Philharmonia Bedford Season 12/13

Esa-Pekka Salonen Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor 2012/13 Season Bedford Corn Exchange

“blazing

originality” The Sunday Times, February 2011

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© Richard Haughton

Welcome to the Philharmonia Orchestra’s eighteenth season in residence at Bedford Corn Exchange.

The seven concerts that make up the 2012/13 Season feature a distinguished roster of internationally acclaimed artists. Conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy (the Philharmonia’s Conductor Laureate),

Sir Andrew Davis and Tugan Sokhiev will return to Bedford, and we are tremendously excited to introduce three remarkable conductors to the Corn Exchange stage for the first time: David Afkham and Santtu-Matias Rouvali make their débuts with the Philharmonia this season; and the young British sensation, and conductor of the Last Night of the BBC Proms, Edward Gardner, comes to Bedford for the first time.

There are some impressive names among the solo artists appearing in the season as well. Two of the UK’s brightest and best–cellist Steven Isserlis and trumpeter Alison Balsom–

key feature in the cultural calendar in Bedford Borough, and as always there is a great sense of anticipation amongst local music lovers around the forthcoming season.

I am delighted that the annual Mayor’s Concert is once again taking place, on Friday 12 It is my very great pleasure to October 2012. As usual there welcome the Philharmonia to a will be a collection for the Mayor’s Charity on the night. new season at its Bedford The Mayor’s Charity is home. It is a real privilege for supporting excellent local Bedford to host once again causes this year in the form of one of the world’s leading orchestras. The Philharmonia’s the King’s Arms Project, the Bedford and District Cerebral programme of concerts in Palsy Society and the Bedford Bedford is established as a

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are featured alongside international soloists: Canadian vioinist James Ehnes; German violinist Arabella Steinbacher; and French pianist Lise de la Salle.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support of the Philharmonia’s residency. Here’s to another world-class season in Bedford.

David Whelton Managing Director

Daycare Centre. This year in hard times whatever you can generously afford will be appreciated more than ever by the charities concerned.

I hope you enjoy what will no doubt be another wonderful season of world-class music in Bedford.

With best wishes

Dave Hodgson Mayor of Bedford Borough

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Friday 12 October 7.30pm MAYOR’S CONCERT TUGAN SOKHIEV conductor NIKOLAI TOKAREV piano MENDELSSOHN Overture, Hebrides CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 ELGAR Enigma Variations Musical inspiration comes in all forms.

Mendelssohn’s elemental ‘Hebridean’ overture sprang from a stormy encounter with the rugged seascape of the Western Highlands.

Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto (actually written before the First) was one of the last pieces he wrote in his native Poland before he moved, and Polish themes come through loud and clear – most notably in the finale’s mazurka feel. The catalyst for Elgar’s perennially popular Enigma Variations was altogether more domestic. A light-hearted piano-side reverie caught his wife’s attention.

Elgar then extemporised on its theme around various friends and acquaintances. The rest, as they say, is history…

“Sokhiev conducted with cool-headed brilliance, and the orchestra responded with near perfection” The Guardian, April 2010

Listen to extracts & buy online philharmonia.co.uk/shop Davis Elgar Enigma Variations, Alassio and Serenade for Strings

Wednesday 5 December 7.30pm DAVID AFKHAM conductor ARABELLA STEINBACHER violin BEETHOVEN Overture, Coriolan BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto “Arabella Steinbacher conjures tones so subtly beautiful and multicoloured that your jaw almost drops” The Times, November 2011

Brahms’s Third Symphony, for some the composer’s greatest, is a magnificent achievement. He made his adoring Viennese public wait six years for it, and what he produced united, for one critic, the “titanism” of the first symphony with the “untroubled pastoral charm” of the second. Perhaps surprisingly, fireworks are not on the agenda here. The work instead is subdued, confessorial and reserved with each movement ending piano or pianissimo. Here it is preceded by Beethoven’s concise yet suitably statuesque ‘tone poem’ Coriolan and followed by the groundbreaking Violin Concerto. This concert brings the charismatic young German conductor David Afkham to Bedford for the first time.

Listen to extracts & buy online philharmonia.co.uk/shop Dohnányi Brahms Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3

Tugan Sokhiev © Patrice Nin

This concert is supported by

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Classical Music Magazine, February 2011

Wednesday 16 January 7.30pm SANTTU-MATIAS ROUVALI conductor ALISON BALSOM trumpet BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 2 HUMMEL Trumpet Concerto BIZET Symphony in C A chance to hear one of the freshest performers in British classical music today.

The glamorous Alison Balsom has injected a new lease of life into solo trumpet playing, and in so doing has collected two Classical Brits, numerous awards by Classic FM, Gramophone and Echo Klassik, and even made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. She performs Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto, one of the liveliest for the instrument, with a lyrically wistful slow movement and a virtuosic last movement.

It is bookended by a German and a French symphony. Beethoven’s Second Symphony is sunny and good-humoured, with a finale plainly looking backwards in style to Bach.

Bizet’s Symphony in C is based on the work of a French great – his tutor, Charles François Gounod. Bizet was still a teenager when he wrote the piece, yet it is widely considered to be his finest orchestral score.

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Alison Balsom © Mat Henneck and EMI classics

“Alison Balsom’s dazzling instrumental skill and technical panache… could hardly be bettered”

Friday 15 February 7.30pm

Saturday 23 March 7.30pm

EDWARD GARDNER conductor KIRILL GERSTEIN piano

STEVEN ISSERLIS director & cello ZSOLT-TIHAMÉR VISONTAY director & violin

The Fourth Symphony was for many, including Tchaikovsky, a breakthrough. Here, Tchaikovsky is in total control of the orchestral palette, with highly original colours – including an almost entirely pizzicato third movement. Woven into the entire work is the ‘fate’ motif, spelled out in the first movement, subsequently developed, and by the finale it is violently thrown around the orchestra in a torrent of enthusiasm. It is the composer’s most exciting symphonic invention. Before this, the bestknown of Shostakovich’s two piano concertos.

Written for his son’s 19th birthday, who later premièred the work, its highlight is its exquisite slow movement – more-than-slightly Romantic in style.

Edward Gardner © Jillian Edelstein

Gala concert in support of

MOZART Divertimento in D major, K. 136 HAYDN Cello Concerto No. 1 BLOCH From Jewish Life SCHUBERT Symphony No. 5

Steven Isserlis © Kevin Davis

BEETHOVEN Overture, Fidelio SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concerto No. 2 TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4

Steven Isserlis is possibly the UK’s best-loved, most highly-respected solo cellist. His distinctive sound (brought about by playing on warmer gut strings) and appearance have earned him a place at the forefront of British musical life for several decades. In this concert he performs Haydn’s First Cello Concerto – a demanding work that requires virtuosic skill – directing it from the soloist’s platform. He the returns to the stage to perform a deeply moving 1924 piece by the SwissAmerican composer Ernst Bloch. The piece is in three movements: Jewish Song, Supplication, and Prayer with the latter, in the words of Isserlis (who commissioned its orchestration), being “surely one of the most fervently beautiful pieces ever written for the cello”.

Listen to extracts & buy online philharmonia.co.uk/shop Schiff Schubert Symphony No. 5

“Isserlis can turn a single note into a smile or a lament” The Guardian, June 2010

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Tuesday 7 May 7.30pm SIR ANDREW DAVIS conductor LISE DE LA SALLE piano ELGAR Overture, In the South (Alassio) MOZART Piano Concerto No. 9, K271, Jeunehomme VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 2, A London Symphony The day after the first performance of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony, on 27 March 1914, George Butterworth wrote to the composer that he was “frightfully glad” that “you have at last achieved something worthy of your gifts”. Vaughan Williams later confided to Sir John Barbirolli that it was his own favourite of the nine symphonies he wrote.

A slow, quiet introduction depicts dawn, with the harp and clarinet sounding the chimes of Westminster, followed by scenes of Bloomsbury Square, the East End, and finally a tragic appassionata presumably depicting the grimmer sides of city life at that time.

Before that, a Mozart Concerto composed at the age of 21. Unlike his previous eight written for himself to perform, the Ninth was Mozart’s first chance to write for a real pianist, Mlle Jeunehomme, a professional French pianist who made her living as a touring virtuoso. Rising to this occasion, the work proudly shows off the young composer’s burgeoning talent.

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Sir Andrew Davis © Dario Acosta Photography

Listen to extracts & buy online philharmonia.co.uk/shop Davis Elgar Enigma Variations, Alassio and Serenade for Strings

Vladimir Ashkenazy © Keith Saunders

Sunday 16 June 7.30pm VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY conductor JAMES EHNES violin ELGAR Violin Concerto BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6, Pastoral

“the wondrous James Ehnes…a thinker of the violin as well as a supreme virtuoso of the instrument” Daily Telegraph, January 2012

Elgar’s epic Violin Concerto was composed for the celebrated Viennese virtuoso Fritz Kreisler, who shortly before giving the 1910 world première in London vowed “I will shake the Queen’s Hall!” He obviously had the desired effect as according to one reviewer, “for a quarter of an hour they called and recalled the man [Elgar] who had achieved a triumph not only for himself, but also for England, and hailed him as master and hero.” Elgar’s own opinion was that “It’s good! Awfully emotional!

Too emotional...but I love it.” Beethoven’s passion was for the countryside. “You ask me where my ideas come from” he once noted, “they come to me in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the night, early in the morning”. The Pastoral Symphony, with its unambiguously bucolic movement titles, is the composer’s attempt to set these sounds and scenes in notes on paper.

Listen to extracts & buy online philharmonia.co.uk/shop Davis/Ehnes Elgar Violin Concerto

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PHILHARMONIA ONLINE SHOP Latest releases Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 6

Christoph von Dohnányi conducts the complete Brahms symphonies

Recordings available on CD or by MP3 download Visit www.philharmonia.co.uk/shop

Join us Support the Philharmonia Orchestra today Your support is essential to the continuing success of the Philharmonia Orchestra and its residency at Bedford Corn Exchange.

Over the past 30 years, the Friends have raised over a million pounds in support of the Orchestra, helping to maintain the highest standards of music-making, education and digital work.

Joining the Friends will offer you a unique relationship with the Orchestra, as well as a range of exclusive benefits including regular updates and bespoke special events. However, the greatest benefit of all is the knowledge that you are perpetuating the great tradition of the Philharmonia as a musical icon in Bedford and throughout the world.

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Membership – from £25 pa* Priority Booking Access to Open Rehearsals Regular E-newsletter Bespoke special events

Join Us For more information, please contact: Catherine Thomson, Friends Administrator on 020 7921 3906 or friends@philharmonia.co.uk *£25 individuals /£35 couples

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Residency Supporters The Philharmonia Orchestra would like to thank its Supporters and Corporate Members for their support of the Philharmonia’s residency at the Bedford Corn Exchange. The quality and breadth of the Philharmonia’s work in the region is made possible by their commitment.

A partnership with the Philharmonia offers an association with an internationally renowned Orchestra bringing some of the world’s greatest artists to Bedford.

There are many ways in which you can support the Philharmonia: Corporate Membership: a package of tickets and hospitality across an entire Philharmonia season.

Advertising in concert programmes: a fantastic way to sell your business services in Bedford while supporting the work of the Orchestra.

The Bedford Charity

Joining the Friends (see opposite) To learn more about supporting the Philharmonia Orchestra please contact Jennifer Davies on 020 7921 3920 or jennifer.davies@philharmonia.co.uk Philharmonia Orchestra 6th Floor, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

The Wixamtree Trust

Tel 020 7921 3900 Fax 020 7921 3950 info@philharmonia.co.uk www.philharmonia.co.uk Design withrelish.co.uk 020 7503 3171 Print Cantate 020 7622 3401 All the information in this brochure was correct at the time of going to press, but changes may be unavoidable.

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The Philharmonia Orchestra is a registered charity Philharmonia Ltd Registered Charity No. 250277 .

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Booking information Subscription ticket prices Seating area

Balcony

Front Stalls

Mid Stalls

Mid/Rear Stalls

Rear Stalls

No. of concerts

Price per ticket

Full price

£33.00

£28.00

£23.00

£19.00

£12.00

Discount (%)

3 concerts

£89.10

£75.60

£62.10

£51.30

£32.40

10%

4 concerts

£118.80

£100.80

£82.80

£68.40

£43.20

10%

5 concerts

£148.50

£126.00

£103.50

£85.50

£54.00

10%

6 concerts

£168.30

£142.80

£117.30

£96.90

£61.20

15%

7 concerts

£196.35

£166.60

£136.85

£113.05

£71.40

15%

SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE! Book for 3 or more concerts at the same time and save up to 15%, as well as benefiting from: • Free ticket exchange scheme (up to one week before concert) • Flexible payment by spreading the cost of your tickets over two instalments (for cheque payments only)

HOW TO BOOK: PHONE: Call 01234 269519 during box office hours: Monday to Saturday: 9.00am – 4.30pm POST: Complete the booking form and post to Philharmonia Orchestra Bookings, Bedford Tourist Information Centre, St. Paul’s Square, Bedford, Bedfordshire, MK40 1SJ Please note the new address for the Box Office Postal applications for 3 or more concerts will be numbered on receipt and processed on a first-come first-served basis.

Please add £1 postage to the total cost if you would like us to send your tickets to you. Stamped, self-addressed envelopes will not be accepted. Please allow 28 days for delivery. Any tickets booked and paid for within seven days of a performance will be held for collection. No unpaid reservations can be accepted in the four days prior to a performance.

IN PERSON: from the Tourist Information Centre in St. Paul’s Square, Bedford, MK40 1SJ. ONLINE: Bookings for single concerts can be made online at www.bedfordcornexchange.co.uk. Please note that subscription discounts are not available online.

FAX: Complete the booking form and fax it to 01234 718113 For bookings for the 12/13 Season and beyond, there will be an additional handling charge of £1.50

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SALE OF RETURNED TICKETS Any returned tickets for a sell-out performance will be resold on a first-come first-served basis. Tickets may be limited to two per person.

FAMILY TICKETS Each adult attending a concert can purchase up to 2 tickets for under-16s for just £5 each.

CONCESSIONS Recipients of Job Seekers Allowance, Income Support, Pension Credit, full-time students and under-16s are entitled to £2 off the full price of a ticket. Please include photocopied proof of your entitlement when booking.

People registered with disabilities are also entitled to concessions.

ACCESS INFORMATION The Philharmonia Orchestra and Bedford Corn Exchange welcome people with disabilities. Bedford Corn Exchange is equipped with an induction loop system, designated wheelchair seats for performances, a disabled lift from ground level to the interval bar and disabled toilets.

Guide dogs permitted with prior notification. Please call 01234 269519 if you require further information.

PRIORITY BOOKING Priority booking is available for Friends of the Philharmonia Orchestra. For more information about joining, please see page 7.

PARKING Ticket holders for Philharmonia concerts can park in River Street Car Park from 6pm until midnight and will not be charged on exit. Bedford Corn Exchange has made this arrangement in an attempt to make it easier to park in the town centre when attending performances at the venue.

If you make use of this facility please let us know what you think. Your feedback helps us to improve our services.

Email us at cornexchange@bedford.gov.uk, or call 01234 344813.

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Booking form -E

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1. Select the concerts you wish to attend 2. Select where you would like to sit in the concert hall from the plan on this page (NB you do not have to sit in the same area for all of your concerts – please indicate your requirements on the booking form) 3. If you require additional tickets for any concerts please indicate the number you require in the ‘additional tickets’ box

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If you would prefer us to calculate the total cost of your tickets, please feel free to leave the payment totals blank: we will advise you of the costs when we send your tickets.

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Concert date

Preferred seating area

1st choice

2nd choice

Example

balcony

front stalls

No. of subscription tickets

No. of additional tickets (full or concessionary rate)

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12 October Sokhiev / Tokarev 5 December Afkham / Steinbacher 16 January Rouvali / Balsom 15 February Gardner / Gerstein 23 March Isserlis / Visontay 7 May Davis / de la Salle 16 June Ashkenazy / Ehnes If you would like your tickets posted to you, please tick this box and add £1 to the total cost of your order.

Sub-total cost of subscription tickets (see p9 for details)

£

Sub-total cost of additional tickets

£

Handling Charge TOTAL

£1.50 (per transaction) £

£

If you would like information about joining the Friends please tick here or contact the Friends Administrator on 020 7921 3906 or friends@philharmonia.co.uk

This brochure is available in alternative formats Call 020 7921 3902 Box Office 01234 269519

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Please fill in your name, address and payment details below (BLOCK CAPITALS PLEASE) Title

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Please tick as many of the boxes below as you wish, EVEN IF you have ticked similar boxes before I would like to join/remain on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Marketing List at the Bedford Corn Exchange, and give my permission to the Orchestra to send me information about future Philharmonia Orchestra events.

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PAYMENT DETAILS I enclose a cheque/postal order made payable to Bedford Borough Council I enclose two cheques made payable to Bedford Borough Council, one with today’s date and one dated one month later. Please note that the second cheque must be dated at least 4 weeks in advance of your first concert. Please make cheques out by writing ‘up to a maximum of £…’ and leaving the figures box blank. This will ensure that you pay no more than your actual ticket total if we have to use your second choice seating area for any concert.

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Send your booking form to Philharmonia Orchestra Bookings, Bedford Tourist Information Centre, St. Paul’s Square, Bedford, Bedfordshire, MK40 1SJ

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