STRAUSS JOSEPH PHIBBS STRAVINSKY ND 62 SEASON MONDAY 9 OCTOBER 2017 2017/18 ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche JOSEPH PHIBBS Rivers to the Sea Interval 20 minutes STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring RUSSELL KEABLE Conductor ALAN TUCKWOOD Leader MONDAY 9 OCTOBER 2017 7.30PM ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE LONDON COVER IMAGE: The Joffrey Ballet performs The Rite of Spring to mark the work’s 100th anniversary in 2013. Photo: © Roger Mastroianni; courtesy of the Joffrey Ballet, Chicago In accordance with the requirements of Westminster City Council, persons shall not be permitted to sit or stand in any gangway. The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment is strictly forbidden without formal consent from St John’s. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the venue. Refreshments are permitted only in the restaurant in the crypt, which is open for licensed refreshments during the interval and after the concert. Please ensure that all digital watch alarms, pagers and mobile phones are switched off. PHONE 020 7222 1061 ONLINE sjss.org.uk ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE St John’s Smith Square Charitable Trust: registered charity no. 1045390; registered in England; company no. 3028678. KSO: Registered charity no. 1069620 TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME RICHARD STRAUSS 1864-1949 RICHARD STRAUSS fiendishly difficult horn solo that sets the Till Eulenspiegels lustige light-hearted tone and which the orchestra Streiche, Op.28 (1894-95) develops to a climax, and another depicting Till on the small and perky D clarinet. At first, Strauss was reluctant to give a THE FAILURE of 29-year-old Richard detailed programme, but he later described Strauss’s first opera, Guntram, in Munich in the episodes – which, he said, “weave in and May 1894 wounded him deeply, especially out of the whole texture in the most varied as he was planning a second opera based disguises and moods as the situations press on on Till Eulenspiegel, a kind of national to the catastrophe in which Till is hanged”. clown in Germany, whose irreverent pranks and peasant wit deflated the pomposities Till’s exploits get wilder and wilder as the of the upper classes. The first printed work progresses. First he gallops through version of Till’s exploits appeared in a marketplace, scattering everything and around 1500 and translations into many everyone in all directions, striding away European languages were soon made. in seven-league boots before hiding in a mouse hole. Then he mocks a priest, flirts In the end, Strauss abandoned the opera with village maidens (depicted by an ardent and decided to write a purely instrumental solo violin) and mimics some professors. piece on the same subject, which he worked on during the winter of 1894-95 But in the end, he is punished, an ominous and completed in May 1895, the first drum roll heralding his trial. Till’s defence, performance being conducted by Franz in the clarinet, is repeatedly overruled Wüllner in Cologne in November that year. by the judge, in the trombones. He is sentenced to be hanged, which Strauss Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till depicts graphically on the clarinet with Eulenspiegel’s merry pranks) was Strauss’s Till’s final shudder on the flute. fourth tone poem and is perhaps his most perfect masterpiece, a work of the highest order conceived in a single burst of inspiration. It shows a new, lighter side of the composer, Strauss’s tone poem shows his lighter side free of any of the heavier Wagnerism of his previous works. Scored for the largest orchestra he had yet used, it pushed the players to their limits, but with a deep understanding of the nature of each instrument. This was virtuoso writing that opened a new era in orchestral technique. Strauss uses rondo form, in which a recurring idea alternates with different episodes that depict Till’s various adventures. But he treats the form very freely. The work is unified by two motifs that appear at the beginning: a PHOTO: © RICHARD STRAUSS INSTITUT GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN 4 KENSINGTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JOSEPH PHIBBS born 1974 JOSEPH PHIBBS and the Philharmonia gave the first Rivers to the Sea (2012) performance there in June 2012, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, to whom the work is dedicated. It received wide critical acclaim JOSEPH PHIBBS is one of the most successful and Phibbs was recognised with a British composers of his generation, having been Composer Award in 2013. A later performance commissioned by, among others, the London from the Royal Festival Hall was broadcast Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony live on Radio 3 and the piece has since been Orchestra (Washington, DC) and the BBC played many times both in Britain and abroad. Symphony Orchestra, which premiered his Lumina at the Last Night of the Proms in 2003 It is not conceived as a and his Partita, under Sakari Oramo, last year. ‘ seascape, but the sea Born in London, Phibbs studied composition acts as a driving force at King’s College London and with Steven Stucky at Cornell University, New York. He Joseph Phibbs on Rivers to the Sea ’ also studied with Param Vir and Harrison Birtwistle, and has taught at the Purcell School, The title comes from a collection of poems King’s College London and the University of by the New York-based writer Sara Teasdale Cambridge. More recent commissions include (1884-1933), some of whose texts Phibbs had a clarinet concerto and a chamber opera. “His already set. Lasting around 25 minutes, it was output operates at a consistently high level of the largest orchestral work he had written. imagination and engagement,” one critic said. “Although the work is not conceived as Rivers to the Sea was commissioned by the a seascape in a conventional sense,” the Philharmonia Orchestra and Anvil Arts for the composer says, “the presence of the sea acts 18th anniversary of the Anvil in Basingstoke, as a driving force… the structure corresponds loosely to traditional symphonic form, each movement set in a contrasting tempo: slow- moderate/fast/slow/very fast. The first and The composer was inspired by New York second movements are linked, as are the third and fourth, with a slow central interlude giving the work an overall three-part structure.” The ‘Nocturne’ has an opening of subliminal beauty, while ‘Night Fugues’, with its closely woven string textures, is thrillingly fast-paced and diverting. Scored for clarinet and strings, the hushed ‘Interlude’ forms the static centre of the work, followed by the inward-looking ‘Dolente’, with its mournful horn solo and chaconne emerging in the harp. The final ‘Neon with Sunrise’ is a blatant celebration PHOTO: MALCOLM CROWTHERS; © JOSEPH PHIBBS of New York, leading to a radiant ending. OCTOBER 2017 5 TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME IGOR STRAVINSKY brought from the village to imprint his sacred The Rite of Spring (1913) kiss on the new-flowering earth. During this rite, the crowd is seized with mystic terror… “After this uprush of terrestrial joy, the second LIKE HIS FRIEND Pablo Picasso, Igor scene sets a celestial mystery before us. Young Stravinsky became a Modernist icon – and, virgins dance in circles on the sacred hill like Picasso, no one was ever quite sure what amid enchanted rocks; then they choose the he would do next. He studied law before victim they intend to honour. In a moment, becoming a composer (against the advice of she will dance her last dance before the his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), and his ancients clad in bearskins to show that the big break came when he was commissioned bear was man’s ancestor. Then the greybeards to write a score for the Ballet Russes by Sergei dedicate the victim to the god Yarilo.” Diaghilev. This was The Firebird, which made his name overnight after its first performance [It is] the scratching, in Paris in 1910. Petrushka followed in 1911 and The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps) ‘ gnawing, wiggling in 1913. Although Stravinsky composed in a of birds and beasts wide range of genres, his output is dominated by ballet music, which he did more to reinvent Stravinsky on The Rite of Spring ’ for the 20th century than any other composer. Roerich sketched backcloths and designed The idea for The Rite of Spring had come to costumes, while Stravinsky started with Stravinsky several years earlier. “One day, when ‘The Augurs of Spring’. By the following I was finishing the last pages of The Firebird spring, he had reached ‘Glorification of the in St Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision… a Chosen One’. Progress slowed as Diaghilev solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a postponed the first performance from circle, watched a young girl dance herself to 1912 until 1913, but the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate was completed on 17 November 1912. “I the god of spring.” He described the vision remember the day well,” Stravinsky wrote, to his old friend Nicholas Roerich, a talented “as I was suffering from a raging toothache.” painter and one of the greatest authorities on the ancient Slavs. Together, they agreed on the The full score was dated 13 March 1913, and titles and the order of the episodes, working the first performance, in Paris in May of that on a scenario that they completed in July 1911 year, provoked one of the strongest reactions in and which Roerich later sent to Diaghilev. musical history. Shocked by the awkwardness of the dancing and the rhythmic savagery of “As conceived by myself and Stravinsky, my the music, many in the audience screamed object is to present a number of scenes of their disapproval so loudly that the orchestra earthly joy and celestial triumph… the first was drowned out, forcing Vaslav Nijinsky, who set should transport us to the foot of a sacred had choreographed the work, to shout out hill… where Slavonic tribes are gathered to instructions to his dancers from the wings.