22 February 2013 LPO programme notes

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI*Principal Guest Conductor YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUINLeader pIETER SChOEMANComposer in Residence JULIAN ANDERSONPatron hRh ThE DUKE OF KENT KG

Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOThY WALKER AM

pROGRAMME £3

CONTENTS

2 Welcome3 Tonight’s works in context 4 About the Orchestra5 On stage tonight 6 Marin Alsop7 Garrick Ohlsson 8 Programme notes13 Next concerts15 Supporters16 LPO administration The timings shown are not precise and

are given only as a guide.

* supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation and one anonymous donor

CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

JTI FRIDAY SERIES SOUThBANK CENTRE’S ROYAL FESTIVAL hALLFriday 22 February 2013 | 7.30pm

MARIN ALSOpconductor

GARRICK OhLSSONpiano

IVESThree Places in New England (18’)

GERShWINRhapsody in Blue (15’)

Interval

COpLANDPiano Concerto (16’)

JOpLIN (arr. Schuller)Suite from Treemonisha (20’)

Free pre-concert events at Royal Festival hall

5.00–5.30pm The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s ensemble for 15–19 year olds, The Band, presents a new work inspired by Ives’s Three Places in New England.

6.15–6.45pm Pianist Garrick Ohlsson shares his views on performing works by Gershwin and Copland.

2 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Welcome

WELCOME TO SOUThBANK CENTRE

We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you have any queries please ask any member of staff for assistance.

Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, YO! Sushi, wagamama, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Caffè Vergnano 1882, Skylon, Concrete and Feng Sushi, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery.

If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, phone 020 7960 4250, or email [email protected] We look forward to seeing you again soon.

A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment:

phOTOGRAphY is not allowed in the auditorium.

LATECOMERS will only be admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance.

RECORDING is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of Southbank Centre. Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended.

MOBILES, pAGERS AND WATChES should be switched off before the performance begins.

The Rest Is Noise is a year-long festival that digs deep into 20th-century history to reveal the influences on art in general and classical music in particular. Inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest Is Noise, we use film, debate, talks and a vast range of concerts to reveal the fascinating stories behind the century’s wonderful and often controversial music.

We have brought together the world’s finest orchestras and soloists to perform many of the most significant works of the 20th century. We reveal why these pieces were written and how they transformed the musical language of the modern world.

Over the year, The Rest Is Noise focuses on 12 different parts. The music is set in context with talks from a fascinating team of historians, scientists, philosophers, political theorists and musical experts as well as films, online content and other special programmes.

If you’re new to 20th-century music, then this is your time to start exploring with us as your tour guide. There has never been a festival like this. Jude KellyArtistic Director, Southbank Centre

Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise, inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest Is Noise

Presented by Southbank Centrein partnership with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 3

Tonight’s works in context

1900 Aaron Copland born in Brooklyn, New York

1886 First sales of Coca-Cola in the USA, originally marketed as a patent medicinal remedy

1876 Prototype telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell

1870

1880

1900

1890

1910

1920

1930

1922 Creation of the Soviet Union (USSR)

1914 Ives completed Three Places in New England

1880 Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov published

1930 Premiere of Ives’s Three Places in New England in New York

1867/68 (exact date unknown) Scott Joplin born in Texarkana, Texas

19401937 Death of George Gershwin1932 London Philharmonic Orchestra founded by Sir Thomas Beecham

1898 George Gershwin born in Brooklyn, New York

1940 1939 Outbreak of World War II in Europe

1945 End of World War II

1906 Kellogg’s began selling Corn Flakes

1896 Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. First modern Olympic games held in Athens

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

1874 Charles Ives born in Danbury, Connecticut

1924 Premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in New York

1927 Premiere of Copland’s Piano Concerto in Boston

1972 First professional performance of Joplin’s complete opera Treemonisha in Atlanta

1910 Joplin completed his opera Treemonisha; however, it was not fully staged until 1972

1990 Death of Aaron Copland

1954 Death of Charles Ives

1917 Death of Scott Joplin

1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man on the Moon. Stonewall riots in New York

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

1955 Vietnam War began

1949 Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four published

1980 John Lennon assassinated

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

1982 Falkland Islands invaded by Argentina

1977 First Star Wars film released

1891 Carnegie Hall opened in New York City


London Philharmonic Orchestra

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the world’s finest orchestras, balancing a long and distinguished history with a reputation as one of the UK’s most adventurous and forward-looking orchestras. As well as giving classical concerts, the Orchestra also records film and video game soundtracks, has its own record label, and reaches thousands of Londoners every year through activities for schools and local communities.

The Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932, and since then its Principal Conductors have included Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Pritchard, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. The current Principal Conductor is Vladimir Jurowski, appointed in 2007, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin is Principal Guest Conductor.

The Orchestra is Resident Orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, where it has performed since it opened in 1951, giving around 40 concerts there each season. 2012/13 highlights include three concerts with Vladimir Jurowski based around the theme of War and Peace in collaboration with the Russian National Orchestra; Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, also conducted by Jurowski; 20th-century American works with Marin Alsop; Haydn and Strauss with Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and the UK premiere of Carl Vine’s Second Piano Concerto with pianist Piers Lane under Vassily Sinaisky. Throughout 2013 the Orchestra is collaborating with Southbank Centre on The Rest Is Noise festival, based on Alex Ross’s book of the same name and charting the 20th century’s key musical works and historical events.

The Orchestra has flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. Every summer, the Orchestra leaves London for four months and takes up its annual residency accompanying the famous Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra since 1964. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing concerts to sell-out audiences worldwide. Tours in the 2012/13 season include visits to Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, the USA and Austria.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded many blockbuster scores, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lawrence of Arabia, The Mission, East is East, Hugo, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label. There are now nearly 70 releases available on CD and to download. Recent additions include Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 with Vladimir Jurowski; Brahms’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 with Klaus Tennstedt; a disc of orchestral works by Mark-Anthony Turnage; and the world premiere of the late Ravi Shankar’s First Symphony conducted by David Murphy.

In summer 2012 the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed as part of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames, and was also chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra maintains an energetic programme of activities for young people and local communities. Highlights include the Deutsche Bank BrightSparks Series; the Leverhulme

Young Composers project; and the Foyle Future Firsts orchestral training programme for outstanding young players. Over recent years, developments in technology and social networks have enabled the Orchestra to reach even more people worldwide: all its recordings are available to download from iTunes and, as well as a YouTube channel, news blog, iPhone app and regular podcasts, the Orchestra has a lively presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Find out more and get involved!

lpo.org.uk

facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra

twitter.com/LpOrchestra

The LPO were on exceptional form, and the performance had a real edge-of-your-seat excitement. The Guardian

(29 September 2012, Royal Festival Hall: Rachmaninoff, Shchedrin, Denisov & Miaskovsky)


On stage tonight

The London Philharmonic Orchestra also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert:

Sonja Drexler • John & Angela Kessler • Julian & Gill Simmonds

First ViolinsAbigail Young

Guest LeaderIlyoung Chae

Chair supported by Moya Greene

Catherine CraigTom EisnerRobert PoolSarah StreatfeildYang ZhangGrace LeeRebecca ShorrockGalina TanneyMadeleine EastonRobert YeomansKatie LittlemoreFrancesca SmithAlina PetrenkoJamie Hutchinson

Second ViolinsAlison Kelly

Guest PrincipalJoseph MaherFiona HighamMarie-Anne MairesseNancy ElanEmma WraggChloé BoireauGavin DaviesDean WilliamsonStephen StewartMila MustakovaElizabeth BaldeyKate Birchall

Chair supported by David & Victoria Graham Fuller

Sheila Law

ViolasHelen Kamminga

Guest PrincipalRobert DuncanGregory Aronovich

Benedetto PollaniLaura VallejoMichelle BruilDaniel CornfordIsabel PereiraMartin FennMiriam EiseleSusanne MartensAlistair Scahill

CellosTimothy Gill

Guest PrincipalFrancis BucknallLaura DonoghueJonathan Ayling

Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Gregory WalmsleySantiago Carvalho†Sue SutherleySusanna RiddellTom RoffSibylle Hentschel

Double BassesTim Gibbs PrincipalLaurence LovelleGeorge PenistonKenneth KnussenHelen RowlandsTom WalleyCatherine RickettsMargarida Castro

FlutesWissam Boustany

Guest PrincipalSue Thomas

Chair supported by the Sharp Family

piccoloStewart McIlwham*

Principal

OboesIan Hardwick PrincipalAngela Tennick

Cor AnglaisGill Callow

ClarinetsRobert Hill* PrincipalEmily Meredith

Bass ClarinetPaul Richards Principal

E-flat ClarinetTom Watmough

SaxophonesMartin RobertsonChristian ForshawNick MossPaul Nathaniel

BassoonsGareth Newman* PrincipalEmma Harding

ContrabassoonSimon Estell Principal

hornsJohn Ryan* PrincipalDavid Pyatt PrincipalMartin HobbsMark Vines Co-PrincipalGareth Mollison

TrumpetsPaul Beniston* PrincipalAnne McAneney*

Chair supported by Geoff & Meg Mann

Nicholas Betts Co-PrincipalDaniel Newell

TrombonesMark Templeton* PrincipalDavid Whitehouse

Bass TromboneLyndon Meredith Principal

Contrabass TromboneLyndon Meredith

TubaLee Tsarmaklis* Principal

TimpaniChristopher Thomas

Guest Principal

percussionAndrew Barclay* Principal

Chair supported by Andrew Davenport

Keith MillarOlly YatesSacha JohnsonEddy Hackett

harpRachel Masters* Principal

CelesteCatherine Edwards

BanjoJames Ellis

* Holds a professorial appointment in London

† Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco


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Marin Alsopconductor

Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice on the international music scene, a Music Director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that music has the power to change lives. She is

recognised across the world for her innovative approach to programming and for her deep commitment to education and the development of audiences of all ages.

Her success as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was recognised when, in 2009, her tenure was extended to 2015. Alsop took up the post of Principal Conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra at the start of the 2012 season, steering the orchestra in its artistic and creative programming, recording ventures and its education and outreach activities. In August 2012 she led the orchestra on a European tour, with acclaimed performances at the BBC Proms in London and at the Concertgebouw’s Robeco Summer Concerts in Amsterdam.

Since 1992, Marin Alsop has been Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where she has built a devoted audience for new music. Building an orchestra is one of Alsop’s great gifts, and she retains strong links with her previous orchestras – the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Principal Conductor 2002–08; now Conductor Emeritus) and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (Music Director 1993–2005; now Music Director Laureate). Marin Alsop has guest conducted the great orchestras of the world including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, La Scala Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In Europe, she regularly returns to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Czech Philharmonic orchestras. Alsop has a close relationship with both the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, appearing with both orchestras most seasons, as well as with the Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment. She is also Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre in London.

Highlights of 2012/13 include Marin Alsop’s Viennese debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the Musikverein; a performance of the Brahms Requiem with the MDR Symphony Orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus; and her debut with Orchestre National de France in Paris.

Since taking up her position in Baltimore in 2007, Marin Alsop has spearheaded educational initiatives that reach more than 60,000 school and pre-school students. In 2008 she launched ‘OrchKids’, which provides music education, instruments and mentorship to the city’s neediest young people, and in 2010 the BSO Academy, where local non-professional musicians work for a week with members of the orchestra.

In 2008 Marin Alsop became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and, in the following year, was chosen as Musical America’s Conductor of the Year. She is the recipient of numerous awards and is the only conductor to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, given to US residents in recognition of exceptional creative work. She was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2010 and was the only classical musician to be included in The Guardian’s ‘Top 100 Women’, celebrating the centenary of International Women’s Day in 2011. In October 2012 Alsop was presented with Honorary Membership (HonRAM) of the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Alsop’s extensive discography on Naxos includes a notable set of Brahms symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and a highly praised Dvořák series with the Baltimore Symphony. The first disc of her Prokofiev symphonic cycle with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra was Orchestral Choice in BBC Music Magazine. Other award-winning recordings include Bernstein’s Mass (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Awards 2010) and Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with Colin Currie on the LPO Label (LPO-0035, Grammy Award 2010).

Born in New York City, Marin Alsop attended Yale University and The Juilliard School. Her conducting career was launched when, in 1989, she was a prize-winner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition and in the same year was the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein.

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 7 London Philharmonic Orchestra | 7

Garrick Ohlssonpiano

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 International Chopin Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess.

Although he has long been regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, ranging across the entire piano literature.

A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. His concerto repertoire alone is unusually wide and eclectic – ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century – and to date he has at his command more than 80 concertos.

The 2012/13 season began with performances of Busoni’s Piano Concerto with the European Union Youth Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda, including at the Edinburgh International Festival. Ohlsson appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this season, followed by a month-long tour of Australia where he recorded, in performance, both Brahms Piano Concertos. At the beginning of 2013 Ohlsson gave a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder. Tonight’s concert will be followed by a Kennedy Center appearance with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra as part of the venue’s Nordic Festival, and a US tour with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Garrick Ohlsson returns to New York later in the spring as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Other US appearances include return visits to the orchestras of Minnesota, Dallas, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Baltimore.

In acknowledgement of the bicentenary of Liszt’s birth, the 2011/12 season included recitals of the composer’s works in cities including Chicago, Hong Kong, London and New York, where he also visited Carnegie Hall with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Lincoln Center with

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the New York Philharmonic. Tours in Europe and Asia included concerts in the UK, France, Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.

During the 2010/11 season Garrick Ohlsson presented a series of all-Chopin recitals in Seattle, Berkeley and La Jolla, culminating at Lincoln Center. In conjunction with that project, a documentary, The Art of Chopin, featuring Garrick Ohlsson and co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations, was released in autumn 2010.

Garrick Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician, and has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács and Tokyo string quartets. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio.

A prolific recording artist, Garrick Ohlsson can be heard on labels including Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Virgin Classics and Bridge Records, where his ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas has garnered considerable critical praise, including a GRAMMY® for Volume 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano was released in 2011. In 2008, Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the complete works of Chopin, and recently released a disc of all the Brahms Piano Variations and Granados’s Goyescas.

Born in New York State, Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of eight. He attended the Westchester Conservatory of Music and at 13 entered The Juilliard School. His musical development has been influenced by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montreal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal, that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he retains immense personal popularity.


Programme notes

Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England of 1914 employs a characteristically rich mixture of quotation and allusion to evoke three scenes set in the composer’s beloved native region: a Boston memorial to a regiment of black soldiers that fought for the North in the Civil War; a Revolutionary campsite where a boy at a Fourth of July picnic dreams of soldiers on the march; and a riverside in the Berkshires where Mr and Mrs Ives took a Sunday-morning walk during their honeymoon.

The programme includes two works for piano and orchestra from the heady period in the 1920s when the classics met jazz: George Gershwin’s famous Rhapsody in Blue, in which an aspiring songwriter displayed his ability to work on a broader canvas;

and Aaron Copland’s two-movement Concerto, written by its idealistic young composer to show how jazz rhythms and colours could help create a distinctive American musical language.

Scott Joplin, the son of a former slave, became the ‘King of Ragtime Writers’ through the success of Maple Leaf Rag and other piano compositions, but had loftier ambitions. He completed and published his opera Treemonisha towards the end of his life, but he never saw it reach the stage. A prime mover in the work’s revival in the 1970s, as orchestrator and conductor, was Gunther Schuller; and he has now arranged an orchestral Suite from Joplin’s ragtime-tinged score.

American pioneers

Charles Ives was the first great American classical composer: not simply, as he seemed for so long, an ingenious experimenter who anticipated many of the technical innovations of 20th-century music; but a composer who shared with Mahler the ability to fuse many different kinds of music, including popular music, into a coherent and powerful statement. One of his most perfectly achieved works is Three Places in New England, depicting three locations in his beloved native region, all with significant historical or personal associations. Ives drafted the three movements in 1911 and 1912, drawing on earlier sketches. By 1914 he had completed them in versions for large orchestra, and brought them together under the title ‘First Orchestral Set’. But this Set, or suite, was never performed, and the manuscript has survived only in fragmentary form.

In 1929, for the conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, Ives made a new version of the piece for a chamber orchestra of two dozen players. It was performed in the USA and in France, and the score was published in 1935 – the first commercial publication of any of Ives’s music. Tonight’s performance is of an edition by the American scholar James B. Sinclair, which retains the compositional improvements of the 1929 revision, while restoring the original scoring for full orchestra.

The first movement was inspired by a bas-relief by the sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens on Boston Common: a memorial to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his regiment of black soldiers, the first of its kind, which he raised to fight for the North in the American Civil War. Ives’s score of this movement is prefaced by a poem,

Three places in New England

1 The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)2 Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut3 The Housatonic at Stockbridge

CharlesIves

1874–1954


presumably his own, which begins and ends with the line ‘Moving – Marching – Faces of Souls!’ The music is mostly sombre and reflective, sometimes evoking a march step but never actually breaking into a march, sometimes seeming on the point of dropping into a familiar melody (such as Marching through Georgia) but never quite doing so, once reaching a brief climax but at the end fading away to nothing.

The second movement is named after the site, preserved as a Revolutionary Memorial, on which General Israel Putnam’s soldiers camped in the winter of 1778/79 during the American War of Independence. Ives combined two earlier works, a humorous Country Band March and an overture and march called 1776, uniting them by means of a narrative in which a boy wanders away from a Fourth of July picnic on the site, and dreams that he sees Putnam’s soldiers marching out of the camp. The music includes both parodies of the amateur bandsmen of Ives’s own time and quotations of tunes from the Revolutionary period, juxtaposed and superimposed in one of Ives’s richest and most complex collages – and one of his most riotous.

The final movement is a souvenir of a walk that Ives and his wife Harmony took by the Housatonic river near Stockbridge, Massachusetts on a Sunday morning in the summer of 1908, during their honeymoon in the Berkshires. ‘We walked in the meadows along the river,’ he recalled, ‘and heard the distant singing from the church across the river. The mist had not entirely left the river bed, and the colours, the running water, the banks and elm trees were something that one would always remember.’ The mists over the water are evoked in ‘shadow’ parts for muted violins, playing in a different key from the rest of the orchestra. At the heart of the piece is a hymn melody, Zeuner’s Missionary Chant, which is eventually expanded into a massive climax – though it is a climax with a characteristically Ivesian aftermath.

‘[‘The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common’] seems to look ahead to black music of the near or distant future: the jagged country blues of Skip James, the dreaming chords of Ellington’s symphonic jazz, John Coltrane’s “sheets of sound”. Such resemblances may be nothing more than accidents, but Ives’s whole method was to plan accidents. He was incapable of asserting a monolithic point of view; instead, he created a kind of open-ended listening room, a space of limitless echoes.’

Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise (Fourth Estate)


Interval – 20 minutesAn announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.

Programme notes

George Gershwin began his career in Tin Pan Alley, as a composer of popular songs and musicals, before making his mark in the realms of concert music and opera. The beginning of this shift is marked by his Rhapsody in Blue. This was one of a number of pieces of ‘symphonic jazz’ requested from various composers by the white band-leader Paul Whiteman, for a New York concert in February 1924 called ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’. Gershwin wrote the Rhapsody in about three weeks, enlisting the help of Whiteman’s arranger Ferde Grofé to score it for the band. The first performance, with the composer playing the solo part (including a cadenza he had not yet written down), was a triumphant success with the star-studded audience. The piece was soon repeated in various cities by Gershwin and the Whiteman band. Later, to give it greater circulation, Grofé also made versions accompanied by theatre orchestra and by full symphony orchestra – though he retained the saxophone section and the banjo of the original.

The Rhapsody in Blue is a single-movement work in the tradition of pieces such as Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy, with a brilliant solo part including several extended cadenzas. Right from the famous trill and glissando of the opening clarinet solo, it is permeated by the instrumental colouring of jazz, together with its melodic and harmonic inflections, and above all its syncopated rhythms. There is also what might well be a full-blown Broadway show tune in the slower interlude towards the end. But it is the way in which Gershwin treats his material, not in a suite-like succession of episodes but in a continuous process of organic development, transition and transformation, that gives the Rhapsody the depth and complexity of a serious concert work.

Rhapsody in Blue, for piano and orchestra

Garrick Ohlsson piano

GeorgeGershwin

1898–1937

‘It’s been tremendously exciting to look on as the works I discuss in The Rest Is Noise have come together in Southbank Centre’s festival. Twentieth-century classical music is an extraordinary creative achievement that has shaped so many aspects of what we hear now, classical or not. There will always be something smouldering at the heart of this repertoire, something dangerous and untamed, but placing the music in a broad cultural and historical context should help people to become more comfortable with it and to understand how it came to be.’

Alex Ross, author, The Rest Is Noise southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise


piano Concerto

Garrick Ohlsson piano

1 Andante sostenuo –2 Molto moderato (molto rubato) – Allegro assai

AaronCopland

1900–90

Aaron Copland composed his only Piano Concerto in 1926, and took the solo part in the first performance in Boston in January 1927, with his long-time champion Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The work reflects Copland’s ambition, forged while he had been studying in Europe a few years earlier, to create a national style through the use of elements of jazz. As he later recalled, the period of the 1920s was ‘definitely coloured by the notion that Americans needed a kind of music that they could recognise as their own. The jazz came by way of wanting to write this more immediately recognisable American music.’ Unlike Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (which had had its famous premiere while Copland was still away), the Concerto is not simply in jazz idioms, but uses jazz styles, clichés and colours to enliven the composer’s rapidly evolving personal style. So, for example, syncopated rhythms are combined with Copland’s Stravinskyan changing metres to produce rhythmic textures of some complexity.

Copland identified ‘two dominant jazz moods: the “blues” and the snappy number’: and it is this dualism that moulds the Concerto’s highly original two-movement form. After a challenging introduction, foreshadowing some of the work’s main thematic ideas, the first movement is a predominantly gentle slow blues; its principal melody is given increasingly full canonic treatment, culminating in a complex and sonorous passage for almost the full forces. After a brief transition, the second movement begins with a piano solo requiring some molto rubato playing (for which Copland’s own recording sets the grotesque tone). The pace then quickens towards the main part of the movement, an exuberant ‘snappy number’. This begins as if in sonata form, with the piano’s syncopated scalewise figure as the first subject, a parodistic tune initiated by the saxophone as the second, and

a development section beginning calmly and incorporating a central piano cadenza. But where the recapitulation ought to be there is instead an expansive return to themes from the introduction to the first movement; after which the two main ideas of the second movement are brought back, in reverse order, in a brilliant coda.


Suite from Treemonisha Arranged by Gunther Schuller (born 1925)Scott

Joplin

1867/8–1917

OvertureWe’re Goin’ Around – Treemonisha’s Bringing Up – Good Advice ConfusionThe BearsWe will Rest Awhile – Aunt Dinah has Blowed de Horn Prelude to Act 3 – Wrong is never Right – A Real Slow Drag

Scott Joplin, born the son of a former slave in Texarkana, Texas, was an itinerant pianist and singer whose published piano pieces established him as the ‘King of Ragtime Writers’ – master of the fashionable style that combined the regular tread of marches and dances with the syncopations of African-American musical tradition. Keen to succeed in more ambitious genres, he wrote two operas: A Guest of Honour, which was given a brief tour in 1903 but has now been lost, and Treemonisha. Joplin completed this three-act opera in 1910 and published its vocal score (with piano accompaniment) the following year; but he died before he could secure a production.

Treemonisha is sung throughout, with some numbers in the style of parlour songs of the time, but with ragtime rhythms prominent in most of the writing for orchestra and chorus. The libretto, by Joplin himself, is set on a single day in 1884 on an Arkansas plantation occupied by slaves freed following the Civil War. Treemonisha is the adopted daughter of a kindly couple who have given her a good education. Having held out against the influence of a group of elderly ‘conjurers’ who foster superstition, she is kidnapped by them. On being rescued, she forgives them, and the people of the plantation hail her as their moral teacher and leader.

When Treemonisha finally reached the stage during the ‘ragtime boom’ of the 1970s, a major part was played by Gunther Schuller, who is not only an eminent composer, conductor and educator, but also a former jazz musician and a respected historian of jazz. Schuller conducted the first fully professional performances of Treemonisha by Houston Grand Opera in 1975 (followed by a recording). For these he made a new scoring of the work for full orchestra, as Joplin’s own orchestration has not survived (though there is tantalising evidence that the orchestral parts were destroyed as late as the early 1960s). Schuller has now compiled an orchestral Suite from the score, made especially for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (of which Marin Alsop is Principal Conductor).

The Suite combines orchestral movements and vocal and choral numbers, freely adapted with voices replaced by instruments. The extended Overture begins with a theme that Joplin said ‘is the principal strain in the opera and represents the happiness of the people when they feel free from the conjurors and their spells of superstition’. It is followed by orchestral transcriptions of a choral dance or ‘ring play’, a description by Treemonisha’s adoptive mother of her upbringing, and a sermon by Parson Alltalk. ‘Confusion’ is an ensemble of horrified reaction to Treemonisha’s abduction, and ‘The Bears’ is a dance scene in which eight bears frolic in waltz time. The next two numbers are sung by a male quartet during work in the cotton fields, and by all the cotton pickers at the end of the day’s labour. The Prelude to Act 3, introducing a scene in which Treemonisha’s friends are waiting anxiously for news of her, is followed by a ‘lecture’ by the idealistic young Remus, and then by the finale, in which Treemonisha leads the company in a joyful dance. Programme notes by Anthony Burton © 2013

Programme notes


Saturday 2 March 2013 | 7.30pm

Weill The Threepenny Opera (sung in German with English surtitles)

Vladimir Jurowski conductorMark padmore MacheathSir John Tomlinson J J PeachumDame Felicity palmer Mrs PeachumAllison Bell Polly PeachumNicholas Folwell Tiger BrownGabriela Iştoc Lucy BrownMeow Meow JennyMax hopp narratorTed huffman directorLondon philharmonic Choir

There will be no interval in this performance.

Free pre- and post-concert performances 6.00–6.45pm and 9.45–10.15pm The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival hallFoyle Future Firsts and conductor Gerry Cornelius present Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel – two chances to hear Weill and Brecht’s first collaboration.

Saturday 6 April 2013 | 7.30pm

Stravinsky Symphony of PsalmsOrff Carmina Burana

hans Graf conductorSally Matthews sopranoAndrew Kennedy tenorRodion pogossov baritoneLondon philharmonic ChoirTrinity Boys Choir

Free pre-concert discussion 6.15–6.45pm | Royal Festival hall Hans Graf looks at Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the lasting appeal of Carmina Burana.

Saturday 27 April 2013 | 7.30pm

Webern Variations Op. 30Berg Lulu SuiteMartinů Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and TimpaniBartók Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste

Vladimir Jurowski conductorBarbara hannigan soprano

Wednesday 1 May 2013 | 7.30pm

Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 4Tippett A Child of our Time

Ryan Wigglesworth conductorRebecca Evans sopranopamela helen Stephen mezzo sopranoBen Johnson tenorMatthew Rose bassLondon philharmonic Choir

Free pre-concert discussion6.15–6.45pm | Royal Festival hallWriter and broadcaster Daniel Snowman takes a look at Tippett’s A Child of our Time.

Friday 17 May 2013 | 7.30pmJTI Friday Series

Stravinsky Jeu de Cartesprokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2Shostakovich Symphony No. 6

Vladimir Jurowski conductorpatricia Kopatchinskaja violin

Next LPO concerts at Royal Festival Hall

Booking details

Tickets £9–£39

London philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office: 020 7840 4242 Monday to Friday 10.00am–5.00pm | lpo.org.uk

Southbank Centre Ticket Office: 0844 847 9920 Daily 9.00am–8.00pm | southbankcentre.co.uk


INTERNATIONAL PIANO SERIES 2012/13

TICKETS 0844 847 9929SOUTHBANKCENTRE.CO.UK

Mitsuko Uchida © Roger Mastroianni

CHRISTIAN BLACKSHAWTuesday 26 February

KARIM SAIDSunday 3 March andSunday 9 June

MITSUKO UCHIDAWednesday 6 March

STEPHEN KOVACEVICHTuesday 19 March

KIRILL GERSTEINThursday 4 April

YUNDIThursday 18 April

ANGELA HEWITTTuesday 7 May

DENIS KOZHUKHINSunday 12 MayPart of The Rest Is Noise

PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKIThursday 23 May

STEVEN OSBORNEWednesday 29 MayPart of The Rest Is Noise

ELISABETH LEONSKAJAWednesday 5 June

LpO Label sale on iTunes

12 February–11 March 2013 | www.iTunes.com/LpO

From 12 February–11 March, we’re offering special discounts on all our LPO Label albums on iTunes. With over 70 releases in the LPO catalogue – from Handel to Holst, and Shostakovich to Ravi Shankar – there’s something for every taste, so grab a bargain this month!

Klaus Tennstedt conducts Brahms Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3

New orchestral works by Mark-Anthony Turnage

Vladimir Jurowski conducts Tchaikovsky Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

Paavo Berglund conducts Sibelius Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6

Some of our recent releases – browse the full LPO catalogue at www.iTunes.com/LpO


We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following Thomas Beecham Group patrons, principal Benefactors and Benefactors:

The generosity of our Sponsors, Corporate Members, supporters and donors is gratefully acknowledged:

Corporate Members

Silver: AREVA UKBritish American Business Destination Québec – UKHermes Fund Managers Pritchard Englefield

Bronze: Lisa Bolgar Smith and Felix

Appelbe of Ambrose AppelbeAppleyard & Trew LLPBerkeley LawCharles RussellLazardLeventis Overseas Corporate DonorLombard Street Research preferred partners Corinthia Hotel London Heineken Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd Villa Maria

In-kind SponsorsGoogle IncSela / Tilley’s Sweets

Trusts and FoundationsBBC Performing Arts Fund The Boltini TrustSir William Boreman’s FoundationThe Boshier-Hinton FoundationBritten-Pears FoundationThe Candide TrustThe Coutts Charitable TrustDiaphonique, Franco-British fund for

contemporary musicDunard FundEmbassy of Spain, Office for Cultural

and Scientific AffairsThe Equitable Charitable TrustFidelio Charitable TrustThe Foyle FoundationJ Paul Getty Junior Charitable TrustThe Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable TrustCapital Radio’s Help a London ChildThe Hobson CharityThe Kirby Laing Foundation

The Idlewild TrustThe Leverhulme TrustMarsh Christian TrustAdam Mickiewicz Institute The Peter Minet TrustPaul Morgan Charitable TrustThe Diana and Allan Morgenthau

Charitable TrustMaxwell Morrison Charitable TrustMusicians Benevolent FundNewcomen Collett FoundationThe Austin & Hope Pilkington TrustSerge Rachmaninoff FoundationThe Rothschild FoundationThe Samuel Sebba Charitable TrustThe Bernard Sunley Charitable

FoundationJohn Thaw FoundationThe Tillett TrustThe Underwood TrustSir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary

SettlementKurt Weill Foundation for MusicGarfield Weston Foundation and others who wish to remain

anonymous

Thomas Beecham GroupThe Tsukanov Family Foundation Anonymous

The Sharp FamilyJulian & Gill Simmonds

Garf & Gill CollinsAndrew Davenport Mrs Sonja DrexlerDavid & Victoria Graham FullerMoya GreeneJohn & Angela KesslerMr & Mrs MakharinskyGeoff & Meg MannCaroline, Jamie & Zander SharpEric Tomsett

Guy & Utti Whittaker Manon Williams

principal BenefactorsMark & Elizabeth AdamsJane AttiasLady Jane BerrillDesmond & Ruth CecilMr John H CookMr Charles Dumas

David EllenCommander Vincent Evans Mr Daniel GoldsteinMr & Mrs Jeffrey HerrmannPeter MacDonald EggersMr & Mrs David MalpasMr Maxwell MorrisonMr Michael PosenMr & Mrs Thierry SciardMr John Soderquist & Mr Costas MichaelidesMr & Mrs G SteinMr & Mrs John C TuckerMr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Lady Marina Vaizey Howard & Sheelagh WatsonMr Anthony Yolland

BenefactorsMrs A BeareDr & Mrs Alan Carrington CBE FRSMr & Mrs Stewart CohenMr Alistair CorbettMr David DennisMr David EdgecombeMr Richard FernyhoughKen FollettMichael & Christine Henry

Ivan HurryMr Glenn HurstfieldMr R K JehaMr Gerald LevinSheila Ashley LewisWg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE JP RAFMr Frank LimPaul & Brigitta LockMr Brian Marsh Andrew T MillsJohn Montgomery Mr & Mrs Andrew NeillEdmund Pirouet Professor John StuddMr Peter TausigMrs Kazue Turner Mr Laurie WattDes & Maggie WhitelockChristopher WilliamsBill Yoe

hon. BenefactorElliott Bernerd

hon. Life MembersKenneth Goode Pehr G GyllenhammarEdmund Pirouet Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE


Administration

Board of Directors

Victoria Sharp ChairmanStewart McIlwham* PresidentGareth Newman*

Vice-PresidentDesmond Cecil CMG Vesselin Gellev* Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Dr Catherine C. HøgelMartin Höhmann* Angela Kessler George Peniston* Sir Bernard RixKevin Rundell* Julian SimmondsMark Templeton*Sir Philip ThomasNatasha TsukanovaTimothy Walker AM Laurence Watt Dr Manon Williams

* Player-Director

Advisory Council

Victoria Sharp Chairman Richard Brass Sir Alan Collins Jonathan Dawson Christopher Fraser OBEClive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwhamLord Sharman of Redlynch OBETimothy Walker AM

American Friends of the London philharmonic Orchestra, Inc.

Margot Astrachan ChairmanDavid E. R. Dangoor

Vice Chair/TreasurerKyung-Wha ChungPeter M. Felix CBE Alexandra JupinDr. Felisa B. KaplanWilliam A. KerrJill Fine MainelliKristina McPhee Dr. Joseph MulvehillHarvey M. Spear, Esq.Danny Lopez

Honorary ChairmanNoel Kilkenny

Honorary DirectorVictoria Sharp

Honorary Director

Richard Gee, Esq Of CounselRobert Kuchner, CPA

General Administration

Timothy Walker AM Chief Executive and Artistic Director

Alison AtkinsonDigital Projects Manager

Finance

David BurkeGeneral Manager andFinance Director

David GreensladeFinance and IT Manager Concert Management

Roanna Gibson Concerts Director (maternity leave)

Ruth SansomArtistic Administrator / Acting Head of Concerts Department

Graham WoodConcerts and Recordings Manager

Barbara Palczynski Glyndebourne and Projects Administrator

Jenny Chadwick Tours and Engagements Manager

Alison JonesConcerts Co-ordinator

Jo OrrPA to the Chief Executive / Concerts Assistant

Matthew FreemanRecordings Consultant Education & Community

Patrick BaileyEducation and Community Director

Alexandra ClarkeEducation Manager

Caz ValeCommunity and Young Talent Manager

Richard MallettEducation and Community Producer

Orchestra personnel

Andrew CheneryOrchestra Personnel Manager

Sarah ThomasLibrarian (maternity leave)

Sarah HolmesLibrarian (maternity cover)

Michael PattisonStage Manager

Julia BoonAssistant Orchestra Personnel Manager

Ken Graham TruckingInstrument Transportation Development

Nick JackmanDevelopment Director

Helen Searl Corporate Relations Manager

Katherine HattersleyCharitable Giving Manager

Melissa Van EmdenEvents Manager

Laura LuckhurstCorporate Relations and Events Officer

Sarah FletcherDevelopment and Finance Officer Marketing

Kath TroutMarketing Director

Mia RobertsMarketing Manager

Rachel WilliamsPublications Manager

Samantha KendallBox Office Manager(Tel: 020 7840 4242)

Libby Northcote-GreenMarketing Co-ordinator

Isobel KingIntern

Albion Media Public Relations (Tel: 020 3077 4930)

Archives

Philip StuartDiscographer

Gillian PoleRecordings Archive professional Services

Charles RussellSolicitors

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLPAuditors

Dr Louise MillerHonorary Doctor

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Photograph of Copland © Roman Freulich. Photograph of Gershwin © ClassicStock/Alamy.

Front cover photograph © Patrick Harrison.

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FSC_57678 LPO 14 January 2011 15/09/2011 12:30 Page 1

Documents

22 February 2013 LPO programme notes