Sunday 14 April 2019 7–8.45pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT IVES SYMPHONY NO 2 Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 Interval SIR MARK Ives Symphony No 2 Sir Mark Elder conductor ELDER Kirill Gerstein piano Welcome Latest News On Our Blog This performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano THE LSO IN SOUTH AMERICA JOHN ADAMS’ HARMONIELEHRE Concerto comes as we look ahead to the composer’s 250th anniversary year in 2020. This May, the LSO tours to South America In the age of synth pop, Live Aid and At its premiere in 1803, this work was heard for the first time in the Orchestra’s history. Madonna’s Material Girl, how was a composer in the same concert as Beethoven’s oratorio With concerts in Bogotá, Medellín, Lima, to write large-scale orchestral music for the Christ on the Mount of Olives, a feature of Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago, Sir concert hall? Composed in 1985, John Adams’ the LSO’s forthcoming 2019/20 season. Simon Rattle leads the way in performances Harmonielehre is one of the most significant of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s examples of a composer grappling with the I hope that you enjoy the concert and that Symphonie fantastique. Later in 2019, the idea of a symphony in the 20th century. you will join us again soon. In June, Conductor Orchestra tours to Ireland, California, Central Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas returns to Europe and Asia. Follow us on social media ARTIST PORTRAIT: DANIIL TRIFONOV elcome to this evening’s LSO conduct Ives’ later ‘New England Holidays’ for behind-the-scenes updates. concert at the Barbican. Tonight Symphony, alongside Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano superstar Daniil tells us about his we welcome Sir Mark Elder, who Concerto with pianist Daniil Trifonov, who facebook.com/londonsymphonyorchestra life away from the concert stage, and the last conducted the Orchestra in February continues his LSO Artist Portrait series. instagram.com/londonsymphonyorchestra experiences that made him love music – 2018, for a programme featuring Charles twitter.com/londonsymphony from rock and jazz to the films of Andrei Ives’ Second Symphony, which continues the Tarkovsky and Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’. LSO’s 2018/19 season theme of ‘Roots and Origins’. Ives looked to the musical cultures WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS Read these articles and more at of his homeland to compose the symphony, lso.uk/blog forging a unique symphonic style and putting Kathryn McDowell CBE DL We are delighted to welcome American classical music on the world stage. Managing Director Gerrards Cross Community Association, who are attending tonight’s concert. I am delighted that Kirill Gerstein will join the Orchestra as soloist in Beethoven’s Please ensure all phones are switched off. Piano Concerto No 3, which forms the first Photography and audio/video recording half of the programme. This is his first are not permitted during the performance appearance with the Orchestra since his LSO debut in Paris in 2017, when he stepped in at short notice as the soloist in an acclaimed performance of Bernstein’s Second Symphony, ‘The Age of Anxiety’. 2 Welcome 14 April 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Coming Up onight’s concert begins with Ives’ success in crafting a distinctive Thursday 25 April 7.30–9.20pm Sunday 5 May 7–9.05pm Beethoven’s Piano Concerto American style paved the way for composers Barbican Barbican No 3. Written in 1800, the piece like Copland and Bernstein, who admired dates from the start of Beethoven’s heroic Ives’ work. The five-movement symphony BOLÉRO BERLIOZ 150: SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE middle period. It is Beethoven’s only piano pivots on a beautiful central Adagio concerto written in a minor key, and C minor cantabile, and culminates with a brass-led Ravel Rapsodie espagnole John Adams Harmonielehre in particular is associated with some of climax and an unprecedented ending. Ravel Boléro Berlioz Symphonie fantastique his stormiest music, including the earlier Ravel L’heure espagnole ‘Pathétique’ Piano Sonata and the Fifth PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Sir Simon Rattle conductor Symphony, which would arrive in 1808. François-Xavier Roth conductor Based on Mozart’s three-movement model, Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for BBC Isabelle Druet Conception Streamed live on YouTube two anguished outer movements bookend Radio 3, including programming lunchtime Jean-Paul Fouchécourt Torquemade a heartfelt Largo, which combines elegant concerts at Wigmore Hall and LSO St Lukes. Thomas Dolié Ramiro Thursday 30 May 7.30–9.40pm Classical lyricism with Romantic intensity, He is also Artistic Advisor to York Early Music Edgaras Montvidas Gonzalves Barbican stillness and long-breathed musical arcs. Festival, Artistic Director of Baroque at the Nicolas Cavallier Gomez Edge Festival and a regular contributor to CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA The second half of the concert features Gramophone magazine. Wednesday 1 May 7.30–9.20pm Charles Ives’ Second Symphony, composed at Barbican Cage The Seasons the start of the 20th century and completed Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Beethoven Violin Concerto around the same time as Mahler’s Fifth journalist and writer. He is the author of The JOHN ADAMS & HARRISON BIRTWISTLE Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Symphony. Ives’ use of the orchestra is lush LSO at 90, and contributes to a wide variety and his vision is progressive. The symphony of specialist classical music publications. Stravinsky Symphonies of Wind Instruments Michael Tilson Thomas conductor gets its unique flavour from a blend of Harrison Birtwistle Shadow of Night Julia Fischer violin the European classical tradition, Ives’ Wendy Thompson studied at the John Adams Harmonielehre innate eccentricity, and a rich invocation of Royal College of Music before taking an 6pm Barbican Hall American musical cultures and traditions, MMus in musicology at King’s College, Sir Simon Rattle conductor LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists with martial elements reflecting the Civil London. In addition to writing about free pre-concert recital War of the 1860s and folk melodies such as music she is Executive Director of Classic ‘Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean’. Arts Productions, a major supplier of independent programmes to BBC Radio. Tonight’s Concert 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor Op 37 1800, rev 1804 / note by Lindsay Kemp 1 Allegro con brio Yet even those familiar with the work’s Mozart’s concerto, a work Beethoven is BEETHOVEN THREE WAYS 2 Largo predecessors would surely have noticed known to have admired, also appears to 3 Rondo: Allegro that Beethoven’s pride in it was justified. have provided some formal pointers. • To summarise Beethoven’s career, This is a more sophisticated, original and historians have divided his music into three Kirill Gerstein piano weighty piece than the first two concertos, That model is acknowledged in the opening categories; simple to conceptualise but one that reflects the changes that were bars, where, as in the Mozart, a quiet trickier to define in practice. y the time his first two piano occurring in the composer’s style as he theme is stated by the strings in unison. concertos were published in their moved from early-period promise and This is the start of what turns out to be an Beethoven’s early works are signalled by final forms in 1801, Beethoven brilliance to middle-period mastery • and unusually long orchestral exposition, but their pace, brilliance and Classicism, while had long been at work on their successor, increasing individuality. after an assertive entry it is the soloist who middle-period works are thought of as a piece which, he claimed, was at ‘a new more progressive, with large-scale forms, and higher level’. Indeed, his intention had — often tempestuous or bestowed with heroic been to perform it at a benefit concert at Almost from the beginning of his career, Beethoven had turned to C minor narratives. Vienna’s Burgtheater in April 1800, but in the event it was not ready and one of the to express some of his strongest sentiments. Beethoven’s late period encompasses works earlier concertos was substituted. It was — written after the composer lost his hearing. not until 5 April 1803 that the Third was They can be contemplative, esoteric or finally premiered, at a concert in the Theater Beethoven’s musical personality is stamped delineates the movement’s formal scheme, eccentric, sometimes hearkening back to an der Wien which also included the first all over the Third Piano Concerto, most as climactic trills and precipitous downward earlier styles or broken up by disruptions. performances of the Symphony No 2 and the unmistakably in its choice of key. Almost scales noisily signal the respective arrivals The final works are often called the most oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Even from the beginning of his career, Beethoven of the central development section challenging that Beethoven wrote, and then the piano part had not been written had turned to C minor to express some of (characterised by flowing piano octaves the greatest. down: a fellow composer who turned pages his strongest sentiments, and by the time and a deliciously exotic G minor statement for Beethoven found that they consisted of this concerto he had already written of the opening theme), the vital return to of ‘almost nothing but empty leaves; at several powerful works in that key, including the opening theme in the home key, and the most on one page or the other a few the famous ‘Pathétique’ Piano Sonata. the tumultuous preparation for the solo Egyptian hieroglyphs, wholly unintelligible Ironically, the inspiration for this most cadenza. Normally in a concerto of this date, to me, scribbled down to serve as clues for recognisable of Beethovenian emotional the soloist would not play after the cadenza, Interval – 20 minutes him’.