Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! A Classical Celebration! Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 Schumann: Cello Concerto in A Minor London Mozart Players Ruth Rogers: director Maciej Kułakowski: cello London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! Coming soon... more concerts with YCAT soloists A Classical Celebration! Broadcast on 7pm, Thursday 24 September. Filmed at St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood. Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1, ‘Classical’ Op.25 Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op.129 Bows and Oboes Celebrating Beethoven London Mozart Players Strauss: Concerto in D major for Oboe Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op.62 Ruth Rogers: director Mendelssohn: Symphony No.4 in A major, Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D, Op.61 Maciej Kulakowski: cello Op.90 ‘Italian’ Jonian Ilias Kadesha: violin Mateusz Moleda: conductor Olivier Stankiewicz: oboe Broadcast date: 7pm, Sunday 15 November Filmed at St John’s Smith Square Broadcast date: 7pm, Thursday 15 October Filmed at Fairfield Halls, Croydon To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, LMP performs his Coriolan Keep in touch! Inspired by a chance wartime meeting Overture and Violin Concerto. The overture If you have enjoyed this concert and londonmozartplayers between the composer and a soldier, reflects the contrasting moods of Heinrich Strauss’s spirited Oboe Concerto is in von Collin’s play – Coriolan’s aggression and would like to hear more about the mozartplayers fact exceptionally difficult to play, with his mother’s gentle pleading. Beethoven’s London Mozart Players then do sign londonmozartplayers.com circular breathing a pre-requisite. This revolutionary Violin Concerto, performed up for our newsletter via our website. concert showcases two artists destined by rising star and YCAT artist Jonian Ilias for stardom, oboist Olivier Stankiewicz and Kadesha, takes us on an exhilarating You’ll get to hear first about all our conductor Mateusz Moleda. Mendelssohn’s journey from a lyrical first movement to a upcoming concerts and exclusive jaunty Italian Symphony is an extra treat. joyous rambunctious finale. It’s a hugely events, and enjoy priority booking The concert comes from Fairfield Halls, satisfying masterpiece, and the perfect and special offers. Croydon, where London Mozart Players has work with which to salute Beethoven’s enjoyed a 30-year residency. genius. London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! Violin 1 Flute Ruth Rogers Fiona Kelly Sijie Chen Nicolas Bricht Nicoline Kraamwinkel Oboe Ann Criscuolo Gareth Hulse Anna de Bruin Katie Clemmow Nicola Gleed Clarinet Violin 2 Tim Lines Antonia Kesel Emma Canavan Gemma Sharples Clare Hayes Bassoon Jeremy Metcalfe Sarah Burnett Jayne Spencer Emma Harding Viola Horn Judith Busbridge Peter Francomb Sophie Renshaw Martin Grainger Michael Posner Joe Ichinose Trumpet Alan Thomas Cello Peter Wright Sebastian Comberti Julia Desbruslais Timpani Sarah Butcher Benedict Hoffnung Bass Catherine Elliott David Johnson London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! Programme notes Sergei Prokofiev Prokofiev may have been deliberately our classically inclined musicians and constraining himself to write in a “classical” professors hear this symphony, they will Petrograd? Symphony No. 1, Classical style, but he does so with obvious affection. be bound to scream in protest at this new There is more than a touch of Haydn-like example of Prokofiev’s insolence, look how i) Allegro humour in the sudden changes of harmony, he will not let Mozart lie quiet in his grave For 200 years, until the 1917 Revolution, ii) Larghetto dynamic and texture which pepper the work. but must come prodding at him with his the capital of the Russian Empire was iii) Gavotta: non troppo allegro Prokofiev himself was in no doubt that he grubby hands, contaminating the pure St Petersburg, built by Peter the Great. had captured the essence of the style. In iv) Finale: molto vivace classical pearls with horrible Prokofievish Prokofiev attended the St Petersburg the same diary entry he continued: “When dissonances. But my true friends will see Conservatory. After the Revolution, that the style of my symphony is precisely wishing to remove the German The Classical Symphony was first sketched Mozartian classicism and will value it elements of the name, the Communist in 1916 but was mostly written during the accordingly.” government renamed it Petrograd. In summer of 1917, while Prokofiev was on 1924 following Lenin’s death it became holiday in the country. In his diary he wrote: Prokofiev himself conducted the première Leningrad, at Stalin’s decree. Since “...I walked through the fields, composing of the symphony in Petrograd, with the 1991 and the fall of the USSR the city the ‘Classical’ Symphony. I wrote down Russian State Orchestra, on 18 April 1918. has regained its original name, but not what I had already composed, but not yet in before the following Russian joke had the form of a score.” In part the Symphony © Martin Smith 2020 become widely known... was written as an exercise in composition away from the keyboard. The 26-year-old Questions on a Russian census form: composer was already well established as a “modernist” with numerous aurally Classical Club unpacked challenging operas and piano works to his 1. Where were you born? credit, so the accessible language of the LMP leader Ruth Rogers gives you an St Petersburg Symphony may have come as a surprise extra insight into Prokofiev’s Classical 2. Where did you study? to contemporary audiences, though it Symphony. Think of it as a kind of ‘video Petrograd programme note’. might also be seen as a look forward to 3. Where do you live now? the simpler, more melodic style Prokofiev Leningrad would come to adopt a decade or so later. Click the play icon above or visit londonmozartplayers.com/classicalclub- 4. Where would you like to live? It can also be seen as one of the first works St Petersburg of neoclassicism, predating Stravinsky’s concert-programmes to watch. Pulcinella by about two years. London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! Programme notes Robert Schumann Schumann famously said to Clara, “I movements, they run without a break, and cannot write a concerto for the virtuosos, motifs from the opening movement run Cello Concerto in I must try for something else,” and it is throughout the work, binding it into an You might like to know… true that the Cello Concerto’s undoubted organic whole. A minor, Op. 129 Ludwig Ebert, the first cellist to perform technical challenges are not those which the Concerto, was only twenty-six might allow a player to show off – which © Martin Smith 2020 when he did so. At the time he was the i) Nicht zu schnell was one of Bockmühl’s complaints. On the principal cellist in the highly-regarded ii) Langsam other hand, few other concertos reveal Court Orchestra of Oldenburg in north- iii) Sehr lebhaft more of the nobly singing soul of the west Germany, and so highly esteemed instrument. Schumann’s light orchestral that the Grand Duke gave him the title scoring removes any potential problems of of Concertmaster – a dignity normally In 1850 Schumann and his wife Clara balance, allowing a seemingly endless flow reserved for the leader of the orchestra. moved to Düsseldorf, where he had been of melody from the soloist and (in the brief appointed Municipal Music Director. second movement) the chance of a tender The warmth of his initial welcome to the duet with the principal orchestral cello. city clearly spurred his creativity: in just Although the work is nominally in three fourteen days in October he produced his Cello Concerto, followed shortly after by his Third Symphony (the Rhenish), which itself took only five weeks. Schumann initially had high hopes of securing a performance of the new concerto, but though he ran it through with the principal cellist of the Düsseldorf orchestra no performance followed – perhaps because his ineptitude as a conductor quickly soured his relationships with the Düsseldorf players. Stravinsky: A Soldier’s Tale A later attempt to interest Frankfurt cellist Robert Bockmühl also came to nothing, and Tama Matheson: narrator by then Schumann’s deteriorating mental Classical Club unpacked Will Vann: conductor state was causing serious concern. He LMP leader Ruth Rogers gives you an succeeded in making some final revisions extra insight into Schumann’s Cello to the work only days before attempting Concerto. Think of it as a kind of ‘video suicide and subsequently voluntarily programme note’. entering a sanatorium. The concerto was eventually premièred in Leipzig by Ludwig Click the play icon above or visit Ebert and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Watch online from 3pm on londonmozartplayers.com/classicalclub- Remembrance Sunday June 1860, four years after the composer’s concert-programmes to watch. death. 8 November London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! Also in 1850… Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was The Second Law of Thermodynamics, premièred at Weimar, conducted by one of the cardinal rules of practical Liszt. physics, was propounded by German physicist Rudolf Clausius. If you haven’t heard Flanders and Swann’s song about it, you should. Frances Mary Buss founded the North London Collegiate School in Camden, the first school to offer girls a full academic education. Notable old girls include poet Stevie Smith, composer Judith Weir, television personality Esther Rantzen and (more important than any of them) LMP bassist Cathy Elliott. The first hippopotamus to be seen in Europe since the Roman Empire came to London Zoo. Obaysch, named after the island where he was captured, became an instant celebrity, drawing crowds of up to 10,000 and inspiring a range of merchandise and even a polka. London Mozart Players Classical Club | A Classical Celebration! The London Mozart Players, the UK’s FM’s social media channels. And now LMP longest established chamber orchestra, is in the vanguard of UK orchestras testing was founded in 1949 by Harry Blech to the waters with paid-for online orchestral delight audiences with the works of Mozart concerts to support their musicians, rather and Haydn.