Thursday 28 November 2019 7.30–9.55pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT TCHAIKOVSKY FIFTH SYMPHONY Rimsky-Korsakov The Legend of the TCHAIKOVSKY Invisible City of Kitezh – Suite Bruch Violin Concerto No 1 Interval Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5 Gianandrea Noseda conductor Janine Jansen violin Welcome Latest News On Our Blog for the Orchestra’s label LSO Live, which LSO STRING EXPERIENCE SCHEME SIX THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. BARTÓK’S THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN Thank you to our media partner Classic FM, We are delighted to announce the which has recommended tonight’s concert appointment of 14 players to this year’s Amid the political turbulence of early 20th- to its listeners. LSO String Experience cohort. Since 1992, century Hungary, Bartók began writing his the scheme has enabled young string players pantomime-ballet. Discover more about this Gianandrea Noseda returns to the Barbican from London’s music conservatoires to gain previously censored work ahead of the LSO’s stage with the Orchestra next week, joined work experience by playing in rehearsals and performance on Thursday 19 December. by soloist Khatia Buniatishvili. As we concerts with the LSO. The first rehearsal continue into December, we also look patch begins on Tuesday 10 December, and ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO: ahead to our annual Choral Christmas the young players will perform with the 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY warm welcome to this evening’s concert, featuring the LSO’s massed choirs, Orchestra at concerts throughout 2020. LSO concert with Principal Guest and a performance of Baroque music from On 27 October 1919, the LSO performed the Conductor Gianandrea Noseda. the LSO Chamber Orchestra and specialist WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS world premiere of one of the most popular We are delighted to be joined by soloist conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, both on works in the repertoire: Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Janine Jansen – with whom the Orchestra 15 December. I hope that you enjoy tonight’s Bancroft’s School One hundred years later, we take a look at has enjoyed a long relationship, from her performance and that you are able to join Guildford U3A the history of this piece, its current popularity, debut in 2006 to her Artist Portrait in 2017 us again soon. LSO Create Monday Club and how this wasn’t always the case … – to perform Bruch’s First Violin Concerto. LSO String Experience Scheme A tour to Germany with Janine Jansen, AUTUMN’S CLASSIC FM for which she was ‘curating artist’, was a RECOMMENDED CONCERTS highlight of the LSO’s summer schedule, and we look forward to her joining us once At the LSO, we are proud to have been again as the Orchestra returns to Germany Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Classic FM’s Orchestra in the City of London in just a few days’ time. Managing Director for over 17 years. Each season, a selection of our concerts come recommended by Classic Gianandrea Noseda continues his exploration FM. Don’t miss our round-up of autumn’s of music by Russian composers tonight, Classic FM recommended concerts and a look taking us from the mythical story of Rimsky- at where the music sits in the LSO’s history. Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Please ensure all phones are switched off. Kitezh to the drama of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Photography and audio/video recording are • lso.co.uk/more/blog Symphony. The performance will be recorded not permitted during the performance. • classicfm.com 2 Welcome 28 November 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up onight’s programme begins and movements. Intense and dramatic at the Sunday 15 December 3pm Thursday 9 January 7.30pm ends with Russian music of the outset, through the course of the symphony Barbican Barbican 19th and 20th centuries, opening darkness gives way to light, the theme with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Suite from The transforming from funereal to triumphant, A CHORAL CHRISTMAS MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh. Based and drawing to a close with a tangible sense on Russian legends of St Fevroniya of of optimism. • Sing your festive favourites with the LSO Wagner Overture and Venusberg Murom and the city of Kitezh, the opera Brass Ensemble and a 300-strong choir. Music from ‘Tannhäuser’ was first premiered in St Petersburg in 1907 Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and has gained a reputation as being one of PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS Simon Halsey conductor Brahms Symphony No 1 Rimsky-Korsakov’s finest, using a glittering London Symphony Chorus orchestral palette to paint a picture of a David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts LSO Community Choir Nathalie Stutzmann conductor Russian forest steeped in mystery. on music, notably for BBC Radio 3 and LSO Discovery Choirs Alina Ibragimova violin BBC Music Magazine. His books include LSO Brass Ensemble Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 follows, short studies of Richard Strauss, Elgar, 6pm Barbican undoubtedly the most popular of the Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and a Prokofiev Thursday 19 December 7.30pm LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists composer’s three violin concertos and a biography, From Russia to the West 1891–1935. Barbican Free pre-concert recital stalwart of the solo repertoire for violinists. The writing for solo violin is nostalgic Wendy Thompson is Executive Director ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO and melodious, particularly in the Adagio of Classic Arts Productions, a major second movement, dotted with seemingly supplier of independent programmes to Sophya Polevaya Spellbound Tableaux effortless intricate passages. A buoyant BBC Radio 3, including Private Passions (world premiere)* and exhilarating Hungarian dance forms and Classical Collection. Elgar Cello Concerto the final movement, bringing the concerto Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin to a surprisingly joyful end compared to Andrew Stewart is a freelance music its distant and creeping beginning. journalist and writer. He is the author François-Xavier Roth conductor of The LSO at 90, and contributes to Alisa Weilerstein cello Tchaikovsky’s monumental Fifth Symphony a wide variety of specialist classical London Symphony Chorus finishes tonight’s concert. Composed in music publications. Simon Halsey chorus director 1888 and conducted by Tchaikovsky for its November premiere that year, the symphony Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and *Commissioned through the Panufnik Composers makes use of a recurring main ‘Fate translator who writes extensively on French, Scheme, generously supported by Lady Hamlyn theme’ to bring together the work’s four Russian and Eastern European music. and The Helen Hamlyn Trust Tonight’s Concert 3 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh – Suite 1905 / note by David Nice 1 Prelude (Forest Scene) even more intense, and in The Legend of mate, who turns out to be Prince Vsevolod • ON APPLE MUSIC 2 Bridal Procession and Tatar Attack – the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden (tenor), son of the ruler of Kitezh. Their 3 Battle of Kerzhenets Fevroniya, to give his penultimate work wedding procession in Act Two is celebrated 4 Apotheosis of Fevroniya; for the stage its full title, he managed to with brilliant orchestral colours (a celebrated Ascent to the Invisible City combine his nature worship with a dash of conductor of a balalaika orchestra reproached Christianity in the character of the saintly Rimsky-Korsakov for not including those imsky-Korsakov’s love of nature heroine and the legend of a city that vanishes instruments in his orchestra, but the and his respect for the pantheism as a defence against its enemy. This was string emulation of them is impressive). of pagan Russia went hand in a powerful symbol of cultural survival in Cheerfulness is short-lived; the drunken hand, and they had their roots in two key the face of domination by a corrupt and scoundrel Grishka gives the signal for Tatars events of the late 1870s. In 1876 he made ineffectual regime. to invade the city, and Vsevolod is killed. his own collection of Russian folk-songs, We move without a break to the highly rejecting the more recent anthologies of After many years of conflict with the effective ostinatos of the battle in Act musical colleagues in favour of specimens Imperial Theatres and compromises with the Three, surely an inspiration to Prokofiev which went back to the ceremonies and second-best efforts of independent Russian in his music for Eisenstein’s film Alexander games of ancient custom. ‘The pictures companies, the composer was anxious to Nevsky 30 years later. of the ancient pagan period and spirit ensure that his deepest operatic myth Gianandrea Noseda Curates: Russian Roots loomed before me, as it then seemed, with should be presented at the highest level. Fevroniya’s prayers have made Kitezh great clarity, luring me on with the charm The Mariinsky Theatre played host to the invisible; only its reflection remains in the You can enjoy our Principal Guest Conductor’s of antiquity’, he later wrote in his candid first performance in February 1907, and lake, and the missing city plays a crucial Russian Roots selection playing on Apple autobiography My Musical Life. among the opera’s many admirers the part in putting the Tatars to flight. Rimsky- Music now. Hear Russian masterpieces and young Sergei Prokofiev went to see the Korsakov produced his most profound music highlights from his own curation of Russian His enthusiasm bore its first fruit four opera four times. It was the last to be as Fevroniya, approaching death, ‘recalls repertoire. Find out more online or tune in years later, when he turned back to the staged in Rimsky-Korsakov’s lifetime. and is solicitous about her implacable to Apple Music’s Classical Radio station to ‘marvellous poetic beauty’ of Nikolai foe and destroyer of Kitezh the Great’.