ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA & VALERY GERGIEV 18 Aug 6pm & 8.30pm Edinburgh Academy Junior School The performance lasts approx. 1hr 20mins with no interval. Supported by
Dunard Fund Please ensure all mobile phones and electronic devices are turned off or put on silent.
ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA & VALERY GERGIEV Royal Scottish National Orchestra Valery Gergiev Conductor Steven Osborne Piano Christopher Hart Trumpet
Tchaikovsky
Serenade for Strings
1 Pezzo in forma di sonatina 2 Valse 3 Elegie 4 Finale (Tema russo)
Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No 1
1 Allegro moderato 2 Lento 3 Moderato 4 Allegro con brio
Stravinsky
Apollon musagète
1 Prologue: The Birth of Apollo 2 Variation of Apollo 3 Pas d’action: Apollo and the Muses 4 Variation of Calliope 5 Variation of Polyhymnia 6 Variation of Terpsichore 7 Second Variation of Apollo 8 Pas de deux: Apollo and Terpsichore 9 Coda 10 Apotheosis
PROGRAMME NOTES Three Russian-born composers glance backwards to the music of the past in today’s concert, with very individual results. Tchaikovsky wrote his Serenade for Strings in 1880 at the same time as his 1812 Overture, and in many ways it’s that grander work’s polar opposite: intimate, modest and refined. He styled its first movement as a homage to Mozart, whose music he adored, though he set out to evoke the earlier composer’s freshness and charm rather than his specific musical style. Shostakovich’s 1933 First Piano Concerto, otherwise known as his Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, began life as a trumpet concerto, the composer later revealed: he only added the piano as his work progressed, but the keyboard instrument gradually became the more prominent of the two soloists. His inspiration was the Baroque concerto grosso for multiple soloists, but again, he stops short of consciously imitating that earlier style in this sly, witty work. Stravinsky looked back overtly to the balance and refinement of Haydn and Mozart in his ballet score Apollon musagète, commissioned in 1927 by wealthy
US patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He had in mind what he called a ‘ballet blanc’, a work of great purity and unity, using just a string orchestra and avoiding almost all violent contrasts in musical material in depicting the god Apollo and three of his Muses. Only in its closing ‘Apotheosis’, where Apollo leads the Muses back to Parnassus, does Stravinsky hint at something darker and more contemporary.
David Kettle David Kettle is a music and arts writer based in Edinburgh, who contributes regularly to the Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph. He has also written for publications including BBC Music Magazine, The Times, The Strad and Classical Music, and for organisations including the BBC Proms, Glyndebourne and Scottish Opera.
ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA The Royal Scottish National Orchestra was formed in 1891 as the Scottish Orchestra and became the Scottish National Orchestra in 1950, before being awarded Royal Patronage in 1977. Throughout its history, the Orchestra has played an integral part in Scotland’s musical life, including performing at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament building in 2004. It performs across Scotland, including concerts in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness, and appears regularly at the Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms. Many renowned conductors have contributed to its success, such as George Szell, Sir John Barbirolli and Sir Alexander Gibson. The Orchestra’s artistic team is currently led by Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård, who was appointed Music Director in 2018, having previously held the position of Principal Guest Conductor. Current Principal Guest Conductor is Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan.
The Orchestra has a worldwide reputation for the quality of its recordings and has received a 2020 Gramophone award for Chopin’s Piano Concertos (soloist Benjamin Grosvenor and conductor Elim Chan), two Diapason d’Or awards for symphonic music (Denève/Roussel 2007 and Denève/Debussy 2012) and eight Grammy award nominations. Over 200 releases are available, including the complete symphonies of Sibelius (Gibson), Prokofiev (Järvi), Glazunov (Serebrier), Nielsen and Martinů (Thomson), Roussel (Denève) and the major orchestral works of Debussy (Denève). Søndergård’s debut recording with the Orchestra of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben was released in 2019. The Orchestra’s pioneering learning and engagement programme, Music for Life, aims to engage the people of Scotland with music across key stages of life. The team is committed to placing the Orchestra at the centre of Scottish communities via workshops and annual residencies across the length and breadth of the country.
VALERY GERGIEV Conductor Valery Gergiev was born in Moscow in 1953 and studied conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory (now the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatory). He won the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin in 1977 and made his Kirov (now Mariinsky) Opera debut one year later, conducting War and Peace. In 1988 he was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Kirov and in 1996 he became General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre. Formerly Principal Guest Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, New York (1997–2008) and Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (2007–15), he is currently Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and of the World Orchestra for Peace, and Co-Chair of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Stars of the White Nights Festival, St Petersburg; the Moscow Easter Festival; the New Horizons Festival at the Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall; the Gergiev Festival, Rotterdam; and the Mikkeli International Festival, Finland. His numerous awards include the 2006 Herbert von Karajan International Music
Prize, the Polar Music Prize, a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, the Dmitry Shostakovich Award, the Golden Mask Award and a Grammy award. He was made an Officier de la Légion d’honneur in 2007 and became honorary president of the Edinburgh International Festival in 2011.
STEVEN OSBORNE Born in Scotland, pianist Steven Osborne studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. His numerous accolades include the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist of the Year in 2013, and two Gramophone awards. He has had residencies at London’s Wigmore Hall, Antwerp’s deSingel, the Bath International Music Festival, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and he is Visiting Professor at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Patron of the Lammermuir Festival and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has performed internationally at venues including Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and he is a regular guest at both New York’s Lincoln Center and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Concerto performances take him to major orchestras across the world, including recent visits to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Oslo Philharmonic, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, in repertoire ranging from Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Messiaen through to Tippett, Britten and Julian Anderson, who dedicated his 2017 piano concerto The Imaginary Museum to Osborne. His recordings span a wide range of repertoire, including Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb and Feldman. He recently released a much-praised recording of Prokofiev’s ‘War Sonatas’, which was shortlisted for a Gramophone award.
CHRISTOPHER HART Royal Scottish National Orchestra Principal Trumpet Christopher Hart studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, before joining the RSNO in 2016. Hart has since performed as guest principal trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under such esteemed conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Sakari Oramo and Semyon Bychkov. His recent projects include a critically acclaimed recording of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat with Oliver Knussen and Soliloquies by Peter Fribbins with the RSNO and Robertas Šervenikas.
eif.co.uk
7–29 August 2021
AUDIENCE SURVEY We are delighted to welcome audiences back to live performances. The past year has been one of the most challenging in the International Festival’s history, so your feedback is more important to us than ever. Anyone who completes the survey will be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win £200 in vouchers of your choice.
Visit eif.co.uk/survey to participate
eif@eif.co.uk
edintfest
@edintfest
edinburghintfestival
Edinburgh International Festival Society is registered as a company in Scotland (No SC024766) and as a Scottish Charity (No SC004694). Registered Address: The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NE.
@edintfest
