Concert programme 2013/14 season Part of Southbank Centre’s
London cover 13-14 v3.indd 1
9/6/2013 12:14:31 PM
Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI* Principal Guest Conductor YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN Leader pieter schoeman Composer in Residence JULIAN ANDERSON Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER AM
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Saturday 14 December 2013 | 7.30pm
John Adams El Niño (Nativity Oratorio) Approx. 2 hrs 10 min including interval between Parts 1 and 2
Vladimir Jurowski conductor Rosemary Joshua soprano Kelley O’Connor mezzo soprano Matthew Rose bass Daniel Bubeck countertenor Brian Cummings countertenor Steven Rickards countertenor London Philharmonic Choir Coloma St Cecilia Singers Trinity Boys Choir Mark Grey sound designer
Free pre-concert performance 5.00–5.45pm | Royal Festival Hall The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s creative ensemble for 15–19 year-olds, The Band, performs its latest set – new music inspired by John Adams’s El Niño and its source texts.
* supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation and one anonymous donor CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Programme £3 Contents 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Welcome About the Orchestra On stage tonight Vladimir Jurowski Rosemary Joshua / Kelley O’Connor Matthew Rose / Daniel Bubeck Brian Cummings / Steven Rickards London Philharmonic Choir Coloma St Cecilia Singers / Trinity Boys Choir Mark Grey / Pieter Schoeman Programme notes Next concerts 2013/14 Annual Appeal LPO Virtual Christmas Gifts Orchestra news Catalyst: Double Your Donation Supporters LPO administration
Welcome
Welcome to Southbank Centre We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you have any queries please ask any member of staff for assistance. Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, YO! Sushi, wagamama, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Caffè Vergnano 1882, Skylon, Concrete, Feng Sushi and Topolski, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery.
Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise, inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest Is Noise
If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, phone 020 7960 4250, or email customer@southbankcentre.co.uk
Presented by Southbank Centre in partnership with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. southbankcentre.co.uk/therestisnoise
We look forward to seeing you again soon.
Tonight is the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s final concert in The Rest Is Noise, a year-long festival that throughout 2013 has dug deep into 20th-century history to reveal the influences on art in general and classical music in particular. Inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest Is Noise, we have used film, debate, talks and a vast range of concerts to reveal the fascinating stories behind the century’s wonderful and often controversial music.
A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment: PHOTOGRAPHY is not allowed in the auditorium. LATECOMERS will only be admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance. RECORDING is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of Southbank Centre. Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended. MOBILES, PAGERS AND WATCHES should be switched off before the performance begins.
We have brought together the world’s finest orchestras and soloists to perform many of the most significant works of the 20th century. We revealed why these pieces were written and how they transformed the musical language of the modern world. Over the year, The Rest Is Noise has focused on 12 different parts. The music has been set in context with talks from a fascinating team of historians, scientists, philosophers, political theorists and musical experts as well as films, online content and other special programmes. Jude Kelly Artistic Director, Southbank Centre
2 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the world’s finest orchestras, balancing a long and distinguished history with its present-day position as one of the most dynamic and forward-looking orchestras in the UK. As well as its performances in the concert hall, the Orchestra also records film and video game soundtracks, has its own successful CD label, and enhances the lives of thousands of people every year through activities for schools and local communities. The Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932, and since then its Principal Conductors have included Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. Vladimir Jurowski is the current Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, appointed in 2007, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin is Principal Guest Conductor.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded the soundtracks to numerous blockbuster films, from Lawrence of Arabia, The Mission and East is East to Hugo, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label. There are now over 70 releases available on CD and to download. Recent additions include Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 with Vladimir Jurowski; Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 with Bernard Haitink; Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sarah Connolly and Toby Spence; and a disc of new works by the Orchestra’s Composer in Residence, Julian Anderson. In summer 2012 the Orchestra was invited to take part in The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames, as well as being chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics.
The Orchestra is resident at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, where it gives around 40 The London Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to concerts each season. 2013/14 highlights include a inspiring the next generation through its BrightSparks Britten centenary celebration with Vladimir Jurowski schools’ concerts and FUNharmonics family concerts; including the War Requiem and Peter Grimes; world the Leverhulme Young premieres of James Composers programme; MacMillan’s Viola Concerto and the Foyle Future and Górecki’s Fourth Firsts orchestral Symphony; French repertoire Bachtrack.com training programme with Yannick Nézet-Séguin; 2 October 2013, Royal Festival Hall: Britten centenary concert for outstanding young and a stellar array of soloists players. Over recent including Evelyn Glennie, years, digital advances and social media have enabled Mitsuko Uchida, Leif Ove Andsnes, Miloš Karadaglić, the Orchestra to reach even more people across the Renaud Capuçon, Leonidas Kavakos, Julia Fischer, globe: all its recordings are available to download from Emanuel Ax and Simon Trpčeski. Tonight’s concert marks the end of the Orchestra’s year-long collaboration iTunes and, as well as a YouTube channel, iPhone app and regular podcast series, the Orchestra has a lively with Southbank Centre in The Rest is Noise festival, presence on Facebook and Twitter. exploring the influential works of the 20th century.
The LPO are an orchestra on fire at the moment.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra enjoys flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. Every summer, the Orchestra takes up its annual residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra for 50 years. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing concerts to sell-out audiences worldwide. Highlights of the 2013/14 season include visits to the USA, Romania, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Belgium, France and Spain.
Find out more and get involved! lpo.org.uk facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra twitter.com/LPOrchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 3
On stage tonight
First Violins Pieter Schoeman* Leader Vesselin Gellev Sub-Leader Chair supported by John & Angela Kessler
Ji-Hyun Lee Chair supported by Eric Tomsett
Katalin Varnagy Chair supported by Sonja Drexler
Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner Martin Höhmann Robert Pool Sarah Streatfeild Yang Zhang Second Violins Eoin Anderson Guest Principal Jeongmin Kim Joseph Maher Kate Birchall Chair supported by David & Victoria Graham Fuller
Nancy Elan Fiona Higham Nynke Hijlkema Marie-Anne Mairesse Ashley Stevens Ksenia Berezina
Violas Cyrille Mercier Principal Robert Duncan Gregory Aronovich Benedetto Pollani Susanne Martens Emmanuella Reiter
Oboes Ian Hardwick Principal Sue Böhling
Cellos Kristina Blaumane Principal Francis Bucknall Laura Donoghue David Lale Santiago Carvalho† Elisabeth Wiklander
Ian Hardwick
Double Basses Kevin Rundell* Principal Tim Gibbs Co-Principal Laurence Lovelle George Peniston
Bassoons Gretha Tuls Guest Principal Gareth Newman*
Flutes Sue Thomas Principal Chair supported by the Sharp Family
Katie Bicknell Piccolos Stewart McIlwham* Principal Katie Bicknell
Cor Anglais Sue Böhling Principal Chair supported by Julian & Gill Simmonds
Clarinets Robert Hill* Principal Nicholas Carpenter* Bass Clarinet Paul Richards Principal
Contrabassoon Simon Estell Principal Horns John Ryan* Principal David Pyatt* Principal Chair supported by Simon Robey
Martin Hobbs Mark Vines Co-Principal
Trombones Mark Templeton* Principal Matthew Lewis Bass Trombone Lyndon Meredith Principal Percussion Andrew Barclay* Principal Chair supported by Andrew Davenport
Henry Baldwin Keith Millar Harp Rachel Masters* Principal Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra
Keyboards Catherine Edwards John Alley Guitars Daniel Thomas Nigel Woodhouse Assistant Conductor Jeremy Bines Surtitle Operator Andrew Huth * Holds a professorial appointment in London † Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco
Chair Supporters The London Philharmonic Orchestra also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert: Geoff & Meg Mann Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp
4 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski
© Chris Christodoulou
Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor
One of today’s most sought-after and dynamic conductors, acclaimed worldwide for his incisive musicianship and adventurous artistic commitment, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow, and completed the first part of his musical studies at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990 he relocated with his family to Germany, continuing his studies at the High Schools of Music in Dresden and Berlin. In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night, and the same year saw his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with Nabucco. Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, becoming the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor in September 2007. He also holds the titles of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Artistic Director of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra. He has also held the positions of First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper, Berlin (1997– 2001); Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2000–03); Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (2005–09); and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001–13). Vladimir Jurowski has appeared on the podium with many leading orchestras in Europe and North America including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Highlights of the 2013/14 season and beyond include his debuts with the New York Philharmonic, NHK Symphony (Tokyo) and San Francisco Symphony orchestras; tours with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra; and return visits to the Chicago Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Jurowski made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1999 with Rigoletto, and has since returned for Jenůfa, The Queen of Spades and Hansel and Gretel. He has conducted Parsifal and Wozzeck at Welsh National Opera; War and Peace at the Opera National de Paris; Eugene Onegin at Teatro alla Scala, Milan; Ruslan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi Theatre; and Iolanta and Die Teufel von Loudon at the Dresden Semperoper, as well as The Magic Flute, La Cenerentola, Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Don Giovanni, The Rake’s Progress, The Cunning Little Vixen, Ariadne auf Naxos and Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. This autumn he returned to the Metropolitan Opera for Die Frau ohne Schatten, and future engagements include Moses und Aron at the Komische Oper Berlin and The Fiery Angel at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. Jurowski’s discography includes the first ever recording of the cantata Exil by Giya Kancheli for ECM; Meyerbeer’s L’étoile du Nord for Marco Polo; Massenet’s Werther for BMG; and a series of records for PentaTone with the Russian National Orchestra. The London Philharmonic Orchestra has released a wide selection of his live recordings on its LPO Live label, including Brahms’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances; Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies 1, 4, 5, 6 and Manfred; and works by Turnage, Holst, Britten, Shostakovich, Honegger and Haydn. His tenure as Music Director at Glyndebourne has been documented in CD releases of La Cenerentola, Tristan und Isolde and Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery, and DVD releases of his performances of La Cenerentola, Gianni Schicchi, Die Fledermaus, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Don Giovanni and Rachmaninoff’s The Miserly Knight. Other DVD releases include Hansel and Gretel from the Metropolitan Opera; his first concert as the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor featuring works by Wagner, Berg and Mahler; and DVDs with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7) and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Strauss and Ravel), all released by Medici Arts. Vladimir Jurowski’s position as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra is generously supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation and one anonymous donor.
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 5
Kelley O’Connor
soprano
mezzo soprano
© Peter Warren
Rosemary Joshua was born in Cardiff and studied at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow. Highlights on the opera stage include Vixen in The Cunning Little Vixen (La Scala, The Netherlands Opera and Opéra National du Rhin); Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (La Scala); Adèle in Die Fledermaus (Metropolitan Opera); Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress (Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival and La Monnaie); Despina in Così fan tutte (Covent Garden); Oscar in Un ballo in maschera and Helen in the world premiere of Manfred Trojahn’s Orest (Netherlands Opera); and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (Glyndebourne Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper and Welsh National Opera). Acclaimed internationally for her Handel roles, she has sung Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare (Paris, Florida and The Netherlands Opera); Angelica in Orlando (Aix-enProvence, Covent Garden and Bayerische Staatsoper); the title role in Semele (Aix-en-Provence, Innsbruck, Cologne and English National Opera); and the title role in Partenope (ENO). Highlights this season include the title role in a concert tour of Handel’s Theodora with The English Concert and Harry Bicket; her first Contessa in a concert tour of The Marriage of Figaro with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and René Jacobs; and Despina in staged performances of Così fan tutte with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel. Among her recent recordings are Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (Orchestre des Champs-Elysées/ Philippe Herreweghe); Purcell’s Harmonia Sacra (Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset); Handel duets with Sarah Connolly (The English Concert/Bicket); and title roles in Handel’s Semele and Partenope, Emilia in Flavio and Romilda in Serse (Early Opera Company/ Christian Curnyn). Rosemary Joshua replaces the previously advertised soprano, Kate Royal. 6 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
© Zachary Maxwell Stertz
Rosemary Joshua
Possessing a voice of uncommon allure and musical sophistication far beyond her years, Grammy Awardwinning mezzo soprano Kelley O’Connor has emerged as one of the most compelling performers of her generation. Recent highlights include her BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival debuts; Berio’s Folk Songs with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Berlin Festival; Roussel’s Padmâvatî with the National Symphony Orchestra; Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with the Seattle Symphony, Royal Scottish National, Berlin Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zürich and Chicago Symphony orchestras; Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony with Gustavo Dudamel and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra; Britten’s Spring Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen with the New York Philharmonic; Bernstein’s ‘Jeremiah’ Symphony on tour with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Hippolyta in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and the world premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary by John Adams with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Conductors with whom Kelley O’Connor has worked include Bernard Haitink, Franz Welser-Möst, Alan Gilbert, Robert Spano, David Robertson, Lorin Maazel, Bernard Labadie, Christoph Eschenbach, Stéphane Denève, James Conlon, Daniel Harding, Iván Fischer and Jiří Bělohlávek. She has performed with the Canadian Opera Company, Cincinnati Opera and Santa Fe Opera, among others, and is particularly associated with the role of Federico García Lorca in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, which was written for her. She recently made her role debut as Suzuki in Madam Butterfly in a new production by Lillian Groag for Boston Lyric Opera. Her discography includes numerous recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Telarc. Highlights of the 2013/14 season include Neruda Songs with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic; an appearance in recital at Carnegie Hall; and Suzuki in Madam Butterfly with Cincinnati Opera.
© Clive Barda
Matthew Rose
Daniel Bubeck
bass
countertenor
British bass Matthew Rose studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in the USA, before becoming a member of the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In 2006 he made an acclaimed debut at Glyndebourne Festival Opera as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – for which he received the John Christie Award – and he has since sung the role at La Scala, Covent Garden, Opéra National de Lyon, Houston Grand Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. He has sung Talbot in Maria Stuarda and Colline in La bohème for the Metropolitan Opera; Sparafucile in Rigoletto and Sarastro in The Magic Flute at Covent Garden; Leporello in Don Giovanni and Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress at Glyndebourne; Claggart in Billy Budd at English National Opera; and Mozart’s Figaro for Welsh National Opera, Opéra de Lille and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. Future engagements include Leporello at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Talbot at Covent Garden, his debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and a return to the Glyndebourne Festival. In concert, Matthew has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, the BBC Proms and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. His engagements have included the London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Colin Davis, Daniel Harding and Michael Tilson Thomas; the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel; the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Charles Dutoit; and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Sir Antonio Pappano. His recital appearances have included the Brighton, Chester and Cheltenham International Festivals, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and London’s Wigmore Hall. His recordings include a critically acclaimed Winterreise with pianist Gary Matthewman; Walter in Guillaume Tell and Der Steuermann in Tristan und Isolde with Sir Antonio Pappano; Ratcliffe in Billy Budd with Daniel Harding; Handel’s Messiah with Stephen Cleobury and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge; Tippett’s A Child of Our Time and Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ with Sir Colin Davis; and Liszt Lieder with pianist Iain Burnside.
Daniel Bubeck made his professional debut in the 2000 premiere of John Adams’s El Niño at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, conducted by Kent Nagano. Since then he has appeared in more than 20 productions of the work on four continents, including with the BBC Symphony, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Radio Filharmonisch Holland, Estonian National Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Atlanta Symphony orchestras, the Orchestra of St Lukes, and at the Ravinia and Adelaide festivals. In 2012 he sang Countertenor 1 in the premiere of Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel. He has performed under other renowned conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, David Robertson and Tõnu Kaljuste. A Handel specialist, he has sung the title roles in Giulio Cesare, Rinaldo and Solomon, as well as roles in Saul, Flavio, Partenope, Arianna in Creta, Theodora, Israel in Egypt and Messiah. Among many career highlights, he has sung Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival; Handel arias with the Orchestra of St Luke’s; excerpts from Philip Glass’s Akhnaten with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by John Adams; Henze’s Das verratene Meer with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra; the American premiere of Lost Objects with Concerto Köln with music by David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon; a recital tour in China with the Suzaka Trio; Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the American Bach Soloists; and New York City Opera’s ‘VOX’ new music project. He can be heard on recordings of El Niño with Kent Nagano, The New Four Seasons with Musica Sequenza, and the soundtrack of the Warner Brothers thriller I Am Legend. Forthcoming engagements include El Niño at the Spoleto Festival, Handel’s Orlando at the Hobart Baroque Festival in Tasmania, and a reprise of Adams’s Gospel with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra. Daniel Bubeck teaches at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. London Philharmonic Orchestra | 7
Brian Cummings
Steven Rickards
countertenor
countertenor
Brian Cummings sang in the premiere of John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, and in the later staging by Peter Sellars. He made his professional debut in the premiere of Adams’s El Niño in Paris and has appeared in further performances of the work worldwide, including with the BBC Symphony, Estonian National Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Tokyo Symphony orchestras and at Carnegie Hall and the Adelaide Festival, under such conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, David Robertson, John Adams, Tõnu Kaljuste and Kent Nagano.
Steven Rickards has sung John Adams’s El Niño with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras and conductors, as well as for CD and DVD productions. In 2012 he prepared the three countertenors for the premiere of Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel. He has appeared at the BBC Proms, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Santa Fe Opera, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra and with the symphony orchestras of Tokyo, San Francisco, St Louis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Virginia.
He recently appeared in the title role of Handel’s Giulio Cesare with Opera Fuoco under David Stern. He collaborates regularly with director Timothy Nelson, including singing the roles of David in Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, Hamor in Handel’s Jephtha and Iarbo/ Corebo in Cavalli’s Didone. He has also appeared as a soloist at the Washington and Bloomington early music festivals. He has sung with Paul Hillier in Theatre of Voices and the Pro Arte Singers, and can be heard on their recordings for Harmonia Mundi as well as on the recording and DVD of El Niño. In France, he sings with ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Opera Fuoco, Ensemble Entheos and Les Muses Galantes. Brian Cummings currently lives in Paris, where he studies with Guillemette Laurens. He studied Early Music at Indiana University, working with Paul Elliott, Paul Hillier and Nigel North. Recent performances have included Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Ravinia Festival. Future engagements include El Niño at the Spoleto Festival (USA) and Adams’s Gospel with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra in Strasbourg.
8 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
He has appeared with numerous period music ensembles including Tafelmusik, the Handel and Haydn Society, Chanticleer, Theatre of Voices, the American Bach Soloists, the Gabrieli Consort and the New London Consort. He has sung at Carnegie Hall in El Niño and with the Oratorio Society of New York, and was the soloist for the US premiere of Michael Nyman’s SelfLaudatory Hymn of Inanna and Her Omnipotence at Alice Tully Hall. He has recorded for Chanticleer, Decca, Dorian, Four Winds, Gothic, Harmonia Mundi, Koch, Newport Classics, Smithsonian and Teldec, and has two solo recordings on the Naxos label with the lutenist Dorothy Linell. Steven Rickards holds a Doctorate from Florida State University and teaches at Butler University, Marian University and the University of Indianapolis.
London Philharmonic Choir Patron HRH Princess Alexandra | President Sir Roger Norrington | Artistic Director Neville Creed Accompanist Jonathan Beatty | Chairman Andrew Mackie | Choir Manager Tessa Bartley
Founded in 1947, the London Philharmonic Choir is widely regarded as one of Britain’s finest choirs, consistently meeting with great critical acclaim. It has performed under leading international conductors for more than 65 years and made numerous recordings for CD, radio and television. Enjoying a close relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Choir frequently joins it for concerts in the UK and abroad. In 2012/13, concerts with the LPO included Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. As part of Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise festival, the Choir has performed Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat and Berlin Mass, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar), Poulenc’s Stabat mater, Britten’s War Requiem, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. Recently released CDs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra include Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Holst’s The Planets and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Vladimir Jurowski, Beethoven’s
Sopranos Annette Argent, Laura Buntine, Millie Carden, Gemma Chance, Paula Chessell, Sheila Cox, Sarah Deane-Cutler, Victoria Denard, Lucy Doig, Rosha Fitzhowle, Eloise Garland, Rachel Gibbon, Emma Hancox, Jane Hanson, Sally Harrison, Carolyn Hayman, Mai Kikkawa, Judith Kistner, Olivia Knibbs, Junelle Kwon, Roseanna Levermore, Suzannah Lipmann, Natasha Maslova, Victoria Mattinson, Janey Maxwell, Meg McClure Tynan, Katie Milton, Mariana Nina, Carmel Oliver, Angelina Panozzo, Linda Park, Lydia Pearson, Sophie Peters, Kathryn Quinton, Danielle Reece-Greenhalgh, Rebecca Schendel, Louisa Sullivan, Tracey Szwagrzak, Susan Thomas, Jenny Torniainen, Susan Watts Altos Deirdre Ashton, Phye Bell, Susannah Bellingham, Sally Brien, Andrei Caracoti, Noel Chow, Liz Cole, Margaret de Valois Rowney, Elisa Dunbar, Andrea Easey, Lynn Eaton, Carmel Edmonds, Regina Frank, Kathryn Gilfoy, Sophy Holland, Charlotte Kingston, Andrea Lane, Ayla Mansur, Marj McDaid, Sophie Morrison,
Missa Solemnis with Christoph Eschenbach, and Dvořák’s Requiem and Stabat mater with Neeme Järvi. The Choir appears regularly at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and performances have included the UK premieres of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s A Relic of Memory and Goldie’s Sine Tempore in the Evolution! Prom. The Choir performed at the Doctor Who Proms in 2008, 2010 and 2013, and in 2011 appeared in Verdi’s Requiem, Liszt’s A Faust Symphony and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Last year, it performed Elgar’s The Apostles with Sir Mark Elder and Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi under Martyn Brabbins. A well-travelled choir, it has visited numerous European countries and performed in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Perth, Australia. Most recently, members of the choir performed Weill’s The Threepenny Opera in Paris, with a repeat performance in London. The London Philharmonic Choir prides itself on achieving first-class performances from its members, who are volunteers from all walks of life. For more information, including details about how to join, please visit lpc.org.uk
Rachel Murray, John Nolan, Carolyn Saunders, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, Mayuko Tanno, Curzon Tussaud, Susi Underwood Tenors Scott Addison, Geir Andreassen, Chris Beynon, Kevin Darnell, Michael Delany, John Farrington, Colin Fleming, Robert Geary, Hyun Jin Jeong, Jon Hall, Stephen Hodges, Rob Home, Patrick Hughes, Andrew Mackie, Tony Masters, Rhydian Peters, Sam Roots, Luke Phillips, Keith Saunders, Travis Winstanley, Tony Wren Basses Jonathon Bird, Peter Blamire, Damion Box, Gordon Buky-Webster, Geoff Clare, Phillip Dangerfield, Marcus Daniels, Benjamin Fingerhut, Richard Ford, Ian Frost, Christopher Gadd, Paul Gittens, Christopher Harvey, Mark Hillier, Stephen Hines, David Hodgson, Martin Hudson, Steve Kirby, John Luff, Anthony McDonald, John G Morris, Will Parsons, Johan Pieters, Mike Probert, Fraser Riddell, Ed Smith, Daniel Snowman, Peter Sollich, Alex Thomas, James Torniainen, James Wilson, Hin-Yan Wong, John Wood
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 9
Coloma St Cecilia Singers
Trinity Boys Choir David Swinson director
Hilary Meyer director Coloma Convent Girls’ School in Croydon is a highachieving comprehensive school with an outstanding music department and a particularly rich choral tradition. There are 500 girls in the whole-school choir, and the St Cecilia Singers, conducted by Musical Director Hilary Meyer, are drawn from the upper part of the school. The music department has a successful track record and in recent years has been a finalist in many competitions including runner-up in the BBC Songs of Praise School Choir of the Year in 2012. In 2012 they were also ‘Choir of the Day’ in the BBC Choir of the Year Competition. The choir has also appeared in Howard Goodall’s television series How Music Works. The St Cecilia Singers have performed in prestigious venues such as Westminster Cathedral, the Royal Albert Hall, and Birmingham’s Town Hall and Symphony Hall, and have toured Italy and Spain performing at Pisa and Siena cathedrals, St Mark’s in Venice, the Duomo in Florence and the Basilica in Montserrat. Their repertoire includes a range of eclectic styles from Byrd and Vecchi to Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies and Paweł Łukaszewski, and they particularly enjoy the challenge of contemporary works. In 2010 they performed in Coloma’s 140th Anniversary Concert at Royal Festival Hall in a newly commissioned work by Howard Goodall entitled The Pearl. This year’s engagements include a chamber concert at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden; a choral concert at St Paul’s Cathedral; and a further performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a BrightSparks schools’ concert in January.
Trinity Boys Choir was founded almost 50 years ago, and has been directed by David Swinson since 2001. The boys frequently appear on such prestigious stages as the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Glyndebourne Festival Opera; English National Opera; and at various opera houses abroad including the Opéra-Comique, Paris; La Fenice, Venice; and at the Aixen-Provence Festival. The Choir is especially well-known for its role in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which it has appeared in over 150 professional performances and on a Warner DVD, a Virgin Classics CD and a Glyndebourne own-label CD. On the concert platform, the Choir is regularly invited to perform at the BBC Proms, and was honoured to take part in Her Majesty the Queen’s 80th Birthday Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006. The boys have performed with all the major London orchestras, and with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir in Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK. Trinity Boys Choir has also been invited to perform in Vienna with the Vienna Boys Choir, as well as throughout Europe and Asia. Soloists from the Choir recently appeared at the Krakow Film Festival and at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. The Choir’s many recordings include John Rutter’s opera Bang!, which was written for the boys; Britten’s A Boy Was Born with the BBC Symphony Chorus; and Walton’s Henry V with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers. TV appearances have included The Royal Variety Performance, the Pride of Britain Awards and Children in Need.
Tonight’s singers: Tonight’s singers Elizabeth Barker, Amy Barr, Laura Brophy, Keng Lam Chan, Catriona Collins, Niamh Collins, Emily Colyer, Francesca Emmanuel, Amy Farnan, Rachel Gibbons, Anna Gibbs, Abigail Harris, Elizabeth Lawless, Rachel Limb, Alessia Marcovecchio, Danita Mooney, Emma Stanley, Isabel Vickers, Rachel Ward, Emma Winton, Poppy Young
10 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Graham Bass, Harry Cookson, Charles Davies, Sebastian Davies, Joshua Dumbrill, Tom Foreman, William Gardner, Alexander Green, Gabriel Kuti, Theo Lally, Harry Lees, Quentin-Zach Martins, Findlay Maule, Toby Mills, Joel Okolo-Hunter, Ben Osland, Samuel Richardson, Igor Sterner, Daniel Williams, Dominic Williams
Mark Grey
Pieter Schoeman
sound designer
leader
Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the LPO in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002.
© Patrick Harrison
© Deborah O’Grady
Mark Grey made history as the first sound designer for the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall (John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, 2002) and the Metropolitan Opera (Adams’s Doctor Atomic, 2008; Nixon in China, 2011; and The Death of Klinghoffer, to come in 2014). For two decades, professional sound-design relationships have led Grey to premiere works by such artists and organisations as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers. He designed and toured extensively with the Kronos Quartet for nearly 15 years, and has been a close collaborator of composer John Adams for more than two decades.
Born in South Africa, he made his solo debut aged 10 with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. He studied with Jack de Wet in South Africa, winning numerous competitions including the 1984 World Youth Concerto Competition in the US. In 1987 he was offered the Heifetz Chair of Music scholarship to study with Eduard Schmieder in Los Angeles and in 1991 his talent was spotted by Pinchas Zukerman, who recommended that he move to New York to study with Sylvia Rosenberg. In 1994 he became her teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington.
As a composer, in 2008 Mark Grey was Composer in Residence with the Phoenix Symphony, whose recording of his oratorio Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio was released the following year by Naxos. In March 2011 two large-scale works by Grey received their world premieres: Mugunghwa at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Fire Angels at Carnegie Hall.
Pieter has performed worldwide as a soloist and recitalist in such famous halls as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Moscow’s Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. As a chamber musician he regularly performs at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall.
For 2014 he has undertaken commissions for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is writing an evening-length opera, Frankenstein, for the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels for 2015/16.
As a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Pieter has performed Arvo Pärt’s Double Concerto with Boris Garlitsky, Brahms’s Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, and Britten’s Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the Orchestra’s own record label to great critical acclaim. He has recorded numerous violin solos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos, Opera Rara, Naxos, X5, the BBC and for American film and television, and led the Orchestra in its soundtrack recordings for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 1995 Pieter became Co-Leader of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice. Since then he has appeared frequently as Guest Leader with the Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon, Baltimore and BBC symphony orchestras, and the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras. Pieter is a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. London Philharmonic Orchestra | 11
Programme notes
John Adams born 1947
El Niño (Nativity Oratorio) Rosemary Joshua soprano Kelley O’Connor mezzo soprano Matthew Rose bass Daniel Bubeck countertenor Brian Cummings countertenor Steven Rickards countertenor London Philharmonic Choir Coloma St Cecilia Singers Trinity Boys Choir
Part 1 1 I sing of a maiden 2 Hail, Mary, gracious! 3 La anunciación (The Annunciation) 4 For with God nothing shall be impossible 5 The babe leaped in her womb 6 Magnificat 7 Now she was sixteen years old 8 Joseph's Dream 9 Shake The Heavens 10 Se habla de Gabriel (Speaking of Gabriel) 11 The Christmas Star
Interval: 20 minutes Part 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar (Because my Lord was born to suffer) When Herod heard Woe unto them that call evil good And the star went before them The Three Kings And when they were departed Dawn Air And he slew all the children Memorial de Tlatelolco (Memorandum on Tlatelolco) In the day of the great slaughter Pues está tiritando (Since Love is shivering) Jesus and the Dragons The Palm Tree
12 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Introduction: A Nativity for a New Century
Whether you think of it as the upbeat to the new millennium or the topping of its first year, El Niño – premiered on 15 December 2000 at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet – grandly and movingly symbolised the turning of a huge page. If we want a convenient label for El Niño, we could call it a Nativity Oratorio. The texts—in Spanish, Latin, and English—are taken or adapted from poems by Rosario Castellanos, Gabriela Mistral, Hildegard von Bingen, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío and Vicente Huidobro, as well as some anonymous verses and passages from the Bible, the New Testament Apocrypha and the Wakefield Mystery Plays. The music, too, draws from many springs and is nourished by a variety of idioms, from Handel to pop, from court and church to street, but it always sounds unmistakably like John Adams, and it is his distinctive voice we hear. The first external impulse for the composition of El Niño was a commission from the San Francisco Symphony, with which Adams has had a close association ever since he became Edo de Waart’s new music adviser in the 1978/79 season, going on to serve as the orchestra’s first Composer in Residence and founder of its ‘New and Unusual Music’ concerts. San Francisco, at the enthusiastic urging of its former Executive Director, Peter Pastreich, asked Adams for a work for chorus and orchestra, and around the same time the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris proposed that he write an opera for performance there. He saw how he could combine these projects by writing an oratorio that could be staged, and so the practicalities came together. The other commissioning groups in London and New York came on board later. The musical part of Adams’s childhood included clarinet lessons with his father and playing in marching bands with him, and an integral part of it was the celebration of Christmas through music—the whole range, from Jingle Bells through Good King Wenceslas to Handel’s Messiah. Describing all that at a lecture a month or so before the first performance of El Niño, Adams had to stop and laugh: ‘It’s all too picturesque, isn’t it? Like something dreamed up by a casting director.’ However that may be, it is true. ‘I love Messiah’, Adams went on to say, and it followed quite naturally – and with not the slightest touch of arrogance or claim to equivalence – when, with another laugh, he came out with it: ‘I wanted to write a Messiah.’ He never thought
that with his ‘chequered religious background’ he would find himself composing a religious work. ‘I envy people with strong religious beliefs. Mine is shaky and unformed. I don’t know what I’m saying, and one reason for writing El Niño was to find out.’ But Adams had also always wanted to write a work about birth, and while El Niño is about a specific birth, its subject is larger: the inexhaustible miracle of birth. That of his own daughter Emily in 1984 was an event that changed his life, and the recollection of it still amazes him: ‘There were four people in the room, and then there were five.’ For the Western world, the Nativity is, after the myth of the creation of Adam, the most famous of all births, and that, Adams thought, would make it a good pretext or matrix for a contemplation and celebration of birth. The first task was choosing or assembling a text. Adams never intended to offer a straight Biblical narrative; rather, he imagined from the beginning that he would follow the plan that appears in various forms in, for example, the Bach Passions and Christmas Oratorio, in Messiah itself, and such 20th-century works as Britten’s War Requiem and Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Requiem for a Young Poet—a plan that intersperses a basic narration with commentary from other sources. Something else Adams knew early on was that he wanted women’s voices clearly heard in a work whose subject was birth: ‘How can you tell this story in the year 2000 and not have a woman’s voice? Seldom in the officially sanctioned stories is there any more than a passing awareness of the misery and pain of labour, of the uncertainty and doubt of pregnancy, or of that mixture of supreme happiness and inexplicable emptiness that follows the moment of birth.’ You can, however, find all this in the piercingly eloquent poems by Hispanic women to which director Peter Sellars drew Adams’s attention when asked to help with the libretto. The last textual component to come into focus was the title. Adams had originally called the work How Could This Happen?, a phrase from an Advent antiphon he had found in German in a motet by the 16th-century FrancoFlemish master Orlande de Lassus. He noticed, though, that people kept ‘mangling’ the title in conversation, and so he concluded there was something not right about it: hence the change to El Niño. The final title is a signal, London Philharmonic Orchestra | 13
Programme notes continued
too, of the importance of the Hispanic component of the work, an important point for Adams, who delights in living in a polyglot culture and who has said that ‘the intensity and genuineness of Latin American art and culture is one of the great gifts one receives by living in California.’ Adams anticipated that his new title might bring the Weather Channel to mind: ‘The association [with storms and violent weather] is right. As Sor Juana [Inés de la Cruz, one of the poets represented in the libretto] says, a miracle is not without its alarming force. Christ was referred to as the “Wind”, a tempest that blows away all that comes in its path and transforms it. Herod knows this. We all know it when a child comes into the world.’ Some of the text of El Niño will be familiar, for example the words from St Luke known as the Magnificat, Mary’s response to the Annunciation: ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord.’ Another is a passage from Haggai, a sixthcentury prophet whose book appears near the end of the Old Testament: ‘For thus saith the Lord: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land …’ Handel sets it (in slightly different verbal form) in Messiah. Here Adams goes directly and explicitly head-to-head with his great precursor, although El Niño is deeply Handelian in two senses: in the simplicity and directness with which the words convey their message of belief, and in the joy the composer takes in setting English words to music. An important part of what gives El Niño its distinctive expressive and literary flavour is the presence of many passages from the New Testament Apocrypha. This is a gathering of some 30 books that resemble the Gospels, Acts and Epistles in the New Testament. Many of them were written around the same time as the New Testament Gospels, but for reasons that range from doubts about their authenticity to accusations of heresy, they have never been accepted as part of the canon. If you want to acquire the New Testament Apocrypha, you have to buy it as a separate book, and you will almost certainly not find it in religious bookshops. Rejected though it may be by the Church, the New Testament Apocrypha is a varied and lively collection. Some of it reads as though written for children, or at least for quite a naive audience; other parts are as deeply serious as anything you will find in the canon. The Nativity 14 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
narratives are often humanly more penetrating than the official ones, and you also find a vein of humour of which there is not a trace in the writings attributed to the four New Testament evangelists.
Part 1 El Niño is in two parts, and the division between them occurs right after the miraculous birth and the appearance of the Christmas star. The first poem is a medieval English one, I sing of a maiden, sung by the chorus and two countertenors. The music begins with what has become an Adams signature, the steady chugging of a single chord—here D minor—but with the texture quickly becoming more complex as crossrhythms and dissonant notes are added to the mix. As at the beginning of Harmonium, the chorus first just reiterates a single syllable—here ‘may’—and then gradually finds its way into the poem: I sing of a maiden, A matchless maiden, King of all Kings … A huge crescendo for the orchestra alone propels us into Hail, Mary, gracious!, a text taken from one of the Mystery Plays that made the Yorkshire town of Wakefield famous in the Middle Ages. Its subject is the Annunciation. The male ensemble of three countertenors takes the part of Gabriel, while the soprano assumes the role of Mary. Taking a cue from Handel’s Messiah, Adams does not lock his three soloists into specific roles: in the very next movement, for example, we will find the mezzo soprano singing the part of the Virgin. Here Mary’s music is in that vein of rapt lyricism that makes Pat Nixon’s aria in Adams’s Nixon in China such a lovely moment. Now we come to the first of El Niño’s Spanish texts. I am sure I am not the only listener for whom El Niño will, among other things, mean the first amazed and grateful encounter with the writings of Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío and Vicente Huidobro. Even in translation it is clear that Castellanos and Sor Juana are among the greatest poets in any language. Castellanos was born in Mexico City in 1925 and died in a domestic accident in 1974 in Tel Aviv, where she
was serving as Mexican Ambassador to Israel. She was a writer of enormous range, deeply interested in Mexico’s pre-Columbian heritage, but at the same time a thoroughly committed citizen of the mid-20th century. Here she is represented by a long poem, impassioned and inward, titled La anunciación. Adams gives Castellanos’s words to the mezzo soprano, who makes her way through the feast of imagery in strong and varied musical declamation. The orchestra begins delicately and ends in a blaze of string sound. This expansive song is followed by a chorus on words from St Luke, brief, punchy, tight: For with God nothing shall be impossible. This is in fact the shortest section of El Niño. The next movement, The babe leaped in her womb, also draws on the third Gospel, but with a very different sort of text. This sets before us the touching scene of the Visitation, Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. At Mary’s greeting, the child in Elizabeth’s womb—the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist—leaped for joy in her womb. The three countertenors, with brief help from the chorus, both tell the story and sing Elizabeth’s jubilant words. Then, still drawing on St Luke, comes the Magnificat, sung by the soprano with support from two of the countertenors and the women of the chorus. Now the story is continued by the Gospel of James in the New Testament Apocrypha. James, known as the Just, was one of the first leaders of the Christian church in Jerusalem and died a martyr’s death there in about AD 65. Some theologians believe him to have been a cousin of Jesus. A marvellously lively and perceptive writer, James tells the story of Joseph coming home after a long absence to find his 16-year-old bride six months pregnant. Reacting in anger and suspicion, not believing her protestations, he can think only like a macho male: what matters is how bad this makes him look. The trio of countertenors sets the scene of Now she was sixteen years old; the baritone takes the part of Joseph, with the countertenors and the soprano sharing the words of the teenage mother-to-be. James goes on to recount how an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, persuading him that ‘that which is conceived in [Mary’s] womb is of the Holy Ghost’, and
foretelling the circumstances of Jesus’s birth ‘among the animals and beasts of burden, on a cold night, in a strange land, and in a poor resting place.’ To James’s text Adams adds words from Matthew, Isaiah and one of Martin Luther’s Christmas sermons. The baritone changes roles from Joseph to storyteller, and this movement, titled Joseph’s Dream, culminates in a mighty orchestral crescendo that spills directly into the next section. This is called Shake the Heavens. It begins with the passage from Haggai mentioned earlier—‘I will shake the heavens, and the earth…’—but moves into another passage from the Gospel of James, describing Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem, Mary both weeping and laughing ‘because I see two people with my eyes, the one weeping and mourning, the other rejoicing and glad.’ Inevitably, the ‘shaking’ passage alludes to Handel, 18th-century virtuoso coloraturas and all. The continuation from James enlists the countertenor trio both to tell the story and to pose Joseph’s questions. Soprano and mezzo soprano join to give us Mary’s replies. Se habla de Gabriel (Speaking of Gabriel) brings us another poem by Rosario Castellanos, one in which she evokes both wryly and powerfully what Adams referred to as ‘the misery and pain of labour … the uncertainty and doubt of pregnancy or … that mixture of supreme happiness and inexplicable emptiness that follows the moment of birth.’ (Gabriel is the name of Castellanos’s son.) Soprano and mezzo soprano bring us the poet’s words over a slow-moving accompaniment. Without break, the music takes us to more words from the New Testament Apocrypha, partly James, partly the so-called Latin Infancy Gospel. This is a wondrously moving passage in which Joseph, in the minutes just before the birth, suddenly realises that all the world, the heavens, the birds of the air, the workers on earth, the sheep and their shepherd, the rivers, the ocean, and the winds have become totally still, and ‘the maiden stood looking intently into heaven.’ This is the moment when Joseph understands. Quietly, the baritone evokes this epiphany. The first part of El Niño concludes with a fiery— literally—poem by Gabriela Mistral (1899–1957), the great Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for London Philharmonic Orchestra | 15
Programme notes continued
Literature in 1945, the first Latin American writer to be so honoured. In swift-moving verse she evokes the mixed ecstasy and pain of religious revelation, and it is the chorus, later joined by the countertenor trio and the three soloists, that gives voice to her words, singing The Christmas Star in Maria Jacketti’s translation. Adams conflates Mistral’s verse with rapturous lines, O quam preciosa (Oh, how precious), by the 12th-century mystic and writer Hildegard von Bingen. The music descends from the great crest it has reached, and the last word we hear is ‘paradisum’: ‘The tender shoot which is the Virgin’s son has opened Paradise.’
Interval: 20 minutes Part 2 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1658–1695), whose poem Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar (Because my Lord was born to suffer) opens Part 2 of El Niño, has been called Mexico’s Tenth Muse and the Mexican Phoenix. A brilliant writer and intellectual, she was a nun from her 21st year until her death. She learned to read at three, taught herself Latin before she was in double digits, tried in vain to have her mother send her to the university in Mexico City disguised as a boy, and devoted much of her life to campaigning against the notion that women should not be educated. Her poems are recognised as the first truly Mexican ones, as distinct from traditional Spanish verse written on New World soil. Pues mi Dios is a remarkable, short example of what her mind and ear could produce. Its text, an artful play of opposites and paradox that speeds up powerfully toward its close, reads like something designed for musical setting; Adams, using the mezzo soprano and the chorus (all of it at first, then the men only), vividly projects the dialogue as well as creating a most evocative atmosphere for this extraordinary poem. Now El Niño reverts to the Bible, this time to Matthew’s account of Herod’s plot to seek out the child in order, supposedly, to worship him (When Herod heard). The setting, over a restless accompaniment, is for baritone and the trio of countertenors. The commentary on Herod’s deceitful plan comes from Isaiah: Woe unto them that call evil good. Again we hear the baritone, this time backed by the full chorus, with the orchestra providing a kind of stride bass. 16 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
And the star went before them is Matthew’s account of the voyage of the Three Kings, represented here by the three soloists. Rubén Darío (1867–1916), a Nicaraguan poet, fleshes out the story of The Three Kings, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, with reverence, charm and warmth. The kings are neatly characterised by the three countertenors, and the soprano adds the touching close, bidding the three to be still, for ‘Love has triumphed and bids you to its feast.’ A brief link, And when they were departed, tells how an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, bidding him to flee to Egypt with his family. The chorus sings the words, which come from Matthew. Dawn Air, for the baritone, is part meditation but even more of a love song. The poem is by the Chilean writer Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948), and Adams has set it in the English translation of David Guss. The next section, another brief one—And he slew all the children—recounts Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents. The chorus, in an almost percussive declamatory style, sings the text from Matthew, and the orchestra adds a fierce final punctuation. Memorial de Tlatelolco (Memorandum on Tlatelolco), uncompromisingly 20th-century in language and tone, is an enraged lament by Rosario Castellanos. On 13 August 1521, Tlatelolco (now part of Mexico City) was the scene of the last great confrontation between the Aztecs and Cortés and his Conquistadors. Casualties were terrible on both sides, but the defeat of the Aztecs was decisive and the history of modern Mexico begins on that day. On 2 October 1968, Tlatelolco Square was once again the scene of bloodshed. A youth revolt had been brewing that summer as in many countries in America and Europe. The first killings by police took place on 21 September, with more to follow a few days later. On 2 October in the early evening, some 5000 troops with jeeps, tanks, armoured cars and helicopters attacked the huge crowd of civilians, many of them students, who had filled the square. Mexican police admitted to 32 deaths; independent estimates by British journalists set the number at ten times that figure at the very least. Castellanos directs her fury not only at the event itself but also at the subsequent effort to suppress
reports of it. This is the single biggest section of El Niño. The soprano abandons her lyric manner and voice to project Castellanos’s words in wide-ranging lines of enormous, expressive power. When the poet bitterly tells the reader not to bother looking in the archives ‘because nothing has been recorded there’, the chorus joins in the painful probing of the terrible scene. Further comment comes from Isaiah—In the day of the great slaughter— set as a percussively declamatory chorus. Pues está tiritando (Since Love is shivering) again testifies to the extraordinary originality of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Each stanza brings a new set of contemplations on the power of the four ancient elements: water, earth, air and fire. The hurling of answers to the repeated question, ‘Who will come to his aid?’ brings to mind the powerful antiphonal rhetoric in some of the choruses and arias of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Now, as El Niño moves into the realm of the quasichildren’s tales that give the New Testament Apocrypha part of its special flavour, the expressive climate changes. The story of the infant Jesus facing down the dragons (Jesus and the Dragons) is told by the writer known as Pseudo-Matthew, most probably Matthias, the apostle chosen to take the place of Judas. The setting is for soprano and the ensemble of countertenors. Pseudo-Matthew is also the source of the tale of The Palm Tree which, at the bidding of the infant Jesus, bowed down so that Mary might partake of its fruit and which then caused a stream of water to appear to quench the thirst of the Holy Family. Adams combines it with another Castellanos poem, Una palmera (A Palm Tree). Here, in a musical setting of touching simplicity, the Spanish verses gradually displace the pseudo-Biblical tale. It ends beautifully: From the dark land of men I’ve come kneeling to admire you. Tall, naked, alone. A poem. The last word we hear, sung softly by the voices of children, accompanied by a single guitar, is ‘poesía’ (poem). Adapted from a programme note © Michael Steinberg, reproduced by kind permission of Nonesuch Records.
Surtitles © 2000 by Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Copyright for all countries. All rights reserved. HAIL MARY, GRACIOUS ‘The Play of the Annunciation’ from Martial Rose’s version of ‘The Wakefield Mystery Plays’, W.W. Norton Co., Inc. N.Y. Publisher. Used by permission. LA ANUNCIANION, SE HABLA DE GABRIEL, MEMORIAL DE TLATELOLCOU and UNA PALMERA by Rosario Castellanos. Reprinted courtesy of Gabriel Guerra Castellanos. NOW SHE WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, JOSEPH’S DREAM, and SHAKE THE HEAVENS from Gospel of James. NOW I, JOSEPH WAS WALKING ABOUT from Gospel of James and Latin Infancy Gospel. JESUS AND THE DRAGONS and A PALM TREE from Gospel of PsuedoMatthew. Text used by permission from DOCUMENTS FOR THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS, edited by David R. Cartlidge and David L. Dungan, Copyright © 1994 Augsburg Fortress. THE CHRISTMAS STAR by Gabriela Mistral; Translated by Maria Jacketti. From ‘Gabriela Mistral: A Reader’. Edited by Marjorie Agosin. Copyright © 1993, 1997 by White Pine Press, Buffalo, New York. Translation Copyright © 1993 by Maria Jacketti. Used by permission of the publisher. DAWN AIR/AIR DE ALBA by Vicente Huidobro; Translated by David Guss © 1963 by Empresa Editora Zig-Zag, S.A. © 1981 by David Guss Used by permission of New Directions.
World premiere James MacMillan: Viola Concerto Wednesday 15 January 2014 7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall Lawrence Power viola Vladimir Jurowski conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Tickets from £9 See overleaf for more details and booking information.
Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 17
Next LPO concerts at Royal Festival Hall
Wednesday 15 January 2014 | 7.30pm
Friday 14 February 2014 | 7.30pm
James MacMillan Viola Concerto (world premiere) Mahler Symphony No. 6
JTI Friday Series
Vladimir Jurowski conductor Lawrence Power viola
Dvořák Carnival Overture Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet (Fantasy Overture)
Free pre-concert discussion 6.15–6.45pm | Royal Festival Hall James MacMillan discusses his new Viola Concerto.
Friday 17 January 2014 | 7.30pm JTI Friday Series Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 Beethoven Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) Vladimir Jurowski conductor Yulianna Avdeeva piano
Wednesday 22 January 2014 | 7.30pm
Valentine’s Day Concert
Stuart Stratford conductor Sa Chen piano
Wednesday 19 February 2014 | 7.30pm Balakirev Islamey (Oriental Fantasy) Khachaturian Piano Concerto Kalinnikov Symphony No. 1 Osmo Vänskä conductor Marc-André Hamelin piano Free pre-concert discussion 6.15–6.45pm | Royal Festival Hall David Nice discusses the evening’s programme.
J S Bach Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 104 Hartmann Concerto funebre Beethoven Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) Vladimir Jurowski conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin Generously supported by the Sharp Family.
Wednesday 29 January 2014 | 7.30pm Kodály Dances of Galánta Grieg Piano Concerto Dvořák Symphony No. 7 Andrés Orozco-Estrada conductor Rudolf Buchbinder piano
18 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Booking details Tickets £9–£39 (premium seats £65) London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office 020 7840 4242 Monday–Friday 10.00am–5.00pm lpo.org.uk Transaction fees: £1.75 online, £2.75 telephone
Southbank Centre Ticket Office 0844 847 9920 Daily 9.00am–8.00pm southbankcentre.co.uk Transaction fees: £1.75 online, £2.75 telephone No transaction fee for bookings made in person
London Philharmonic Orchestra Annual Appeal 2013/14
Tickets Please! Do you remember the first time you saw a symphony orchestra live on stage? Every year the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s schools’ concerts allow over 16,000 young people to see and hear the Orchestra live. The LPO is the only orchestra in the UK to offer specific and tailored orchestral concerts for all ages – from primary school children aged five, through to 18-year-old A-level students. Six out of ten children attending the concerts will be experiencing an orchestra for the very first time.
Tickets for the concerts cost £9. We want to offer free tickets to 2,500 children from the most disadvantaged schools and we need your help to make this happen.
For a donation of just £9 you could buy a ticket for a child to attend one of our schools’ concerts. If you would like to donate more, you could buy tickets for three children (£27), a row of seats in the stalls (£108), or a whole class to attend (£270). Every donation of any size from our supportive audience will help us to fill our concert hall with new young audience members.
Please visit lpo.org.uk/ticketsplease, where you can select the seats you wish to buy, or call Katherine Hattersley on 020 7840 4212 to donate over the phone. Thank you for supporting Tickets Please!
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 19
Virtual Christmas Gifts from the London Philharmonic Orchestra Want to give a different present to your music-loving friends or family this Christmas? How about a stocking filler, or a gift for someone who has everything? Celebrate with the London Philharmonic Orchestra by giving one or more of our Virtual Gifts. Each gift comes with a bespoke Christmas card which we can send to you or directly to the recipient with your own personal greeting. Virtual Gifts start from just £10. You can choose to support one of the iconic moments of the Orchestra’s 2013/14 season, or alternatively your gift can go towards our exciting and enriching work in south London schools. Whatever you choose, your gift will have an impact long after the celebration itself.
Iconic moments: £10 Your opportunity to support a sensational musical moment from the London Philharmonic Orchestra in one of our forthcoming concerts. Choose from: • • • • • • • • •
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (Fantasy Overture) Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (Choral) Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 (Organ) Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)
Adopt A Class: £30 Your gift will pay for an LPO player to spend an hour with disabled children in a London school and help them overcome their disabilities through music.
Roll Call: £40 Help us liven up an assembly in one of south London’s schools by sending in a group of LPO musicians.
Centre Stage: £50 Your gift will help us offer the opportunity for a south London school child to perform at the Royal Festival Hall. Visit lpo.org.uk/virtualgifts to hear soundclips of the iconic moments and buy your gift online, or call Katherine Hattersley on 020 7840 4212 to buy over the phone. We also have a range of LPO Friends or Contemporaries gift memberships available, as well as concert gift vouchers and CD subscriptions. Just visit lpo.org.uk/gifts to find out more. In order to guarantee delivery by Christmas please order by Thursday 19 December 2013. Virtual gifts are intended as a way to show your support for the Orchestra’s charitable objectives this Christmas. The London Philharmonic Orchestra reserves the right to vary concert programmes if necessary. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is a registered charity No. 238045.
20 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Orchestra news
The LPO at Waterloo and Heathrow
Christmas gifts from the LPO
Earlier this week, members of the Orchestra brought some festive cheer to travellers at Waterloo Station and Heathrow Airport – all on one day!
What to buy the person who has everything? How about a Christmas gift from the London Philharmonic Orchestra?
Heathrow is one of the Orchestra’s Principal Supporters, and over the last year the LPO has made several appearances at Terminal 5. The most recent was on Thursday morning, when members of the Orchestra performed a selection of Christmas music alongside a screening of the animated film The Snowman and The Snowdog.
Treat someone to a subscription to the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s CD releases and they will receive every new CD on the LPO Label (one each month), mailed before they’re available in the shops.
The annual ‘Carols at Waterloo’ event has become a regular fixture in the Orchestra’s festive calendar, and this year was no exception. On Thursday an ensemble of LPO brass players and singers from the London Philharmonic Choir entertained commuters for two hours during the evening rush hour, raising money for Save the Children.
Or how about one of our Virtual Gifts? Whether you’re helping us to stage world-class concerts or providing a London child with their first experience of live music, your gift will have an impact long after the celebration itself. Concert gift vouchers, and memberships of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Friends or Contemporaries are also available. lpo.org.uk/gifts
Spring tours
2014/15 season launch
In February the Orchestra, with Glyndebourne Festival Opera soloists and chorus under Sir Mark Elder, will take Britten’s Billy Budd on tour to New York, where they will give four performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House. The cast includes Jacques Imbrailo as Billy Budd, Brindley Sherratt as Claggart and Mark Padmore as Captain Vere. These performances mark Glyndebourne’s first US tour in more than a decade.
Booking for our new 2014/15 season opens on Thursday 6 February 2014. To take advantage of priority booking (from 27 January), join one of our membership schemes for as little as £50 a year.
Before then, on 18 January the Orchestra will travel to Madrid with Vladimir Jurowski, giving two concerts at the city’s Auditorio Nacional de Música. The second of these will include the Spanish premiere of James MacMillan’s new Viola Concerto with soloist Lawrence Power, four days after the Orchestra gives the world premiere at London’s Royal Festival Hall (see page 18). Other tours this spring include visits to Paris to perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 under Jurowski; Germany with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and pianist Nicholas Angelich; and a tour to Moscow also with Jurowski, where the Orchestra will perform Britten’s War Requiem.
Our memberships offer a wealth of opportunities to become closer to the musicians and to be more involved in the day-to-day life of the Orchestra. Membership allows you to support the Orchestra, helps us to maintain the high standards that you hear and see on the concert platform, and benefits thousands of people through our Education and Community Programme. To show our thanks, we offer a range of benefits for you to enjoy, from priority booking and regular newsletters to private recitals in your home by our musicians, with an increase in exclusivity for those able to make major supporting gifts. However you are able to help us, we look forward to welcoming you into the orchestral family. Call Sarah Fletcher on 020 7840 4225 or visit lpo.org.uk/support/memberships.html London Philharmonic Orchestra | 21
Catalyst: Double Your Donation
The London Philharmonic Orchestra is building its first ever endowment fund, which will support the most exciting artistic collaborations with its partner venues here in London and around the country. Thanks to a generous grant pledge from Arts Council England’s Catalyst programme, the Orchestra is able to double the value of all gifts from new donors up to a maximum value of £1 million. Any additional gifts from existing generous donors will also be matched. By the end of the campaign we aim to have created an endowment with a value of £2 million which will help us work with partners to provide a funding injection for activities across the many areas of the Orchestra’s work, including: • More visionary artistic projects like The Rest Is Noise at Southbank Centre • Educational and outreach activities for young Londoners like this year’s Noye’s Fludde performance project • Increased touring to venues around the UK that might not otherwise have access to great orchestral music To give, call Development Director Nick Jackman on 020 7840 4211, email support@lpo.org.uk or visit www.lpo.org.uk/support/double-your-donation.html
Catalyst Endowment Donors Masur Circle Arts Council England Emmanuel & Barrie Roman The Sharp Family The Underwood Trust Welser-Möst Circle John Ireland Charitable Trust Tennstedt Circle Simon Robey The late Mr K Twyman Solti Patrons Anonymous Suzanne Goodman The Rothschild Foundation Manon Williams & John Antoniazzi Haitink Patrons Lady Jane Berrill Moya Greene Tony and Susie Hayes Lady Roslyn Marion Lyons Diana and Allan Morgenthau Charitable Trust Sir Bernard Rix TFS Loans Limited The Tsukanov Family Foundation Guy & Utti Whittaker
22 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Pritchard Donors Anonymous Linda Blackstone Michael Blackstone Jan Bonduelle Richard and Jo Brass Britten-Pears Foundation Lady June Chichester Lindka Cierach Mr Alistair Corbett Mark Damazer David Dennis Bill & Lisa Dodd Mr David Edgecombe David Ellen Commander Vincent Evans Mr Daniel Goldstein Ffion Hague Rebecca Halford Harrison Michael & Christine Henry Honeymead Arts Trust John Hunter Ivan Hurry Tanya Kornilova Howard & Marilyn Levene Mr Gerald Levin Geoff & Meg Mann Ulrike Mansel
Marsh Christian Trust John Montgomery Rosemary Morgan John Owen Edmund Pirouet Mr Michael Posen John Priestland Ruth Rattenbury Tim Slorick Howard Snell Stanley Stecker Lady Marina Vaizey Helen Walker Laurence Watt Des & Maggie Whitelock Victoria Yanakova Mr Anthony Yolland
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following Thomas Beecham Group Patrons, Principal Benefactors and Benefactors: Thomas Beecham Group The Tsukanov Family Foundation Anonymous Simon Robey The Sharp Family Julian & Gill Simmonds Garf & Gill Collins Andrew Davenport Mrs Sonja Drexler David & Victoria Graham Fuller John & Angela Kessler Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Geoff & Meg Mann Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp Eric Tomsett Guy & Utti Whittaker Manon Williams & John Antoniazzi Principal Benefactors Mark & Elizabeth Adams Jane Attias Lady Jane Berrill Desmond & Ruth Cecil Mr John H Cook David Ellen
Commander Vincent Evans Mr Daniel Goldstein Don Kelly & Ann Wood Peter MacDonald Eggers Mr & Mrs David Malpas Mr Maxwell Morrison Mr Michael Posen Mr & Mrs Thierry Sciard Mr & Mrs G Stein Mr & Mrs John C Tucker Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Lady Marina Vaizey Howard & Sheelagh Watson Mr Anthony Yolland Benefactors Mrs A Beare Mrs Alan Carrington Mr & Mrs Stewart Cohen Mr Alistair Corbett William and Alex de Winton Mr David Edgecombe Mr Richard Fernyhough Ken Follett Michael & Christine Henry Malcolm Herring Ivan Hurry Mr Glenn Hurstfield Mr R K Jeha
Per Jonsson Mr Gerald Levin Sheila Ashley Lewis Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE JP RAF Mr Frank Lim Paul & Brigitta Lock Mr Brian Marsh Andrew T Mills John Montgomery Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill Edmund Pirouet Professor John Studd Mr Peter Tausig Mrs Kazue Turner Mr Laurie Watt Des & Maggie Whitelock Christopher Williams Bill Yoe and others who wish to remain anonymous Hon. Benefactor Elliott Bernerd Hon. Life Members Kenneth Goode Carol Colburn Grigor CBE Pehr G Gyllenhammar Edmund Pirouet Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE
The generosity of our Sponsors, Corporate Members, supporters and donors is gratefully acknowledged: Corporate Members
Trusts and Foundations
Silver: AREVA UK British American Business Carter Ruck Thomas Eggar LLP
Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation Ambache Charitable Trust Ruth Berkowitz Charitable Trust The Boltini Trust Borletti-Buitoni Trust Britten-Pears Foundation The Candide Trust The Ernest Cook Trust The Coutts Charitable Trust The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust Dunard Fund Embassy of Spain, Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs The Equitable Charitable Trust Fidelio Charitable Trust The Foyle Foundation J Paul Getty Junior Charitable Trust Lucille Graham Trust The Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust The Hobson Charity The Idlewild Trust Kirby Laing Foundation The Leverhulme Trust Marsh Christian Trust
Bronze: Lisa Bolgar Smith and Felix Appelbe of Ambrose Appelbe Appleyard & Trew LLP Berenberg Bank Berkeley Law Charles Russell Leventis Overseas Preferred Partners Corinthia Hotel London Heineken Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd Sipsmith Steinway Villa Maria In-kind Sponsors Google Inc Sela / Tilley’s Sweets
The Mayor of London’s Fund for Young Musicians Adam Mickiewicz Institute The Peter Minet Trust Maxwell Morrison Charitable Trust Musicians Benevolent Fund The Ann and Frederick O’Brien Charitable Trust Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française Polish Cultural Institute in London PRS for Music Foundation The R K Charitable Trust Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation The Samuel Sebba Charitable Trust Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation The David Solomons Charitable Trust John Thaw Foundation The Tillett Trust Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement Garfield Weston Foundation The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Youth Music and others who wish to remain anonymous
London Philharmonic Orchestra | 23
Administration
Board of Directors Victoria Sharp Chairman Stewart McIlwham* President Gareth Newman* Vice-President Richard Brass Desmond Cecil CMG Vesselin Gellev* Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Dr Catherine C. Høgel Martin Höhmann* George Peniston* Sir Bernard Rix Kevin Rundell* Julian Simmonds Mark Templeton* Natasha Tsukanova Timothy Walker AM Laurence Watt Dr Manon Williams * Player-Director Advisory Council Victoria Sharp Chairman Christopher Aldren Richard Brass Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Lord David Currie Andrew Davenport Jonathan Dawson Christopher Fraser OBE Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Clive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwham Baroness Shackleton Lord Sharman of Redlynch OBE Martin Southgate Sir Philip Thomas Chris Viney Timothy Walker AM Elizabeth Winter American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Inc. Jenny Ireland Co-Chairman William A. Kerr Co-Chairman Kyung-Wha Chung Peter M. Felix CBE Alexandra Jupin Dr. Felisa B. Kaplan Jill Fine Mainelli Kristina McPhee Dr. Joseph Mulvehill Harvey M. Spear, Esq. Danny Lopez Hon. Chairman Noel Kilkenny Hon. Director Victoria Sharp Hon. Director
Richard Gee, Esq Of Counsel Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP
Orchestra Personnel
Public Relations
Andrew Chenery Orchestra Personnel Manager
Albion Media (Tel: 020 3077 4930)
Chief Executive
Sarah Thomas Librarian (maternity leave)
Archives
Timothy Walker AM Chief Executive and Artistic Director
Sarah Holmes Librarian (maternity cover)
Philip Stuart Discographer
Finance
Christopher Alderton Stage Manager
Gillian Pole Recordings Archive
Brian Hart Transport Manager
Professional Services
David Burke General Manager and Finance Director David Greenslade Finance and IT Manager
Julia Boon Assistant Orchestra Personnel Manager
Concert Management
Development
Roanna Gibson Concerts Director
Nick Jackman Development Director
Graham Wood Concerts and Recordings Manager
Helen Searl Corporate Relations Manager
Jenny Chadwick Tours Manager Tamzin Aitken Glyndebourne and UK Engagements Manager Alison Jones Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator Jo Cotter PA to the Chief Executive / Tours Co-ordinator Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant Education and Community Alexandra Clarke Education and Community Project Manager Lucy Duffy Education and Community Project Manager Richard Mallett Education and Community Producer
24 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
Katherine Hattersley Charitable Giving Manager Melissa Van Emden Events Manager Sarah Fletcher Development and Finance Officer Rebecca Fogg Development Assistant Marketing Kath Trout Marketing Director Mia Roberts Marketing Manager Rachel Williams Publications Manager Samantha Kendall Box Office Manager (Tel: 020 7840 4242) Libby Northcote-Green Marketing Co-ordinator Lily Oram Intern Digital Projects Alison Atkinson Digital Projects Manager
Charles Russell Solicitors Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors Dr Louise Miller Honorary Doctor London Philharmonic Orchestra 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP Tel: 020 7840 4200 Fax: 020 7840 4201 Box Office: 020 7840 4242 Email: admin@lpo.org.uk lpo.org.uk The London Philharmonic Orchestra Limited is a registered charity No. 238045. Photograph of John Adams © Margaretta Mitchell. Front cover photograph © Patrick Harrison. Printed by Cantate.