Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI Principal Conductor Designate EDWARD GARDNER supported by Mrs Christina Lang Assael Principal Guest Conductor Designate KARINA CANELLAKIS Leader PIETER SCHOEMAN supported by Neil Westreich Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER CBE AM Chief Executive Designate DAVID BURKE
Programme notes Playlist Concert: 29 April 2020
Orlando Gibbons
Pavane in G minor for organ, MB 16
1583–1625 Orlando Gibbons was one of the outstanding composers of the later English Renaissance, responsible for such well-known pieces as the anthems O clap your hands together and This is the record of John, the keyboard piece Lord Salisbury’s Pavane and the madrigal The silver swan. He held the post of organist of the Chapel Royal from 1605 until his premature death, and was also organist of Westminster Abbey for the last two years of his life. His playing was much admired, a French visitor describing him as ‘the best finger of that age’.
Gibbons’s Pavan in G minor (probably intended for the virginals, the English forerunner of the harpsichord) is a slow, expressive dance in the characteristic form of three ‘strains’, each followed by an intricately decorated repeat.
Nico Muhly
Organ Concerto (Register)
© Anthony Burton
born 1981 Register, for organ and orchestra, is one of many collaborations between me and the organist James McVinnie, one of my oldest friends. I’ve always treated the organ as an early version of the synthesizer, with additions and subtractions to the sounds creating sudden shifts of mood, or register. Like in speech, changes in tone and style can be subtle or jarring; here, the organ and orchestra work with and against one another in an animated and intimate conversation, with sudden asides and rapid shifts in tack.
The piece is built around three distinct cycles of chords: one, large and ascending, with a sense of slight menace; the second, bright, descending, and brilliant; and the third, a sparkling perpetual-motion machine, in whose genetic past is a Pavan in G minor by Orlando Gibbons, a composer with whose music Jamie and I both enjoy a lifelong romance. Despite the power of the modern organ, the piece ends with a glance towards the Jacobean period, with strings played without vibrato, and the organ in its smallest, most understated register. © Nico Muhly