London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 20 March 2016 7pm Barbican Hall Schumann Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ Daniel Harding conductor Christian Gerhaher Faust/Pater Seraphicus/Dr Marianus Christiane Karg Gretchen/Una Poenitentium Alastair Miles Mephistopheles/Böser Geist Andrew Staples Ariel/Pater Ecstaticus/Angel Tara Erraught London’s Symphony Orchestra Mangel/Maria Aegyptiaca Olivia Vermeulen Not/Mulier Samaritana/Mater Gloriosa Lucy Crowe Soprano Matthew Rose Bass Choir of Eltham College London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 9.30pm 2 Welcome 20 March 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES CH CBE Barbican. We are delighted to welcome LSO Principal (1934–2016) Guest Conductor Daniel Harding, to conduct Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’. In recent The LSO was deeply saddened to hear of the years Daniel Harding has been a champion of this death of the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies work, and it was his great desire to perform it with on Monday 14 March 2016. Our thoughts are with the LSO. his family and friends. Sir Peter had been working closely with the LSO in recent years, with his Tenth Tonight’s performance features a stellar cast of Symphony in 2014 and latterly on his new children’s soloists, comprised of many of the leading operatic opera The Hogboon, which receives its premiere artists of our time including: Christiane Karg, Alastair in June 2016. His vision for music education and Miles, Andrew Staples, Matthew Rose, Lucy Crowe, the wealth of pieces he has left for young people is Tara Erraught, Olivia Vermeulen and, in the title unparalleled in recent times. He will be remembered role, Christian Gerhaher, whom LSO audiences will for his significant contribution to British music, and remember from his performance of Debussy’s will be greatly missed by his many colleagues all Pelléas et Mélisande in January. over the world. We are also delighted to welcome the Choir of To read the LSO’s full tribute, please visit our website. Eltham College, the London Symphony Chorus and LSO Choral Director Simon Halsey. This season the lso.co.uk/more/news LSC celebrates its 50th anniversary, a great milestone in the history of the choir. LSO 2016/17 SEASON NOW ON SALE I hope that you enjoy tonight’s concert and can join us again soon. The LSO returns to the Barbican on Booking is now open for the LSO’s 2016/17 season. Sunday 3 April for the first of a pair of programmes Full listings for all concerts taking place between with conductor Alan Gilbert, who will make his debut September 2016 and July 2017 can be found on with the LSO. the LSO website, along with details on how to purchase tickets. lso.co.uk/201617season Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director lso.co.uk Composer Profile 3 Robert Schumann Composer Profile My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had but written them down ... Sometimes I am so full of music, and so overflowing with melody, that I find it simply impossible to write down anything. Robert Schumann orn into a middle-class home in Zwickau on 8 a way out through music.’ His secret engagement to June 1810, Robert Schumann was the youngest Clara in 1837 and subsequent battle with Bof five children. In 1816, the boy enrolled at Wieck to win approval led to the composition of a private school where he also appears to have a flood of remarkable songs and song-cycles. received his first piano lessons. Robert’s youthful In August 1840 the Leipzig Court of Appeal compositions and considerable keyboard skills judged that Schumann and Clara were free to attracted attention at Zwickau’s Lyceum, although he marry. The couple, in addition to their tireless was equally recognised for his extensive schoolboy musical activities, produced seven children. literary efforts. Schumann’s worsening periods of manic depression, possibly heightened by the secondary As a student of law at Leipzig University, Schumann symptoms of syphilis, periodically blocked his spent his time writing, composing and improvising immense creative output. After he attempted at the piano. Lessons with piano teacher Friedrich suicide in February 1854 by drowning in the River Wieck and composition studies with Heinrich Rhine, he requested to enter a sanatorium near Dorn helped prepare the way for a musical career. Bonn, where he died on 29 July 1856. Unfortunately, Schumann’s ambitions as a pianist were undermined by finger problems. Severe Composer Profile © Andrew Stewart depression prompted the young man to consider suicide; however, his almost obsessive love for Wieck’s musically gifted daughter, Clara, offered an alternative to terminal melancholy. ‘Everything that happens in the world affects me, politics, literature, people,’ observed Schumann; ‘I think it all over in my own way, and then it has to find 4 Programme Notes 20 March 2016 Robert Schumann (1810–56) Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ (1844–53) 1 OVERTURE In his youth Schumann had originally wanted to be a poet. He certainly had the talent: his mature PART ONE journalistic writings show an exuberant literary 2 SZENE IM GARTEN [SCENE IN THE GARDEN] flair. Composition only came via a long, obsessively 3 GRETCHEN VOR DEM BILD DER MATER DOLOROSA determined and at times eccentric process of [GRETCHEN BEFORE THE IMAGE OF MATER DOLOROSA] self-education. Even then literature retained a 4 SZENE IM DOM [SCENE IN THE CATHEDRAL] powerful hold on Schumann’s imagination. The discovery of Byron’s poetry for instance was an PART TWO experience as devastating as falling passionately 5 SONNENAUFGANG [SUNRISE] in love. (Schumann was the kind of man who could 6 MITTERNACHT [MIDNIGHT] only ever fall in love passionately.) Given all that, 7 FAUSTS TOD [FAUST’S DEATH] and given Schumann’s growing romantic nationalist feelings in the 1840s, it was inevitable that he would PART THREE one day find himself tackling the great verse drama 8 FAUSTS VERKLÄRUNG [FAUST’S TRANSFIGURATION] Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) – for Germans, Goethe is a figure as totemic as PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER DANIEL HARDING CONDUCTOR Shakespeare is for the English. Goethe had treated STEPHEN JOHNSON the legend of Faust – the academic who sells his CHRISTIAN GERHAHER soul to the Devil in return for youth, knowledge FAUST/PATER SERAPHICUS/DR MARIANUS and magical powers – in two distinct parts. Part CHRISTIANE KARG One is a relatively conventional depiction of Faust’s GRETCHEN/UNA POENITENTIUM bargain with Mephistopheles, his seduction of the ALASTAIR MILES girl Gretchen and its tragic consequences. Part MEPHISTOPHELES/BÖSER GEIST Two is a much less easily graspable account of the ANDREW STAPLES maturation of Faust’s soul, his death and subsequent ARIEL/PATER ECSTATICUS/ANGEL transfiguration in an ethereal world which only TARA ERRAUGHT superficially resembles the Roman Catholic Heaven: MANGEL/MARIA AEGYPTIACA Goethe was emphatically not a Christian. OLIVIA VERMEULEN JOHANN WOLFGANG VON NOT/MULIER SAMARITANA/MATER GLORIOSA Initially the thought of taking on such a revered GOETHE (1749–1832) LUCY CROWE SOPRANO SOLO poetic work was daunting, and Schumann appears was a poet, playwright and scientist. MATTHEW ROSE BASS SOLO to have spent about ten years wavering between Following the success of his first LUCY ANDERSON, GEORGIA BISHOP, ROBIN HORGAN setting it as an opera or a sacred-secular choral work novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther VOCAL SOLOISTS FROM THE GUILDHALL SCHOOL – perhaps he was really putting it off. Eventually, (1774), he has remained an important in 1844, buoyed up by the recent success of his figure in German and world literature. CHOIR OF ELTHAM COLLEGE choral-orchestral Das Paradies und die Peri – in his He is most widely known as the LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS own description ‘halfway between an opera and an author of the tragedy Faust, published SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR oratorio’ – Schumann began working with feverish in two parts in 1808 and 1832. enthusiasm on a similar hybrid setting of the final lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 ‘transfiguration’ scene from Part Two of Faust. He his own Parts One and Two, and in 1853, not seems to have been pleased with it, yet a year later long before his final mental collapse, he added he was writing to his friend Mendelssohn: the Overture. ‘The scene from Faust reposes in my desk. I am absolutely Whether Schumann would have gone on adding afraid to look at it again. The lofty poetry, especially of the scenes from Goethe’s drama is impossible to say. As it stands, Schumann’s choice of scenes from final part, moved me so deeply that I ventured to begin. Faust might at first seem confusingly arbitrary. It I have no idea whether I shall ever publish it.’ would be difficult to divine Goethe’s story from Schumann’s setting, and scenes that had such a Why such reticence? One possible reason is the powerful effect on his fellow romantic Berlioz – music had dark associations. After four years of Faust’s solitary address to elemental nature, the staggering, at times almost manic productivity, scenes of student ribaldry in the Bierkeller – seem Schumann had composed the Faust scene ‘by to have had little interest for Schumann. Instead the sacrifice of his last strength’, as his devoted his settings concentrate on some of the drama’s wife Clara reported. He had then plunged into a psychological and philosophical themes. catastrophic depressive episode that lasted well into the following year, and which for a while silenced him creatively. Turning again to these famous lines earlier in the scene must have given Schumann painful pause for thought: DANIEL HARDING CONDUCTS ‘The man who strives with all his might, IN 2016 him we can redeem’ Sun 8 May 2016 7pm Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 [‘Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Bruckner Symphony No 3 den können wir erlösen!’] with Leif Ove Andsnes piano Yet four years later, in 1848, Schumann was setting those very words in an extended and Sun 5 Jun 2016 7pm partly recomposed version of the transfiguration Mahler Symphony No 2 scene.