London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 29 May 2016 7pm Barbican Hall BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO Beethoven Violin Concerto London’s Symphony Orchestra INTERVAL Elgar Symphony No 2 Sir Antonio Pappano conductor Nikolaj Znaider violin Concert finishes approx 9.20pm 2 Welcome 29 May 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief A very warm welcome to this evening’s LSO ELGAR UP CLOSE ON BBC iPLAYER concert at the Barbican. Tonight’s performance is the last in a number of programmes this season, During April and May, a series of four BBC Radio 3 both at the Barbican and LSO St Luke’s, which have Lunchtime Concerts at LSO St Luke’s was dedicated explored the music of Elgar, not only one of to Elgar’s moving chamber music for strings, with Britain’s greatest composers, but also a former performances by violinist Jennifer Pike, the LSO Principal Conductor of the Orchestra. String Ensemble directed by Roman Simovic, and the Elias String Quartet. All four concerts are now We are delighted to be joined once more by available to listen back to on BBC iPlayer Radio. Sir Antonio Pappano and Nikolaj Znaider, who toured with the LSO earlier this week to Eastern Europe. bbc.co.uk/radio3 Following his appearance as conductor back in lso.co.uk/lunchtimeconcerts November, it is a great pleasure to be joined by Nikolaj Znaider as soloist, playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto. We also greatly look forward to 2016/17 SEASON ON SALE NOW Sir Antonio Pappano’s reading of Elgar’s Second Symphony, following his memorable performance Next season Gianandrea Noseda gives his first concerts of Symphony No 1 with the LSO in 2012. as LSO Principal Guest Conductor, Janine Jansen is the focus of our LSO Artist Portait, and we welcome Sincere thanks to our media partner Classic FM, back Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, who have recommended tonight’s concert to and Lang Lang. Tickets are available now. their listeners. lso.co.uk/201617season I hope you enjoy the performance, and that you can join us at the Barbican again soon. On 5 June, LSO Principal Guest Conductor, Daniel Harding, A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS conducts Mahler’s Second Symphony. Looking ahead to the 2016/17 season, we welcome back both The LSO offers great benefits for groups of ten Nikolaj Znaider and Sir Antonio Pappano for several or more, including 20% discount on standard tickets. concerts. More information can be found at lso.co.uk. Tonight, we are delighted to welcome: Adele Friedland & Friends Gerrards Cross Community Association Denver Travel Carolyn Johnson & Friends Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director lso.co.uk/groups London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Nikolaj Znaider in 2016/17 SIBELIUS MOZART AND TCHAIKOVSKY MOZART AND TCHAIKOVSKY VIOLIN CONCERTO SERIES LAUNCH CONCERT II The violinist and conductor Sun 25 Sep 2016 7pm Sun 18 Dec 2016 7pm Sun 14 May 2017 7pm returns to the LSO in 2016/17 Sibelius Violin Concerto Mozart Violin Concerto No 1 Mozart Violin Concerto No 5 Mahler Symphony No 4 Mozart Violin Concerto No 4 Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5 to launch a new series, Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4 exploring Mozart’s Violin Daniel Harding conductor Nikolaj Znaider conductor/violin Concertos side-by-side with Nikolaj Znaider violin Nikolaj Znaider conductor/violin Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies. Christiane Karg soprano lso.co.uk 020 7638 8891 4 Programme Notes 29 May 2016 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Violin Concerto in D major Op 61 (1806) 1 ALLEGRO MA NON TROPPO It was not until one of the 19th century’s greatest 2 LARGHETTO violinists, Joseph Joachim, performed it in London 3 RONDO (ALLEGRO) in 1844 under Mendelssohn’s baton that the work came to be recognised as the sublime masterpiece NIKOLAJ ZNAIDER VIOLIN that it is. Joachim was only twelve years old at the time, but later descriptions of his playing, which In tonight’s performance, Nikolaj Znaider talked of artistic perfection with bravura as a plays the cadenza by Fritz Kreisler in the secondary consideration, perhaps explain how Violin Concerto’s first movement. it was that he was the first one to be able to put the concerto across; these qualities, after all, PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER For Beethoven, the concerto was not a form to apply equally well to the work itself. LINDSAY KEMP is a senior be taken lightly. Like Mozart, the first great master producer for BBC Radio 3, of the Classical concerto, he composed concertos ‘All its most famous strokes of including programming lunchtime principally for his own instrument, the piano; concerts from LSO St Luke’s. whereas Mozart’s output of piano concertos ran genius are not only mysteriously He is also Artistic Director of to nearly 30, Beethoven completed only five, each quiet, but mysterious in the London Festival of Baroque of them a dynamic and virtuosic conflict between Music, and a regular contributor soloist and orchestra. It is not hard to picture him radiantly happy surroundings.’ to Gramophone magazine. at the keyboard, challenging the orchestra to battle Donald Tovey on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in the gigantic flourishes of the first movement of the ’Emperor’ Concerto, running it ragged THE ‘EMPEROR’ CONCERTO in the fleet-footed games of the finale of the First, The circumstances of the first performance in was Beethoven’s fifth and final or coaxing it patiently into submission in the Vienna in December 1806 sound somewhat less piano concerto composed in 1809. slow movement of the Fourth. promising. Beethoven had rushed to complete the The work is the most symphonic piece in time and the soloist, Franz Clement, was of his piano concertos, and was Compared to these dramas, his only completed apparently forced to sight-read much of the music dedicated to the composer’s violin concerto is a very different animal, a work at the concert. This sounds hard to believe, but it friend and royal benefactor, the of unprecedented warmth and serenity that its is surely significant that the autograph contains Archduke Rudolph, although the first audiences evidently found rather puzzling. many alterations to the solo part, perhaps made work’s majestic title was only ’The opinion of connoisseurs admits that it contains at Clement’s suggestion, after what one can conceived at a later date by an beautiful passages but confesses that the context only imagine was a somewhat hairy premiere. early publisher. often seems broken and that the endless repetition If Beethoven made things hard for his soloist, of unimportant passages produces a tiring effect’, however, Clement did not show the concerto to ran one account of its first performance. its best advantage by playing the second and third Clearly, a little more action was expected. movements at opposite ends of the concert from the first, and inserting some virtuoso showpieces in between (including one played with the violin upside down). lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 BEETHOVEN on LSO LIVE Although Beethoven knew how to play the violin, new tune, which is then alternated with the main it was not really his instrument, so we should not theme before a peaceful coda, a fanfare-like Symphonies be too surprised that his concerto does not adopt outburst from the strings and a short cadenza Nos 1–9 the confrontational and virtuoso tone of the piano lead straight into the finale. concertos. And unlike the piano, the violin cannot Bernard Haitink accompany itself, with the result that the orchestra FINALE conductor has to play along almost all of the time. Beethoven Here again, the form is simple – a rondo whose does not fight against this. Instead he turns it to uncomplicated treatment may owe much to ‘A towering achievement.’ an advantage by writing a supremely conciliatory Beethoven’s haste to complete the concerto, but The Times concerto in which the violin and orchestra are in whose recurring theme is irresistible nevertheless. agreement throughout. As Donald Tovey has said, And there is real originality in the way in which the Benchmark Beethoven Cycle ’all its most famous strokes of genius are not only movement opens with the theme given out by the BBC Music Magazine mysteriously quiet, but mysterious in radiantly soloist over a bare, prompting accompaniment from happy surroundings’. the cellos and basses, and in the way that, just when Classical Recordings of the Year you feel Beethoven has proved that he could carry New York Times FIRST MOVEMENT on for ever, he wittily brings the concerto to an end. This is certainly true of the work’s unusual opening, Nominated for Best Classical Album where five gentle drum beats introduce the sublime 49th Annual Grammy Awards first theme, and then proceed to dominate and unify the whole movement through repeating and lsolive.lso.co.uk recycling their insistent rhythm in different contexts. There is no menace in this (as well there might be), and when the solo violin first enters it is not to contradict the orchestra, or even to contribute any new themes of its own, but to enrich the music with soaring embellishments and eloquent refinements of the movement’s glorious melodic material. SECOND MOVEMENT This non-aggressive attitude is even more noticeable in the placid slow movement, which seems to start out as a straightforward set of variations on the INTERVAL – 20 minutes theme introduced right at the beginning on muted There are bars on all levels of the Concert Hall; ice cream strings – so straightforward, indeed, that the music can be bought at the stands on Stalls and Circle level. never leaves the key of G major and the solo violin The Barbican shop will also be open.