 9 Thu 19 Nov Musica ad Rhenum (UK premiere) (‘From the New World’) Chopin, Liszt and Bartók John Adams conductor Nikolaj Znaider conductor Manfred Honeck conductor Thu 29 Oct Alice Sara Ott Leila Josefowicz violin Soile Isokoski soprano Hélène Grimaud piano Thu 5 Nov Ashley Wass Thu 26 Nov Maria João Pires & Ashot Khachatourian lso.co.uk 020 7638 8891 4 Programme Notes 18 October 2015 Béla Bartók (1881–1945) The Miraculous Mandarin – Concert Version (1918–24) 1 INTRODUCTION (STREET NOISES); The opening of the work evokes the sounds of the THE COMMAND OF THE HOODLUMS DIRECTED TO THE GIRL city outside the tawdry room in which the action 2 THE GIRL’S FIRST INVITING GESTURES, IN RESPONSE TO takes place. Three hoodlums force a girl to lure WHICH THE OLD GENTLEMAN APPEARS, WHO GETS THROWN men from the street, whom they intend to beat OUT IN THE END BY THE HOODLUMS up and rob. There are three victims lured by the 3 THE GIRL’S SECOND INVITING GESTURES, UPON WHICH girl, depicted in sinuous clarinet solos: a penniless APPEARS THE YOUNG LAD, WHO IS ALSO THROWN OUT roué, an attractive young man and finally a strange 4 THE GIRL’S THIRD INVITING GESTURES; Mandarin with an intense stare. He pursues and THE MANDARIN APPEARS captures the girl at which point the robbers emerge. 5 THE GIRL’S SEDUCTIVE DANCE BEFORE THE MANDARIN The last part of the ballet moves from the brutally 6 THE MANDARIN CATCHES UP WITH THE GIRL AFTER physical to the eerily metaphysical. Despite the AN EVER WILDER CHASE hoodlums’ attempts to smother and stab the Mandarin, he refuses to die. After they hang him, PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Bartók’s last work for the stage originated in a he begins to glow with a greenish-blue light; the JAN SMACZNY is the Sir Hamilton ‘grotesque pantomime’ by the Hungarian playwright girl accepts his embrace, and at last his wounds Harty Professor of Music at Queen’s Menyhért (Melchior) Lengyel (1890–1974), which begin to bleed and he dies. University, Belfast. A well-known the composer came across in 1917. With its low-life writer and broadcaster, he specialises setting, this story of prostitution and violence was as The musical style of the work is perceptibly harder in the life and works of Dvorˇák and remote from the fairy-tale world of his second stage edged than in the composer’s earlier stage works Czech opera, and has published work, The Wooden Prince, as the graphic action of and the expression more succinct. Moments of books on the repertoire of the that ballet had been from the dark intensity of the stillness alternate with frantic activity in a score Prague Provisional Theatre and opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. A clear connection which has more than a hint of Stravinsky’s The Rite Dvorˇák’s Cello Concerto. between the three works, however, is the composer’s of Spring. As contemporary reactions showed, the close attention to orchestral sonority; although accompaniment to this bizarre scenario is appallingly Bartók completed the piano score of The Miraculous vivid, but it makes for compulsive listening. COMPOSER PROFILE Mandarin by the spring of 1919, the orchestration PAGE 8 was not finished until the autumn of 1924. Bartók prepared a concert version of the ballet almost as soon as its was completed; he intended it Bartók’s music plots the course of Lengyel’s bizarre, to be based on the scenes up to and including the expressionistic tale in compelling detail, and from Mandarin catching the girl. Rather than calling it a its premiere in Cologne in 1926 a whiff of scandal Suite, which would imply a conventional collection shadowed the work; a staging in Budapest planned of dances, he preferred the title ‘Music from to honour Bartók’s 50th birthday in 1931 did not The Miraculous Mandarin’. survive the dress rehearsal. The presentation of the story is far from the conventionally balletic. Indeed, the action of the Mandarin is propelled as much by mime as by dance. Nevertheless, Bartók’s control of the dramatic structure is superbly assured. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Chant du rossignol (Song of the Nightingale) (1914–17) It was the blend of fairy tale and allegory so beloved of The story was divided into three sections: the fête the Russians that first drew Stravinsky to Hans Christian in the Emperor of China’s palace, the two nightingales, and the illness and recovery of the Andersen’s story of The Nightingale. Emperor of China. The brilliant opening section, depicting the fête in honour of the nightingale, PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER In the story, a nightingale sings to the Emperor clearly benefits from the composer’s experience JAN SMACZNY before being temporarily displaced by a mechanical with Petrushka and The Rite. The latter in particular version. In the end, with the Emperor on his death- seems to hover in the middle distance during the bed, the nightingale returns to restore the Emperor’s ‘Marche Chinoise’, which announces the arrival COMPOSER PROFILE health with his sweet song. Stravinsky saw potential of the Emperor and concludes the first part. PAGE 8 in this story as the subject of his first opera and the oriental setting was an added attraction. The libretto The singing of the real nightingale begins the middle and first musical sketches secured the approval of section; the Japanese envoys arrive and present Stravinsky’s teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, and the first the artificial nightingale, whose song is played by act was completed in 1909. the oboe against a mechanical rumble in the piano, celeste, harp, clarinet and lower strings. In the third When Stravinsky began work on The Firebird, section, Death, surrounded by his minions, sits on The Nightingale was interrupted, and it was not until the Emperor’s chest and wears his regalia.