BARTÓK Thursday 19 December 2019 7.30–9.30pm Barbican

LSO SEASON CONCERT THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN

Sophya Polevaya Spellbound Tableaux (world premiere)* Elgar Cello Concerto Interval Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin

François-Xavier Roth conductor Alisa Weilerstein cello

London Symphony Chorus Simon Halsey chorus director

*Commissioned through the Panufnik Composers Scheme, generously supported by Lady Hamlyn

and The Helen Hamlyn Trust

2 Welcome

Welcome Latest NewsTonight’s programme concludes with Bartók’s pantomime ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, which was also written 100 years ago, for which we are joined on stage by the London Symphony Chorus. Most frequently performed as a concert suite during Bartók’s lifetime, preserving just two-thirds of the original music, we are delighted tonight to perform this work in full. The performance will also be recorded for LSO Live.

I wish you a very happy festive season, and hope you are able to join us again in the New Year. The LSO’s 2019/20 concert season at the Barbican continues on 9 January with Nathalie Stutzmann conducting Brahms’ Symphony No 1. Throughout January and February, Sir Simon Rattle celebrates the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth with the composer’s Seventh and Ninth Symphonies, and eagerly awaited performances of the rarely heard oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. •

Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director

warm welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the Barbican, conducted by Principal Guest

Conductor François-Xavier Roth. We are joined tonight by soloist Alisa Weilerstein, who made her LSO debut with Elgar’s Cello Concerto in 2016. It is a pleasure to welcome her back to the LSO to perform this much-loved piece, 100 years after its world premiere with the Orchestra, and we look forward to her joining us again for concerts in Paris and Lyon in March.

The concert begins with a new work by composer Sophya Polevaya, Spellbound Tableaux, commissioned as part of the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme. We extend our thanks to Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust for their generous support of the scheme, which has supported some 90 composers since its launch in 2005.

19 December 2019

On Our BlogLSO DISCOVERY SINGING DAY: CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

‘Writing Christ on the Mount of Olives, Beethoven laid the groundwork for oratorios by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas!’, explains Choral Director Simon Halsey. Read about our most recent Singing Day and discover more about Beethoven’s only oratorio ahead of two performances in the New Year.

ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO: 100-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

On 27 October 1919, the LSO performed the world premiere of one of the most popular works in the repertoire: Elgar’s Cello Concerto. One hundred years later, we take a look at the history of this piece, its current popularity, and how this wasn’t always the case …

•  lso.co.uk/more/blog

Please ensure all phones are switched off. Photography and audio/video recording are not permitted during the performance.

LSO PANUFNIK COMPOSERS SCHEME: APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN

Applications for the 2020/21 LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme are now open. Generously supported by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust, each year the scheme offers six emerging composers the opportunity to write for the Orchestra, guided by composers Colin Matthews and Christian Mason.

•  lso.co.uk/more/news

WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUP

Olga Polevaya & Friends

3Tonight’s Concert

Tonight’s Concert In Brief

and is provocative, intense, and at moments brutal. Bartók mirrors this in the music, with dream-like sequences interspersed with frantic moments reminiscent of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. •

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITERS

Jo Kirkbride is Head of Artistic Planning at the Dunedin Consort. She is an external assessor for Creative Scotland's Open Project Funding strand and sits on the Board of Directors for New Music Scotland.

Lewis Foreman works as a repertoire consultant for various record companies, and has written books on, among others, Grainger, Rubbra and Vaughan Williams, as well as a biography of Sir Arnold Bax.

Andrew Stewart is a freelance music journalist and writer. He is the author of The LSO at 90, and contributes to a wide variety of specialist classical music publications.

Jan Smaczny is the Sir Hamilton Harty Professor of Music at Queen’s University, Belfast. A well-known writer and broadcaster, he specialises in the life and works of Dvořák and in Czech opera, and has published books on the repertoire of the Prague Provisional Theatre and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto.

onight’s concert opens with the world premiere of Spellbound Tableaux, a new work by composer

Sophya Polevaya, inspired by the 1945 Alfred Hitchcock film Spellbound. As a homage to Hitchcock's combination of classic Hollywood allure with surrealist art, suspense and the pseudo-cryptic, the Tableaux incorporate musical cryptograms into five scenes.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto follows, premiered by the LSO in October 1919 with the composer himself conducting. The piece has overcome initial mixed reviews to become a stalwart of the solo repertoire for cellists. The lyrical first movement opens boldly from the soloist, who later takes over a flowing theme first heard in the violas. This is contrasted with a scherzo second movement propelled by the soloist. Passionate and singing solo lines soar over a pared-back orchestra in the third movement, which leads to an expansive finale, tinged with heartbreaking interjections from the cello throughout.

Bartók’s pantomime ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, completes tonight’s concert. First performed in 1926 – and subsequently banned the day after its premiere – the story at the heart of this work originated in a ‘grotesque pantomime’ by the Hungarian playwright Menyhért (Melchior) Lengyel,

Coming UpFriday 3 January 1pm LSO St Luke’s

BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERT BACH UP CLOSE

J S Bach Sonatas for violin and harpsichord No 4 in C minor; No 1 in B minor; No 6 in G major Alina Ibragimova violin

Carole Cerasi harpsichord

Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3

Thursday 9 January 7.30pm Barbican

MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO

Wagner Overture and Venusburg Music from ‘Tannhäuser’ Mendelssohn Violin Concerto Brahms Symphony No 1 Nathalie Stutzmann conductor Alina Ibragimova violin

6pm Barbican: Free pre-concert recital LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artists

Recommended by Classic FM

Sunday 19 January 10am–5pm Barbican & LSO St Luke’s

LSO DISCOVERY DISCOVERY DAY: BEETHOVEN

Attend a morning LSO rehearsal conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, followed by a talk and chamber music at LSO St Luke’s. Part of Beethoven 250 at the Barbican

Sunday 19 January 7pm Barbican

CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

Berg Violin Concerto Beethoven Christ on the Mount of Olives Sir Simon Rattle conductor Lisa Batiashvili violin

Elsa Dreisig soprano

Pavol Breslik tenor

David Soar bass

London Symphony Chorus

Simon Halsey chorus director

Part of Beethoven 250 at the Barbican

4 Programme Notes 19 December 2019

Sophya Polevaya Spellbound Tableaux 2019 / note by Jo Kirkbride

1 Lovers’ Knot 2 Hitchcock Cameo: A Recitative 3 Dream Burlesque 4 Interlude 5 Memento Mori

ased on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound, Sophya Polevaya’s score takes as its muse

this fantastical film and abstracts it still further. It is not, as she tells us, ‘a retelling of the same story scene by scene, nor a replacement underscore to a particular frame’. Rather, it is an impression or abstraction of the idea itself. Left open as musical snapshots, the five intense scenes of Spellbound Tableaux capture Hitchcock’s drama from several, seemingly disparate angles. Gone is any traditional, teleological narrative, and in its place she offers the listeners a more complex, multi-dimensional object, one that can be viewed (or heard) from any number of directions. Only at the end are we able to zoom out, to piece together the puzzle, and to understand the work as a cohesive whole.

This short- and long-range zoom effect, this oscillation between the small and the epic, is itself an echo of Hitchcock’s own filmic techniques. ‘For me, the miniature form has a number of appealing qualities

that distinguishes it from monumental art’, Polevaya explains, ‘an acute conciseness and a display of considerable detail in a small space. It was an interesting idea to apply to the orchestral medium, which is in effect a paradox to it, a medium of epic proportions.’

At the smallest scale, Polevaya structures the work around a series of cryptograms, rendering the names of the film’s main characters into a series of musical motifs (‘some are more leitmotivic/declamatory; others discreet, a personal token’). In the opening scene we meet the central character, J.B., his motif being the first two pitches. But as the texture begins to swell into a chamber-like ensemble, this extends into a cryptogram of his full name – John Brown – which is joined at the end of the movement by a cryptogram of Constance, his lover. The two become coiled together, creating the lovers’ knot of the scene’s title.

The second and third movements – a recitative and a burlesque – together present a twist on the idea of a play within a play. Here, in a nod towards Hitchcock’s own cameo within the film, Polevaya inserts a ‘quasi-concerto for the violin’, a genre within a genre, which includes the spelling out of Hitchcock’s own name and initials. The fourth movement, an interlude, is a jumble

of intensity, ‘a polarity of lyricism and aggression’ that signifies the complexity of J.B.’s difficult character. But this aggression is swapped for desolation in the ‘Memento Mori’ that follows, gravitating to the theme of death with a rendition of the Dies Irae chant as its backdrop. In the end, it is this fragility, always teetering on the brink of the abyss, that sees the work out – not with a flurry but with a slow, inexorable ebb. •

LSO DISCOVERY: NEW MUSIC

Saturday 15 February 7pm LSO St Luke’s SOUNDHUB SHOWCASE: PHASE II Alex Ho and Sun Keting, composers on Phase II of LSO Discovery’s Soundhub scheme, showcase new music, joined by LSO musicians. LSO Soundhub is generously supported by

Susie Thomson

Thursday 26 March 10am–1.30pm LSO St Luke’s 2.30–6pm PANUFNIK COMPOSERS WORKSHOP Eight composers hear their new work rehearsed by the LSO and François-Xavier Roth, with mentors Colin Matthews and Christian Mason. François-Xavier Roth conductor Free entry, booking essential The Panufnik Composers scheme is

generously supported by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust

5Composer Profile

Sophya Polevaya In Profile / profile by Jo Kirkbride

ophya Polevaya has a broad worldview when it comes to music. ‘I think it would become apparent

to the listener that I’m a classically trained composer, acknowledging an eye for formal principles in say structural integrity, melody and rhythm. However, I’m no purist’, she says. ‘My aspiration as a composer is to have different angles, the expression is quite plural.’ This might mean combining instruments with non-instruments, the experimental with the historical, incorporating DIY electronics, micro-tonal scordatura and/or performance choreography.

Theatre, film and other art forms all influence these creative processes, together coalescing into a style that is both highly theatrical and sometimes even deliberately disarming. ‘I once wrote an ensemble piece where the conductor takes on a theatrical role dressing up as a policeman’, she recalls. ‘They have to conduct while blowing a whistle, stamping their feet rhythmically, while also brandishing and stabbing the air with a butter knife.’ Such performance choreography, she concedes, is not always possible.

Born and based in London, Polevaya describes her interest in music as ‘self-cultivated’, something that home schooling allowed her to explore to the full. Guitar, saxophone and composition lessons eventually led to her studying music at Royal Holloway and later, composition at the Royal Academy of Music – but along the way, her interests broadened still further. As a saxophonist, she found herself experimenting with effects pedals and loop stations, and from there she developed an interest in electroacoustic composition. Her debut album, Electric Scent (2019), brings these two strands together, showcasing both her electroacoustic writing and her talent as a multi-instrumentalist.

Even when she is not the performer, her music remains rooted in the act of performance, geared towards the dramatic effect that it will have when shared with listeners. The fantasy, she says, would be to compose an orchestral work with staging, costume, lighting and choreography. In other words, to liberate the score from its traditional concert hall trappings and to take it somewhere else, somewhere between

the opera house and the film screen. In this respect, she cites Mauricio Kagel as one of her greatest influences: ‘he refreshed the concert medium with his innovative composed theatre aesthetic, playing on the light versus the serious’.

This ambition to reach beyond the concert hall and to embrace elements of film is deep-seated. Polevaya recalls a youth spent watching old Hollywood classics on VHS and memorising the scripts, which led to a love of Hitchcock, Kubrick, Chaplin and Tarkovsky, among others. The opportunity to compose for the London Symphony Orchestra – well-known for appearing on iconic film scores, including Star Wars and Fiddler on the Roof – then, is a closing of the circle. ‘I love the whole escapism’, she says, ‘the total art quality of films … My first encounter with the LSO was, like for many people, through cinema, and I decided I wanted this commission to resonate with this connection.’ •

6 In Conversation 19 December 2019

Sophya Polevaya In Conversation / interview by Lydia Heald

my eye when watching this particular film, rather than a retelling of the plot or a replacement underscore to a specific frame. What is it like being a young emerging composer in the 21st century?

It’s a very individual journey of creating, discovery, attempting to realise ideas – that’s one of the great things about it! I think it’s promising that there is an increasing diversity in the image of who might be a composer.

As well as being a composer, you’re also a saxophonist. How does your work as a composer inform your work as a performer, and vice-versa?

The two are quite interconnected for me as I play my own music and write for myself as well. Through the saxophone, I became more conscious of experimental forms of performance. Then, when I’m composing a piece, I find working at an instrument a useful way to think aloud, the piano being my main go-to instrument. It can be quite freeing to allow a part of the composing to evolve at an instrument. • Read the full interview on our blog. •  lso.co.uk/more/blog

head of the world premiere of her piece, Spellbound Tableaux, we caught up with composer and

saxophonist Sophya Polevaya.

What has your journey been like from first getting into music to where you are now?

I was fortunate to have music lessons from an early age. A little later I started looking at composition as well. I just kept going with it! I applied for the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme in 2017. I received the 10-minute commission from that year’s scheme.

Growing up in London, I went to the LSO’s concerts at the Barbican often, so for the coin to flip and for something of mine to be presented is quite surreal!

Where do you find your inspiration when writing a new piece of music?

My work is fuelled by many things: a specific sound, instrument, form, performance narrative or something completely outside of music that I have encountered. The actual process of composing itself can be a form of inspiration too! It often sparks secondary

layers for a piece, ideas that are quite far out, or perhaps an alternative that is more interesting than the original idea.

Spellbound Tableaux is a take on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound. I was absorbed in the Cluedo-esque quality of the film, this thrill of knowing that certain objects hold an intricate detail. In the spirit of that, I made my own letter-to-note system and from that I generated some cryptograms around the Spellbound characters’ names, as well as for Hitchcock himself. What drew you to Hitchcock’s Spellbound?

Hitchcock’s films are so wonderfully crafted that it’s hard not to be captivated by them! Imagine what it must have been like to see this star-studded film in the 1940s with the provocative poster headline ‘Will he kiss me or kill me?’. It’s very different to today’s cinema, but I think as a contemporary viewer you can still appreciate the drama, Hitchcock’s vision and also the impact this film had.

How would you describe the finished piece?

The Tableaux is a set of scenes, a montage of different ideas – there are five in total, each one short in duration. It’s very much an appreciative impression of what caught

BEETHOVEN 250 conducted by Sir Simon Rattle January & February 2020

BARTÓK & DUKAS conducted by François-Xavier Roth & Sir Simon Rattle March & April 2020

ARTIST PORTRAIT & DUKAS with soloist Antoine Tamestit April to June 2020

PLUS DON’T MISS Sir Antonio Pappano, Karina Canellakis, Susanna Mälkki & Sir Mark Elder conduct Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy & more lso.co.uk/201920

The LSO’s 2019/20 season continues in the New Year

8 Programme Notes 19 December 2019

Edward Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor Op 85 1919 / note by Lewis Foreman

first movement is simpler than in many concertos. Here, after the soloist’s resonant introductory chords, the main theme in 9/8 metre is repeated six times in various colourings and treatments, before the romantic middle section, which develops the 9/8 theme and sends the cello into flights of reminiscent romantic fantasy. The main 9/8 theme was first sketched in March 1918, which perhaps gives us a first clue to its wartime provenance. Its elegiac character is reinforced when it returns for four further repetitions and the mood becomes more and more autumnal. The music runs on into a scherzo, which begins with a pizzicato version of the opening chords. Then, after slow questioning phrases, it whirls away in a torrent of thistledown semiquavers. This is the world of Elgar’s youth, complete with a brief, swaggering romantic extension. They combine and Elgar is brought back to present realities, perhaps musing on what might have been.

The adagio is not only the shortest and most concentrated movement in the concerto, but also requires a smaller orchestra than the others. It is framed by eight exquisite bars of yearning phrases for the soloist, and then Elgar’s cello sings elegiacally, with a wonderfully ever-extending line, for a world

1 Adagio – Moderato 2 Lento – Allegro molto 3 Adagio 4 Allegro ma non troppo

Alisa Weilerstein cello

n the latter part of 1917 and early part of 1918, Elgar was constantly ill and eventually it was decided

to remove his tonsils, the operation taking place on 15 March 1918. This was successful and on 22 March, the night before returning home, he wrote a theme which we now know as the opening theme of the Cello Concerto. The Elgars soon decamped to ‘Brinkwells’, their Sussex cottage. However, there was no immediate mention of any Cello Concerto, and indeed, when he resumed composing, it was to write the Violin Sonata, quickly followed by the Piano Quintet. The actual composition of the Cello Concerto seems to have taken place in the spring and early summer of 1919.

Although there had been a major tradition of new concertos for both violin and piano during the 30 years before World War I, there were practically no British cello concertos since Sullivan’s youthful effort in the 1860s. It is undeniable that Elgar’s concerto grew

out of the war, but there is little direct external evidence. It was a terrible time for so many, and particularly painful for Elgar, when so much of the world he had known and loved was irrevocably changed.

The Cello Concerto was premiered in the opening concert of the LSO’s Queen’s Hall Winter 1919/20 season. When Elgar arrived to rehearse the concerto the day before the concert, Albert Coates, who was conducting the remainder of the programme, kept him waiting for over an hour, so the concerto’s rehearsal became a brief scramble: in the half hour remaining it can have been little more than a play-through. On the day of the concert, Coates did it again, and only because the Orchestra volunteered to stay for an extra half-hour, unpaid, was it possible to have any rehearsal at all. Not surprisingly, it had mixed reviews.

Until well into World War II, the Cello Concerto remained something of a connoisseur’s piece. Gradually, a number of celebrated cellists championed it, but it was Pablo Casals’ performance in November 1936, under Sir Adrian Boult, that announced the work’s final acceptance, in spite of much grumbling, characteristic of that time, that a non-British cellist could not understand it.

The concerto is dedicated to Sidney and Francis Colvin, two of Elgar’s literary friends. Sidney Colvin was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and President of the Literary Society. It was he who had successfully interested Elgar in setting Binyon’s poems in what became the three-part wartime choral work The Spirit of England.

Although Elgar made no overtly programmatic claims about this work, many have argued that it is an elegy for World War I. This is a persuasive assertion, vindicated for the commentator by internal evidence. You might like to make your own decision during this evening’s performance. A motto for our discussion is that of the tempo marking used almost uniquely by Elgar: nobilmente (nobly). On looking at the score of the Cello Concerto, one’s first surprise is that he marks the opening with this instruction. What can he mean? – for this is far from the grand, even grandiloquent manner associated with this mood in some of his other music.

Here we have a four-movement concerto with a break between the second and third movements. The shape of the

9Composer Profile

Edward Elgar In Profile 1857–1934

lgar’s father, a trained piano-tuner, ran a music shop in Worcester in the 1860s. Young Edward, the

fourth of seven children, showed musical talent but was largely self-taught as a player and composer. During his early freelance career, which included work conducting the staff band at the County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, he suffered many setbacks. He was forced to continue teaching long after the desire to compose full-time had taken hold. A picture emerges of a frustrated, pessimistic man, whose creative impulses were restrained by his circumstances and apparent lack of progress. The cantata Caractacus, commissioned by the Leeds Festival and premiered in 1898, brought the composer recognition beyond his native city.

At the end of March 1891, the Elgars were invited to travel to Bayreuth for that summer’s festival of Wagner’s operas, a prospect that inspired Elgar immediately to compose three movements for string orchestra, the Serenade. The Variations on an Original Theme ‘Enigma’ (1898-99) and his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (1900) cemented his position as England’s finest composer, crowned by two further oratorios, a series of ceremonial works, two symphonies and concertos for violin and cello.

Elgar, who was knighted in 1904, became the LSO’s Principal Conductor in 1911 and premiered many of his works with the Orchestra. Shortly before the end of World War I, he entered an almost cathartic period of chamber-music composition, completing the peaceful, slow movement of his String Quartet soon after Armistice Day. The Piano Quintet was finished in February 1919 and reveals the composer’s deep nostalgia for times past. In his final years, he recorded many of his works with the LSO and, despite illness, managed to sketch movements of a Third Symphony. •

Profile by Andrew Stewart

that has been lost. At the beginning of the finale it is linked by a recitative – a sort of cadenza – to the apparently extrovert finale, which is again marked nobilmente as Elgar strides out into the world once more. But the bravado is short-lived, and the more introspective music underlines the fact that this is the final ghost of a world that has passed.

Towards the end, Elgar springs the surprise of a new slow theme, a passage of unprecedented chromaticism, focusing all his pathos and autumnal feeling, a cry of anguish if ever there was one. This is merged with the wraith of the slow movement, giving the effect of a despairing mourner refusing to accept events. Then, suddenly, as if Elgar has woken from his reverie, we have the return of the opening flourish, and the curt eight orchestral bars of dismissal.

At the end, all are playing together almost for the first time, as if the composer is brusquely saying, ‘well that’s enough of all that’. In his own list of works, Elgar wrote against this concerto ‘Finis RIP’: his age indeed had passed. •

Sunday 15 March 2020 7pm Barbican VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Britten Violin Concerto Vaughan Williams Symphony No 6 Sir Antonio Pappano conductor

Vilde Frang violin

5.30pm LSO Platforms Guildhall Artists: Free recital Recommended by Classic FM

Sunday 29 March 2020 7pm Barbican ELGAR & SIBELIUS Elgar Violin Concerto Sibelius Symphony No 4 Sir Mark Elder conductor

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider violin

5.30pm: Free pre-concert recital LSO Platforms: Guildhall Artist Recommended by Classic FM

Interval – 20 minutes There are bars on all levels.

10 Programme Notes 19 December 2019

Bela Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin Op 19 – Ballet 1918–19, orch 1924 / note by Jan Smaczny

cushions, but his face emerges to gaze longingly at the young woman. Pulling themselves together, the hoodlums stab him with a rusty sword, but after staggering from the blows, the Mandarin recovers and again makes for the young woman. Finally, they hang him from a lamp hook (oboe and cor anglais instrumental lines over a terrifyingly hollow accompaniment). The lamp falls to the floor and is extinguished; to the sound of a wordless chorus, the body of the Mandarin begins to glow with a strange, greenish-blue light. At last, the young woman realises that this terrible episode can only end if she accepts his embrace. The hoodlums cut the Mandarin down and she takes him in her arms. The Mandarin is, at last, satisfied; his wounds begin to bleed and he dies.

The musical style of The Miraculous Mandarin is far harder edged than that of Bartók’s earlier stage works and the expression considerably more succinct. Moments of stillness alternate with frantic activity in a score that has more than a hint of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. As contemporary reactions showed, the accompaniment to this bizarre scenario is often appallingly vivid, but it makes for compulsive listening. •

1 Beginning – the curtain rises 2 First game of seduction 3 Second game of seduction 4 Third game of seduction – the Mandarin enters 5 Dance of the young girl 6 The chase – the hoodlums leap out 7 Suddenly the Mandarin’s head appears – the hoodlums drag the Mandarin to     the centre of the floor 8  The Mandarin falls to the floor

artók’s last work for the stage originated in a ‘grotesque pantomime’ by the Hungarian

playwright Menyhért (Melchior) Lengyel (1880–1974), which he first encountered in 1917. With its low-life urban setting, this tale of prostitution and violence was as remote from the fairy-tale world of his second stage work, The Wooden Prince, as the graphic action of that ballet had been from the dark, claustrophobic intensity of the opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. A clear connection between the three works, however, is the composer’s close attention to instrumental sonority in projecting the atmosphere of each.

Bartók began work on the score of The Miraculous Mandarin in 1918 and had completed the piano score by the spring of 1919. He did not finish the orchestration,

however, until the autumn of 1924. The first performance was given at the Cologne Opera in 1926, conducted by Bartók’s enthusiastic supporter, Jenő Szenkár. Szenkár recounted the difficulty that the score’s complexity created in rehearsal and also described the uproar it encountered from both the public and the press at the premiere; apparently, the booing and whistling led to the lowering of the safety curtain. A staging in Budapest, which had been planned to honour the composer’s 50th birthday in 1931, did not survive the dress rehearsal.

Bartók’s music plots the course of Lengyel’s quasi-expressionistic tale in compelling detail. The presentation of the story is certainly a long way from the sequence of set pieces seen in conventional ballet. Indeed, the action of the Mandarin is propelled as much by mime as by dance. If occasionally the composer’s delivery of the scenario results in some fitful gestures, Bartók’s control of the dramatic structure and depiction of each incident is superbly assured.

The opening of the work is a magnificently graphic evocation of the sounds of the city outside the tawdry room in which the action is set. Three hoodlums are introduced; they force the young woman with them

to lure men in from the street, whom they intend to beat up and rob. The first victim to respond to her advances (depicted by a sinuous clarinet solo) is a penniless roué who is soon thrown out by the hoodlums (rapid triplets in the brass). Another, slightly wilder clarinet solo heralds the arrival of the second victim, a young man, also without money, but attractive enough for the young woman to want to dance with him. Their dance moves to a passionate climax, but the fate of the young man is the same as that of his predecessor and after his precipitate exit, she looks out once more.

The third and last time, she is terrified to see the Mandarin with his strange appearance and intense stare. The music reaches a raucous climax as he enters the room. In the long dance that follows, the young woman loses her fear and finally embraces the Mandarin. His excited reaction is too much for her and she tears herself away; during the driving fugal interlude that follows, the Mandarin pursues and captures her, but as she struggles the hoodlums emerge to beat and rob him.

In the last part of the work, the action moves from the brutally physical to the eerily metaphysical. At first, the robbers attempt to smother the Mandarin with

11Composer Profile

Béla Bartók In Profile 1881–1945

orn in 1881 in Hungary, Bartók began piano lessons with his mother at the age of five. He

studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where he created a number of works that echoed the style of Brahms and Richard Strauss.

He discovered Austro-Hungarian and Slavic folk music after graduating, travelling extensively with his friend Zoltán Kodály and recording countless ethnic songs and dances which began to influence his own compositions. Kodály also introduced him

to the works of Debussy in 1907, the year in which Bartók became Professor of Piano at the Budapest Conservatory.

Bartók established his mature style with such scores as the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin and his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. He revived his career as a concert pianist in 1927, when he gave the premiere of his First Piano Concerto in Mannheim.

Bartók detested the rise of fascism and in October 1940, he quit Budapest and travelled to the US. At first, he concentrated on ethno-musicological research, but eventually returned to composition and created a significant group of ‘American’ works, including the Concerto for Orchestra and his Third Piano Concerto.

His character was distinguished by a firm, almost stubborn refusal to compromise or be diverted from his musical instincts by money or position. Throughout his working life, Bartók collected, transcribed and annotated the folk songs of many countries, a commitment that brought little financial return or recognition, but one which he regarded as his most important contribution to music. •

Profile by Andrew Stewart

12 Artist Biographies

François-Xavier Roth conductor

a revival of Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. With the Gürzenich Orchestra, he continues his Bruckner cycle, an exploration of Berlioz, and features new commissions from Gander and Srnka alongside works by Bach, Rameau and Rebel. In celebration of Beethoven 250, The New Academy carries the spirit with which Beethoven staged his academy concerts in Vienna into the here and now, juxtaposing intense moments of Beethoven’s music with particular, contemporary hallmark styles. The New Academy will also tour to London, Munich, Hamburg and Lyon.

Recordings include the complete tone poems of Richard Strauss as Principal Conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg (2011–16) and, with Les Siècles, the three Stravinsky ballets (The Rite of Spring won German Record Critics’ and Edison Klassiek Prizes). Ravel and Berlioz cycles are underway for Harmonia Mundi; the first Ravel release, Daphnis and Chloé, won Gramophone Awards’ Orchestral Album of the Year 2018. Mirages, a vocal recital with Sabine Devieilhe for Erato, was Victoires de la Musique Classique Recording of the Year 2018. Recent releases include an album to commemorate Debussy’s centenary and two marking the 150th anniversary of Berlioz’s death (Harold en Italie and Les nuits d’été and Symphonie Fantastique). The Gürzenich Orchestra’s

rançois-Xavier Roth has been General Music Director of the City of Cologne since 2015, leading both

the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera. He is the first-ever Associate Artist of the Philharmonie de Paris and has recently been named Artistic Director of L’Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing.

With a reputation for inventive programming, his incisive approach and inspiring leadership are valued around the world. He works with leading orchestras including the Staatskapelle Berlin, Boston Symphony, San Francisco

Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and Tonhalle, Zürich. In 2019/20, he makes return visits to the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre de Paris, Montreal Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Munich Philharmonic and Mahler Chamber Orchestras. He makes a double appearance with the Boulez Ensemble, and last month made his debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

In 2003, he founded Les Siècles, an innovative orchestra performing contrasting and colourful programmes on modern and period instruments, often within the same concert. With Les Siècles, he has given concerts throughout Europe, regularly appearing at key festivals (Berlin Musikfest, Beethovenfest Bonn, Musica Viva, Gstaad, Berlioz Festival, Santander and George Enescu) and toured to China and Japan. They recreated the original sound of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in its centenary year and, subsequently, with the Pina Bausch and Dominique Brun dance companies in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Tokyo. The orchestra has twice been nominated for Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Award.

In his fifth Cologne opera season, he leads new productions of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict and

19 December 2019

recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony joins their Fifth, both works having been premiered by this orchestra.

Engagement with new audiences is an essential part of François-Xavier Roth’s work. With the Berlioz Festival and Les Siècles, he founded the Jeune Orchestre Européen Hector Berlioz, an orchestra-academy with its own collection of period instruments. They recently performed the first part of Les Troyens in Berlioz’s birthplace. Roth and Les Siècles devised Presto!, a television series for France 2, attracting weekly audiences of over three million. The Gürzenich Orchestra’s Ohrenauf! youth programme was recipient of a Junge Ohren Produktion Award.

Roth has premiered works by Yann Robin, Georg Friedrich Haas, Hèctor Parra and Simon Steen-Andersen, and collaborated with composers like Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann, Helmut Lachenmann and Philippe Manoury (from whom the Gürzenich Orchestra commissioned the Cologne Trilogy – Ring, Saccades and Lab.Oratorium).

He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur for achievements as a musician, conductor, music director and teacher. •

13Artist Biographies

Alisa Weilerstein cello

she rejoins the Israeli pianist for a US recital tour of all five of the composer’s Cello Sonatas, besides playing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Guy Braunstein, Barnatan, and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra. Her recording of the concerto, featuring Alan Gilbert, Stefan Jackiw, Barnatan and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, is due for release by Pentatone this fall.

In recent years, Weilerstein has recorded the Elgar and Elliott Carter Cello Concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. The disc was named Recording of the Year 2014 by BBC Music Magazine, which featured the cellist on the cover of its May 2014 issue. Her release of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic topped the US classical chart. Her third album, a compilation of unaccompanied 20th-century cello music titled Solo, was pronounced an ‘uncompromising and pertinent portrait of the cello repertoire of our time’ (ResMusica, France). Solo’s centrepiece is the Kodály sonata, a signature work that Weilerstein revisits on the soundtrack of If I Stay, a 2014 feature film starring Chloë Grace Moretz, in which the cellist makes a cameo appearance as herself. In 2015, she released a recording of sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninov, marking her duo album debut with Inon Barnatan.

young cellist whose emotionally resonant performances of both traditional and contemporary

music have earned her international recognition … Weilerstein is a consummate performer, combining technical precision with impassioned musicianship’, wrote the MacArthur Foundation, upon awarding American cellist Alisa Weilerstein a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship.

Entering her second season as Artistic Partner with the Trondheim Soloists, Weilerstein joins the ensemble on two European tours

this autumn, including appearances in London, Norway, Munich and Bergen. Their first album together, 2018’s Transfigured Night, released on Pentatone, features Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and both Haydn Cello Concertos. It attracted unanimous praise, with Gramaphone magazine proclaiming, ‘you’d go far to find performances of the Haydn concertos that match Alisa Weilerstein’s mix of stylistic sensitivity, verve and spontaneous delight in discovery’. Beyond the partnership with the Trondheim Soloists, Weilerstein’s 2019/20 concert highlights include Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto with the New York Philharmonic, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2 with Tokyo’s NHK Symphony, Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra with Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, Schumann’s Cello Concerto with the Houston Symphony, Barber’s Cello Concerto with the Detroit Symphony, Strauss’ Don Quixote and Bloch’s Schelomo with the San Diego Symphony, and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the LSO, both at the Barbican and at the Philharmonie in Paris. In recital, she gives solo performances of Bach’s complete Cello Suites in California, Barcelona and Manchester, and joins frequent duo partner Inon Barnatan for Brahms and Shostakovich at London’s Wigmore Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary,

In 2016 she released a ‘powerful and even mesmerising’ recording (San Francisco Chronicle) of Shostakovich’s Cello Concertos with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Pablo Heras-Casado.

Weilerstein’s career milestones include an emotionally tumultuous account of Elgar’s concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Barenboim in Oxford, England, and a performance at the White House for President and Mrs Obama. An ardent champion of new music, she has worked on multiple projects with Osvaldo Golijov and Matthias Pintscher and premiered works by Lera Auerbach and Joseph Hallman.

Weilerstein, whose honours include Lincoln Center’s 2008 Martin E Segal Award and the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award, is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and Columbia University. Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, she is a Celebrity Advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. •

‘

14 London Symphony Chorus 19 December 2019

London Symphony Chorushe London Symphony Chorus was formed in 1966 to complement the work of the London Symphony

Orchestra and is renowned internationally for its concerts and recordings with the Orchestra. Their partnership was strengthened in 2012 with the appointment of Simon Halsey as joint Chorus Director of the LSC and Choral Director for the LSO, and the Chorus now plays a major role in furthering the vision of LSO Sing, which also encompasses the LSO Community Choir, LSO Discovery Choirs for young people and Singing Days at LSO St Luke’s.

The LSC has worked with many leading international conductors and other major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the European Union Youth Orchestra. It has also toured extensively in Europe and has visited the US, Israel, Australia and south–east Asia.

The partnership between the LSC and LSO, particularly under Richard Hickox in the 1980s and 1990s, and later with Sir Colin Davis, led to the LSC’s large catalogue of recordings, which have won numerous awards, including five Grammys. Gramophone included the recordings of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust and Romeo and Juliet on LSO Live with Sir Colin Davis as two of the ‘Top 10’ Berlioz recordings. Recent LSO Live recordings with the Chorus include Bernstein’s Wonderful Town and Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, both with Sir Simon Rattle.

Highlights of the 2018/19 season included Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges with Sir Simon Rattle at the 2018 BBC Proms and at the Lucerne Festival, Bernstein’s Candide with Marin Alsop, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria with Sir Antonio Pappano, performances of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with the Netherlands Philharmonic and Marc Albrecht, David Lang’s the public domain with Simon Halsey, and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with Sir Simon Rattle.

The Chorus looks forward to the 2019/20 season, which will include performances of Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives in Europe with Sir Simon Rattle, James MacMillan’s St John Passion with Gianandrea Noseda, and Tippett’s Child of Our Time with Alan Gilbert. The Chorus is an independent charity run by its members. It is committed to excellence, to the development of its members, to diversity and engaging in the musical life of London, to commissioning and performing new works, and to supporting the musicians of tomorrow. For more information, please visit lsc.org.uk. •

President Sir Simon Rattle om cbe

Vice President Michael Tilson Thomas

Patrons Simon Russell Beale cbe Howard Goodall cbe

Chorus Director Simon Halsey cbe

Associate Directors Matthew Hamilton Nia Llewelyn Jones

Associate Conductors Lucy Hollins David Lawrence

Chorus Accompanists Benjamin Frost Richard Gowers

Chairman Owen Hanmer

Concert Manager Robert Garbolinski

LSO Choral Projects Manager Sumita Menon

15London Symphony Chorus & Artist Biographies

Sopranos Alana Clark Imogen Coutts Joanna Gueritz Isobel Hammond Denise Hoilette Claire Hussey Debbie Jones Luca Kocsmarszky Debbie Lee Marylyn Lewin Doris Nikolic Maggie Owen Mimi Kroll Alison Ryan Deborah Staunton Sarah Townsend Lizzie Webb* Rachel Wilson

Altos Lauren Au Jo Buchan* June Brawner Gina Broderick* Liz Cole Maggie Donnelly Joanna Gill Rachel Green Kate Harrison Jane Hickey Elisabeth Iles Jill Jones Gilly Lawson* Anne Loveluck Aoife McInerney Caroline Mustill Helen Palmer Susannah Priede Rafaela Tripalo Kathryn Wells Zoe Williams

Simon Halsey chorus director

imon Halsey occupies a unique position in classical music. He is the trusted advisor on choral

singing to the world’s greatest conductors, orchestras and choruses, and also an inspirational teacher and ambassador for choral singing to amateurs of every age, ability and background. Making singing a central part of the world-class institutions with which he is associated, he has been instrumental in changing the level of symphonic singing across Europe.

He holds positions across the UK and Europe as Choral Director of the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Chorus Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Artistic Director of Orfeó Català Choirs and Artistic Adviser of the Palau de

la Música, Barcelona, Artistic Director of the Berlin Philharmonic Youth Choral Programme, Creative Director for Choral Music and Projects of WDR Rundfunkchor, Director of the BBC Proms Youth Choir, Artistic Advisor of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Choir, Conductor Laureate of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, and Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Birmingham.He is also a highly respected teacher and academic, nurturing the next generation of choral conductors on his post-graduate course in Birmingham and through masterclasses at Princeton, Yale and elsewhere.

Halsey has worked on nearly 80 recording projects, many of which have won major awards, including a Gramophone Award, Diapason d’Or, Echo Klassik, and three Grammy Awards with the Rundfunkchor Berlin. He was made Commander of the British Empire in 2015, was awarded The Queen’s Medal for Music in 2014, and received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2011 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to choral music in Germany.

Born in London, Simon Halsey sang in the choirs of New College, Oxford, and of King’s College, Cambridge, and studied conducting at the Royal College of Music in London. •

London Symphony Chorus on stage

Tenors Jorge Aguilar Paul Allatt* Matteo Anelli Erik Azzopardi Joaquim Badia Philipp Boeing Oliver Burrows Ethem Demir Colin Dunn Patrizio Giovannotti Michael Harman Jude Lenier Daniel Owers Davide Prezzi Mattia Romani Malcolm Taylor James Warbis Robert Ward*

Basses Chris Bourne Steve Chevis Thomas Fea Ian Fletcher Rupert Gill Owen Hanmer* Elan Higueras Rocky Hirst Anthony Howick Sam Loveless Alex Mackinder George Marshall Geoff Newman Alan Rochford Jesus Sanchez Rod Stevens Richard Tannenbaum Robin Thurston Jez Wareing Anthony Wilder

Vocal Coaches Norbert Meyn Anita Marrison Rebecca Outram Robert Rice

*Denotes LSC Council Member

16 The Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra on stage

19 December 2019

Timpani Nigel Thomas

Percussion Neil Percy David Jackson Sam Walton Tom Edwards Jeremy Cornes

Harp Bryn Lewis

Piano Elizabeth Burley

Celeste James McVennie

Organ James McVennie

Leader Roman Simovic

First Violins Clare Duckworth Ginette Decuyper Laura Dixon Gerald Gregory Maxine Kwok-Adams William Melvin Elizabeth Pigram Laurent Quenelle Harriet Rayfield Sylvain Vasseur Julian Azkoul Richard Blayden Lyrit Milgram Mariam Nahapetyan Julia Rumley

Second Violins David Alberman Thomas Norris Sarah Quinn Miya Väisänen Matthew Gardner Naoko Keatley Alix Lagasse Csilla Pogany Belinda McFarlane Iwona Muszynska Andrew Pollock Camille Joubert Patrycja Mynarska Helena Smart

Violas Edward Vanderspar Malcolm Johnston Corentin Bordelot German Clavijo Stephen Doman Julia O’Riordan Robert Turner Stephanie Edmundson Jenny Lewisohn Cynthia Perrin Elisabeth Varlow Heather Wallington

Cellos Charles-Antoine Duflot Alastair Blayden Jennifer Brown Noel Bradshaw Eve-Marie Caravassilis Daniel Gardner Hilary Jones Amanda Truelove Laure Le Dantec Deborah Tolksdorf

Double Basses David Desimpelaere Colin Paris Patrick Laurence Matthew Gibson Thomas Goodman Joe Melvin Jani Pensola Marianne Schofield

Flutes Gareth Davies Patricia Moynihan

Piccolo Sharon Williams

Oboes Juliana Koch Rosie Jenkins

Cor Anglais Christine Pendrill

Clarinets Chris Richards Chi-Yu Mo

Bass Clarinet Katy Ayling

Bassoons Daniel Jemison Joost Bosdijk

Contra Bassoon Dominic Morgan

Horns Timothy Jones Angela Barnes Alexander Edmundson Finlay Bain

Trumpets David Elton Robin Totterdell Simon Cox

Trombones Jono Ramsay James Maynard

Bass Trombone Paul Milner

Tuba Ben Thomson

LSO String Experience Scheme Since 1992, the LSO String Experience Scheme has enabled young string players from the London music conservatoires at the start of their professional careers to gain work experience by playing in rehearsals and concerts with the LSO. The musicians are treated as professional ‘extra’ players (additional to LSO members) and receive fees for their work in line with LSO section players. The Scheme is supported by: The Polonsky Foundation Derek Hill Foundation Idlewild Trust Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Thistle Trust

Editorial Photography Ranald Mackechnie, Chris Wahlberg, Harald Hoffmann, Marco Borggreve Print Cantate 020 3651 1690 Advertising Cabbells Ltd 020 3603 7937

Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.