BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Glasgow Season 2013/2014

CITY HALLS, GLASGOW BOX OFFICE: 0141-353 8000

The Glasgow Season 2013/2014 bbc.co.uk/bbcsso

Welcome

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra BBC Scotland City Halls, Candleriggs Glasgow G1 1NQ Email: bbcsso@bbc.co.uk bbc.co.uk/bbcsso

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has always had very strong and affectionate links with the city of Glasgow. Like this great city, it is vibrant, modern and cosmopolitan - a symbol of Scotland’s mature cultural life. The orchestra flourishes as never before under a remarkable conducting team, and among British orchestras there are few with such a powerful commitment to sustaining the old whilst at the same time embracing the new.

facebook.com/bbcsso twitter.com/bbcsso youtube.com/bbcsso

The BBC SSO’s flexibility and the range of work is also greater than ever – from regular series of broadcasts on BBC Radio and Television, award-winning commercial recordings, to international touring and music-making with children, students and families, it provides diverse and distinctive programming that touches audiences not just in Scotland but worldwide. Broadcasting is still its primary role and these days, thanks to the airwaves and internet, all the performances in this brochure will be heard right across the world, many of them broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

This season will be another great milestone in our relationship with Donald Runnicles.

Following last season’s sensational operatic triumph with Tristan and Isolde, Donald brings yet another of the great voices of modern times to Scotland, the celebrated American baritone Thomas Hampson who joins us to sing songs by Mahler. He will also lead the orchestra through some perennial favourites and new musical treasures, including Mozart’s Requiem and John Adams’s jazz-inspired symphony, City Noir. Andrew Manze will conclude one of the most thrilling projects we’ve undertaken in recent years, the complete cycle of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies, and we bring our friends the Edinburgh Festival Chorus back to City Halls to join us in the climax to the cycle, the mighty Sea Symphony.

All concerts are scheduled to be recorded for future transmission or broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

The orchestra’s home at City Halls is a wonderful concert venue, a hall that it is both grand and intimate, a venue that both the orchestra and audiences have fallen in love with. It’s the perfect space in which to enjoy favourite pieces and make new discoveries with good friends and admired guest artists, such as pianists Denis Kozhukhin and Steven Osborne, violinist James Ehnes and the National Youth Choir of Scotland.

And whether you’re getting to know orchestral music, or you’re a regular concert-goer, every concert in our season is a musical journey. Bring your imagination and your ears and immerse yourself in a season of music-making with our magnificent orchestra.

Gavin Reid, Director

Donald Runnicles Chief Conductor

Ilan Volkov Principal Guest Conductor

Andrew Manze Associate Guest Conductor

Matthias Pintscher Artist-in-Association

03

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 2013/14 Glasgow Season

World Class Performances

Season Highlights

10

Thomas Hampson joins us to launch the new BBC SSO season, before Donald Runnicles takes us on the most far-reaching of all Mahler’s journeys through the Germanic imagination, the mighty Fifth Symphony.

Join us for evenings of unforgettable music at City Halls, our home in the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City. Experience the grandeur of Mahler’s epic Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, discover the pioneering spirit of America’s greatest composers in Born in the USA, and join us as our acclaimed Vaughan Williams Symphony Cycle reaches its climax with the mighty Sea Symphony, featuring the forces of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

International Soloists The great American baritone Thomas Hampson opens the season and spearheads a line-up of outstanding artists from the USA: cellists Alisa Weilerstein and Joshua Roman, violinist Sarah Chang, and conductor David Alan Miller. Violinist James Ehnes performs Shostakovich, feted soprano Elizabeth Watts is the soloist in Britten, Mahler and Vaughan Williams, Steven Osborne continues his Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle with Nos.1 and 2, and BBC SSO audience favourite Denis Kozhukhin returns to perform Rachmaninov’s much-loved Second Piano Concerto.

13

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 If you heard Denis Kozhukhin’s breathtaking Prokofiev concerto performances in recent BBC SSO seasons, you’ll know to expect every bit as much electricity when he tackles Rachmaninov’s best-loved piano concerto.

Music You Know, Music You Don’t There’s a host of classical favourites this season from Mozart’s Requiem and Elgar’s Cello Concerto, to Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony and Mahler’s Fifth with its famous Adagietto. But we pride ourselves in particular on introducing the new or unfamiliar into our Thursday Night concerts. This season discover works by George Tsontakis, AJ Kernis, Albert Schnelzer and Sean Shepherd and hear some less-familiar works by Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Messiaen.

Hampson Sings Mahler

22/27

Osborne plays Beethoven The masterly Scottish pianist Steven Osborne continues his Beethoven piano concerto cycle with Nos.1and 2.

Pre-and Post-Concert Events Ticket holders can get even more value through extra events which accompany many of our Thursday Night concerts. Pre-concert PRELUDES begin 45 minutes before concerts and once again take the form of music-inspired readings, interviews and pre-concert talks.

Please note that space is often very limited for Preludes and seats are allocated on a first-come firstserved basis.

Most evenings close with post-concer t CODAS which showcase many of our outstanding soloists. This season includes performances from Thomas Hampson and Donald Runnicles, Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, Denis Kozhukhin and James Ehnes.

Save up to 30% with a Season Ticket Take advantage of our generous season ticket discounts, and start saving when you book from just 4 concerts. Plus if you book 8, 11 or 14 concerts in the season you can get an extra one FREE. Please see pages 30/31 for more details.

Single Ticket concessions are also available for Over 60s, SSO Club Members, Registered Disabled and for Groups. £5 Single tickets for Students, School Pupils, Under 16s and Unemployed.

23

Barber Violin Concerto Samuel Barber brings European romanticism back home to the East Coast of the USA in a violin concerto whose glorious tunes and blossoming lyricism have made it a true modern classic; perfect for the gleaming tone of Sarah Chang.

04

Mahler&Britten Mahler’s symphonies were once unfashionable and rarely performed. But they inspired and were championed by a young Benjamin Britten, whose centenary we celebrate in 2013.

Hugh Macdonald introduces our series of concerts that pairs the two composers.

It was Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (21 November) that first caught Benjamin Britten’s imagination: “I naturally groaned in anticipation of forty five minutes of boredom. But what I heard was not what I had expected to hear… the scoring startled me… The colouring seemed calculated to the smallest shade, and the result was wonderfully resonant.”

That was the first Mahler that Britten ever heard, in 1930 at a Prom in London’s Queen’s Hall. As a 17-year-old he had, like most of us, very strong opinions about music.

Brahms, for example, he loathed. He had a youthful passion for Wagner, but an equally youthful contempt for Elgar - though that changed somewhat in later life. His discovery of Mahler was to lead to a love of the Austrian’s music that was intense enough to influence his own developing musical style. Britten’s centenary is a good excuse to explore the fascinating parallels in the work of these two great artists.

It was Mahler’s orchestral sound, the ‘colouring’ as Britten called it, and especially its chamber music-like clarity and detail, that appealed to him so much. The outdoor freshness of the Fourth Symphony certainly has that quality, but it also highlights Mahler’s preoccupation with the innocence of childhood - a theme that was to feature just as strongly in Britten’s work. In fact it had already appeared in the third of Britten’s extraordinary, Ravel-like Quatre Chansons Françaises (21 November), though they were composed well before he discovered Mahler, when he was only 14. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (19 September) was another of his works that made a big impression on the young Britten, who described it in his 1936 diary as music to ‘revel’ in and said that he could not get its famous slow movement, the Adagietto, out of his head. A kind of love-song-without-words that spins from a musical ‘sigh’ a fantasia of passionate yearning, Britten wrote that the Adagietto left “a nice (if erotic) taste” in his mouth.

Mahler&Britten_ September 2013 – April 2014 19 September 2013 Britten Overture: The Building of the House Mahler Songs Mahler Symphony No.5 21 November Britten Quatre Chansons Françaises Britten ‘Gloriana’ Symphonic Suite Mahler Symphony No.4 Mahler/Britten What the Wild Flowers Tell Me (post-concert coda) 24 April 2014 Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten Mahler Symphony No.9

In those days before the Mahler revival, the symphonies (especially the biggest of them) were not often heard in the UK’s concert halls. Britten’s desire to make them better known led him to make an arrangement of the second movement, What the Wild Flowers Tell Me (21 November), of the Third Symphony. Premiered in a 1942 broadcast by this very orchestra (then the BBC Scottish Orchestra) under Guy Warrack, it’s a beautiful rescoring for smallish orchestra of an effervescent nature piece with a darker, stormy centre.

60 years ago, Britten’s contribution to the Coronation celebrations in 1953 was an opera, Gloriana, about the first Queen Elizabeth, that has only recently become appreciated as much more than an occasional piece. The orchestral suite he made from it shows off his virtuosic command of the orchestra, as does his much later overture The Building of the House (19 September), composed for another special event - the opening of the Snape Concert Hall, near his beloved Aldeburgh. We don’t know what Britten thought of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (24 April), for many the greatest of them all. But we can be fairly sure that his opinion would have been close to what he said about Mahler’s Song of the Earth: “ It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain; of strength and freedom… of disappointment and never-satisfied love.”

Hugh Macdonald writes, lectures, broadcasts and co-directs the Lammermuir Festival.

It was Mahler’s orchestral sound, especially its chamber music-like clarity and detail, that appealed to Britten so much.

05

06

Born in the USA Since the 1900s, American composers have strived to create their own voice in orchestral music.

This season the BBC SSO celebrates some of those figures, old and new. Richard Bratby surveys a century of pioneering US spirit.

In 1910, Charles Ives drafted a manifesto for American music. It must, he wrote, be “simple enough to be understood by the many, and complex enough to be of value to all”. And once perfected, the composer should stand foursquare before the listener and “knock some BIG ideas into his mind”.

Well, nearly. Ives was an insurance man by trade, and those ringing words actually came from a training pamphlet for travelling salesmen. Only a few contemporaries knew that in his spare time, Ives was a composer. But if they’d ever heard it, they’d have recognised exactly the same principles at work in his Second Symphony from 1901 (20 March). Ives had taken all he needed from the European classics, and thrown in a whole crowd of allAmerican “BIG ideas”. Football marches, slave songs and parlour ballads each have their shout, and it all ends with a huge, raucous raspberry of a discord.

Except that to Ives, it wasn’t a discord. There were no wrong notes in Ives’s America, merely many different voices talking honestly. That joyous chaos of styles, that bigness and frankness of vision, and above all, that overwhelming moral urge to communicate would set the agenda for a century of American music. If the result sounded wrong to polite European ears, well, it was their loss.

Though sometimes it came with a sly wink. When George Gershwin wrote his Piano Concerto (20 March) in 1925, he told reporters that he’d had to buy a musical textbook “to find out what concerto form was”. (A decade later he was playing tennis with Schoenberg.) Samuel Barber didn’t even try to be disingenuous; as befits the music of an Ivy League graduate, his 1939 Violin Concerto (6 March) displays impeccable old-world manners. Yet it still manages to speak its piece with an eloquence and simplicity that Ives would have admired.

And throughout the Depression, the cautious optimism of the New Deal and a second, global war for democracy, that eloquence became a vital national resource. Aaron Copland was the Brooklyn-born son of Lithuanian Jewish parents, but through sheer personal effort he crafted a musical language that remains the definitive sound of America - it’s audible even five decades later, in Air by Aaron Jay Kernis (12 December). It’s no surprise that his Third Symphony (6 March) written in 1946 is crowned with a Fanfare for the Common Man, but in Quiet City (27 February) Copland even managed to capture the distinctive inner landscape of America’s cities.

Ives’s vision of American music had blossomed into a gloriously rich musical democracy. Today’s American composers positively rejoice in the options before them, whether they’re George Tsontakis helping a city rediscover its shared heritage - Let the River Be Unbroken (6 March), - John Adams probing the underbelly of West Coast pop culture in City Noir (12 December), or Sean Shepherd letting rip with a flag-waving, firecracker-throwing holiday celebration, Blue Blazes (20 March). Or simply Aaron Jay Kernis gazing at the clouds above the ocean and seeing endless horizons of possibility in Newly Drawn Sky (16 January). But all these composers write music to be heard, to be understood, and to touch the real, modern lives of the most diverse audience on earth.

“BIG ideas”? They don’t get much bigger.

Richard Bratby is a freelance writer and critic.

Born in the USA_ September 2013 – March 2014 19 September 2013 Thomas Hampson sings American Songs (post-concert coda) 12 December John Adams City Noir AJ Kernis Air (post-concert coda) 16 January 2014 AJ Kernis Newly Drawn Sky 27 February Copland Quiet City 6 March George Tsontakis Let the River Be Unbroken Barber Violin Concerto Copland Symphony No.3 20 March Sean Shepherd Blue Blazes Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Ives Symphony No.2

That chaos of styles, bigness of vision, and urge to communicate set the agenda for a century of American music.

Images (clockwise from top left): George Gershwin, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber

07

08

The Vaughan Williams Cycle Completes This season the BBC SSO finishes its three-year cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies.

Associate Guest Conductor Andrew Manze reflects on the journey so far.

Over the past two seasons the BBC SSO and I have plunged into the heart of the symphonies of Vaughan Williams: from the ‘Pastoral’ Third to the post-apocalyptic Sixth.

Along the way, it has been a pleasure and privilege to meet many people amongst the orchestra, our concert audiences, and our listeners at home, for whom these symphonies are deeply important. For some, they conjure up distant memories; others experienced a ‘Damascus’ moment during a symphony, when they were ‘switched on’ to Vaughan Williams, or even to the whole idea of classical music.

Vaughan Williams Symphonies_ November 2013 – May 2014

The symphonies were all performed at Glasgow’s City Halls, of course, but there was also a memorable visit to Perth on the day the city officially welcomed back the soldiers of the Black Watch from their latest tour of duty. This coincidence lent poignancy to that evening’s performances of the angry, post-WW1 Fourth and the vision-of-heaven Fifth, premiered during the dark days of 1943.

Sunday 10 November, as part of Discovering Music Symphony No.8

Some of the scores the BBC Music Library supplied date from the symphonies’ earliest performances. They often bear the markings of Sir Adrian Boult or Vaughan Williams himself. Nothing brings the composer more to life, however, than meeting people who knew him. One Glasgow audience subscriber worked as a sound engineer at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in London during the 1940s, and she was present at several Vaughan Williams premieres and I thank her for sharing her vivid recollections of the gentle giant of a composer (‘always bumbling around’) and of what these symphonies meant to people when they were first heard.

7 November 2013 Symphony No.7, ‘Sinfonia Antartica’

15 May 2014 A Sea Symphony (Symphony No.1)

Performing the central three symphonies, Four, Five and Six, in one concert, as we did at the BBC Proms in 2012, had never been done before, though often mooted. The heroic members of the orchestra will tell you why this was not done before - and why it might be a while before anyone does it again! It was a physically, musically and emotionally draining experience - but one that will ever remain one of my most cherished memories.

In the 2013/14 season, we face the challenge of the three remaining symphonies; the challenge being that they are often overlooked as the less inspired efforts of a spent composer. They are certainly harder to summarise in words but Vaughan Williams is endlessly inventive in creating new uses for his distinctive vocabulary in each major work.

The Seventh, Sinfonia Antartica (7 November) and a by-product of RVW’s work on the film Scott of the Antarctic, is too easily dismissed as second-hand and cinematic. Its critics forget that the composer was a pioneer in adapting the genre of tone poem, perfected by his beloved Sibelius, to use in film scores. For me, No.7 is the most haunting of them all.

Symphony No.8 (10 November) is by turns witty, acerbic and glorious, full of life, cocking a snook at those who thought VW would fade away after No.5. And, as is appropriate with the idea of a cycle, we will end where the composer started out on his lifelong symphonic odyssey, with A Sea Symphony, (No.1), at the very end of the season.

Andrew Manze is Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC SSO.

Photos: Vaughan Williams © BBC Andrew Manze at City Halls by John Wood

09

Some of the scores the BBC Music Library supplied often bear the markings of Sir Adrian Boult or Vaughan Williams himself.

10

Opening Night

THOMAS HAMPSON SINGS MAHLER

THURSDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2013, 7.30PM

BRITTEN OVERTURE: THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE (c.6 mins) MAHLER SONGS (c.25 mins) MAHLER SYMPHONY No.5 (c.75 mins) THOMAS HAMPSON BARITONE DONALD RUNNICLES CONDUCTOR Lovers, soldiers, children and kings; heaven, hell and talking birds… Gustav Mahler took the timeless themes of German poetry, and drew out their soul in song. And then he wrought those songs into symphonies that would echo down a century. The incomparable American baritone Thomas Hampson sings us into the new BBC SSO season, before Donald Runnicles takes us on the most far-reaching of all Mahler’s journeys through the Germanic imagination, the mighty Fifth Symphony. But that’s not quite the beginning; in Britten’s centenary year, his sparky Aldeburgh overture gets the season off to a flying start. It’s not quite the end, either: stay late to hear Hampson and Runnicles in a personal selection of classic American songs.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Grand Hall James Naughtie, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today, in conversation with Thomas Hampson and Donald Runnicles.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Thomas Hampson performs a selection of American songs, accompanied by Donald Runnicles at the piano.

Photo: Donald Runnicles by John Wood

11

RUNNICLES CONDUCTS: MOZART’S REQUIEM

THURSDAY 26 SEPTEMBER, 7.30PM

ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO (c.30 mins) MOZART REQUIEM comp. Robert Levin (c.50 mins) ALISA WEILERSTEIN CELLO MIAH PERSSON SOPRANO CHRISTINE RICE MEZZO JEREMY OVENDEN TENOR

NEAL DAVIES BASS NATIONAL YOUTH CHOIR OF SCOTLAND DONALD RUNNICLES CONDUCTOR

Mozart’s unfinished Requiem is one of the best-loved masterpieces of classical choral music. But strip away the rumours, legends and the layers of alterations, and it turns out that the piece we usually hear is only half the story. Donald Runnicles directs the acclaimed National Youth Choir of Scotland and a quartet of world-class soloists in a revelatory new completion of the Requiem prepared, with a creator’s insight, by the great Canadian Mozartian Robert Levin. Hear this transcendent music with new ears – and savour the intense commitment that the young American cellist Alisa Weilerstein brings to Elgar’s war requiem of a cello concerto.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Grand Hall Dr Richard Holloway, writer, broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh, discusses the Requiem, music and mourning.

There will be no coda after this concert.

Photo: Alisa Weilerstein by Jamie Jung

“Alisa is a star...

Her technical abilities serve a taste for sweep and intensity; she performs with soulful expression and physical abandon.”

The New York Times

12

MÄRKL CONDUCTS: DEBUSSY& & MESSIAEN

THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER, 7.30PM

MESSIAEN LES OFFRANDES OUBLIÉES (c.12 mins) MESSIAEN POÈMES POUR MI

(c.32 mins)

DEBUSSY IMAGES (c.40 mins) GWENETH-ANN JEFFERS SOPRANO JUN MÄRKL CONDUCTOR Debussy never got further into Spain than a day-trip to San Sebastian, and maybe that’s just as well. His imagination created a Spain more vivid, and more poetic, than any musical picturepostcard and in Ibéria – the central panel of his ravishing Images – the warmth, the bustle and the fragrance is almost tangible. Jun Märkl’s years with the Orchestre National de Lyon have given him a unique affinity with French music, and he’ll share a very personal understanding not only of Messiaen’s early, rarely-heard Les offrandes oubliées, but also – with soprano Gweneth-Ann Jeffers – in the astonishing Poèmes pour Mi, eight songs that fuse the spiritual and the sensual in music to pierce the soul.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room French music expert Roger Nichols reflects on Debussy and Messiaen.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Gweneth-Ann Jeffers performs Ravel’s Chansons madécasses.

Photos: Jun Märkl by Jean-Baptiste Millot, Gweneth-Ann Jeffers

“Jeffers is a born diva, but her powers come from within, fuelled by intelligence and understanding of how music shapes role.”

Opera Today

13

RACHMANINOV PIANO CONCERTO No.2 N

THURSDAY 24 OCTOBER, 7.30PM

ALBERT SCHNELZER A FREAK IN BURBANK (c.9 mins) RACHMANINOV PIANO CONCERTO No.2 (c.35 mins) NIELSEN SYMPHONY No.4 ‘THE INEXTINGUISHABLE’ (c.34 mins) DENIS KOZHUKHIN PIANO THOMAS DAUSGAARD CONDUCTOR “Music is life” declared Carl Nielsen of his Fourth Symphony “and like it, inextinguishable”.

Albert Schnelzer, on the other hand, drew his inspiration from Haydn… and the films of Tim Burton. Yet whether they’re portraying a primal struggle for existence against the guns of the Great War, or an oddly classical Hollywood nightmare, both Nielsen and Schnelzer grab you by the throat and hurl you straight into the music. Thomas Dausgaard loves every note; and if you heard Denis Kozhukhin’s breathtaking Prokofiev concerto performances in recent BBC SSO seasons, you’ll know to expect every bit as much electricity when the two of them tackle Rachmaninov’s best-loved piano concerto, made famous by the film Brief Encounter.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson introduces Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Denis Kozhukhin plays Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude.

Photo: Denis Kozhukhin by Paul Marc Mitchell

“Genius in action.”

The Herald on Denis Kozhukhin

14

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CYCLE: SINFONIA ANTARTICA

THURSDAY 7 NOVEMBER, 7.30PM

TIPPETT DIVERTIMENTO ON SELLINGER’S ROUND (c.19 mins) MOZART PIANO CONCERTO No.20 IN D MINOR (c.35 mins) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS SYMPHONY No.7 ‘SINFONIA ANTARTICA’* (c.42 mins) SHAI WOSNER PIANO KATHERINE BRODERICK SOPRANO* WOMEN OF THE GLASGOW CHAMBER CHOIR* ANDREW MANZE CONDUCTOR

Andrew Manze’s Vaughan Williams symphony cycle with the BBC SSO has been a revelation – prompting a long-overdue reappraisal of these landmarks of 20th century symphonism. Now they take the richest and strangest journey of all: the vast orchestral panorama that Vaughan Williams created from his score to the classic 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic. A mighty heart beats beneath its icy surface, just as a profound tenderness tempers the drama of Mozart’s darkest piano concerto. Pianist Shai Wosner makes a very welcome return to the BBC SSO, though not before Andrew Manze shares his rediscovery of Tippett’s Divertimento – a little burst of postwar irreverence from a true British original.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Simon Heffer, journalist and biographer of Vaughan Williams, introduces the composer’s Seventh Symphony.

“Passionately committed conducting and playing and, most important of all, a huge affirmation of Vaughan Williams’s enduring symphonic achievement.”

The Guardian on Andrew Manze and the BBC SSO’s performances of Vaughan Williams at the BBC Proms

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Katherine Broderick and Shai Wosner in a short recital.

Image: Chris the sled dog makes time for a bit of culture during Captain Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic in 1911. Photograph by Herbert Ponting

Photo: Andrew Manze by John Wood

15

MAHLER 4

THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER, 7.30PM

BRITTEN QUATRE CHANSONS FRANÇAISES* (c.15 mins) BRITTEN GLORIANA: SYMPHONIC SUITE (c.26 mins) MAHLER SYMPHONY No.4* (c.57 mins) ELIZABETH WATTS SOPRANO* MARTYN BRABBINS CONDUCTOR When the young Benjamin Britten first heard Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, a new musical world stood open before him. “Wonderfully resonant”, he declared it – and he was far from the first listener to be seduced by Mahler’s fantastic musical journey from playful mock-Mozart to a deceptively worldly heaven. Still, some might say that Britten was halfway there already; certainly it’s hard to believe that his sensuous Quatre Chansons Françaises is the work of a teenager. Elizabeth Watts supplies both innocence and experience, while Martyn Brabbins conducts the suite from Britten’s Coronation-year opera Gloriana; Olde Englande reimagined with positively Mahlerian irony.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room On the eve of Britten’s 100th birthday, Martyn Brabbins gives a conductor’s view of the composer.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Members of the BBC SSO, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, play Britten’s arrangement of Mahler’s What the Wild Flowers Tell Me (Minuet from Symphony No.3).

Photos: Elizabeth Watts, Martyn Brabbins by Simon Butterworth

“Conductor Martyn Brabbins held things together with glowing confidence, and the BBC SSO responded with hugely energetic playing.”

The Scotsman

“Mind:Blown.

I HAD TO KEEP CHECKING MY BOTTOM JAW WASN’T SITTING ON MY KNEES.”

( TWITTER COMMENT )

“Utterly stunning. Epic.

An immense achievement.”

“Loved every minute of it!

Really want to be part of a BBC orchestra one day!!” ( TWITTER COMMENT )

( FACEBOOK COMMENT )

AWES

“AN

“WHAT A NIGHT. WHAT A PERFORMANCE. WHAT AN ORCHESTRA. AND WHAT A GENIUS CONDUCTOR. DOES IT GET ANY BETTER?” ( THE HERALD )

“What a performance from the BBC SSO, responding to Runnicles musicianship with molten unanimity.” ( THE SCOTSMAN )

“YOU’D BE HARD-PUT TO NOT BE BOWLED OVER

BY THE MIGHTY SOUND RUNNICLES GETS FROM THIS ORCHESTRA” ( THE GUARDIAN )

“One of the great Bruckner 8s. Utterly stunning. Epic. An immense achievement.

Rarely have an orchestra sounded so glorious in a perfectly judged performance. ( FACEBOOK COMMENT )

“Back from City Halls.

Barnstorming Shostakovich 5.

Surprised roof stayed on!”

SOME ( TWITTER COMMENT )

PERFORMANCE. IT WAS UP THERE WITH THE GODS.” ( TWITTER COMMENT )

“THIS WAS THE BBC SSO’S EVENING, WITH RUNNICLES’S MASTERLY COMMAND OF THE SCORE’S DEEPEST BREATHING” ( THE TIMES )

“Brilliant bold programming and playing. Amazing” ( TWITTER COMMENT )

18

City Noir was first suggested by my reading the so-called “Dream” books by Kevin Starr, a brilliantly imagined, multi-volume cultural and social history of California.

In the “Black Dahlia” chapter of his Embattled Dreams volume, Starr chronicles the tenor and milieu of the late ‘Forties and early ‘Fifties as it was expressed in the sensational journalism of the era and in the dark, eerie chiaroscuro of the Hollywood films that have come to define the period sensibility for us: “… the underside of home-front and post-war Los Angeles stood revealed. Still, for all its shoddiness, the City of Angels possessed a certain sassy, savvy energy. It was, among other things, a Front Page kind of town where life was lived by many on the edge, and that made for good copy and good film noir.”

Those images and their surrounding aura whetted my appetite for an orchestral work that, while not necessarily referring to the soundtracks of those films, might nevertheless evoke a similar mood and feeling tone of the era. I was also stimulated by the notion that there indeed exists a bona fide genre of jazz-inflected symphonic music, a fundamentally American orchestral style and tradition that goes back as far as the early 1920s.

The music of City Noir is in the form of a thirty-minute symphony. The formal and expressive weight of its three movements is distributed in pockets of high energy that are nested among areas of a more leisurely — one could even say “cinematic” — lyricism. The first movement, “The City and its Double,” opens with brief, powerful “wide screen” panorama that gives way to a murmuring dialogue between the double bass pizzicato and the scurrying figures in the woodwinds and keyboards.

The steady tick of a jazz drummer impels this tense and nervous activity forward — a late-hour empty street scene, if you like.

As a relief to the frenzy of the first movement’s ending, “The Song is for You”, takes its time assembling itself. Gradually a melodic profile in the solo alto sax emerges from the surrounding pools of chromatically tinted sonorities. The melody yearns toward but keeps retreating from the archetypal “blue” note. But eventually the song finds full bloom in the voice of the solo trombone, a “talking” solo, in the manner of the great Ellington soloists Lawrence Brown and Britt Woodman (both, fittingly enough, Angelinos). The trombone music picks up motion and launches a brief passage of violent, centripetal energy, all focussed on a short obsessive idea first stated by the sax. Once spent of its fuel, the movement returns to the quiet opening music, ending with pensive solos by the principal horn and viola.

“Boulevard Night” is a study in cinematic colors, sometimes, as in the moody “Chinatown” trumpet solo near the beginning, it is languorous and nocturnal; sometimes, as in the jerky stop-start coughing engine music in the staccato strings, it is animal and pulsing; and other times, as in the slinky, sinuous saxophone theme that keeps coming back, each time with an extra layer of stage makeup, it is in-your-face brash and uncouth. The music should have the slightly disorienting effect of a very crowded boulevard peopled with strange characters, like those of a David Lynch film—the kind who only come out very late on a very hot night. © John Adams

19

JOHN ADAMS: CITY NOIR

THURSDAY 12 DECEMBER, 7.30PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY No.4 (c.35 mins) SHOSTAKOVICH VIOLIN CONCERTO No.1 (c.40 mins) JOHN ADAMS CITY NOIR (c.35 mins) JAMES EHNES VIOLIN DONALD RUNNICLES CONDUCTOR It’s one of the most talked-about new scores of recent years. And there’s absolutely nothing minimal about John Adams’s City Noir, a sassy, bluesy symphony of Los Angeles, inspired by classic movies and scored for a Mahler-size orchestra. This is music that demands to be heard, and Donald Runnicles has set it alongside the dazzling brightness of Beethoven’s headlong Fourth Symphony and the ominous twilight of Shostakovich’s tormented First Violin Concerto, performed here

by James Ehnes – whose “indelible, intellectually gripping” Shostakovich performances have left critics reeling. Three masterworks from three centuries, each speaking to the other – and, more importantly, to us: right here and right now.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Violinist James Ehnes in conversation.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) James Ehnes, accompanied by Donald Runnicles at the piano, performs Air by AJ Kernis.

Photo: John Adams by Deborah O’Grady

“A knockout” The Los Angeles Times on City Noir

20

GRIEG PIANO CONCERTO

THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2014, 7.30PM

AJ KERNIS NEWLY DRAWN SKY (c.18 min) GRIEG PIANO CONCERTO (c.30 min) SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY No.1 (c.31 min) LARS VOGT PIANO DONALD RUNNICLES CONDUCTOR One summer evening Aaron Jay Kernis watched his children playing on Long Island’s Atlantic shore – and he heard Newly Drawn Sky. It’s both a gorgeously-tinted musical cloudscape and a very American hymn of hope in the future, lit by the same inner glow that gives Grieg’s youthful Piano Concerto its perennial freshness. Few pianists are better equipped than Lars Vogt to draw out the Concerto’s latent poetry, and it’s followed by one of the most extraordinary explosions of youthful energy in all 20th century music: the teenage Dmitri Shostakovich’s brilliant First Symphony. Donald Runnicles reveals both the boy-poet and the raspberry-blowing prankster behind this deliciously deadpan masterpiece.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Writer David Nice introduces the programme and discusses Shostakovich’s First Symphony.

There will be no coda after this concert.

“The touch throughout was light as a feather, while also possessing steely strength.”

The Independent on Lars Vogt

Photo: Lars Vogt by Felix Broede

21

SCHUBERT’S UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

THURSDAY 13 FEBRUARY, 7.30PM

STRAVINSKY LE CHANT DU ROSSIGNOL (c.23 mins) SCHUBERT SYMPHONY No.8 ‘UNFINISHED’ (c.24 mins) BERLIOZ HAROLD IN ITALY (c.45 mins) ANTOINE TAMESTIT VIOLA MATTHIAS PINTSCHER CONDUCTOR Niccolò Paganini wanted a vehicle to show off his new Stradivarius viola. Hector Berlioz gave him the last thing he expected – a flamboyant, Byron-inspired symphony that drives straight to the brooding heart of the Romantic spirit. It’s like nothing else in 19th century music, and the great French viola virtuoso Antoine Tamestit is one of its greatest interpreters. BBC SSO Artist-in-Association Matthias Pintscher brings a composer’s ear to this remarkable score, and pairs it with two very different but equally vivid visions by two of Berlioz’s creative kindred spirits – Stravinsky’s bejewelled Oriental fairytale, and the two perfectly-poised movements of Schubert’s Unfinished (and some would say unfinishable) Eighth Symphony.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Antoine Tamestit in conversation.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Antoine Tamestit plays extracts from JS Bach’s Cello Suites, arranged for viola.

Photos: Matthias Pintscher by John Wood, Antoine Tamestit by Eric Larrayadieu

“Antoine Tamestit is exceptionally good.”

The Sunday Times

22

OSBORNE PLAYS BEETHOVEN: PIANO CONCERTO No.2

THURSDAY 27 FEBRUARY, 7.30PM

COPLAND QUIET CITY* (c.8 mins) BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO No.2 (c.37 mins) SCHUMANN SYMPHONY No.2 (c.36 mins) STEVEN OSBORNE PIANO MARK O’KEEFFE TRUMPET* JAMES HORAN COR ANGLAIS* ANDREW MANZE CONDUCTOR The path of the artist can be lonely. Aaron Copland knew what it was to be alone in a great American city, and distilled it into haunting poetry. Robert Schumann drew strength from his beloved Clara, and the example of Beethoven, and wrote one of the noblest of all Romantic symphonies. The young Beethoven, meanwhile, introduced himself to his public in a piano concerto that positively sparkles with its own audacity. The masterly Scottish pianist Steven Osborne continues his Beethoven piano concerto cycle, while Andrew Manze proves that whether we’re in 20th century Manhattan or 18th century Vienna, the creative spirit will find a way.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Novelist Louise Welsh reads a specially written piece, which takes Quiet City as its starting point.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Steven Osborne plays selections from Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives.

Illustration: Steven Osborne by Wil Freeborn

“Anyone who’s listened to Andrew Manze conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recently, or who’s heard pianist Steven Osborne play Beethoven ever, might have guessed at the calibre of this concert.

And still, the evening was little short of revelatory.”

The Guardian on the performance of Piano Concerto No.4

23

BORN IN THE USA: BARBER&COPLAND

THURSDAY 6 MARCH, 7.30PM

GEORGE TSONTAKIS LET THE RIVER BE UNBROKEN (c.15 mins) BARBER VIOLIN CONCERTO (c.22 mins) COPLAND SYMPHONY No.3 (c.42 mins) SARAH CHANG VIOLIN DAVID ALAN MILLER CONDUCTOR

Three pages from American history. Tsontakis’s Let the River Be Unbroken takes slave-songs and hymns to reawaken all the romance – and cruelty – of the Civil War. Barber brings European Romanticism back home to the East Coast of the USA in a violin concerto whose glorious tunes and blossoming lyricism have made it a true modern classic; perfect for the gleaming tone of Sarah Chang. And Aaron Copland salutes the end of the Second World War in a symphony of blue skies and boundless optimism, crowned by – what else? – his Fanfare for the Common Man. Is this the Great American Symphony? Albany Symphony Orchestra music director David Alan Miller will make a powerful case.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room David Alan Miller introduces this all-American programme.

There will be no coda after this concert.

“Her gifts are at a level so removed from the rest of us that all we can do is feel the appropriate awe.”

The New York Times on Sarah Chang

Photo: Sarah Chang by Colin Bell

24

BORN IN THE USA: GERSHWIN& IVES

THURSDAY 20 MARCH, 7.30PM

SEAN SHEPHERD BLUE BLAZES UK Premiere (c.8 mins) GERSHWIN PIANO CONCERTO IN F (c.34 mins) IVES SYMPHONY No.2 (c.40 mins) FREDDY KEMPF PIANO MARTYN BRABBINS CONDUCTOR “Please don’t try to make things nice. All the wrong notes are right”. And they’re never more gloriously right than in Charles Ives’s delirious Second Symphony, where slave songs, majorette marches and good old-fashioned romance collide in an irresistible slice of pure Americana. It’s the keystone of our American series, and of this all-American evening from BBC SSO favourite Martyn Brabbins. Ives is the spiritual forebear both of Sean Shepherd’s irreverent new curtain-raiser, and of the magnificent Piano Concerto by another great American original: George Gershwin.

You’d expect unforgettable tunes from Gershwin, and you’d be right; though with soloist Freddy Kempf, you can also expect charisma, flair and virtuosity of skyscraper proportions.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson discusses the pioneering spirit of America’s composers.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Freddy Kempf performs a selection from Schumann’s Fantasiestücke.

Photo: Freddy Kempf by Neda Navaee

“He has the fearless exuberance of youth.

He is prepared to take risks, a readiness that brings spontaneous combustion to his playing; but he has sensitivity, too” The Daily Telegraph on Freddy Kempf

25

RUNNICLES CONDUCTS: MAHLER 9

THURSDAY 24 APRIL, 7.30PM

ARVO PÄRT CANTUS IN MEMORIAM BENJAMIN BRITTEN (c.7 mins) MAHLER SYMPHONY No.9 (c.85 mins) DONALD RUNNICLES CONDUCTOR

The very first bars of Mahler’s Ninth seem to falter. The stricken composer put the rhythm of his failing heart into the orchestra – and began his Ninth Symphony with a sigh of “farewell”. But that’s the beginning, not the end, and over eighty minutes of music Mahler wrings every last drop of sweetness, terror and love from a life of total emotional commitment. Every performance of Mahler’s Ninth is a unique occasion, and given Donald Runnicles’ special relationship with late Romanticism, this will prove to be one of the highlights of our season. Peace, meanwhile, comes dropping slow in Arvo Pärt’s minimalist elegy for Britten; a perfectly-chosen upbeat to Mahler’s overwhelming symphonic swansong.

Please Note: there will be no interval in this concert.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Dr Jeremy Barham, author of The Mahler Companion, reflects on the composer and his influence.

There will be no coda after this concert.

“Runnicles succeeded where so many other conductors fail: he created a sense of symphonic catharsis that makes you understand music – this music – as a journey rather than a succession of peaks” The Financial Times on Donald Runnicles and the BBC SSO’s performance of Mahler 2

26

DVOŘÁK’S CELLO CONCERTO

THURSDAY 1 MAY, 7.30PM

JANÁČEK arr. Talich SUITE:THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN (c.20 mins) DVOŘÁK CELLO CONCERTO (c.40 mins) BARTÓK CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA (c.38 mins) JOSHUA ROMAN CELLO RICHARD FARNES CONDUCTOR

It’s said that Dvořák drew inspiration for his Cello Concerto from Niagara Falls – and yet every note seems to yearn for his imminent return home to Bohemia. Not every journey ends with a homecoming though; the exiled Béla Bartók knew he was dying as he wrote his Concerto for Orchestra. He responded with a roof-raising shout of joy. As Music Director of Opera North, Richard Farnes knows how to bring a musical drama to life, and with the superlative young American cellist Joshua Roman as soloist, he’ll make these masterpieces live and breathe. And what better opening than the woodland poetry of Janáček’s most life-affirming opera?

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Joshua Roman in conversation.

Post-Concert Coda (approximately 10 minutes after the main concert) Joshua Roman gives a short solo recital.

Photo: Joshua Roman by Jeremy Sawatzky

“A cellist of extraordinary technical and musical gifts” The San Francisco Chronicle on Joshua Roman

27

Closing Night

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: A SEA SYMPHONY

THURSDAY 15 MAY, 7.30PM

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO No.1 (c.35 mins) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A SEA SYMPHONY (c.65 mins) STEVEN OSBORNE PIANO ELIZABETH WATTS SOPRANO MARK STONE BARITONE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL CHORUS ANDREW MANZE CONDUCTOR A ringing fanfare, a shout of acclamation, and a mighty swell of sound: A Sea Symphony took the traditions of British oratorio and opened the floodgates to a spring tide of inspiration. This isn’t just an epic choral seascape; for Vaughan Williams, Walt Whitman’s poetry offered limitless imaginative vistas. Andrew Manze’s BBC SSO Vaughan Williams cycle has been described as “a huge affirmation of Vaughan Williams’ symphonic achievement”; now, in the company of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and two compelling young British singers, what more stirring way to end both the cycle and our season than at the beginning? And don’t forget Steven Osborne’s Beethoven piano concerto cycle which continues with the bold and brilliant First.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room Associate Guest Conductor Andrew Manze reflects on the BBC SSO’s complete Vaughan Williams symphony cycle.

There will be no coda after this concert.

Illustration: Walt Whitman

“Manze’s rapport with the orchestra is a pleasure to witness and draws some of the most concerted orchestral playing you’re likely to hear anywhere.”

The Daily Telegraph

28

FILM EVENTS FRIDAY 26 JULY 2013, 7.30PM

Buster Keaton in

THE GENERAL

Music composed and conducted by Timothy Brock Buster Keaton is an acknowledged comic genius of the silent screen and The General is one of his greatest films. Set during the American Civil War, it’s a tale of unrequited love, a stolen locomotive (the eponymous General), spectacular stunts, frantic chases and some of the best visual gags ever filmed. And, as a part of a double bill, it will be preceded by Keaton’s classic short comedy, One Week.

These concert screenings are conducted by Timothy Brock who has written a new score for The General based on American anthems and sheet music from the 1800s. Don’t miss this joyous evening of sophisticated silent comedy and brilliant comic scoring.

Cert. U | All tickets £15 | Unreserved Seating

SUNDAY 22 DECEMBER, 3.00PM

Booking Now Open!

CHRISTMAS AT THE MOVIES

Jamie MacDougall singer and presenter Matt Dunkley conductor

Once again the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra presents an afternoon of musical classics from the big screen, from movies old and new and for everyone from aged 8 to 80. There’s nothing quite like the sound of a full symphony orchestra playing some of the best-loved music for the cinema and this year we are delighted to welcome Matt Dunkley who has arranged and conducted scores for films such as Moulin Rouge, Black Swan, The Dark Knight and Love, Actually. So book now to secure the seats you want for our annual concert that’s fast becoming a Glasgow family favourite!

Tickets: £11–£24 | Under 16s: £5 | Group discounts available

“The BBC SSO’s moviethemed Christmas concert is invariably one of the classiest on the musical advent calendar”

Photo: Jamie MacDougall

The Herald

More Events At City Halls Afternoon Performance Afternoon Performance is our popular daytime concert series. Showcasing core classical favourites and lesser-known gems from the symphonic repertoire, the forthcoming season features a succession of leading conductors and guest soloists. Details to be announced in Autumn 2013.

Hear And Now The BBC SSO has a reputation as one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles, and in Hear and Now, BBC Radio 3’s platform for the very latest new music, we present the best modern music by some of the world’s most exciting living composers. Performances take place on Saturday nights at City Halls or the Old Fruitmarket. Please see the Diary on the back page for dates.

29

GET INVOLVED The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Learning and Outreach programme aims to provide a symphony orchestra experience to as many people as possible, and deepen the experience of classical music for all. It ranges from flagship par tnerships with Sistema Scotland: Big Noise and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, to events for amateur musicians and music fans of all ages and abilities, in composition, performance and music-making.

In the 2013/14 season you’ll be able to get involved with the orchestra through events such as a Come and Sing Mozart’s Requiem; Come and Play music by Benjamin Britten, to celebrate his centenary; and Creative Family Workshops, the first exploring the compositions of Claude Debussy, and the second the music of America.

“Allows people of all ages and so many different levels of skill to participate so fully and enjoyably” “Out of this world. No words will be able to express how thoroughly inspiring and enjoyable this session was” Full details to be announced. Please check our website for updates.

bbc.co.uk/orchestras/learn

Photos: John Wood and Derek Ironside

Plan Your Visit Q: Where can I park?

A: You can park near City Halls for just £1.20 on the night of the performance at the multi-storey facilities at Q-Park on Candleriggs and Albion Street. N.B. You will need to have your ticket validated in the City Halls foyer on concert nights when you arrive at the venue. This includes parking for disabled patrons. Other car parking facilities close to City Halls include the NCP Glasshouse on Glassford Street and car parks on the east side of High Street, in addition to metered on-street parking throughout the area.

Q: What public transport runs near City Halls?

A: City Halls is within easy walking distance of Argyle Street, Queen Street, High Street and Central railway stations as well as St. Enoch and Buchanan Street subway stations. Buchanan Bus Station is a 15 minute walk away. Nearby bus routes include 16, 18, 19, 31, 40, 61, 62, 66, 75, 240, 255, 262, 263.

CITY HALLS

Q: What access facilities are available?

A: All entrances at City Halls are fully accessible with lifts to every level of the auditorium. Wheelchairs are available on request and can be pre-booked via the box office. Guide dogs are welcome at City Halls.

Q: Is there an induction loop?

A: No, there is no induction loop in the City Halls auditorium.

However, Glasgow’s Concert Halls has an assisted infrared hearing system which can be used as both a stand alone hearing aid or as an enhancement to an existing hearing aid. Headsets are available from the cloakroom for a £5 refundable deposit and can be pre-booked via the box office.

Q: Is food available at City Halls before the concert?

A: No, but the Merchant City and the centre of Glasgow is full of restaurants and bars where you can enjoy food before or after the concert. There are also two bars in City Halls: the Candleriggs Bar at the opposite end of the promenade from the Recital Room and the Bazaar Bar on the ground floor. Beat the queues by pre-ordering your interval drinks.

A large print, text-only version of this brochure is available. For a copy please telephone: 0141-552 0909

WILSON STREET

The information in this brochure was correct at the time of publishing. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra reserves the right to amend artists and programmes for any of the listed concerts if necessary.

30

BOOK A SEASON TICKET

II I IV

IV I II

III

Please fill in form and return to:

III

I

Thursday 19 Sep Thursday 26 Sep Thursday 10 Oct Thursday 24 Oct Thursday 7 Nov Thursday 21 Nov Thursday 12 Dec Thursday 16 Jan Thursday 13 Feb Thursday 27 Feb Thursday 6 Mar Thursday 20 Mar Thursday 24 Apr Thursday 1 May Thursday 15 May

No. of people at Standard price

II

III

No. of people at Concession price

Price Band

Seating Area

Total Price of Concerts

(+ £1.75 transaction fee + postage) £

I am a returning Season Ticket Holder and I would like to retain the following seats from the previous season if possible

Grand Total £

Payment PLEASE COMPLETE IN BLOCK CAPITALS Initial(s)

Surname

Address Postcode

Telephone

E-mail [

] I enclose a cheque made payable to Glasgow Culture and Sport

[

] I authorise you to debit my credit/debit card (PLEASE DELETE AS APPROPRIATE)

VISA / MASTERCARD / MAESTRO START DATE

SIGNATURE

EXPIRY DATE

IV

Opening Night: Thomas Hampson Sings Mahler Mozart’s Requiem Märkl Conducts: Debussy and Messiaen Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 Vaughan Williams Cycle: Sinfonia Antartica Mahler 4 John Adams: City Noir Grieg Piano Concerto Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony Osborne Plays Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.2 Born in the USA: Barber and Copland Born in the USA: Gershwin and Ives Runnicles Conducts: Mahler 9 Dvořák’s Cello Concerto Closing Night: Vaughan Williams - A Sea Symphony

£

Title

TE RR AC ES

STAGE

Please complete

No. of Concerts

STA LLS &

III

IV

BBC SSO Subscriptions Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Box Office 2 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow G2 3NY

Please mark your preferred seating area with a cross on the plan and the number of tickets required against your chosen dates/seating area on the form. Remember that if you are booking 8, 11 or 14 concerts you are entitled to an extra concert at no additional cost. Please mark your FREE concert in the column provided.

BAL CO NY IV

ISSUE NO.

3 DIGIT SECURITY CODE

FREE

31

HOW TO BOOK BOX OFFICE: 0141-353 8000 bbc.co.uk/bbcsso SEASON TICKETS: Book a Season Ticket and SAVE up to 30% Why book a season ticket?

How to book a season ticket

There are lots of good reasons to book in advance for the BBC SSO’s Glasgow Thursday Night Season. Not only are you guaranteed a terrific year of music but you can also:

1 Decide how many concerts you want to attend (checking if you are entitled to any for free) and where you would like to sit.

• Save Money by booking just 4 or more concerts - and the more you book the more you save. This year you can save up to 30% across the Glasgow Thursday Night Season.

• Get a FREE Concert when you book for 8, 11, or 14 concerts, which means you can discover even more music. For example, it’s the same price to book for 12 concerts as it is for 11, so use your free extra concert to explore a composer or a piece you don’t know!

• Secure the seats you want in advance, guaranteeing you the best seats at the best price. Exclusive Season Ticket booking opens on Thursday 14 March 2013.

• Exchange your tickets for another concert if you find you can’t attend one you’ve booked in advance. We’ll happily swap them for a concert not on your subscription list. Please note that the Box Office requires 24 hours notice and a £1 charge applies.

• Plan your year of concerts in one simple booking.

• Expand your musical horizons. There’s such a wide range and mix of music in our Thursday Night Series that you’re bound to discover something new.

Single ticket prices

2 Calculate your discount from the grid and then fill in the form opposite.

3 Cut off and return to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Box Office using the address provided. Please note that there is a Box Office charge of £1.75 per subscription transaction.

4 That’s it!

Subscription booking is by post only.

Season ticket prices Subscriptions/ Concerts

Seating Area / Price Bands

I

I1

I11

IV

£81.60

£68.00 £57.80 £37.40 15

DISCOUNT % 4

Standard

Concession £76.80

£64.00

£54.40 £35.20 20

5

Standard £96.00

£80.00

£68 . 00 £44.00 20

Concession £90.00

£75.00 £63.75 £41.25 25

6

Standard £115.20

£96.00

£81.60 £52.80 20

Concession £108.00 £90.00 £76.50 £49.50 25

7

Standard £134.40 £112.00 £95.20 £61.60 20

Concession £126.00 £105.00 £89.25 £57.75 25

9/8

Standard £144.00 £120.00 £102.00 £66.00 25

Concession £134.40 £112.00 £95.20 £61.60 30

10

Standard £180.00 £150.00 £127.50 £82.50 25

Concession £168.00 £140.00 £119.00 £77.00 30

12/11 Standard £184.80 £154.00 £130.90 £84.70 30

Concession £171.60 £143.00 £121.55 £78.65 35

13

Standard £218.40 £182.00 £154.70 £100.10 30

Concession £202.80 £169.00 £143.65 £92.95 35

14/15 Standard £235.20 £196.00 £166.60 £107.80 30

Concession £218.40 £182.00 £154.70 £100.10 35

Season Ticket concessions are available to Senior Citizens and SSO Club Members.

ooking for single tickets opens: B Monday 15 April 2013 Single ticket prices for Thursday Night Series Stalls

Seating Area / Price Bands I

I1

I11

IV

£24

£20

£17

£11

Terraces Balcony

£17

£24 £20

North Balcony £11 South Balcony

£11

Discounts • £5 tickets for Students, Under 16s and Unemployed. Students (those in full time education), Under 16s and the Unemployed are entitled to £5 tickets (subject to availability).

Proof of status may be required.

• Single Ticket Concessions. Over 60s and SSO Club members receive £2 off full price single tickets (proof of status required).

• 50% Discount for Registered Disabled.

Disabled patrons and a companion will receive a 50% discount on any single full price ticket.

• Groups. Bring a group of 10 and get one extra ticket free (that’s two free tickets for a group of 20, etc.). For details of group booking please call the box office on 0141-353 8000.

• School Groups. We welcome school parties to City Halls for BBC SSO concerts. If you are a teacher interested in bringing a group, please email ssooutreach@bbc.co.uk • Box Office Charges. Please note that the Glasgow Concert Halls Box Office charges a fee of £1.50 on all telephone bookings and £1 on all online bookings. There will be a 75p charge if you wish to have your tickets posted to you.

City Halls Box Office •

Opening Hours Mon – Sat, 12 noon – 6pm (later on concert evenings).

Sundays: opening hours vary.

Please contact the box office to confirm.

Tickets also available from the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Box Office.

MAHLER & BRITTEN

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CYCLE

BORN IN THE USA

FILM MUSIC

GLASGOW SEASON DIARY COMPLETE LISTINGS

Friday 26 July 2013, 7.30pm BUSTER KEATON IN THE GENERAL + ONE WEEK Concert Screenings Music composed and conducted

by Timothy Brock Thursday 19 September, 7.30pm OPENING NIGHT: THOMAS HAMPSON SINGS MAHLER Britten The Building of the House Mahler Songs Mahler Symphony No.5 Thomas Hampson baritone Donald Runnicles conductor Thursday 26 September, 7.30pm MOZART’S REQUIEM Elgar Cello Concerto Mozart Requiem Alisa Weilerstein cello Miah Persson soprano Christine Rice mezzo Jeremy Ovenden tenor Neal Davies bass National Youth Choir of Scotland Donald Runnicles conductor Saturday 5 October, 7.30pm HEAR AND NOW: PINTSCHER CONDUCTS BOULEZ Tickets available from August 2013 Thursday 10 October, 7.30pm MÄRKL CONDUCTS: DEBUSSY AND MESSIAEN Messiaen Les offrandes oubliées Messiaen Poèmes pour Mi Debussy Images Gweneth-Ann Jeffers soprano Jun Märkl conductor Thursday 24 October, 7.30pm RACHMANINOV’S PIANO CONCERTO No.2 Albert Schnelzer A Freak in Burbank Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 Nielsen Symphony No.4 (The Inextinguishable) Denis Kozhukhin piano Thomas Dausgaard conductor Thursday 31 October, 2.00pm AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE Programme and ticket details to be announced

Thursday 7 November, 7.30pm VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CYCLE: SINFONIA ANTARTICA Tippett Divertimento on Sellinger’s Round Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20, K.466 Vaughan Williams Symphony No.7 ‘Sinfonia Antartica’ * Shai Wosner piano Katherine Broderick soprano* Women of the Glasgow Chamber Choir* Andrew Manze conductor Sunday 10 November, 2.00pm DISCOVERING MUSIC Vaughan Williams Symphony No.8 Andrew Manze conductor and presenter Tickets available from October 2013 Thursday 14 November, 2.00pm AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE Programme and ticket details to be announced Thursday 21 November, 7.30pm MAHLER 4 Britten Quatre Chansons Françaises* Britten Gloriana: Symphonic Suite Mahler Symphony No.4* Elizabeth Watts soprano* Martyn Brabbins conductor Saturday 30 November, 7.30pm HEAR AND NOW: SIGNALS FROM HEAVEN JAPANESE MASTERS Ilan Volkov conductor Tickets available from October 2013 Thursday 5 December, 2.00pm AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE Programme and ticket details to be announced Thursday 12 December, 7.30pm JOHN ADAMS: CITY NOIR Beethoven Symphony No.4 Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1 John Adams City Noir James Ehnes violin Donald Runnicles conductor Sunday 22 December, 3.00pm CHRISTMAS AT THE MOVIES Matt Dunkley conductor

Thursday 16 January, 7.30pm GRIEG PIANO CONCERTO AJ Kernis Newly Drawn Sky Grieg Piano Concerto Shostakovich Symphony No.1 Lars Vogt piano Donald Runnicles conductor Thursday 6 February, 2.00pm AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE Programme and ticket details to be announced Thursday 13 February, 7.30pm SCHUBERT’S ‘UNFINISHED’ SYMPHONY Stravinsky Le Chant du Rossignol Schubert Symphony No.8 ‘Unfinished’ Berlioz Harold in Italy* Antoine Tamestit viola* Matthias Pintscher conductor Saturday 22 February, 7.30pm HEAR AND NOW: AMERICANA Ilan Volkov conductor Tickets available from January 2014 Thursday 27 February, 7.30pm OSBORNE PLAYS BEETHOVEN: PIANO CONCERTO No.2 Copland Quiet City* Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2 Schumann Symphony No.2 Steven Osborne piano Mark O’Keeffe trumpet* James Horan cor anglais* Andrew Manze conductor

Thursday 13 March, 2.00pm AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE Programme and ticket details to be announced Thursday 20 March, 7.30pm BORN IN THE USA: GERSHWIN AND IVES Sean Shepherd Blue Blazes Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Ives Symphony No.2 Freddy Kempf piano Martyn Brabbins conductor Thursday 24 April, 7.30pm RUNNICLES CONDUCTS: MAHLER 9 Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten Mahler Symphony No.9 Donald Runnicles conductor Thursday 1 May, 7.30pm DVOŘÁK’S CELLO CONCERTO Janáček Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen Dvořák Cello Concerto Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Joshua Roman cello Richard Farnes conductor Saturday 10, Sunday 11 May TECTONICS GLASGOW 2014 Thursday 15 May, 7.30pm CLOSING NIGHT: VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A SEA SYMPHONY Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony Steven Osborne piano Elizabeth Watts soprano Mark Stone baritone Edinburgh Festival Chorus Andrew Manze conductor

Thursday 6 March, 7.30pm BORN IN THE USA: BARBER AND COPLAND George Tsontakis Let the River Be Unbroken Barber Violin Concerto Copland Symphony No.3 Sarah Chang violin David Alan Miller conductor

FSC LOGO TO BE PLACED

Brochure design by weared8.com

Customers’ personal details are held in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Data Protection Act 1998. If consent is given at the time of ticket purchase, this information will be passed to the BBC SSO and may be used to contact you with information about forthcoming concerts or BBC events. These details will not be passed on to any third party. If you wish to have your name removed from the orchestra’s mailing-list please E-mail: bbcsso@bbc.co.uk or telephone: 0141-422 6728.

Saturday 11 January 2014, 7.30pm HEAR AND NOW: MACMILLAN CONDUCTS MACMILLAN James MacMillan conductor Tickets available from November 2013