Musical reflections on a year of isolation Concert programme Wednesday 30 June 2021 7.30pm Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Brett Dean conductor LPO Foyle Future Firsts Members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Milhaud Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano, Op. 47 (IV. Douloureux) Five world premieres from LPO Young Composers: Geoffrey King patina (this is truly a golden age) Alexander Tay Witherbud Paweł Malinowski declined/restored\elapsed Robin Haigh SLEEPTALKER Sun Keting that which is unseen...
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Debut Sounds is an annual celebration of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Talent programmes: LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts. This year we have been delighted to work with LPO Composer-in-Residence Brett Dean as Composer Mentor, supporting the five Young Composers in seminars and workshops to develop their new pieces. For this season’s brief, the composers were invited to create music inspired by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer scope of the crisis and its myriad accompanying implications brings such a paradigm shift in behaviours, expectations and realities that it is too major an occurrence to ignore and, as such, demands a rich variety of artistic responses. Tonight, an ensemble of Foyle Future Firsts and members of the LPO, conducted by Brett Dean, present these five world premieres. Visit lpo.org.uk/youngcomposers to find out more about tonight’s composers, and check out our YouTube channel to watch short films of each of them discussing and rehearsing their new pieces: youtube.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
The 2020/21 LPO Young Composers Programme is generously supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the RVW Trust, The Leche Trust and the Garrick Charitable Trust. The 2020/21 Foyle Future Firsts Development Programme is generously funded by the Foyle Foundation with additional support from the Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust and the Fidelio Charitable Trust.
Mobiles and watches should be switched off before the performance begins.
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The London Philharmonic Orchestra is grateful to all those whose who are generously supporting the Orchestra during the 2020/21 season. This performance has been made possible through a grant from the Cultural Recovery Fund from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. #HereForCulture
The 17 members of the Foyle Future Firsts programme are talented graduate instrumentalists who aspire to be professional orchestral musicians. We support their transition between college and the professional platform, developing talented players for future orchestral appointments with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and other orchestras and ensembles around the world. Now in its 17th year, our unique programme has gone from strength to strength. Members are supported and nurtured to the highest standards and we are proud to see current and past Foyle Future Firsts undertaking professional engagements and building successful careers. Members of the Foyle Future Firsts programme benefit from individual lessons and mentoring from London Philharmonic Orchestra Principals, mock auditions, and the opportunity to play in full orchestral rehearsals throughout the year. They also take part in high-profile and unique chamber performances, and work alongside London Philharmonic Orchestra musicians on Education & Community projects. lpo.org.uk/futurefirsts
FIRST VIOLINS Claudia TarrantMatthews* Leader Kate Oswin Lasma Taimina
Chair supported by Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave
SECOND VIOLINS Inês Delgado* Tania Mazzetti
Chair supported by Countess Dominique Loredan
VIOLAS David Quiggle Abby Bowen* CELLOS Alicja Kozak* Francis Bucknall DOUBLE BASSES Thomas Morgan* Sebastian Pennar FLUTES/PICCOLOS Stewart McIlwham Sirius Chau‡ OBOES/COR ANGLAIS Amy Roberts Hannah Condliffe† CLARINETS/ BASS CLARINETS Benjamin Mellefont Lewis Graham†
BASSOONS/ CONTRABASSOONS Jonathan Davies
Chair supported by Sir Simon Robey
Emily Newman* TRUMPETS Nick Walker* Paul Beniston
HORNS Joel Roberts § Gareth Mollison TROMBONES/ BASS TROMBONES Merin Rhyd* Mark Templeton
Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton
TUBA Adam Collins* HARP Alis Huws* PIANO Fionnuala Ward* PERCUSSION Iolo Edwards* Harry Lovell-Jones† * Foyle Future First 2020/21 † Foyle Future First reserve 2020/21 § Foyle Future First 2019/20 ‡ Foyle Future First reserve 2019/20
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LPO COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE & COMPOSER MENTOR
Australian composer Brett Dean became the LPO’s Composer-in-Residence for three years from September 2020. The Orchestra worked closely with Dean on his opera Hamlet, which was premiered at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2017 to great acclaim, winning both the 2018 South Bank Sky Arts Award and the International Opera Award for Best New Opera. During his LPO residency Dean also takes on the role of Composer Mentor to the LPO Young Composers Programme, providing guidance and expertise to the five participants. Brett Dean studied in his hometown of Brisbane before moving to Germany in 1984, where he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic’s viola section for 14 years. He began composing in 1988, initially concentrating on experimental film and radio projects and as an improvising performer. His reputation as a composer continued to develop, and it was through works such as his clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music (1995), which won an award from the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers, and Carlo (1997) for strings, sampler and tape, inspired by the music of Gesualdo, that he gained international recognition. In 2016 he was awarded the Don Banks Music Award by Australia Council, acknowledging his sustained and significant contribution to Australia’s musical scene.
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Dean enjoys a busy performing career as a violist and conductor. His imaginative conducting programmes usually centre around his own works combined with other composers: highlights include his appointment as Creative Chair at the TonhalleOrchester Zürich in 2017/18, and projects with the BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, Concertgebouw, Tonkünstler and Stuttgart orchestras, and as Artist-in-Residence with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Other recent highlights include the world premiere of the piano concerto Gneixendorfer Musik – eine Winterreise for Jonathan Biss, premiered by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in February 2020; Dean conducted the French premiere with the Orchestre National de Lyon in October 2020. In November 2019 the opera Hamlet received its German premiere at Cologne Opera, and the US premiere is planned at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022. In December 2020 the LPO gave the UK premiere of Dean's The Players at the Royal Festival Hall, which was streamed on Marquee TV. Looking ahead, on 8 December 2021 the Orchestra will give the world premiere of of a new version of his Notturno inquieto (Rivisitato), and on 27 April 2022 the UK premiere of his Cello Concerto with soloist Alban Gerhardt. Brett Dean’s music has been recorded for BIS, Chandos, Warner Classics, ECM Records and ABC Classics. Highlights include a BIS release in 2016 of works including Shadow Music, Testament, Short Stories and Etudenfest performed by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Dean; his Viola Concerto has also been released on BIS with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The DVD of Hamlet was released by Glyndebourne in 2018 and won a Gramophone Award in 2019. Profile © Boosey & Hawkes/Intermusica.
DARIUS MILHAUD 1892–1974 Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano, Op. 47 1918 IV. Douloureux Stewart McIlwham flute Amy Roberts oboe Benjamin Mellefont clarinet Fionnuala Ward piano The group of composers known as ‘Les Six’, to which Darius Milhaud belonged, along with the diverse line-up of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre, was keen to promote new kinds of expression, consciously lighthearted and humorous, free from both the Impressionism of Debussy and any trace of Germanic pomposity. Their meetings, frequented by Jean Cocteau and other poets, artists and writers, only went on for a few years (1916–23) but made an impact on the world of art. The idea of liberating themselves from so many constraints gave them a natural affinity with the surrealists, and they also welcomed external influences such as jazz and Latin American music.
Darius Milhaud
The latter was especially important to Darius Milhaud: his early Sonata Op. 47 for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano was composed in Brazil in 1918. He had arrived there that February as secretary to poet Paul Claudel, then serving as French ambassador to Brazil. The Spanish influenza pandemic reached Brazil by August, and soon daily deaths were surging into the thousands. Milhaud was greatly influenced by the horrors he witnessed, and wrote in his memoir: 'The supply of coffins gave out, and you constantly saw cartloads of corpses that were thrown into the common graves in the cemeteries.' It was the sight of such mass death that influenced, at least in part, his Op. 47 Sonata. Its final movement, Douloureux ('painful' or 'griefstricken'), is a sombre funeral march of sorts – perhaps the composer’s personal tribute to all those who had fallen victim to the pandemic. Programme note adapted from the Warner Classics booklet 'Moderniste', 9029554870, and appears courtesy of Warner Classics. Original note by Denis Verroust, Association Jean-Pierre Rampal (jprampal.com). Translation: Susannah Howe.
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GEOFFREY KING born 1992 patina (this is truly a golden age) world premiere I wonder to what extent you'll be able to hear the residue I’ve left behind on this piece, which has undergone such extensive revision since its first draft that literally one note of the original remains. That lone musical survivor – a high A in the strings – was the final note of the original but will open the music tonight. I find the poetry of this appealing – the preparatory work (which you won't hear) flows directly into tonight’s music, which hopefully will flow into some private memory of the piece which stays with you (which I won’t hear). That shared experience in the middle, a chance for everyone's timelines to overlap for just a few precious moments, is something I've missed dearly in the past year. As I write this in late May, I know that sitting with you on 30 June will feel very different to how it would in the Before Times. Tonight's concert will, I suspect, reach each of us through the residue of isolation and enclosure and quiet that tints our interaction with the world. What a privilege it is to be here with you tonight, to enjoy real sounds made by real people in the same room, unmediated by great distances and bad wi-fi connections and accidentally muted microphones. GK
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GEOFFREY KING is a composer in London, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He writes music about people, and about the ways that people engage with music. Recent and upcoming projects (aside from this one) include a large-scale cantata about medieval genderqueer sex worker John Rykener with librettist Gareth Mattey, a song-cycle about London's public toilets, and a semi-staged portrait of American poet Frank O'Hara. Geoff has written for many talented musicians and ensembles including Parker Ramsay, the Echéa Quartet, Fermata Ensemble, Liam Byrne, the Hermes Experiment, CHROMA, the Royal Opera House orchestra and English Touring Opera. He is a member of the composer collective Stomping Ground, and currently studies at the Royal Academy of Music with Philip Cashian and Edmund Finnis. Many thanks to the LPO and Brett Dean for their time, expertise and patience; to Phil, Ed and Josh for their guidance; and to David, for everything. geoffkingmusic.com
ALEXANDER TAY born 1994 Witherbud world premiere 'For what is this shadow of the going in which we come, this shadow of the coming in which we go, this shadow of the coming and the going in which we wait, if not the shadow of purpose, of the purpose that budding withers, that withering buds, whose blooming is a budding withering.' (Beckett, Watt) In our current situation we seem to be at a crossroads moment. Witherbud is that feeling of being faced with a seemingly inescapable crossroad of binary oppositions. At this moment where we seem to be about to begin again, should we go forward or back on ourselves? Should we halt? Should we wither or bud? Witherbud is an attempt to ask these questions musically. Quotations from Bach emerge from mechanical textures, are whittled at, and transform. The piece sporadically speeds and slows, sometimes uncannily. The tone seemingly changes at the piece’s own whim from serious to playful to plainly ridiculous. The questions that the piece poses collapse in on themselves. AT
ALEXANDER TAY spends his time studying and composing with psychoacoustic illusions. His fascination with deceit and aural trickery has formed the foundation of a composition PhD at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Guided over the last four years by supervisors Julian Anderson and Malcolm Singer, Alex has made pieces that deceive perceptions of musical speed, pitch continuity and sound ontology for François-Xavier Roth, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Park Lane Group and Royal Northern Sinfonia. Previous teachers and collaborators include Robin Holloway, Richard Causton, Christian Mason, Jeremy Thurlow (King's College Cambridge/Churchill College Cambridge), Colin Matthews (Panufnik Scheme), Judith Weir (Dartington), Gerry Cornelius, Patrick Bailey, Hugh Brunt, the Britten Sinfonia and the Heath Quartet (Dartington). soundcloud.com/woodenspoon324
Brett Dean conducting the Debut Sounds Spring Workshop at Blackheath Halls, March 2021
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I was thinking about the piece as a vivid archive of remembrance. The orchestra became a surface, the wondrous apparatus through which I capture and broadcast the vanishing memories. It is also a reflection of the decline and decay, and the fin de siècle ambiance is embedded underneath the piece. However, as it alludes to the time that no longer exists, it carries all of the aesthetic admiration and interplay, but also the fear of what Svetlana Boym called the 'restorative nostalgia' in her Future of Nostalgia, which 'is at the core of recent national and religious revivals; it knows two main plots: the return to origins and the conspiracy.' PM
© Grzesiek Mart
PAWEŁ MALINOWSKI born 1994 declined/restored\elapsed world premiere
PAWEŁ MALINOWSKI is mainly interested in recreating previously existing musical material into different contexts, camp aesthetics, and ordinary stories about daily life. He won the Grand Prix in the 58th Tadeusz Baird Young Composers Competition (2017), and in December 2017 he was awarded the prize of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Poland for the best students. In 2019, his piece Robotron was chosen to represent Polish Radio during the 66th International Rostrum of Composers. Paweł's works have been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Sacrum Profanum, Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, Pulsar Festival, Ostrava Days, Örebro Contemporary Music Festival, Musica Electronica Nova, and others. Paweł is currently undertaking a PhD in composition under Professor Wojciech Widłak at the Academy of Music in Krakow. He graduated with honours from the Academy of Music in Krakow (Masters) and he studied composition (MMus) under Juliana Hodkinson, Niels Rønsholdt and Simon SteenAndersen at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus. pawelmalinowski.com
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ROBIN HAIGH born 1993 SLEEPTALKER world premiere SLEEPTALKER is about dreams, as metaphors for predictions of the future. Like our dreams, predictions are hazy, ungraspable, often fearsome. Both are built out of our perceptions of events of the past and present, uncanny reflections of things that have been. This is what the music in SLEEPTALKER means to me; dreamlike, clouded visions of a future both unknowable and inevitable. RH
ROBIN HAIGH writes music that channels the frivolity and opaque nostalgia of millennial life into a kind of hazy 21st-century romanticism. His 'completely refreshing', 'magical' recorder quintet In Feyre Foreste earned him a British Composer Award in 2017 aged just 24, and his 'quirky, playful, bold and original' Britten Sinfonia commission Grin won an Ivor Novello Award in 2020. Robin’s individual approach to music is informed by his early experiences writing for the progressive metal band he played in as a teenager growing up in Newham, East London. His pieces are often based on unusual concepts: Samoyeds (for the Ligeti Quartet) makes music out of the sounds of howling dogs; Aesop (an LSO commission) asks orchestral performers to play on recorders; and No One (commissioned by Presteigne Festival) reimagines the harp via Homeric memes. Robin studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal Academy of Music with teachers including Dmitri Smirnov, Edmund Finnis and David Sawer, and has worked as an assistant to Sir Harrison Birtwistle. He is coming to the end of an AHRC-funded PhD at the University of York, where he also teaches, supervised by Martin Suckling. robinhaigh.com
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SUN KETING born 1993 that which is unseen... world premiere In Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, 'empty space' is considered to be a space for communication, where space is not really empty but consists of spirit, which evokes a place of holiness. Many of us recently, have been under such extreme conditions during lockdown, forced to keep distant and aware of what used to be normal, what we took for granted and what used to be unseen. When one looks at the art of flower arrangement, one learns to appreciate not only the beauty of the flowers and branches, but the empty space within and around. This piece is inspired by a particular modern flower arrangement I saw and is written for the unseen that exists in between. SK
SUN KETING is a London-based Chinese composer and artist. Her recent works focus on performing arts and instrumental sound exploration combining Eastern cultural, spiritual and philosophical elements. Sun's music has been performed in the UK, the USA, Europe and Asia. She has composed music for the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers, Riot Ensemble, Psappha Ensemble, CHROMA Ensemble, Tangram, Silkroad Ensemble, CoMA Ensemble, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Chinese Orchestra Taiwan. Sun was selected to join the LSO's Soundhub Composer Scheme for both the 2018/19 and 2019/20 phases. Her works for dance – Ensō (2019) and Listen (2020) – were both created in collaboration with Rome-based choreographer/ artist Huang Xiao and premiered at LSO St Luke’s. Sun is also a composer-in-residence of both Chinese Arts Now and Tangram. Her work One Undivided (2019) was co-commissioned by CAN, the LSO and the Silk String Quartet. Her work Erasure was cocommissioned by Tangram and Yo-Yo Ma's Silkroad Ensemble. Sun has also collaborated on projects with the International Guitar Foundation & Festival, Rye Festival, Wellcome Collection, The Ditch Festival and Leeds Lieder Festival. In 2018 Sun completed her MMus degree at the Royal Academy of Music, receiving a Distinction and the Pullen Memorial Prize. She is currently studying for a doctorate at the RAM under the mentorship of Phil Cashian and Helen Grime. ketingsun.com Watch short films of tonight’s five composers discussing and rehearsing their new works:
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youtube.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
2021/22 concert season at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall
Every breath every melody every whisper every emotion every tingling spine every silence every strike of the baton every dimmed light every note held every goosebump every empty chair filled every moment of wonder The new season awaits. Browse the full season from 29 June at lpo.org.uk Public booking opens Thursday 8 July
The right is reserved to substitute artists and to vary the programme if necessary. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is a registered charity No. 238045. London Philharmonic Orchestra, 89 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TP. lpo.org.uk
