Thursday 11 January 2018 7.30–9.55pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT RAMEAU TO MAHLER Schubert Symphony No 8, ‘Unfinished’ Mahler Rückert Lieder RATTLE & Interval Handel Three Arias Rameau Les Boréades – Suite Sir Simon Rattle conductor Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano KOŽEN A Supported by LSO Music Director Donors Welcome LSO News On Our Blog Tonight’s performance is supported by BRITISH COMPOSER AWARDS FOR FAREWELL TO NIGEL BROADBENT, the LSO’s Music Director Donors, some SOUNDHUB AND PANUFNIK COMPOSERS FIRST VIOLIN of whom join us in the audience this evening. Our Music Director Donors provide Five of the 13 BASCA British Composer On Thursday 21 December we said goodbye leading support for our work and stand Awards this year went to current composers to one of the stalwarts of the London side-by-side with the Orchestra in our and alumni of the LSO’s artist development Symphony Orchestra, First Violin Nigel ambitious plans with Sir Simon Rattle. schemes. Congratulations go to Cevanne Broadbent, who retires after 38 years in I would like to thank them for their Horrocks-Hopayian (Panufnik 2010, the Orchestra. He will be very much exceptional contribution to the LSO at Soundhub Associate), Emily Howard missed by everyone in the LSO. this exciting time in the our history. (Panufnik 2007), Robin Haigh (Soundhub 2017), Deborah Pritchard (Panufnik 2015) and Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert I hope you enjoy the performance and Philip Venables (Panufnik 2005). WELCOME TO NEW PRINCIPAL at the Barbican, our first of 2018. Tonight that you will join us again soon. In our TRUMPET DAVID ELTON Music Director Sir Simon Rattle conducts next concert on 13 January, in partnership a programme pairing the Romantic with with the Barbican, Sir Simon Rattle is THE LSO’S 2018/19 SEASON On 11 December we welcomed a new member the Baroque, and orchestral with opera. joined by a cast of narrators, including of the Orchestra, as David Elton joined Helen McCrory and Simon Callow, for a Details of the LSO’s 2018/19 season will Philip Cobb as Principal Trumpet. David We begin with Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ rare performance of the Genesis Suite, be announced on Tuesday 23 January, with comes to the LSO from the Sydney Eighth Symphony, followed by Mahler’s directed by Gerard McBurney and with public booking open from Friday 2 February. Symphony Orchestra where he has been Rückert Lieder and three arias by Handel. specially created visual projections by Visit our website lso.co.uk to find out Principal Trumpet for the last six years. For these vocal works we are delighted to projection designer Mike Tutaj. what's in store. welcome mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, Read our blog, watch videos and more who returns following her performance in LSO Friends will receive priority booking • youtube.com/lso Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande with for the 2018/19 season. If you would like • lso.co.uk/blog the Orchestra and Sir Simon in 2016. to find out more about joining, visit lso.co.uk/support-us. Continuing Sir Simon’s focus on late works Kathryn McDowell CBE DL WELCOME TO TONIGHT'S GROUPS across the 2017/18 season, including some Managing Director that were never heard during their composers’ Read our news online We are delighted to welcome tonight's groups: lifetimes, the concert closes with Sir Simon’s • lso.co.uk/news Ann Parish & Friends own suite from the opera Les Boréades, Edgbaston High School Old Girls’ Association written in the final years of Rameau’s life. 2 Welcome 11 January 2018 Tonight’s Concert / introduction by Lindsay Kemp Coming Up: Sir Simon Rattle onight’s concert mixes vocal PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Saturday 13 January 2018 7.30pm Thursday 19 & 26 April 2018 7.30pm articulacy of two very different kinds Barbican Hall with music written for dramatic Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for MUSIC OF EXILE dance, and a masterpiece of abstract BBC Radio 3, including programming Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Milhaud et al Helen Grime Woven Space * orchestral expression so wordlessly specific lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall and Genesis Suite (world premiere) that it is possible to imagine its composer LSO St Luke’s; Artistic Advisor to York Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Mahler Symphony No 9 unable to think how to continue work on it. Early Music Festival; Artistic Director of Baroque at the Edge Festival; and a regular Sir Simon Rattle conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor Mahler’s typically personal settings of words contributor to Gramophone magazine. Helen McCrory, Simon Callow, by the Romantic poet Friedrich Rückert are Rodney Earl Clarke, Sara Kestelman narrators * Commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the the product of two happy summers in his Andrew Stewart is a freelance music journalist Gerard McBurney creative director LSO by the Barbican early 40s, spent far from the stresses of and writer. He is the author of The LSO at Mike Tutaj projection design town, conscious of his art and in the act of 90, and contributes to a wide variety of London Symphony Chorus 26 April generously supported by Baker McKenzie finding the love of his life. specialist classical music publications. Simon Halsey chorus director London Symphony Orchestra The emotions revealed in the Handel arias Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner are both more public and more vicarious, Remembered (Faber) and Mahler: His Life Produced by the LSO and the Barbican. Part of but his opera arias are just as able to and Music (Naxos). He also contributes the LSO’s 2017/18 Season and Barbican Presents. Sunday 22 April 2018 7pm access a psychological state with empathy regularly to BBC Music Magazine and The Barbican Hall and expressive power. Rameau’s dances Guardian, and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, may seem at first to be peripheral to the Radio 4 and the World Service. Tippett The Rose Lake † stirring stories from which they come, but Mahler comp Cooke Symphony No 10 the way in they can reflect emotion and Sunday 14 January 2018 7pm enhance atmosphere shows the touch of Barbican Hall Sir Simon Rattle conductor a true musical dramatist. And Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, with which we Janáček Overture: From the House of the Dead † Supported by Resonate, a PRS Foundation start, is intense poetry of almost Carter Instances initiative in partnership with Association of British unbearable beauty. Berg Violin Concerto Orchestras, BBC Radio 3 and Boltini Trust Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle conductor lso.co.uk/whatson Isabelle Faust violin 020 7638 8891 Tonight's Concert 3 Franz Schubert Symphony No 8, ‘Unfinished’ 1822 / note by Lindsay Kemp 1 Allegro moderato duly given to the Society’s representatives, years around 1820. Maybe, too, in his mind Schubert casts the slow second movement 2 Andante con moto Joseph and Anselm Hüttenbrenner, in whose he had simply moved on by the time the in E major, a distant key from the B minor private hands it then remained. That they chance to resume work on the ‘Unfinished’ of the first which enhances the sense of usic history is littered with saw no reason to release it is not as perverse presented itself; certainly its uniquely entering a different world. Indeed, the incomplete compositions, from as it sounds; Schubert’s contemporary sustained brand of pained poetic lyricism relationship between the two movements Bach’s Art of Fugue to Berg’s opera reputation was almost exclusively as a was not one to which he later returned. has been described by one writer as that Lulu. So why, alone among them all, has the composer of vocal music, and, as far as we of ‘a certain premonition of death and a symphony that Schubert began in October know, no symphony of his was accepted for The opening presents a bleak vision: a vision of heaven’. But despite the Elysian 1822, and then abandoned with only two of public performance anywhere between the sinuous and menacingly subterranean beauty of the tender first theme, and even its intended four movements completed, premiere of the Sixth in 1818 and his death theme intoned by cellos and double the apparent gruff cheerfulness with which become known as the ‘Unfinished’? Why ten years later. Thus it was only when latter- basses, followed by a nervous string its striding bass line at one point offers to are Bruckner’s Ninth or Mahler’s Tenth, both day Schubert-lovers wrested the score of the accompaniment to an aching tune given take things over, the night-terrors still lurk. regularly performed today in their partial ‘Unfinished’ from Anselm over 40 years after out on oboe and clarinet. The music then The clarinet’s nostalgic second theme is the state, not similarly entitled? it was written that it finally came to light, builds steadily in volume until a held note on first to hint at disquiet, but the orchestral receiving its premiere • in Vienna in 1865 to horns and bassoons swells into a brief but outburst which rears its head later on leaves The probable reason is that in most cases it keen public interest. sturdy bridge to the lilting second theme. no doubt that true peace of mind is not to was death that prevented fulfilment of the Announced by cellos and taken up by the be had here. work, an implacable external force which Whatever it was that stopped Schubert from violins, this new, major-key theme seems at gives no reason to cast doubt on a composer’s completing the symphony we shall probably first to promise a more carefree mood, but Schubert’s half-composed third movement motivation or drive.