F R E E

TCHAIKOVSKYS Y M P H O N Y N O. 1 ( W I N T E R D A Y D R E A M S )

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ARNOLDT H E H O L L Y

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KELLYI M P R O V I S A T I O N S O N C H R I S T M A S C A R O L S

C O N D U C T O R M A R C O R O M A N O

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The programme tonight has been constructed from music depicting aspects of winter and music for the festive season, so you will hear a large symphonic work in the first half – Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony ‘Winter Daydreams’. In the second half you will hear many familiar carols and seasonal tunes, in unfamiliar settings perhaps, but with great orchestral light and colour.

Our conductor tonight, Marco Romano, has conducted many GOS concerts in the past, most recently our performance of Carmina Burana in March 2014, which was our celebration of Glasgow’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games that summer. Marco has a wealth of experience and is particularly interested in British music, some of which you will be able to enjoy after the interval.

This is a very special year for us. We are celebrating 130 years of women first becoming playing members of GOS and we are marking the anniversary by featuring women artists in different ways throughout the coming season. Tonight, Alison Bonnar, who has recently joined the orchestra as second trombonist,

will be playing an arrangement (by our first trumpeter Allan McPhee), of Karl Jenkins’ Benedictus from the Armed Man on euphonium.

In March, we have Les Sirenes Chamber Choir performing with us in Debussy’s Nocturnes which is an enormous pleasure for us – this all female choir was BBC Choir of the Year in 2012 and tickets will be in great demand. Make sure you buy yours early!

Lastly, you will have seen our collection buckets as you arrived tonight – in July next year we are going on Tour to the Czech Republic, based in Prague. The orchestra is almost complete, over sixty musicians and around thirty friends will take part but we are offering financial support to some of our musicians, including students. Some of you gave very generously at our October concert and we appreciate it very much. We hope you will give generously again – all donations will be gratefully received!

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the concert!

Ann Westwood, President

WELCOME TO OUR WINTER CONCERT, THE SECOND OF OUR 2015-16 SEASON

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MEET THE CONDUCTOR

MARCO ROMANOMarco Romano originally trained as a clarinettist at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before turning to conducting full-time. He has worked with many orchestras throughout the UK at both professional and non-professional levels. He was a founder and Musical Director of the Glasgow Sinfonia, Musical Director of the Renfrewshire Schools Symphony Orchestra and Musical Director of the Dumfries Choral Society.

He made his professional debut in 1984 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In 1996, he became the Artistic and Musical Director of the Sunderland Empire Theatre’s Promenade Concert Series and has since gone on to work with many orchestras including the Halle, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Birmingham Philharmonic and Liverpool Mozart Orchestras, and the Orchestras of Scottish Opera and Opera North. He has also worked with many distinguished soloists including Julian Lloyd Webber, Sarah Walker, Dennis O’Neill, John Wallace, Tasmin Little and Lesley Garrett.

In 2003 he founded Naked Opera and was its Musical Director from 2003 – 2012.

He is currently the Musical Director of Music in the Minster, a company that produces operatic and music theatre projects in the North East of England, and is a guest conductor with the Glasgow Orchestral Society. In 2014, he was asked to become an Associate conductor with the Ravel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Marco has a very large and varied repertoire and is happy to conduct just about anything from Bach to John Williams, although he likes to specialise mainly in 19th & 20th century repertoire with a special love of British music.

www.marcoromanoconductor.co.uk

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PROGRAMME

PIOTR (PETER) ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840 - 1893)

SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN G MINOR ‘WINTER DAYDREAMS’1 Allegro tranquillo (‘Dreams of a winter journey’) 2 Adagio cantabile (‘Land of desolation; Land of mists’) 3 Scherzo Allegro scherzando giocoso 4 Andante lugubre – Allegro maestoso

Though seldom performed, Tchaikovsky’s first symphony is held in great affection by the relatively few music lovers who know it. This, his first essay in symphonic form, caused him much labour and anguish. Substantially composed in 1866, it achieved few outings during his lifetime. The first movement is convincingly formed and in some ways is actually his finest by the criteria of traditional sonata form. Indeed, it and the two inner ones are in places close to the mature Tchaikovsky. Most of the thematic material is excellent. And there are hints too of the great ballet scores to come and the orchestral suites.

There is no slow introduction to the first movement: the Allegro starts with a rustling accompaniment on violins supporting the opening theme on woodwind. With this momentum from the outset, the movement is notable for a rhythmic peculiarity: the combination of duple time signature with, mostly, three-bar phrases. The journey of the title is not a specific one but you can imagine being whisked through a frosted landscape on a troika. The main melodies are inescapably Tchaikovsky. Furthermore, the two middle movements are almost vintage Tchaikovsky. The Adagio has a warm touch to it in spite of its title. A short introduction, not desolate sounding, precedes the first of two themes which form the body of the movement. This appears on the oboe followed by the second, answering,

melody (basically extending the first) initially on violas. Wistful might be a more apt description than desolate. Alternation of these themes in different registers and by different instruments is as far as development goes, before a brief reprise of the introductory material closes the movement. The scherzo too is sign of things to come, especially with the waltz-like trio. After the return of the main scherzo material, there is a fleeting echo of the waltz as the movement draws to a close. With the finale we have a break from the delicacy of much of the writing in the previous movements. After a slow introduction the brisk duple rhythm and more assertive thematic material make a huge contrast. As a second subject the lugubrious opening theme (a genuine Russian folk melody) reappears at faster tempo, becoming much heartier (one feels it should have been arranged for the Red Army choir). The reliance on fugal episodes to add compositional interest may seem contrived and is perhaps the one aspect of the symphony indicating the composer’s concerns with his symphonic technique. However, winter blues have been well banished by the time we reach the closing pages of this under-rated symphony.

I N T E R V A L

MALCOLM ARNOLD (1921 - 2006)

THE HOLLY AND THE IVY: FANTASY ON CHRISTMAS CAROLS (ARR. PALMER)

Arnold was one of the most successful British composers of the postwar era. He trained at the Royal Academy of Music and was an orchestral trumpeter with the LPO at the start of his musical career. He won a Mendelssohn Scholarship for further composition study in 1948. Early recognition came with his First Symphony (he eventually wrote nine) and Beckus the Dandipratt Overture. Because of his melodic facility Arnold

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was much in demand for occasional works and in particular the cinema. For 25 years or so from the late 1940s he wrote a prodigious number of film scores ranging through documentaries, the St Trinian’s comedies and The Bridge over the River Kwai (undertaken at short notice when Walton withdrew). The Holly and the Ivy was a 1952 British social drama about a clergyman (played by Ralph Richardson, heading a distinguished cast) better at looking after his parishioners than his own family’s problems. The music, which includes aspects of the outgoing, even brash, side to Arnold, was transcribed and arranged for concert performance by Christopher Palmer who, with Philip Lane, has done much to retrieve classic film scores of the era. Additional material comes from a television documentary ‘Christmas Roundup’ and carols arranged for the charity Save the Children in 1960.

PETER WARLOCK (PHILIP HESELTINE) (1894 – 1930)

BETHLEHEM DOWN (ARR. FOR STRINGS BY PHILIP LANE)

The Anglo-Welsh composer and musicologist Philip Heseltine had already acquired some notoriety when he came to publish his first compositions, hence the use of a pseudonym. The choice of ‘Peter Warlock’ hints at the darker side to his character. In the course of an often chaotic and alcohol-fuelled lifestyle Warlock produced highly regarded research on English Elizabethan music and a modest output of small-scale compositions, mostly for voice and piano but including the popular ‘Capriol’ suite of arrangements of renaissance dances for string orchestra. Important influences were Delius and the now largely forgotten Bernard van Dieren. ‘Bethlehem Down’ was written to a text by the poet Bruce Blunt, apparently after discussion during a pub crawl. It won the Daily Telegraph Christmas carol competition in 1927, the proceeds funding Blunt and Warlock’s seasonal drinking that year!

KARL JENKINS (b.1944)

BENEDICTUS (FROM ‘THE ARMED MAN’ REQUIEM) (ARR. ALLAN MCPHEE)

Sir Karl Jenkins has enjoyed a long career successively as oboist and saxophonist in both classical and progressive rock and jazz music, and as a composer in these genres. Larger works such as ‘Adiemus’ and ‘The Armed Man’ Requiem are usually classified as ‘crossover’ music and have had considerable commercial success. Jenkins followed various medieval and early renaissance composers in incorporating the traditional tune ‘L’homme armé’ into his ‘Requiem for peace’. As well as the Latin mass he uses liturgical text from other religions and, following Vaughan Williams and Britten in comparable works, some lay texts as well. The Benedictus, here arranged as an euphonium solo, is of course from the traditional requiem.

BRYAN KELLY (b.1934)

IMPROVISATIONS ON CHRISTMAS CAROLSThough born in Oxford, and composing significant liturgical works for the Church of England, Bryan Kelly is a versatile and cosmopolitan musician. He trained in composition with Gordon Jacob, Herbert Howells and, in Paris, Nadia Boulanger. During his career he has taught at the then RSAMD in the early 1960s, the Royal College of Music (for over 20 years), in Washington DC as a visiting lecturer, and extensively in Umbria, Italy and Cairo, Egypt. He now divides his time between England, France and the Middle East. His musically ingenious ‘Improvisations on Christmas Carols’ dates from 1969, is scored for large orchestra and displays the skill one would expect given his musical pedigree. There are five movements.

Alastair Whitelaw, December 2015

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GLASGOW ORCHESTRAL SOCIETY

VIOLIN IAaron Jamison LEADER

Katherine BerlouisAnn BoveyMorag GreigRhiannon LeakePeter McCabeDiana McCroneKatharine MuirMeg MunckMaureen QuinnLaura StewartMaria TahenyAnne Thomson

VIOLIN II Lindsay Pell*Greta CydzikaiteBarbara De La RueMichelle DiamondDonald GibsonClaire HollingworthFiona KettlewellNicky MacEwanNga MacrowChloe MorrisonChristine PatersonMarj PartridgeJohn RichesLiz SimeLynsey StewartPat Woodcock

VIOLALynne Anderson*Martin BuchanRussell EcobRobert FeeFrances Goldman

Christine JohnstonChris LennoxSue MathersSheila Nicol

CELLOSarah Moyes*Mary CreeQuintin Doyle^

Amy MacLeanNena RichesAlayne SwansonAlastair Whitelaw

DOUBLE BASSAnn Westwood*Paco G AnayaJulie McCullaghIan McTierZoe Roberts

FLUTE Lorna McTier*Simon Dennis

PICCOLOSimon Dennis*

OBOEAnne Chalmers*Alison Simpson

CLARINETRobert Neil*David Hay^

BASSOONStephanie Dancer*Nicky Moyes

HORN Gail Graham*Michael Barr^

Tom FergusonSaskia Loysen^

Fiona Sim

TRUMPETAllan McPhee*Fergus DuncansonEric Woodburn^

TROMBONEAngus McIntyre*Alison Bonnar

BASS TROMBONEKeith Anderson

TIMPANIPhilip Woodrow*

PERCUSSIONJames EdmondYoko Takenouchi^

Caitlin Divers^

PIANO/CELESTEStewart Munro^

HARPFiona Duncanson^

PRESIDENT Ann Westwood

SECRETARY Claire Hollingworth

LIBRARIAN Sue Mathers

FRONT OF HOUSE Rona Gibson Sandy Nicol Elliott Simpson

HONORARY FELLOWS Neil Butterworth Ruth Maguire Jim Meldrum Sally Wilson

* Section Principal ^ Guest player

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SPONSORSHIP

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PROGRAMME SPONSORED BY ROBERT NEIL PROCESS SAFETY LTD

GOS is a Registered Scottish Charity , No. SC007359 and a member of Making Music Scotland.

Please put the dates of our next two concerts in your diary:

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED TONIGHT’S CONCERT AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN!

SUNDAY 20 MARCH 2016

Conductor: Stephen Broad Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Mussorgsky (arr. Ravel) – Pictures at an ExhibitionRavel – Mother Goose SuiteDebussy – Nocturnes with Les Sirenes

SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Conductor: Catherine Larsen-Maguire Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Arnold – Scottish DancesWalton – Viola Concert soloist Nicola BoagRachmaninov – Symphonic Dances

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