London Philharmonic Orchestra 11 November 2015 concert programme by London Philharmonic Orchestra

Concert programme 2015/16 London Season lpo.org.uk

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI* Principal Guest Conductor ANDRÉS OROZCO-ESTRADA Leader pieter schoeman† Composer in Residence magnus lindberg Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER AM

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Wednesday 11 November 2015 | 7.30pm

Fauré Suite, Pelléas et Mélisande (19') Magnus Lindberg Violin Concerto No. 1 (27')

Contents 2 Welcome 3 On stage tonight 4 About the Orchestra 5 Leader: Peter Schoeman 6 Robin Ticciati 7 Christian Tetzlaff 8 Programme notes 14 Sound Futures donors 15 Supporters 16 LPO administration

Interval Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales (18') Debussy La mer (23')

Robin Ticciati conductor Christian Tetzlaff violin

* supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation † supported by Neil Westreich CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide.

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, Feng Sushi and Topolski, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall. 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 We look forward to seeing you again soon. Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery are closed for essential refurbishment until 2017. During this period, our resident orchestras are performing in venues including St John's Smith Square. Find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk/sjss 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.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra 2015/16 season Tonight's concert, conducted by Robin Ticciati, is part of our series of concerts featuring a range of works that promise to 'take you to another time and place'. We are undoubtedly across the Channel in France today with three composers, Fauré, Ravel and Debussy, all composing around the same time but exploring different musical ideas. Our next concert in the series is on 4 December when we cross the border to Italy for Respighi's Pines of Rome. lpo.org.uk/events/music-to-transport.html You can find out more about French music in our short video here: lpo.uk/PBFrench We are joined this evening by Christian Tetzlaff who performs Magnus Lindberg's Violin Concerto No. 1 first premiered in 2006. Lindberg, the Orchestra's Composer in Residence, considers the violin to be 'the king of instruments' and has been inspired to write a Second Violin Concerto. The Orchestra will give the world premiere on Wednesday 9 December with soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann taking up the challenge. Find out more and book tickets here: lpo.org.uk/whats-on-and-tickets Making a NOISE Today we welcome students who join us through the Orchestra's NOISE scheme that entitles students and under 26-year-olds to £4 and £8 seats to selected concerts in London and all four concerts in the Brighton season. As part of the scheme, we recruit student representatives at universities and colleges across London and Brighton to help publicise NOISE: in September we attended Freshers’ Fairs at Brighton University and Sussex University to get as many students signed up as possible, whilst successfully recruiting a student representative from Brighton University. To find out more visit: lpo.org.uk/noise

On stage tonight

First Violins Pieter Schoeman* Leader Chair supported by Neil Westreich

Vesselin Gellev Sub-Leader Ilyoung Chae Chair supported by an anonymous donor

Katalin Varnagy Chair supported by Sonja Drexler

Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner Martin Höhmann Chair supported by The Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust

Geoffrey Lynn Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Robert Pool Sarah Streatfeild Yang Zhang Tina Gruenberg Grace Lee Rebecca Shorrock Galina Tanney Judith Choi-Castro Second Violins Victoria Sayles Guest Principal Kate Birchall Chair supported by David & Victoria Graham Fuller

Fiona Higham Nynke Hijlkema Joseph Maher Marie-Anne Mairesse Ashley Stevens Dean Williamson Alison Strange Elizabeth Baldey John Dickinson Stephen Stewart Sioni Williams Georgina Leo

Violas Cyrille Mercier Principal Robert Duncan Gregory Aronovich Susanne Martens Benedetto Pollani Emmanuella Reiter Laura Vallejo Naomi Holt Martin Fenn Sarah Malcolm Daniel Cornford Richard Cookson Cellos Kristina Blaumane Principal Chair supported by Bianca and Stuart Roden

Pei-Jee Ng Co-Principal Francis Bucknall Laura Donoghue Santiago Carvalho† David Lale Gregory Walmsley Elisabeth Wiklander Chair supported by The Viney Family

Susanna Riddell Tom Roff Helen Rathbone Sibylle Hentschel Double Basses Kevin Rundell* Principal Tim Gibbs Co-Principal George Peniston Laurence Lovelle Tom Walley Kenneth Knussen Helen Rowlands Charlotte Kerbegian Catherine Ricketts

Flutes Sue Thomas* Principal

Cornets Nicholas Betts Toby Street

Chair supported by Victoria Robey OBE

Hannah Grayson Stewart McIlwham*

Trombones Mark Templeton* Principal

Piccolo Stewart McIlwham* Principal

David Whitehouse

Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

Bass Trombone Paul Lambert

Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra

Tuba Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal

Oboes Ian Hardwick* Principal Alice Munday

Timpani Simon Carrington* Principal

Cor Anglais Sue Böhling* Principal

Percussion Andrew Barclay* Principal

Clarinets Robert Hill* Principal Thomas Watmough

Chair supported by Andrew Davenport

Henry Baldwin Co-Principal

Bassoons Gareth Newman Principal Laura Vincent Julia Staniforth Contrabassoon Claire Webster Horns David Pyatt* Principal Chair supported by Simon Robey

John Ryan* Principal Chair supported by Laurence Watt

Martin Hobbs Mark Vines Co-Principal Gareth Mollison Trumpets Paul Beniston* Principal Anne McAneney* Chair supported by Geoff & Meg Mann

Chair supported by Jon Claydon

Keith Millar Karen Hutt Ignacio Molins Richard Horne Harps Rachel Masters* Principal Lucy Haslar Celeste Catherine Edwards * Holds a professorial appointment in London † Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco Meet our members: lpo.org.uk/players

Robin Totterdell

Chair Supporters The London Philharmonic Orchestra also acknowledges the following chair supporter whose player is not present at this concert: Eric Tomsett

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 3

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski produced one of those utterly compelling performances where the London Philharmonic Orchestra seemed to be playing as if their lives depended on it. Bachtrack, September 2015 (4 Stars) Recognised today as one of the finest orchestras on the international stage, the London Philharmonic Orchestra balances a long and distinguished history with a reputation as one of the UK’s most forwardlooking ensembles. As well as its performances in the concert hall, the Orchestra also records film and video game soundtracks, releases CDs on its own record label, and reaches thousands of people every year through activities for families, schools and community groups. The Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932. It has since been headed by many of the world’s greatest conductors including Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. Vladimir Jurowski is currently the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, appointed in 2007. Andrés Orozco-Estrada took up the position of Principal Guest Conductor in September 2015. Magnus Lindberg is the Orchestra’s current Composer in Residence. The Orchestra is resident at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, where it gives over 30 concerts each season. Throughout 2014/15 the Orchestra gave a series of concerts entitled Rachmaninoff: Inside Out, a festival exploring the composer’s major orchestral

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masterpieces. 2015/16 is a strong year for singers, with performances by Toby Spence and Anne Sofie von Otter amongst others; Sibelius enjoys 150th anniversary celebrations; distinguished visiting conductors include Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Vasily Petrenko, with Robin Ticciati returning after his debut in 2015; and in 2016 the LPO joins many of London’s other leading cultural institutions in Shakespeare400, celebrating the Bard’s legacy 400 years since his death. The Orchestra continues its commitment to new music with premieres of commissions including Magnus Lindberg’s Second Violin Concerto, and works by Alexander Raskatov and Marc-André Dalbavie. Outside London, the Orchestra has flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. Each summer the Orchestra takes up its annual residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in the Sussex countryside, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. In 1956 it became the first British orchestra to appear in Soviet Russia and in 1973 made the first ever visit to China by a

Pieter Schoeman leader

Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the LPO in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded the soundtracks to numerous blockbuster films, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lawrence of Arabia, East is East, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Thor: The Dark World. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label. There are now over 80 releases available on CD and to download. Recent additions include Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3 conducted by Stanisław Skrowaczewski and Messiaen’s Des Canyons Aux Étoiles. In summer 2012 the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed as part of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames, and was also chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2013 it was the winner of the RPS Music Award for Ensemble. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians through an energetic programme of activities for young people. Highlights include the BrightSparks schools’ concerts and FUNharmonics family concerts; the Young Composers Programme; and the Foyle Future Firsts orchestral training programme for outstanding young players. Its work at the forefront of digital engagement and social media has enabled the Orchestra to reach even more people worldwide: all its recordings are available to download from iTunes and, as well as a YouTube channel and regular podcast series, the Orchestra has a lively presence on Facebook and Twitter. Find out more and get involved! lpo.org.uk facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra twitter.com/LPOrchestra

Western orchestra. Touring remains a large part of the Orchestra’s life: highlights of the 2015/16 season include visits to Mexico City as part of the UK Mexico Year of Culture, Spain, Germany, Canary Islands, Belgium, a return to the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Orchestra’s premiere at La Scala, Milan.

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. 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. 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. He is a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Pieter's chair in the London Philharmonic Orchestra is supported by Neil Westreich.

youtube.com/londonphilharmonic7

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Robin Ticciati conductor

Under Ticciati, the music seemed to hang in the air above the orchestra and really breathe.

Erica Jeal, The Guardian, January 2015

Robin Ticciati has been Principal Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra since 2009/10 and the Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera since summer 2014. From the 2017/18 season he will assume the Music Directorship of the Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin for an initial five-year term. Guest conducting projects within the next two seasons include return engagements with the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Swedish Radio Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as debuts with the DSO-Berlin, Czech Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and NDR Hamburg.

Music can teach you an honesty, because it is about a philosophy of life, and living. It should fill the soul. Robin Ticciati

For his first seasons as Glyndebourne Music Director, Robin conducted new productions of Der Rosenkavalier and La Finta Giardiniera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and a revival of a Ravel double-bill with L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortileges. Aside from Glyndebourne, recent opera projects include new productions of Peter Grimes at La Scala Milan, The Marriage of Figaro at the Salzburg Festival, Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, and a Metropolitan Opera debut with Hänsel und Gretel. He will return to the Met in 2017. Robin Ticciati is in his seventh season as Principal Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His 2015/16 season with the SCO features a twin focus on

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Brahms and the Second Viennese School. Together they have toured extensively in Europe and Asia, and make regular appearances at the Edinburgh International Festival. Their latest recording for Linn Records, featuring Haydn symphonies, was released in September this year. The other three albums they have recorded for Linn – two Berlioz discs (Symphonie Fantastique; Les Nuits d'Été and La Mort de Cléopâtre) and a double album featuring Schumann’s four symphonies – have attracted unanimous critical acclaim. His discography also includes Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Linn), Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, Bruckner’s Mass No. 3 and two Brahms discs with the Bamberg Symphony (Tudor), as well as a number of opera releases on Opus Arte and on Glyndebourne’s own label. Born in London, Robin Ticciati trained as a violinist, pianist and percussionist. He was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain when he turned to conducting, aged 15, under the guidance of Sir Colin Davis and Sir Simon Rattle. He was recently appointed ‘Sir Colin Davis Fellow of Conducting’ by the Royal Academy of Music.

Christian Tetzlaff violin

Technically, Tetzlaff is flawless, and the sound he makes with his modern Greiner violin ... is effortlessly beautiful.

Tim Ashley, The Guardian, May 2015

Equally at home in classical, romantic and contemporary repertoire, Christian Tetzlaff sets standards with his interpretations of the violin concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berg and Ligeti, and is renowned for his innovative chamber music projects and performances of Bach. Christian regularly works with many of today’s leading orchestras and conductors. The 2015/16 season sees performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (Andris Nelsons), San Francisco Symphony (Susanna Mälkki), The Philadelphia Orchestra (Fabio Luisi), Minnesota Orchestra (Osmo Vänskä), Leipzig Gewandhausorchester (Riccardo Chailly), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie (Paavo Järvi), Dresden Staatskapelle (Manfred Honeck), Budapest Festival Orchestra (Jukka-Pekka Saraste) and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (Gianandrea Noseda). Chamber music activities include a one-week residency at Toppan Hall in Tokyo, and concerts with regular trio partners Lars Vogt and Tanja Tetzlaff as well as the Tetzlaff Quartett at Philharmonie de Paris, Laeiszhalle Hamburg and Dvořák Hall, Prague. He also plays Brahms’s piano quartets with Leif Ove Andsnes, Clemens Hagen and Tabea Zimmermann at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, London’s Barbican Centre, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris. Last season, Christian was the Artist-in-Residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker, where he worked with Sir Simon Rattle in various programmes. Other highlights included performances with the Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, London Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony and Rotterdam Philharmonic orchestras.

Christian’s recordings have received numerous prizes and awards, including the Diapason d’Or, Edison, Midem Classical and ECHO Klassik awards, as well as several Grammy nominations. His discography includes the violin concertos by Dvořák, Mozart, Lalo, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Jörg Widmann; MarkAnthony Turnage’s Mambo, Blues and Tarantella; violin sonatas by Mozart, Bartók, Schumann and Brahms; and Bach’s complete solo sonatas and partitas. His most recent recordings – of the piano trios by Brahms with Tanja Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, and Shostakovich’s violin concertos with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under John Storgårds – were released by Ondine and received wide critical acclaim.

I think of myself as an actor who speaks through the violin, and when I encounter a new piece I have to find the right tone of voice, the right way to 'speak’. That is the difference between performers and composers. Composers are always themselves, whereas we have to be different every time. Christian Tetzlaff

Born in Hamburg in 1966, Christian Tetzlaff studied at the Lübeck Conservatory with Uwe-Martin Haiberg and in Cincinnati with Walter Levin. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and hr-Sinfonieorchester and was Musical America’s 2005 Instrumentalist of the Year. He plays a violin made by German violinmaker Peter Greiner and teaches regularly at the Kronberg Academy near Frankfurt. christiantetzlaff.com London Philharmonic Orchestra | 7

Programme notes

Speedread A hackneyed old cliché it might be, but two adjectives are most commonly associated with French orchestral music: ‘elegance’ and ‘restraint’. That has rather a lot to do with Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel. Fauré’s trademarks were transparency and cleanliness of texture coupled with a sense of care of emotions. But Fauré did ‘do’ passion, and if anything could prompt heart-searching from an artist in late 1890s Europe, it was Maurice Maeterlinck’s heartrending play Pelléas et Mélisande. While Maurice Ravel owed much to Fauré, he arrived on this earth a generation later, a generation that witnessed upheavals both musical (the emergence of jazz) and human (the carnage of the First World War). A sense of nostalgia peers through the perfect

Gabriel Fauré 1845–1924

When Gabriel Fauré was asked to provide incidental music for a performance of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre in 1898, he made no attempt to match the play’s central dramatic events or psychological undercurrents – Fauré knew he was no Wagner. From early on he seems to have realised that small-scale, intimate forms were his métier. So when Fauré came to write his Pelléas music he tried to capture something of the play’s subtle, dreamlike essence – to provide a kind of musical scene-setting against which the actors could develop their roles for themselves. The famous actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, who played Mélisande in that London production, had chosen Fauré, apparently with something like this in mind. In which case he did not disappoint her: ‘Dear Mr Fauré,’ she recalled, ‘how sympathetically he listened, and how humbly he said 8 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

orchestrations of much of Ravel’s most overtly ‘simple’ music, including his ‘goodbye’ to 18thcentury Vienna, the Valses nobles et sentimentales. Ravel's orchestration may be inspired but Debussy's impressionistic orchestrations are not to be ignored and his depiction of the sea is unrivalled in its subtlety and evocative sound. Some things, however, remain constant, and the value of musical care and delicacy is one of them. If Ravel was known as the finest orchestral craftsman of his age, then surely that accolade now belongs to Magnus Lindberg from Finland, whose first Violin Concerto from 2006 might be a work of immense power, but is one that knows the value of clarity, luminosity and restraint.

Suite, Pelléas et Mélisande 1 Prélude 2 La Fileuse 3 Sicilienne 4 La Mort de Mélisande

he would do his best! His music came – he had grasped with most tender inspiration the poetic purity that pervades and envelops M. Maeterlinck’s lovely play.’ But Fauré also realised that some of the music was strong enough to stand on its own in concert, so he created a four-movement orchestral suite Pelléas et Mélisande. It comprises three numbers Fauré provided for the London production, plus the rather earlier 'Sicilienne' he revived as an entr’acte preceding Act Two. The opening 'Prélude' sets the scene for the fateful first encounter between the delicate, otherworldly Mélisande – lost in the forest and distressed by the loss of a mysterious crown – and the troubled, alltoo-earthly prince Golaud. Then comes 'La Fileuse', with running string figures imitating the movement of Mélisande’s spinning wheel. The sweetly innocent

flute melody and rippling harp of 'Sicilienne' prepare for the scene at the fountain, in which Mélisande loses her ring in the water whilst playing (innocently or knowingly?) with Golaud’s half-brother Pelléas. Finally 'Le Mort de Mélisande', with its gentle but hauntingly sad funereal rhythms provides a telling backdrop both for the heroine’s death and Golaud’s subsequent grief and guilt. In the apt words of Fauré’s pupil and friend

Magnus Lindberg

Charles Koechlin (orchestrator of the suite, at Fauré’s request), ‘the dull, intense anguish of this Finale, so simply achieved, attains an extraordinary inner pathos’. Programme note © Stephen Johnson

Violin Concerto No. 1 Christian Tetzlaff violin

born 1958

Magnus Lindberg’s career as a composer of concertos began relatively late, in 1994, with Away for clarinet, string orchestra, piano and percussion. But he has since made good that tardy start with no fewer than seven further concertante works: Campana in Aria (1998) for horn and orchestra, two concertos each for piano (1991–94 and 2011–12) and for cello (1999 and 2003), one for clarinet (2002) and this violin concerto (2006) – and his Second Violin Concerto will be premiered in this hall on 9 December by Frank Peter Zimmermann, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Lindberg’s Violin Concerto No. 1 was commissioned by the Lincoln Center in New York in association with the Barbican Centre here in London, the Casa de Música in Porto and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, which is based in Örebro in central Sweden. It was premiered by Lisa Batiashvili (who also recorded it for Sony Classical) on 22 August 2006, during the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. Those origins explain the modest orchestration of the work, which is scored for a Classical ensemble of two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, the forces employed in Mozart’s violin concertos. The Mostly Mozart organisers asked Lindberg to provide a link with Mozart, and rather than make some kind of stylistic allusion, he ‘thought that using the same forces would create a bridge to his sound

world’ – but he then subdivides his strings so much that he creates the impression of much larger forces. Comprised of three unnamed movements, the opening of the first (marked 'crotchet = 60': none of the movements bear a verbal tempo indication), with the violin soaring effortlessly above the orchestra, may recall the opening of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto – and not just because of the scoring: in both works, the violin’s first note is an F, although an octave higher in the Lindberg than in the Sibelius. (Unlike some Finnish composers, Lindberg is happy to accept his Sibelian heritage, as other points in this Concerto make clear.) The solo line is supported by a gossamer carpet of strings, which soon throw out a little dance-figure, variants of which will prove important; echoes of it now flit around the orchestra. On the surface, the music takes the form of a series of lively conversations between the soloist and other members of the orchestra, occasionally still hinting at a Sibelian soundscape; in the background, the harmony, moving more slowly, suggests the dawning of day, until, with the tempo gradually increasing, the music seems to heave into the full warmth of morning, and the soloist alternately offers passages of pyrotechnics and floats aloft over supportive rafts of colour – larks ascend over Finnish fields as well. The prominence of the horns underlines the sense that the music is indeed another London Philharmonic Orchestra | 9

Programme notes continued

contribution to the Finnish tradition of nature-painting. The music crests, as if the soloist has reached the crown of some huge hill and now canters down the slope towards the central movement, which follows without a break and in the same tempo as the opening of the first movement – though the mood here is slightly darker. Lindberg allows his soloist a few moments of lyrical repose, but here, too, the tempo gradually increases, as do the demands on the violinist’s technique. The tension in the orchestra is swiftly racheted up until a Tapiola-like storm erupts about the solo violin. Like a sudden summer downpour it is enough to allow

the skies to clear and the soloist to step forward in a rhapsodic cadenza which, halfway through, enjoys the support of a solo double bass. The brisk third movement – a briefer, closing panel after the larger spans of the first two – likewise follows without a break. It has a dance-like, perhaps even folk-like quality, with a catchy, syncopated march often animating its progress. Finally, the tempo broadens, like a river reaching the sea. Programme note © Martin Anderson

Magnus Lindberg: LPO’s Composer in Residence Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer in Residence from the beginning of the 2014/15 season. Last season's highlights included the Orchestra performing the world premiere of Accused, with soprano Barbara Hannigan in January. Lindberg also plays an active role in the Orchestra’s education activities, mentoring the four participants on the LPO Young Composers scheme, and conducting the annual Debut Sounds concerts that showcase the young composers' new works. Lindberg was born in Helsinki in 1958. Following piano studies, he entered the Sibelius Academy where his composition teachers included Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen. His compositional breakthrough came with two large-scale works, Action–Situation– Signification (1982) and Kraft (1983–85), which were inextricably linked with his founding with Esa-Pekka Salonen of the experimental Toimii Ensemble.

Lindberg was Composer in Residence of the New York Philharmonic between 2009 and 2012, with new works including the concert-opener EXPO premiered to launch Alan Gilbert’s tenure as the orchestra’s Music Director, Al Largo for orchestra, Souvenir for ensemble, and Piano Concerto No. 2 premiered by Yefim Bronfman in 2012. Lindberg’s music has been recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Ondine, Da Capo and Finlandia labels. He is published by Boosey & Hawkes. Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Interval – 20 minutes An announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval. 10 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Maurice Ravel

1875–1937

In 1911, Maurice Ravel became inspired by two 80-year-old sets of piano works by Franz Schubert. Ravel opted, with typical understatement, to write some quasi-Viennese piano waltzes for his own private amusement. But that wasn’t to be. In support of a new concert society he’d helped establish, the Société Musicale Indépendante, Ravel agreed to have the eight miniatures of his Valses nobles et sentimentales performed at a concert on 9 May 1911 at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. As was traditional, the Société audience was prompted to guess the composer of each work after its performance. When the pianist Louis Albert arrived at the end of Ravel’s ‘Epilogue’, not only were most in the audience unable to cite Ravel as the composer, but some of his closest colleagues could be heard booing and jeering. After that, Ravel knew the piece needed re-birthing. An opportunity came his way when the ballerina Natasha Trouhanova prompted the composer to orchestrate his waltzes and present them as a ballet. Ravel did so in just 15 days, dreaming up his own scenario (an aristocratic love story) and making his debut as a conductor for the first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in June 1912.

piece like Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, but also to the sense of destruction and bitterness that purposefully characterizes Ravel’s monolithic post-war waltz, La Valse. That piece, however, is foreshadowed in the seventh waltz, ‘Moins vif’, the piece Ravel cited as the most representative of what he was trying to say with his waltz set. Perhaps, wrapped up in that, is the feeling of a goodbye to 19th-century Vienna and its associated cultural landmarks and baggage. After the percussive first waltz, that sense of farewell most apparent in the longing, sentimental ‘Assez lent’; likewise, ‘Presque lent’ can feel like a sentimental recollection of the second ‘Modéré’. Ravel’s final epilogue even seems to glance back at everything that has happened before it. Here and elsewhere Ravel’s orchestration is unfailingly lucid and deliciously coloured, supporting his gentle dissonances and veiled sensuality. Those elements and more surely prompted the famous comment from Claude Debussy, on hearing the piece, that ‘this is the most subtle ear that can ever have existed’. Programme note © Andrew Mellor

The ballet certainly wasn’t a flop, but history has shown that Ravel’s music doesn’t depend on any extraneous staging to come off, which seems in keeping with his original pianistic concept. At the top of the score, in fact, Ravel included a quote from the forgotten French writer Henri de Régnier: ‘The delicious and ever-fresh pleasure of a useless occupation’ it read. There is a direct contrast in this music not only to the very public virtuosity of a

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Programme notes continued

Claude Debussy 1862–1918

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 La mer Simon Trpčeski 1 De l’aubepiano à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea) 1 Allegro tanto 2 Jeuxma denon vagues (Play of Waves) 2 Intermezzo: 3 DialogueAdagio du vent– et de la mer 3 Finale: Alla breve (Dialogue between the Wind and the Sea)

Claude Debussy’s re-imagining of musical purpose and orchestral potential came to the fore in his 1893 depiction of a woodland faun’s erotic fantasies, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. In Debussy’s eyes, Romanticism had been wrung for everything it was worth by a succession of composers from Beethoven to Wagner – from the former’s compelling command to the sonic ecstasy of the latter’s never-resolving harmonies. In the musical ‘Impressionism’ of the Prélude (the composer disliked the term, but it’s useful to an extent), Debussy discovered an orchestral language of implication. Impressionist painters had used short, built-up brush strokes and multiple colours in creating the visual equivalent – leaving explicit details to the imagination of the observer while conjuring a new sense of light and movement. Debussy’s orchestra, too, became a medium of exotic beauty and colour; through his move away from traditional harmonic ‘preparation’ and ‘resolution’, his superimposition of short motifs and his emphasis on passing, shifting textures, Debussy created a language of suggestion – of free thought and mood evocation rather than narrative angst and forthright explanation. Fast forward 12 years, and Debussy was working on the major orchestral work which is often seen as the Prélude’s sister: La mer ('The Sea'). By this time, though, fate was dealing the composer a rather different hand to the carefree but determined ambition he’d experienced when writing the Prélude. The composer had walked away from his life – leaving his wife for that of a wealthy banker (Emma Bardac) and abandoning the family home in Paris. In so doing he lost almost all of his friends. He travelled to England in search of emotional respite, and it was in an Eastbourne hotel, overlooking the English Channel, that he put the finishing touches to La mer.

When La mer was first performed in Paris on 15 October 1905 it slightly wrong-footed both the paying audience and the critics who were mapping the composer’s style. From the title of the piece – and those of its three movements – many expected a straightforwardly evocative ‘sea’ piece in the vein of the Grotto Scene from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande or Sirènes from his Nocturnes. What they got wasn’t a programmatic tone poem but rather a full advancing of the musical principles suggested by the Prélude; the three ‘symphonic sketches’ contain a series of complex episodes and superimposed patterns that encompass a huge descriptive range. The focus, even more than before, is on texture: 'From Dawn to Noon on the Sea' sees instruments suggesting a collage of fragmentary ideas but the orchestra as a whole moving together tidally through visions of the sea at different times of day (‘I particularly liked the bit at quarter to eleven’ proffered the biting wit of Erik Satie). While beautiful fragmentary ideas emerge from the horn and oboe (among others) in 'Play of Waves', the movement is one of rhythmic irregularity without much in the way of standard harmonic progression or melodic line. Perhaps the most Impressionistic movement of the three, this world of surface spray and isolated happenings is notably evocative of the seascapes of the Impressionist painters. In the wild, elemental and mysterious exchanges of the 'Dialogue between the Wind and the Sea' (this title itself could be a Turner homage), a soaring melodic idea tries to break from the surface, but is drowned by the power of the colliding elements and a final oceanic surge from the orchestra – a forthright break for freedom from Debussy, perhaps, against the waves of criticism levied at him over the Emma Bardac affair. Programme note © Andrew Mellor

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Magnus Lindberg Violin Concerto No. 2 world premiere at Royal Festival Hall Wednesday 9 December 2015 | 7.30pm Wagenaar Overture, Cyrano de Bergerac Magnus Lindberg Violin Concerto No. 2* (world premiere) Beethoven Symphony No. 7

Recommended recordings of tonight’s works Fauré: Suite, Pelléas et Mélisande London Philharmonic Orchestra | Vernon Handley [Classics for Pleasure] Lindberg: Violin Concerto Lisa Batiashvili | Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | Sakari Oramo [Sony BMG 88697 129362] Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentale London Philharmonic Orchestra | Serge Baudo [Classics for Pleasure]

Jaap van Zweden conductor Frank Peter Zimmermann violin *commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Debussy: La mer Berlin Philharmonic | Herbert von Karajan [Classics for Pleasure]

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Principal Benefactors Mark & Elizabeth Adams David & Yi Yao Buckley Desmond & Ruth Cecil Mr John H Cook David Ellen Mr Daniel Goldstein Drs Frank & Gek Lim Peter MacDonald Eggers Dr Eva Lotta & Mr Thierry Sciard Mr & Mrs David Malpas Mr & Mrs G Stein Mr & Mrs John C Tucker Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Lady Marina Vaizey Grenville & Krysia Williams Mr Anthony Yolland Benefactors Mr Geoffrey Bateman Mrs A Beare Ms Molly Borthwick David & Patricia Buck Mrs Alan Carrington Mr & Mrs Stewart Cohen Mr Alistair Corbett Mr Bruno de Kegel Mr David Edgecombe Mr Timothy Fancourt QC Mr Richard Fernyhough Wim and Jackie Hautekiet-Clare Tony & Susan Hayes Mr Daniel Heaf and Ms Amanda Hill Michael & Christine Henry Malcolm Herring

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Administration Board of Directors Victoria Robey OBE Chairman Stewart McIlwham* President Gareth Newman* Vice-President Dr Manon Antoniazzi Roger Barron Richard Brass Desmond Cecil CMG Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Amanda Hill Dr Catherine C. Høgel Rachel Masters* George Peniston* Kevin Rundell* Natasha Tsukanova Mark Vines* Timothy Walker AM Laurence Watt Neil Westreich David Whitehouse* * Player-Director Advisory Council Victoria Robey OBE Chairman Christopher Aldren Richard Brass David Buckley Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Andrew Davenport Jonathan Dawson William de Winton Edward Dolman Christopher Fraser OBE Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Rehmet Kassim-Lakha Jamie Korner Clive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwham Sir Bernard Rix Baroness Shackleton Lord Sharman of Redlynch OBE Thomas Sharpe QC Julian Simmonds Martin Southgate Sir Philip Thomas Sir John Tooley 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 Alexandra Jupin Jill Fine Mainelli Kristina McPhee Dr. Joseph Mulvehill Harvey M. Spear, Esq. Danny Lopez Hon. Chairman Noel Kilkenny Hon. Director Victoria Robey OBE Hon. Director Richard Gee, Esq Of Counsel Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP Stephanie Yoshida

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