Sunday 16 June 2019 7–9pm Barbican LSO SEASON CONCERT ARTIST PORTRAIT: DANIIL TRIFONOV Beethoven Overture: Egmont Shostakovich Concerto No 1 for HAROLD Piano, Trumpet and Strings Interval Berlioz Harold in Italy * Gianandrea Noseda conductor Daniil Trifonov piano Philip Cobb trumpet IN ITALY Antoine Tamestit viola * Welcome Latest News On our Blog After the interval, Antoine Tamestit joins BMW CLASSICS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP: the Orchestra as viola soloist in Berlioz’s WORKS IN PROGRESS Harold in Italy, a work originally written for On 30 June, the LSO takes over Trafalgar violin and viola virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. Square as Sir Simon Rattle conducts a This month’s LSO Discovery Showcase, This four-movement symphony is inspired dance-inspired programme of music by ‘One Night, One Thousand and One by a poem by Lord Byron, describing Childe Dvořák, Poulenc, Ravel and Bushra El-Turk. Stories’, featured pieces for electronics, Harold’s pilgrimage through Italy. This There will also be performances by young live performance and video presented concert forms part of Berlioz 150, as we musicians from the LSO On Track scheme in by Ife Olalusi and Ken Burnett, members celebrate the composer’s life and music East London and from the Guildhall School. of the LSO Digital Technology Group. across 2019, marking 150 years since We spoke to Ken and Ife about their Berlioz’s death. inspirations and influences, and how elcome to tonight’s LSO concert LSO AT THE BBC PROMS 2019 they produced music for the concert. at the Barbican conducted by A very warm welcome to the retired LSO Gianandrea Noseda. Pianist Daniil players who join us tonight for their annual The LSO and a 300-strong choir perform Trifonov makes the final appearance in his reunion. It is always a pleasure to see LSO Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast on Tuesday ‘TO BE SOMEONE ELSE IS A BATTLE’ LSO Artist Portrait series of 2018/19, and members from years gone by, and I am 20 August at the BBC Proms, conducted passes on the torch to viola player Antoine delighted that they have this opportunity by Sir Simon Rattle. The programme also LSO Jerwood Composer+ Amir Konjani Tamestit for next season’s LSO Artist to hear today’s Orchestra perform. includes Varèse’s Amériques and French discusses To Be Someone Else is a Battle Portrait, which will bring together some of composer Charles Koechlin’s Les bandar-log. at LSO St Luke’s, his first event of the the most beautiful and innovative music I hope that you enjoy the concert and that we 16-month LSO Jerwood Composer+ Scheme, composed for viola, and showcase the full will see you again soon. Later this month, sharing thoughts on art, artists and how range of Antoine Tamestit’s artistry. the LSO performs Janáček’s The Cunning WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS he created his immersive installation. Little Vixen in a semi-staged production This evening’s concert begins with conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and directed We are delighted to welcome Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, followed by Peter Sellars. Jelena Nehodova and friends Read these articles and more by Shostakovich’s Concerto No 1 for who join us in the audience tonight. • lso.co.uk/blog Piano, Trumpet and Strings. The LSO is delighted to welcome LSO Principal Please ensure all phones are switched off. Trumpet Philip Cobb to perform as soloist Photography and audio/video recording alongside Daniil Trifonov in this piece. are not permitted during the performance. Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director 2 Welcome 16 June 2019 Tonight’s Concert In Brief Daniil Trifonov In Conversation oethe’s Egmont is a play that PROGRAMME CONTRIBUTORS Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ … mixes romance and political That’s the piece which started my love for intrigue with an overarching fight David Cairns won the biography category classical music. I was already playing the for freedom, and Beethoven’s Egmont of the Whitbread Prize and the Samuel piano when I first heard it. Once I did, I had Overture captures all the drive, heroism Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for his Scriabin fever! I think that for the next five and exuberance of the story. The music second volume biography on Berlioz: years I played more than half of the piano enacts a struggle between fear and youthful Servitude and Greatness. music that Scriabin wrote. ambition, culminating with a silence that represents Egmont’s execution, followed by Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and What do you do in your downtime? a heady and rousing ‘Victory Symphony’. translator who writes extensively on French, I really enjoy hiking and walking. Especially Russian and Eastern European music. in the mountains. I like to do long trips, say Shostakovich’s early Concerto for Piano, 10 to 30 kilometres in length. I was always Trumpet and String Orchestra is compact Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for BBC interested in geography – I suppose that’s and brilliant. Composed around the time Radio 3, including programming lunchtime where it comes from. And in city planning – of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk concerts at Wigmore Hall and LSO St Luke’s. I enjoy exploring London on foot, that’s one District and the inventive Op 34 Preludes He is also Artistic Advisor to York Early Music of my favourite activities while here. I also for Piano, the concerto shows a flashier side Festival, Artistic Director at Baroque at the sometimes do some light coding. to Shostakovich, written to be premiered Edge Festival and a regular contributor to by the composer himself and filled with Gramophone magazine. What do you listen to beyond classical music? What advice would you give to an aspiring cinematic twists and turns. Outside of classical, I would say one of musician at the outset of their career? Andrew Stewart is a freelance music the most interesting experiences for me is I would say that it’s good to explore, to go Inspired by Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s journalist and writer. He is the author of The listening to King Crimson, especially the beyond just piano literature and understand Pilgrimage, in Harold in Italy Berlioz LSO at 90 and contributes to a wide variety early albums from the 1970s, like In the that the piano does not exist in a vacuum. depicts the dreamy wanderings of Harold of specialist classical music publications. Court of the Crimson King and Larks’ There are other arts and other musics. through the Italian countryside. The first Tongues in Aspic. I really like their music, it’s I think it’s very important to listen widely, movement depicts Harold in the midst of very instrumental rock. My father used to to orchestral music and opera. Also to enjoy Italy’s mountain ranges. In the following be in a rock band too. He played keyboards other art forms as well. Movies, literature, movements, Harold encounters pilgrims, in this underground band back in the 1980s and of course painting – it all helps. pifferari (wandering wind players) and a when he was studying. I quite like the sound romantic serenade, before he comes across of the electric guitar, but the furthest I’ve Read the full interview at a fearsome gang of brigands. ventured from the piano is an organ! lso.co.uk/blog Tonight’s Concert 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Overture: Egmont Op 84 1810 / note by Lindsay Kemp or all that Beethoven claimed he The Egmont Overture starts with a slow had agreed to compose incidental introduction, contrasting a stern and music for the first Viennese fatalistic-sounding string motif with lyrical BEETHOVEN 250 production of Goethe’s drama Egmont woodwind phrases which eventually lead Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO at the Barbican in the composer’s in 1810 ‘purely out of love for the poet’ the music into the main Allegro section. 250th anniversary year (apparently he would have preferred to write Egmont’s youthful impetuosity is perhaps music for Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, also in the represented here, though threatened by repertory that season), it is not hard to see reminiscences of the opening string figure. how much the story would have inspired After an emphatic statement backed up him. Set in the 16th century, it has Count by trumpets and timpani, the music cuts Egmont, governor of Spanish-ruled Flanders, off unexpectedly. If this brief silence is falling in love with Clärchen and through showing us Egmont’s death, there can her finding sympathy for an oppressed be no doubt that it is a joyous uprising people. He tries to persuade Philip II to that subsequently whisks the overture show leniency but ends up on the scaffold, to its heady conclusion, in the music of convinced that his death will inspire a new the Victory Symphony – enough to inspire fight for freedom. anyone to cast off their chains. • Singing Day: Discovery Day Christ on the Mount of Olives 19 January 2020 For the composer of Fidelio this was a 22 September 2019 Barbican & LSO St Luke’s godsend, and Beethoven’s incidental score LSO St Luke’s includes four entr’actes, a melodrama Christ on the Mount of Olives (ie speech over music) and a climactic HALF SIX FIX 19 January & 13 February 2020 ‘Victory Symphony’. Only the overture has Beethoven Symphony No 7 remained in the repertory, however, though & Berg Seven Early Songs HALF SIX FIX its dramatic drive and heroic exuberance 15 January 2020 Beethoven Symphony No 9 make it a powerful enough encapsulation 12 February 2020 of the story in itself. Indeed, as in the Beethoven Symphony No 7 dynamic overtures to Coriolan and Leonore, & Berg Early Works Beethoven Symphony No 9 Beethoven here produced one of the earliest 16 January 2020 16 February 2020 examples of the symphonic poem, one of the 19th century’s favourite forms.