LPO Foyle Future Firsts/Royal Academy of Music pre-concert performance programme: 15 Jan 2025

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Pre-concert performance

Foyle Future Firsts

Wednesday 15 January 2025 | 6.00pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Edward Gardner conductor

Members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra

LPO Foyle Future Firsts

Students from the Royal Academy of Music

Igor Stravinsky Suite No. 2 for small orchestra (7’)

Missy Mazzoli These Worlds In Us (9’)

Maurice Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin (16’)

Welcome

Welcome to this evening’s performance, in which LPO Principal Conductor Edward Gardner brings together an ensemble of LPO members, Foyle Future Firsts and students from the Royal Academy of Music. It forms part of the LPO’s 2024/25 season theme Moments Remembered, exploring the relationship between music and memory.

Participants on the LPO’s annual Foyle Future Firsts programme are talented instrumentalists who aspire to become professional orchestral musicians. Across the year Future Firsts benefit from individual mentoring from London Philharmonic Orchestra Principals, mock auditions, involvement in full orchestral rehearsals and Education & Community projects, and wider professional development sessions. Members of the scheme are supported and nurtured to the highest standards and we are proud to see current and past Foyle Future Firsts consistently taking professional engagements with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and other world-class ensembles.

Since 1822 the Royal Academy of Music has been inspiring successive generations of musicians to connect, collaborate and create. For over 20 years, professional side-by-side projects, such as this one, have played a unique and indispensable role in high-level musical training at the Academy. They function as artistic work-placements, giving students the experience of rehearsing and performing in a completely professional context. At the heart of this experience is the mentorship provided by partners, such as LPO and Academy alumnus Edward Gardner.

Under the musical direction of Ed Gardner, this evening’s ensemble has also been rehearsed by LPO Fellow Conductor Juya Shin, making tonight’s performance a true showcase of multiple generations of talent in one powerful programme.

The Foyle Future Firsts Development Programme 2024/25 is generously supported by the Foyle Foundation with additional support from the Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust and individual chair supporters. The LPO Conducting Fellowship is generously supported by Patricia Haitink with additional support from Gini and Richard Gabbertas.

Programme notes

Stravinsky spent the years immediately following The Rite of Spring (1914–20) exiled in Switzerland. The war had necessitated a temporary pause in the Paris operations of the Ballet Russes, the composer’s primary source of income, but he remained productive. He concentrated mainly on works for smaller ensembles and further refining his compositional voice, delving more deeply into the language and folk heritage of his Russian homeland.

In 1914 and 1915 Stravinsky wrote three easy ‘teaching pieces’ for piano duet, following these the next year with a series of five more, the second set for his elder children, Theodore and Mika. The first pieces have an easy left-hand part for the children to play, the second an easy right-hand. The two Suites derived from these pieces are scored for small orchestra and were published in 1925 and 1921 respectively. ‘I wrote the Polka first’, Stravinsky recalled. ‘It is a caricature of Serge Diaghilev, whom I had seen as a circus trainer cracking a long whip.’

The composer Alfredo Casella was present when Stravinsky played the Polka for Diaghilev, and asked for a piece for himself as well; Stravinsky responded with the Marche. The Valse was written in the style of, and in homage to, Erik Satie. The Suite is extremely witty and rhythmically varied, with the employment of the piano obligato and tuba, and the colourful application of the percussion instruments, creating particularly original orchestral effects.

Missy Mazzoli (born 1980)

These Worlds In Us (2006)

The title These Worlds In Us comes from James Tate’s poem The Lost Pilot, a meditation on his father’s death in the Second World War:

(excerpt)

My head cocked towards the sky, I cannot get off the ground, and you, passing over again, fast, perfect and unwilling to tell me that you are doing well, or that it was a mistake that placed you in that world, and me in this; or that misfortune placed these worlds in us.

This piece is dedicated to my father, who was a soldier during the Vietnam War. In talking to him it occurred to me that, as we grow older, we accumulate worlds of intense memory within us, and that grief is often not far from joy. I like the idea that music can reflect painful and blissful sentiments in a single note or gesture, and sought to create a sound palette that I hope is at once completely new and strangely familiar to the listener.

The theme of this work, a mournful line first played by the violins, collapses into glissandos almost immediately after it appears, giving the impression that the piece has been submerged under water or played on a turntable that is grinding to a halt. The melodicas (mouth organs) played by the percussionists in the opening and final gestures mimic the wheeze of a broken accordion, lending a particular vulnerability to the bookends of the work. The rhythmic structures and cyclical nature of the piece are inspired by the unique tension and logic of Balinese music, and the march-like figures in the percussion bring to mind the militaristic inspiration for the work as well as the relentless energy of electronica drum beats.

© Missy Mazzoli

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

tombeau de Couperin (1914–17)

Le tombeau de Couperin, Ravel’s homage to French music of the 18th century, began life in July 1914 when the composer wrote a dance for piano solo inspired by a transcription he had made of the ‘Forlane’ from one of François Couperin’s Concerts royaux of 1722. The war years, during which Ravel served in the transport corps, intervened, and it was not until June 1917, after he had been invalided out, that he returned to it. By now, however, the piece had acquired a second level of meaning, and when it arrived at its final form in November it had become a suite in six movements, each dedicated to the memory of a friend or friends killed in the war. French pianist Marguerite Long gave the premiere in April 1919, and that same year Ravel produced an orchestration, selecting just four of the original movements and reordering them slightly. This version received it premiere in Paris on 28 February 1920.

Interest among French composers in the music of their Baroque forbears was high in the decades around 1900, and though Ravel was not aiming at pastiche, he married Couperin’s clear-cut structural models, with their repeating sections, to his own natural elegance and polish. Thus the toccata-like ‘Prélude’ teems with ruffling expectancy, the rondo-form ‘Forlane’ effortlessly reinterprets the buoyant rhythms of the Couperin original, the ‘Menuet’ is a masterpiece of classical beauty and poise, and the ‘Rigaudon’ encloses a dainty central section within boisterous outer panels.

© Caroline Tompkins

First Violins

Kate Oswin* Leader

LPO chair supported by Eric Tomsett

Izzy Howard#

Emil Hartikainen†

Hazuki Katsukawa†

Ki Hei Lee†

Chung Ng†

Second Violins

Kate Birchall*

Emmanuel Webb#

Iohan Coman†

Ezo Sarici†

Samy Okuma-Chin†

Matej Mijalic†

Violas

Laura Vallejo*

Melissa Doody#

Pol Altimira Saura†

Catherine White†

Cellos

David Lale*

Olivia Da Costa#

Danushka Edirisinghe†

Jayden Lamcellari†

Double Basses

Sebastian Pennar*

Yufei Zou†

On stage tonight

Flutes

Rebecca Rouch§

Stewart McIlwham*

Piccolo

Stewart McIlwham*

Oboes

Harvey Jones†

Kara Battley§

Cor Anglais

Kara Battley§

Clarinets

Thomas Knollys#

Benjamin Mellefont*

LPO chair supported by Sir Nigel Boardman & Prof. Lynda Gratton

Bassoons

Keane Lui#

Jonathan Davies*

LPO chair supported by Sir Simon Robey

Horns

Hannah Williams#

Mark Vines*

William Scotland†

Longgang Ji†

Trumpets

Lucas Houldcroft#

Paul Beniston*

Trombones

Mark Templeton*

LPO chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

Alexander Hassib†

Tuba

Callum Davis#

Percussion

Charlie Hodge#

Karen Hutt*

Lewis Blee†

Harp

Stien De Neef#

Piano

Justine Gormley#

Assistant Conductor

Juya Shin (LPO Fellow Conductor 2024/25)

* LPO member

# Foyle Future First 2024/25

§ Foyle Future First reserve 2024/25

† Royal Academy of Music student

Foyle Future First instrument chairs are kindly supported by: David Burke & Valerie Graham (Clarinet), Michelle Crowe Hernandez (Tuba), John & Sam Dawson (Percussion), Marie Power (Piano), and Judy Wrightson & Tony Llewellyn (Violin).

Edward Gardner conductor

Edward Gardner has been Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since September 2021, recently extending his contract until at least 2028. He is also Music Director of the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, and Honorary Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, following his tenure as Chief Conductor from 2015–24.

This season – his fourth as Principal Conductor – Ed conducts nine LPO concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. In October 2024 he and the Orchestra embarked on a major US tour with celebrated violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Randall Goosby, earning resounding praise throughout. Later this spring at the Royal Festival Hall, he presents works including Strauss’s mighty Alpine Symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.

Edward Gardner’s position at the LPO is generously supported by Aud Jebsen.

Save the date: Debut Sounds 2025

Wednesday 2 July 2025 | 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall

Five world premieres by members of the LPO’s Young Composers programme, performed by an ensemble of LPO musicians and Foyle Future Firsts, conducted by 2024/25 LPO Fellow Conductor Juya Shin. The Young Composers are writing new works on the LPO’s season theme of memory, under the guidance of our Composer-in-Residence and Composer Mentor, Tania León.

Tickets will go on sale later in the spring: find out more at lpo.org.uk/youngcomposers

The LPO Young Composers programme 2024/25 is generously supported by Jerwood Foundation, Lark Music, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, Sally Groves MBE and Vaughan Williams Foundation.

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