AN EVENING OF FILM MUSIC DECEMBER 1 2016
with
ROGER HUCKLE solo violin
WILLIAM GOODCHILD conductor SARAH IVANOVICH guest leader
PROGRAMME £2
www.bristolsymphonyorchestra.com
2 0 1 7 C O N C E RT S
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Saturday 8 April
Saturday 22 April
St George’s Bristol
St Mary Redcliffe
Natalia Lomeiko, violin
Simon Callaghan, Piano
Conductor: William Goodchild Guest Leader: Aimee Cottam
Conductor: William Goodchild Guest Leader: Imogen Armstrong
Saturday 24 June
Winter Concert
Clifton Cathedral
TBC
Andy Sheppard, saxophone
Nicola Meecham, Piano
Conductor: William Goodchild Principal Leader: Pamela Bell
Conductor: William Goodchild Guest Leader: TBC
W E L C O M E A N D T H A N K YO U Welcome to our third and last concert of 2016. As we come to the end of our first year, we would like to thank you for supporting us by coming along this evening. Without you, our audience, there would be no Orchestra. We would also like to thank Helen and Peter Wilde who were courageous enough to ask a brand new orchestra to perform in June at Helen’s concert in her capacity as this year’s High Sheriff. This was our launch concert under the baton of our conductor William Goodchild. Helen and Peter continue to support us financially, but more importantly with their enthusiasm, friendship and hospitality, for which we are most grateful. In addition, many thanks to Michael Beek for his excellent programme notes for tonight’s concert. We hope you enjoy reading them. Our first year has been extraordinary and most enjoyable. Forming in January, we started with the number of players you could count on one hand and have, amazingly, grown to the numbers you see on stage this evening. By great fortune, Bristol Symphony Orchestra has managed to attract some of the region’s best professional, semi-professional and amateur players. Our ethos is to communicate the joy we all have in making music together and performing to as wide an audience as we possibly can. Our April and June 2017 concerts are now set up and we very much hope you will join us for these varied concerts. To keep in touch and up-to-date with our activities, please sign up to our e-newsletters via the website at www.bristolsymphonyorchestra. com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter by using our social media name @BristolSymphony. And don’t forget to tell all your friends about us! With our best wishes for a very happy Christmas and New Year, Rachel Goodchild, Design and Marketing, on behalf of Bristol Symphony Orchestra
Kora Concerto On 18th June 2016, Bristol Symphony Orchestra performed the Concerto for Kora and Orchestra at St George’s Bristol as part of the High Sheriff’s Concert. Filmmaker Remco Merbis (Pixillion) and his associates have produced a six minute film documenting the collaboration between William Goodchild and Mamadou Cissokho: from when the two first met up in February, through to the final concert. The project affirms the power of music as an important tool for communication, unhindered by barriers of language and culture, and for forging new relationships between people from different backgrounds and traditions. Thank you Remco for making this unique short documentary. To watch the film, please follow a link available via our website homepage.
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TO N I G H T ’ S P R O G R A M M E Roger Huckle, solo violin * William Goodchild, conductor Sarah Ivanovich, guest leader FIRST HALF Eric Coates The Dam Busters March Nino Rota The Godfather Maurice Jarre Dr Zhivago John Williams Three Pieces from Schindler’s List * 1. Lullaby 2. Jewish Town 3. Remembrances
John Williams Suite from Jaws
1.The Shark Theme 2. Out to Sea and The Shark Cage Fugue
- - - INTERVAL - - SECOND HALF Richard Wagner Ride of the Valkyries Apocalypse Now Ennio Moriconne Cinema Paradiso * Bernard Hermann Psycho – Suite for String Orchestra 1. Prelude 2.The Murder 3. Finale
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 7, Allegretto The King’s Speech Debbie Wiseman Wolf Hall Thomas Newman Road to Perdition Elmer Bernstein The Magnificent Seven Please remember to switch off all digital devices during the concert this evening. Thank you.
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P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
Eric Coates (1886-1957)
The Dam Busters
Nino Rota (1911-1979)
The Godfather
Dir. Michael Anderson (1955)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
Eric Coates’ stirring Dam Busters March owes much to the patriotic writing of Sir Edward Elgar. Written before the film production company came calling, Coates is said to have been trying out marches in the style of Elgar, and felt this particular one could work well for the film. Coates wasn’t keen on film scoring and only allowed the producers to use the march after being convinced it was a film of national importance; incidentally, it was composer Leighton Lucas who completed the rest of the film’s music. The film was indeed important, based on real life events during World War II in 1943 that saw the development of the ‘bouncing bomb’. ‘Operation Chastise’ would see the destruction of several integral German dams; a successful mission for the British, despite the loss of life both in the air and on the ground. Today Coates’ immortal work, his most famous for sure, is inescapably linked with flights of fancy and deeds of daring-do.
A lone trumpet opens Nino Rota’s score for The Godfather, just a few bars of a slow waltz and then it’s gone. The use of music in the film is indeed relatively spare, but that makes the moments where it is used all the more powerful. Rota’s accompaniment for Francis Ford Coppola’s scintillating mafia thriller is one of moody underlining, punchy stings (short bursts, like musical exclamation marks) and evocative romance. By 1972 Rota had already had quite a career, creating magical and memorable scores for the films of legendary Italian directors like Fellini, Visconti, Monicelli and Zefferelli, not to mention Hollywood films for King Vidor and Edward Dmytryk. His contribution to The Godfather remains one of his finest, however, and his Godfather Waltz is as evocative of the gangster idiom today as John Williams’ Jaws theme is for sharks.
All film notes by Michael Beek (Film Music Journalist) michaelbeek.co.uk
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P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
Maurice Jarre (1924-2009)
Doctor Zhivago
John Williams (b.1932) Three Pieces from
Dir. David Lean (1965)
Schindler’s List *
Life during the Bolshevik Revolution was tough enough without cheating on your wife and romancing the wife of a politicial activist, but Yuri Zhivago, doctor and part-time poet, did it anyway… Boris Pasternak’s novel of the same name was thought too difficult to adapt for the screen, but David Lean made movie magic with his 1965 film version, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The film was typically epic, on the heels of Lean’s decidedly sandier Lawrence of Arabia, and took in a far chillier landscape, though with equal artistry and attention to detail. The central performances, stunning set-pieces and ultimately simple story of a man’s life choices, made for an impressive picture and one that is today considered an absolute masterpiece.
Dir. Steven Spielberg (1993)
‘Lara’s Theme’ is classic Maurice Jarre, with its resonating romantic flair, exotic orchestration – some thirty Balalaikas were used in the original recording – and quite simply, a memorable theme. It now immediately conjures the heady drama and intense romance of the film, and is the late composer at his romantic best.
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While the finishing touches were being adorned on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, the director was already in Poland shooting Schindler’s List. This could not have been a more contrasting project, and it was a brave move into distinctly adult territory for a director whose eyes had normally been fixed on more family-friendly fare. This film was always very close to the director’s heart, however, and when it picked up seven Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture, it was clear Spielberg had achieved something very special. The story is of course a real one, as Oskar Schindler – shrewd businessman, womaniser and toast of the Nazi party set – created sanctuary, through the creation of jobs, for hundreds of otherwise ill-fated Jews. Generations exist across the world today thanks to Schindler’s efforts, and Spielberg’s personal reflection on it has moved audiences ever since. When the director first spoke to composer John Williams about the score, Williams famously said ‘Steven, you need a better composer than I for this film...’ to which his old friend replied, ‘You’re right, but they’re all dead!’
P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
John Williams (b.1932)
Jaws
Dir. Steven Spielberg (1975) Spielberg’s second theatrical feature is the one that really made his name, and Jaws gave birth to the word ‘Blockbuster’. The film, about a Great White Shark terrorising the waters off an East Coast Island community was the greatest of successes upon its release, and a good thing too, because its production was nothing short of a major headache and worry to Universal. Based on the late Peter Benchley’s thrilling novel of the same name, the film begins as a blood-curdling thriller as the shark eats its way through the community, and becomes a high-spirited adventure as Police Chief Brody (Roy Schneider) takes to the sea with a shark expert (Richard Dreyfuss) and a shark hunter (Robert Shaw) to catch and kill the twenty-five foot monster shark. Using just a repeated motif of two notes, the theme is at once simple, primal and terrifying. It has become forever linked with the sight of a lone fin breaking the water. Unsurprisingly the Academy saw fit to award Williams with an Oscar, his second, but a first for his original music.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Ride of the Valkyries
Apocalypse Now
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1979) Originally written to open Act III of Wagner’s Opera Die Walküre, the piece proved so popular on its own that it has become a staple of classical concert repertoire since its first operatic performance in 1870. Exhilarating, intense, swirling and unwieldy, the piece has become less about Nordic female Gods transporting fallen heroes, and more about a call to arms, thanks to its use in Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola’s modern classic is a bleak and uncompromising view of the Vietnam conflict, largely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness novella, amongst other influences. Starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen and Dennis Hopper, the film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The famous scene featuring Wagner’s music saw the air cavalry launch a brutal attack on a village, the music blasting from loudspeakers aboard the lead helicopter in order to motivate the troops in their assault. It was also used to accompany D.W. Griffith’s legendary silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915), so an inspiration to filmmakers for many years.
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P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
Ennio Morricone (b.1928)
Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)
Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore (1988)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
One of the most beloved Italian films of the modern age, Cinema Paradiso finds a revered film director returning home to his Sicilian village some thirty years after leaving for a new life in Rome. Rediscovering the movie theatre where his dreams were born, he remembers a childhood spent lost in the movies, the friends he made and the love he lost. Not one but two Morricones contributed to the music for this romantic love letter to cinema, with legendary composer Ennio joined by his son, Andrea. Together they crafted one of the most memorable of the elder Morricone’s career, although the famous love theme is in fact by Andrea.
Psycho, Hollywood’s most famous chiller, almost never made it to the silver screen. A simple story - based on the novel by Robert Bloch - filmed in black and white, and peppered with a cast of relatively unknown actors, Hitchcock didn’t have much hope for this one, and was one step away from re-editing it for television. This was until he heard the music Bernard Herrmann had created for him, which transformed a potentially by-thenumbers story into an edge-of-your-seat, visceral thriller of the highest order.
Cinema Paradiso *
Celebrating sixty years in the business this year, Ennio Morricone shows no signs of slowing down, particularly after his 2016 Oscar-win for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Perhaps unbelievably, it was his first legitimate Oscar, and it came almost a decade after he was given an honorary statuette by the Academy for his ‘magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music’.
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Psycho
Herrmann’s take on Psycho was typically original for the irascible composer: ‘a black and white score’, he called it. When Hitchcock mooted re-cutting the film and demoting it to television, Herrmann simply said, ‘leave it to me’. Ignoring Hitchcock’s one guideline to ‘leave the shower scene without music’, Herrmann went on to create a nerve-shredding film score: one which not only lifted the film to the status of ‘classic’, but also influenced endless film scores and composers to come. Herrmann’s classic ‘suite’ takes in some key moments from the film’s score, including the edgy Prelude and of course the infamous, shrieking music from the Shower Scene.
P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Symphony No. 7, Allegretto
Debbie Wiseman (b.1963)
The King’s Speech
Dir. Peter Kosminsky (2015)
Dir. Tom Hooper (2010) In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history...’ thus began the speech by King George VI to the people of the British Empire on 3 September 1939 as a second world war became a reality. For Tom Hooper’s Oscar-winning film, this moment, the moment, was underscored by the Allegretto of Beethoven’s mighty Symphony No. 7. The pacing works beautifully in the scene, with Geoffrey Rush (as the vocal coach) seemingly conducting the speech in time to the music. Colin Firth’s delivery of those impassioned words are matched by the music, building in power together. Of course no irony was lost on the audience, as a British King made a speech about going to war with Germany, to the tune of a German composer. It’s a stunning cinematic and musical moment, however, and all the more memorable for the choice of music. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay.
Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel’s award-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies continue to have readers enraptured and the success of the books meant it was only a matter of time before her dark Tudor tales were adapted for the screen. The news that Peter Kosminsky would direct the BBC’s mini-series of Wolf Hall meant that audiences were in for something truly special. With standout performances from leads Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis and Claire Foy, not to mention stunning costumes, production design and music, the series was must-see viewing on BBC Two earlier this year. Debbie Wiseman’s dark and frenetic chamber score perfectly captured the tone of the piece, with her play on musical shadows making for a riveting listen. The original soundtrack album went to Number One in the charts, which itself is testament to the music’s impact.
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P RO G R A M M E N OT E S
Thomas Newman (b.1955)
Road to Perdition
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Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004)
The Magnificent Seven
Dir. Sam Mendes (2002)
Dir. John Sturges (1960)
Director Sam Mendes followed his feature film debut, American Beauty, with another distinctly American story, this time set in 1930s Chicago. Tom Hanks stars as a mob hitman, whose world is shattered by the murder of his wife and youngest son, at the hands of one of his own. On the run with his surviving son, the pair form a deep bond as he seeks to avenge the deaths of those he held most dear, even if it means killing the only father he has ever known.
A proper guns-blazing classic and featuring one of the most impressive ensemble casts assembled for the screen: Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn -each a leading man in his own right, yet thrown together and creating magic in this re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. The story is identical, with a small village (this time in Mexico) calling on gunfighters from across the border to help them take on a vicious band of marauders, whose repeated attacks have driven them to the edge.
Acclaimed upon its release, Mendes film features striking cinematography by the late Conrad L. Hall (who received a posthumous Oscar for his work), outstanding performances by the cast - which included Jude Law, Daniel Craig and a final screen appearance by Paul Newman. Another winning element is the original score by Thomas Newman, who crafted a typically expressive and hugely poignant accompaniment, in a style that the composer has very much made his own.
Equally memorable and taking the onscreen action, humour and camaraderie to even greater heights, is the film’s music by Elmer Bernstein. The composer had already been making a name for himself since his debut score in 1951, and had proven himself with Biblical epics, thrillers and a handful of westerns. It was perhaps The Magnificent Seven, however, that catapulted the young composer into the Hollywood A-List; and his buoyant, exciting score stood him in fine stead for a long and varied career in Hollywood film music.
ABOUT Soloist Roger Huckle Roger Huckle has been the inspiration and guide for Bristol Ensemble – Bristol’s professional chamber orchestra, and a cherished musicians’ collective of exceptional standard – since its foundation in 1994. Born in Bristol, Roger studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire and with Frederick Grinke, was a member of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic, and now performs with leading UK orchestras – including co-leading the London Concertante and Opera Box Orchestra. Roger appreciates Bristol Ensemble players’ musical hunger and real commitment to the group’s performances. He always aims for heart-felt music-making, and fondly recalls the transcendent spirituality of a 2004 Emerald Messiah. Although his favourite journey is Bergen to Oslo by road, he loves Bristol’s Downs, and describes the tip of Worms Head at Rhossili in Gower as his favourite place in the world.
Conductor
William Goodchild is a professional composer, orchestrator and conductor. He
composes music for film, television, concert performance and commercial installation. Specialising in wildlife and history documentary, he has scored well over 70 films including many that have won international awards. In 2016, he was nominated for Best Composer at the Royal Television Society West of England Awards, and the Music Award at Wildscreen Festival. On stage and in the recording studio, Will has collaborated with a wide variety of international soloists including guitarist John Williams, singer Tom Jones and saxophonist Andy Sheppard. His passion for working across styles led to a live and recorded collaboration with Mercury Prize-Winner, Roni Size: the album, Live at Colston Hall, was released in 2015. Also at Colston Hall, with Sir David Attenborough presenting, Will orchestrated and conducted the BBC’s Nature’s Great Events Live to a sell-out audience. The BBC’s Wild China series, orchestrated and conducted by Will, won an Emmy for Sound and Music. Many recordings conducted by Will are available to buy on Sony Classical, Universal Classical and Jazz, and CBS Records. He has worked with a number of professional orchestras including the BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Bristol Ensemble. Will is Conductor and Artistic Director of Bristol Symphony Orchestra.
Guest leader
Sarah Ivanovich studied the violin at Trinity College of Music and has played in
several Bristol orchestras over the years. She has performed and recorded as a violinist and vocalist on the experimental folk scene. Having spent several years as a teacher before training at UWE to gain an MA in music therapy in 2008, Sarah currently works as a music therapist with pre-school children with SEND. Sarah spends most of her time being Mum to her two young sons, Miro and Leon. Coincidentally, Sarah’s grandfather, Stanley Sanders, worked as an assistant to Sir Barnes Neville Wallace during WW2, on the engineering of the “bouncing bombs”, the subject of The Dam Busters film.
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THE ORCHESTRA PLAYERS Violin 1 Sarah Ivanovich (Guest Leader) Pamela Bell Erica Burnell Aimee Cottam Richard Hunt Elea Mumford Josie Rampley Robert Tulloh Maretha Van Der Walt Eloise Wyke Violin 2 Lizzie Porteous Nasser Ahmari Imogen Armstrong Monique Ayres Lauren Bose Katherine Jillings Jo Phillips Lauren Phillips Kenneth Price Rosie Schultz Minkee Kim Viola Becks Sankey Bertie Allison Jessica Bensted Anita Chute Alexia Granatt Oliver Kohll Cello May-Lin Coxson Sophie Barford Ruth Bush Will Marriage Jayne Taylor Sarah Vesty Catherine Warner Rhiannon Wilkinson
Double Bass Ben Groenevelt Clare Daley Siriol Leach Rob Lillis Alex Pearson Harp Emily Mullins Mandolin Charlotte Carrivick Piano Jean Hasse Flute Pippa Craggs Jane Lings Oboe Jennifer Mears Olivia Diskin Clarinet Bass Clarinet Sophie Wilsdon Sarah Edgeworth James Stallwood Saxophone
(Alto - Tenor)
Sophie Stockham Jehan Abdel-Malak Bassoon Daisy Woods Georgina Pickworth Trumpet Martin Rogers Simon Bowles Christopher Rowe
French Horn Dave Ransom Luke Norland Ella Cliff Kaitlyn Hamilton Trombone Matt Davies Lyn Harradine William Whiting Tuba Simon Derrick Percussion / Timpani Christopher Fletcher-Campbell Josh Cottam MANAGEMENT TEAM Pamela Bell Rob Tulloh William Goodchild Rachel Goodchild Aimee Cottam Erica Burnell Eloise Wyke Jane Krish Deb Marriage
PROGRAMME Programme Designer
Rachel Goodchild Programme Notes
Michael Beek
Programme Editor
Jane Krish
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