Monday 10 June 2019 7.30–9.50pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT ARTIST PORTRAIT Beethoven Andante Favori Beethoven Piano Sonata No 18 TRIFONOV Schumann Bunte Blätter Schumann Presto Passionato Interval Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 8 Daniil Trifonov piano Welcome Latest News On our Blog After the interval, Daniil Trifonov performs BMW CLASSICS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP: Prokofiev's Eighth Piano Sonata in B-flat WORKS IN PROGRESS major – the last and most expansive of his On 30 June, the LSO takes over Trafalgar three 'War’ Sonatas. Square as Sir Simon Rattle conducts a This month’s LSO Discovery Showcase, dance-inspired programme of music by ‘One Night, One Thousand and One Daniil Trifonov completes his LSO Artist Dvořák, Poulenc, Ravel and Bushra El-Turk. Stories’, featured pieces for electronics, Portrait series on Sunday 16 June in There will also be performances by young live performance and video presented Shostakovich's Concerto No 1 for Piano, musicians from the LSO On Track scheme in by Ife Olalusi and Ken Burnett, members Trumpet and Strings, conducted by East London and from the Guildhall School, of the LSO Digital Technology Group. Gianandrea Noseda. I hope that you enjoy who join the Orchestra on stage. We spoke to Ken and Ife about their the concert and that you will join us again inspirations and influences, and how elcome to tonight’s concert at soon for the remaining concerts in the they produced music for the concert. the Barbican, a recital of music LSO’s season. LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2019 by Beethoven, Schumann and Prokofiev played by pianist Daniil Trifonov, The LSO and a 300-strong choir perform ‘TO BE SOMEONE ELSE IS A BATTLE’ which forms the penultimate performance Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast on Tuesday of his LSO Artist Portrait series. 20 August at the BBC Proms, conducted LSO Jerwood Composer+ Amir Konjani by Sir Simon Rattle. The programme also discusses To Be Someone Else is a Battle The programme begins with Beethoven’s Kathryn McDowell CBE DL includes Varèse’s Amériques and French at LSO St Luke’s, his first event of the Andante Favori, originally composed as the Managing Director composer Charles Koechlin’s Les bandar-log. 16-month LSO Jerwood Composer+ Scheme, slow movement of the famous ‘Waldstein’ sharing thoughts on art, artists and how he Sonata, followed by the last of his three Op created this immersive installation. 31 sonatas, an understated and forward- WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS looking work. Following this, he performs Read these articles and more Robert Schumann's Bunte Blätter, a collection We are delighted to welcome • lso.co.uk/blog of miniatures written across the composer's Jelena Nehodova and Friends life. The extrovert Presto Passionato who join us in the audience tonight. completes the first half, another displaced piece which was first composed as the finale Please ensure all phones are switched off. of Schumann’s G minor Piano Sonata. Photography and audio/video recording are not permitted during the performance. 2 Welcome 10 June 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up he first two pieces in tonight’s quietly in the bass and rising uncannily to Sunday 16 June 7–8.50pm Sunday 30 June 5–6.30pm recital show a less familiar side of the piano’s upper register. The following Barbican Trafalgar Square Beethoven’s musical personality: Andante sognando is dance-like, using a the tuneful Andante Favori, which was theme from Prokofiev’s abandoned opera ARTIST PORTRAIT: DANIIL TRIFONOV BMW CLASSICS rejected as the central movement of Eugene Onegin, and the finale is majestic. Beethoven’s heroic ‘Waldstein’ sonata for In the final reprise of its main theme, the Beethoven Overture: Egmont Dvořák Selection of Slavonic Dances being too long, and the E-flat major Sonata. music reaches a fearsome peak of intensity, Shostakovich Concerto No 1 for piano, trumpet Bushra El-Turk Tuqus (world premiere) * Opening on a dissonant seventh chord, before subsiding to an ambivalent ending. and strings Poulenc Selection from ‘Les biches – Suite’ the Sonata’s oddity and understatement Berlioz Harold in Italy * Ravel La valse anticipates the enigmatic music of Beethoven’s final years. Gianandrea Noseda conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Daniil Trifonov piano London Symphony Orchestra Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blätter were Philip Cobb trumpet LSO On Track Young Musicians * published late in the composer’s career, Wendy Thompson studied at the Royal Antoine Tamestit viola* Guildhall School Musicians * and reflect different times in his life. Unlike College of Music, before taking an MMus London Symphony Orchestra his collections of piano pieces Carnaval or in musicology at King’s College, London. Free entry, early arrival recommended Waldszenen, the pieces make up an album In addition to writing about music Thursday 27 June 7.30–9.25pm with no thematic thread woven through. she is Executive Director of Classical Saturday 29 June 7.30–9.25pm Produced in partnership with BMW The pieces nevertheless showcase Arts Productions, a major supplier of Barbican Schumann’s unique inventiveness and independent programmes to BBC Radio. rich palette. The Presto passionato which THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN follows was meant as the finale for his Piano Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Sonata in G minor, but was replaced after his Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life Janáček The Cunning Little Vixen (semi-staged) wife Clara suggested it was too difficult for and Music (Naxos). He contributes regularly pianists wanting to buy and learn the sonata. to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, Sir Simon Rattle conductor and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and Peter Sellars director Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata is his the World Service. Lucy Crowe, Gerald Finley, Sophia Burgos, Peter longest piano sonata, written after he Hoare, Jan Martiník, Hanno Müller-Brachmann, returned to a war-torn Stalingrad. The Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Paulina Malefane, Anna Lapkovskaja soloists opening movement uses two themes: the journalist and writer. He is the author of The London Symphony Orchestra first lyrical and mysterious, the second LSO at 90 and contributes to a wide variety starkly desolate, its melody beginning of specialist classical music publications. Produced by LSO and Barbican Tonight’s Concert 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Andante Favori & Piano Sonata No 18 / note by Wendy Thompson Andante Favori in F major WoO 57 first gracious, the second featuring running ultimately reveals itself as the unifying • THE OPUS 31 SONATAS 1804 octaves in the bass. motto of the Allegro, recurring at the start of the development, in the recapitulation, Written early in Beethoven’s maturity, the Piano Sonata No 18 in E-flat major, The three sonatas • composed in 1802 and and again in the coda. The movement never three sonatas of Opus 31 each have a unique Op 31 No 3, ‘The Hunt’ published in 1803/4 as Beethoven’s Op 31 really settles, with frequent pauses, abrupt character. The first of the three, in G major, 1802 date from a critical period in his life. He had changes of tempo, and constant harmonic is playfully extrovert, with crashing chords, for some time been suffering from ill-health side-slipping through different keys. flashy runs and an elaborate Adagio in the 1 Allegro with a persistent stomach complaint, but style of a decorative aria. 2 Scherzo: Allegretto vivace even worse for a musician, his hearing The brittle, duple-metre Scherzo with its 3 Minuetto: Moderato e grazioso was rapidly deteriorating. In the spring incredibly fast staccato texture anticipates The second of the set, in D minor, is 4 Presto con fuoco and summer of 1802, while staying on his Mendelssohn: once again, its progress is nicknamed ‘The Tempest’. Although not doctor’s advice at the medicinal spa village interrupted by abrupt changes of tempo, as stormy as its name suggests, the eethoven’s Andante Favori in of Heiligenstadt, he wrote a remarkable while elfin horn-calls foreshadow Weber’s sonata is dark and brooding. Tense, slowly F major was composed between letter to his brothers confessing that his Oberon. It’s followed by an elegant minuet transforming harmonies are the focus of 1803 and 1804, and was originally humiliating disability would henceforth and trio, both in the tonic key. The trio, its opening movement, which is broken up intended as the central movement of his condemn him to live ‘like an outcast’, and which later formed the basis of Saint-Saëns’ with passages of melancholic recitative. C major ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. According to saying that he had seriously contemplated Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for two Beethoven’s friend and pupil Ferdinand suicide. The letter was never posted, and pianos, consists largely of alternating chords Ries, an acquaintance of Beethoven Beethoven returned to Vienna in the autumn in opposing registers of the piano keyboard. complained that the sonata was too long, determined to come to terms with his The lively Presto con fuoco is a sonata-rondo an opinion which inevitably provoked an affliction and pursue a ‘new path’ in his work. finale. With its galloping 6/8 rhythm in irritable outburst. But after considered tarantella style, it gave rise to the Sonata’s reflection, Beethoven accepted the criticism The last of the three Op 31 sonatas, unlike nickname, ‘The Hunt’. • as valid, and replaced the Andante, which its tempestuous D minor predecessor, bears he published as a separate piece. He often little trace of struggle and conflict, nor of the included it in his recitals, and its popularity ‘heroic’ mood that would soon be associated gave rise to the title of ‘Favoured Andante’. in Beethoven’s mind with the key of E-flat major.