Sunday 16 December 2018 7–9.15pm Tuesday 18 December 2018 7.30–9.45pm Barbican Hall LSO SEASON CONCERT ROOTS & ORIGINS Brahms Violin Concerto Interval ROMANIAN Debussy Images Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No 1 Sir Simon Rattle conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin These performances of Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No 1 are generously RHAPSODY supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute 16 December generously supported by LSO Friends Welcome Latest News On Our Blog We are grateful to the Romanian Cultural BRITISH COMPOSER AWARDS MARIN ALSOP ON LEONARD Institute for their generous support of these BERNSTEIN’S CANDIDE concerts. Sunday’s concert is also supported Congratulations to LSO Soundhub Associate by LSO Friends, and we are delighted to have Liam Taylor-West and LSO Panufnik Composer Marin Alsop conducted Bernstein’s Candide, so many Friends with us in the audience. Cassie Kinoshi for their success in the 2018 with the LSO earlier this month. Having We extend our thanks for their loyal and British Composer Awards. Prizes were worked closely with the composer across important support of the LSO, and their awarded to Liam for his Community Project her career, Marin drew on her unique insight presence at all our concerts. The Umbrella and to Cassie for Afronaut, into Bernstein’s music, words and sense of a jazz composition for large ensemble. theatre to tell us about the production. I wish you a very happy Christmas, and hope you can join us again in the New Year. The • lso.co.uk/more/blog elcome to this evening’s LSO LSO’s 2018/19 concert season at the Barbican FELIX MILDENBERGER JOINS THE LSO concert at the Barbican. This continues on 9 and 10 January with Sir Simon AS ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR Romanian Rhapsody programme Rattle in performances of Sibelius’ Seventh WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS marries three works connected by a theme Symphony and Hans Abrahamsen’s Let me The Donatella Flick LSO Conducting of fantasy, infused with national flavour, tell you with soprano Barbara Hannigan, who Competition came to a thrilling conclusion A warm welcome to British Emunah, and has been devised by the LSO’s Music also features as part of our Artist Portrait on Thursday 22 November, with the prize Gerrards Cross Community Association, Director Sir Simon Rattle as part of his Roots series in 2019. going to 28-year-old German conductor Felix Guildford U3A and Linda Diggins & Friends, and Origins series, which extends across the Mildenberger. He now takes up the position who join us in the audience for these concerts. 2018/19 season. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos of LSO Assistant Conductor, working with the is a long-standing friend of the LSO and joins Orchestra’s Music Director Sir Simon Rattle, us in these concerts as soloist in Brahms’ and Principal Guest Conductors François- Please ensure phones are switched off. Violin Concerto. Xavier Roth and Gianandrea Noseda. Photography and audio/video recording Kathryn McDowell CBE DL are not permitted during the music. Following Debussy’s triptych of Images Managing Director inspired by folk traditions in England, Spain and France, the programme is completed by George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No 1, an early composition but nevertheless one of his most enduringly popular works. 2 Welcome 16 & 18 December 2018 Tonight’s Concert In Brief / by Wendy Thompson Coming Up in January 2019 ll three pieces in tonight’s concert Debussy’s set of three orchestral Images Wednesday 9 January 6.30–7.30pm Sunday 13 January 10am–5pm have a distinct national flavour. pays homage to three different countries – Barbican Hall Barbican Hall & LSO St Luke’s Johannes Brahms, a German Britain, with the incorporation of the composer brought up on a diet of Bach and Northumbrian folk-song The Keel Row into HALF SIX FIX LSO DISCOVERY Beethoven, was enthralled throughout his ‘Gigues’; France, where two French nursery SIBELIUS SYMPHONY NO 7 DISCOVERY DAY: BARTÓK life by the seductive melodies and catchy songs permeate the texture of ‘Rondes rhythms of Hungarian folk music. de printemps’ (Springtime Dances); and Hans Abrahamsen Let me tell you Attend a morning LSO rehearsal conducted finally Spain, in the vivid portrayal of a small Sibelius Symphony No 7 by Sir Simon Rattle, followed by an His early development was influenced by Iberian town going about its daily business, afternoon talk on Béla Bartók and the the popular music he heard first in the inns sleeping under the stars, or thrumming with Sir Simon Rattle conductor influence of Hungarian folk music, and dance-halls of his native Hamburg, and life and vitality on the morning of a fiesta. Barbara Hannigan soprano with a chamber music performance. later in cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic Vienna, where the gypsy music of Central Europe was all the rage. Brahms’ close association PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Thursday 10 January 7.30–9.40pm Sunday 13 & 20 January 7–8.55pm with two eminent Hungarian violinists, Barbican Hall Barbican Hall Eduard Rémenyi and Joseph Joachim, Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and cemented his passion for Magyar music, translator who writes extensively on French, LSO SEASON CONCERT LSO SEASON CONCERT which found its apogee in the scintillating Russian and Eastern European music. NIELSEN’S ‘INEXTINGUISHABLE’ BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO 6 Violin Concerto he wrote for Joachim. Andrew Stewart is a freelance music Sibelius Symphony No 7 Bartók Tonight’s programme ends with another journalist and writer. He is the author of The Hans Abrahamsen Let me tell you Music for strings, percussion and celeste gypsy-influenced piece, the Romanian LSO at 90, and contributes to a wide variety Nielsen Symphony No 4, ‘Inextinguishable’ Bruckner Symphony No 6 Rhapsody No 1 by the brilliant Romanian of specialist classical music publications. violinist and composer George Enescu. Sir Simon Rattle conductor Sir Simon Rattle conductor His music is saturated with the modal Wendy Thompson studied at the Royal Barbara Hannigan soprano inflections and quasi-improvisational style College of Music, before taking an of Romanian folk culture. Enescu composed MMus in musicology at King’s College, his popular Romanian Rhapsodies while London. In addition to writing about studying in Paris in the early 1900s, where music she is Executive Director of Classic Claude Debussy was emerging as France’s Arts Productions, a major supplier of leading composer. independent programmes to BBC Radio. lso.co.uk/whatson Tonight’s Concert 3 Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D major Op 77 1878 / note by Andrew Huth 1 Allegro non troppo there a clearly symphonic cast to the music, conducted. It was entirely Joachim’s violin concertos in which the composer left 2 Adagio but also the open lyricism that Brahms decision, though, to begin the concert with it to the soloist to provide the expected 3 Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace associated with the key of D major. Both the Beethoven Concerto, of which he was cadenza; tonight, Leonidas Kavakos plays works were composed at the same lakeside the most famous player of the day. Brahms the cadenza written by Joachim. Leonidas Kavakos violin village in Carinthia; coincidentally, 50 years didn’t care for the idea. ‘A lot of D major’, later Alban Berg would write his Violin he commented, but his unspoken objection After so symphonically conceived a first rahms didn’t play the violin, but Concerto on the shores of the same lake. was that he always disliked inviting movement, the other movements are his understanding of it was second comparisons with Beethoven, who was a more relaxed in mood and structure. The only to that of his own instrument, Since Brahms tended to cover his tracks and very different type of composer. The only Adagio is coloured by the sound of the wind the piano. When he left his native Hamburg say little about the gestation and composition real similarities between the two concertos instruments, the soloist weaving delicate for the first time, it was to accompany the of his music, we usually know very little about are that they are roughly equal in length traceries around the main theme, but never Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi on a its background. It is quite possible that ideas and proportion, with a first movement playing it in its full form. The rondo finale concert tour during which a famous episode for the concerto had been in his mind for longer than the other two together. pays tribute to Joachim’s own concerto demonstrated the 20-year-old composer’s some time; but during its composition there ‘in the Hungarian style’, which he had astonishing musicianship: one evening he was a revealing correspondence with Joachim. Brahms misses no opportunity to show off dedicated to Brahms. • discovered that the only available piano We learn, for example, that the concerto was the essential character of the violin. There was tuned a semitone flat, and coolly originally to have had four movements rather is brilliance, power and lyricism in the solo transposed Beethoven’s C minor sonata up than the expected three (an idea Brahms part, which makes enormous demands on into C-sharp in order to play it at the right reserved for his Second Piano Concerto, the player. For all its depth and subtlety of pitch. It was through Reményi that Brahms composed three years later). Joachim was construction, though, the overall form of the met the violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom himself a gifted composer, and in the past concerto is almost obstinately traditional, he formed one of the closest friendships of Brahms had often sought his advice on ignoring the innovations of Mendelssohn his life, and whose playing was at the back compositional matters. Now it was the solo in his famous concerto or even those found of his mind whenever he composed for the violin part that Brahms sent to Joachim for his in the later Beethoven concertos.