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London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Thursday 18 May 2017 7.30pm Barbican Hall Vaughan Williams Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus Brahms Double Concerto INTERVAL Holst The Planets – Suite Sir Mark Elder conductor Roman Simovic violin Tim Hugh cello Ladies of the London Symphony Chorus London’s Symphony Orchestra Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 9.45pm Supported by Baker McKenzie 2 Welcome 18 May 2017 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to tonight’s LSO concert at the Barbican. BMW LSO OPEN AIR CLASSICS 2017 This evening we are joined by Sir Mark Elder for the second of two concerts this season, as he conducts The London Symphony Orchestra, in partnership with a programme of Vaughan Williams, Brahms and Holst. BMW and conducted by Valery Gergiev, performs an all-Rachmaninov programme in London’s Trafalgar It is always a great pleasure to see the musicians Square this Sunday 21 May, the sixth concert in of the LSO appear as soloists with the Orchestra. the Orchestra’s annual BMW LSO Open Air Classics Tonight, after Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of series, free and open to all. Dives and Lazarus, the LSO’s Leader Roman Simovic and Principal Cello Tim Hugh take centre stage for lso.co.uk/openair Brahms’ Double Concerto. We conclude the concert with Holst’s much-loved LSO WIND ENSEMBLE ON LSO LIVE The Planets, for which we welcome the London Symphony Chorus and Choral Director Simon Halsey. The new recording of Mozart’s Serenade No 10 The LSO premiered the complete suite of The Planets for Wind Instruments (‘Gran Partita’) by the LSO Wind in 1920, and we are thrilled that the 2002 recording Ensemble is now available on LSO Live. To order your of the work on LSO Live with Sir Colin Davis has copy, please visit the website: recently achieved platinum status. lsolive.lso.co.uk I would like to take this opportunity to thank Baker McKenzie for their generous sponsorship of tonight’s concert. The LSO and Baker McKenzie A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS celebrate 20 years of partnership this year and we thank them for their longstanding support as our Tonight we are delighted to welcome: legal partners. Thanks also go to our media partners Classic FM, who have recommended tonight’s Faversham Music Club performance to their listeners. Gerrards Cross Community Association Hertfordshire and Essex National Trust I hope that you enjoy the concert, and that you can Queen Elizabeth Girls School join us again soon. On Tuesday 23 May, Bernard King Edward VI Grammar School Haitink will join us for the first of three concerts, The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School which focus on Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven. lso.co.uk/groups Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director 3074MAR_LSO_Dec16.indd 2 04/04/2017 11:20:19 4 Programme Notes 18 May 2017 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus (1939) PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Ralph Vaughan Williams was an avid collector of ‘These variants are not exact WENDY THOMPSON studied at English folksong, which he used constantly throughout replicas of traditional tunes, but the Royal College of Music, before his long composing career. Much of his orchestral taking an MMus in musicology at music, from the early Norfolk Rhapsody onwards, is rather reminiscences of various King’s College, London. In addition marinated in its plangent modality and characteristic versions in my own collection to writing about music she is triplet rhythmic figuration. Executive Director of Classic Arts and those of others.’ Productions, a major supplier of In 1939, while he was working on his Fifth Symphony, programmes to BBC Radio. Vaughan Williams took time off to compose Five War broke out shortly after the US premiere of Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, scored for strings and Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and in November harp, for his champion Sir Adrian Boult to conduct 1939 Sir Adrian Boult conducted the first British In the first few weeks of THE BLITZ, at the New York Fair in June that year. The ancient performance in the Colston Hall in Bristol, where the the BBC made plans to evacuate to tune was one that Vaughan Williams had known and evacuated BBC Symphony Orchestra was based. Bristol after German bombs struck loved since 1893. Its origins are obscure, but it dates 19 years later, Boult directed it at the composer’s several BBC buildings. Queen’s back to at least the 16th century. In England it was funeral in Westminster Abbey, an occasion movingly Hall, then home to the Proms, was traditionally sung as a carol to the words ‘Come described by the writer and biographer Michael destroyed and there were several all ye faithful Christians’, but in Ireland it was known Kennedy: ‘Into the silence of the Abbey came explosions at Broadcasting House, as ‘The star of the County Down’, and in Scotland the first notes of the Five Variants of Dives and including one in the Music Library as ‘Gilderoy’. Lazarus. It was as if Vaughan Williams himself had which killed seven people. The BBC spoken. The tune which he had loved all his life, Symphony Orchestra was evacuated Vaughan Williams also came across other variants of which came from the soil of England, ageless and to Colston Hall with the contingency the tune during his folksong-collecting expeditions: anonymous … was the perfect device to create that they could continue broadcasting in 1905 he had found a particularly gruesome one in a mood of remembrance which will haunt those from a disused railway tunnel if Norfolk, set to the words ‘The Murder of Maria Martin’, who experienced it to the end of their days.’ performance in the Hall became or ‘The Red Barn’ (referring to a notorious Victorian impossible. The tunnel was even murder case), and others in his bag included versions tested with the Orchestra at full called ‘The Thresher’ and ‘Cold blows the wind’. volume to ensure the structure All these were later put to good use: Vaughan Williams could withstand the sound. said of his orchestral piece – an introduction and theme followed by five vividly contrasted variations: lso.co.uk Composer Profile 5 Ralph Vaughan Williams Composer Profile SUMMER 2017 HIGHLIGHTS Born in Gloucestershire on 12 October 1872, Ralph Vaughan Williams moved to Dorking in Surrey at the age of two, following the death of his father. Here, his maternal grandparents, Josiah Wedgwood – of the pottery family – and his wife Caroline, who was the sister of Charles Darwin, encouraged a musical upbringing. Vaughan Williams attended Charterhouse School, and in 1890 he enrolled at the Royal College of Music, becoming a pupil of Sir Hubert Parry. Weekly lessons at the RCM continued when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1892. Vaughan Williams’ Yuja Wang (8 Jun) first composition to make any public impact, the song Linden Lea, was published in 1902. Sun 28 May 7pm Bruckner Symphony No 9 COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER His ‘discovery’ of folk song in 1903 was a major Bernard Haitink conductor STEPHEN CONNOCK influence on the development of his style. A period of study with Maurice Ravel in 1908 was also very Sun 4 Jun 7pm successful, with Vaughan Williams learning, as he put Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 (‘Pathétique’) it, ‘how to orchestrate in points of colour rather than Michael Tilson Thomas conductor in lines’. The immediate outcome was the song-cycle On Wenlock Edge. The Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Thu 8 Jun 7.30pm Tallis, using a tune he had studied while editing the Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 English Hymnal, was first performed in Gloucester Yuja Wang piano Cathedral in 1910. With these works he established Michael Tilson Thomas conductor a reputation which subsequent compositions, such as the Symphony No 3 (‘Pastoral’), Flos Campi and Sun 25 Jun 7pm the Mass in G minor, served to consolidate. Mahler Symphony No 3 Daniel Harding conductor In 1921 he became conductor of the Bach Choir, alongside his Professorship at the RCM. Over his Sun 9 Jul 7pm long life, he contributed notably to all musical forms, Andrew Norman A Trip to the Moon including film music. It is in his nine symphonies Sir Simon Rattle conductor however, spanning a period of almost 50 years, that Supported by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music the greatest range of musical expression is evident. Vaughan Williams died on 26 August 1958, just a few 020 7638 8891 months after the premiere of his Ninth Symphony. lso.co.uk 6 Programme Notes 18 May 2017 Johannes Brahms (1833–97) Double Concerto for Violin and Cello Op 102 (1887) 1 ALLEGRO The combination of violin and cello with orchestra 2 ANDANTE was original, perhaps unprecedented. Brahms 3 VIVACE NON TROPPO certainly had in mind such works as Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for ROMAN SIMOVIC VIOLIN Violin and Viola, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for TIM HUGH CELLO Violin, Cello and Piano, but writing to Clara in August 1887 he spoke of his difficulties. ‘After all it is quite PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER Brahms was 20 when he first met the violinist Joseph different to write for instruments whose character ANDREW HUTH is a musician, Joachim, and the friendship that grew between the two and sound is only approximate in one’s ear, which writer and translator who writes was perhaps the closest in Brahms’ life, comparable one hears only in the mind – instead of writing for extensively on French, Russian (though very different in character) to his love for an instrument whose character and sound one and Eastern European music.