2022/23 concert season at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall
Principal
Conductor
Artistic Director Elena Dubinets Chief Executive David Burke Leader Pieter Schoeman supported by Neil Westreich
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall
Wednesday 18 January 2023 | 7.30pm
Brett Dean
Amphitheatre (11’)
Kinan Azmeh
Clarinet Concerto (UK premiere) (22’)
Interval (20’)
Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 1 in D minor (41’)
Enrique Mazzola conductor
Kinan Azmeh clarinet
Generously supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation.
Contents
2 Welcome LPO news
3 On stage tonight
4 London Philharmonic Orchestra
5 Leader: Pieter Schoeman
6 Enrique Mazzola
7 Programme notes
9 Kinan Azmeh
11 On the LPO Label
12 Next concerts
13 Sound Futures donors
14 Thank you 16 LPO administration
Works from tonight’s concert are being filmed for future broadcast on Marquee TV. We would be grateful if audience noise during the performance could be kept to a minimum, and if audience members could kindly hold applause until the end of each full work. Thank you for your co-operation.
Post-concert event | 10.00pm | Late-night chamber concert Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Clarinettist/composer Kinan Azmeh performs his own music alongside musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Tickets available from the Southbank Centre Ticket Office.
The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide. Concert presented by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Principal Conductor Edward Gardner supported by Aud Jebsen Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KGWe hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you need any information or help, please ask a member of staff.
Eating, drinking and shopping? Take in the views over food and drinks at the Riverside Terrace Cafe, Level 2, Royal Festival Hall. Visit our shops for products inspired by our great cultural experiences, iconic buildings and central London location. Explore across the site with Beany Green, Côte Brasserie, Foyles, Giraffe, Honest Burger, Las Iguanas, Le Pain Quotidien, Ping Pong, Pret, Strada, Skylon, Spiritland, Topolski, wagamama and Wahaca.
If you would like to get in touch with us following your visit, please write to: Visitor Contact Team, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, or email hello@southbankcentre.co.uk
We look forward to seeing you again soon.
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.
Readmission If you leave the auditorium during the concert, you will be readmitted at a suitable point at the discretion of our Visitor Assistants.
Recording is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of the Southbank Centre. The Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended. Mobiles and watches should be switched off before the performance begins.
You are welcome to bring drinks from the venue’s bars and cafés into the Royal Festival Hall to enjoy during tonight’s concert. Please be considerate to fellow audience members by keeping noise during the concert to a minimum, and please take your glasses with you for recycling afterwards. Thank you.
Following tonight’s concert, composer and clarinettist Kinan Azmeh will be showcasing his talents in an intimate chamber setting when he performs his own music alongside members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The performance takes place in the Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Tickets are available from the Southbank Centre Ticket Office.
We are delighted that a selection of concerts from our LPO 2022/23 Royal Festival Hall season are being filmed for broadcast on Marquee TV. Works from this evening’s concert are being filmed for broadcast on Saturday 18 February 2023 at 7pm. The performance will remain available to watch free of charge for 48 hours without a Marquee TV subscription.
If you would like to subscribe for unlimited access to Marquee TV’s extensive range of music, opera, theatre and dance productions, you can enjoy 50% off with code LPO2022. Visit marquee.tv/LPO2022 to find out more, enjoy a free trial or subscribe.
This season marks the LPO’s 90th anniversary, and as celebrate memories of the last 90 years, we’re asking for your help to keep the next 90 years – and beyond –exciting, dynamic and inclusive. Please consider donating to our Birthday Appeal, as we continue to make history in the present by offering life-enriching musical experiences for everyone.
As you may have seen from recent media coverage, the vibrant arts community of which we are part has been hit hard by the funding cuts from Arts Council England. The LPO is no exception to this and so we find ourselves even more reliant on our supporters and your generosity to help carry us forward towards an exciting future. Please make a donation of whatever size you can. Your gift to the LPO will enable us to keep writing the wonderfully rich and inspiring story of the LPO for the next 90 years and more.
Donate online at lpo.org.uk/celebrate90 or call our Individual Giving Team on 020 7840 4212 or 020 7840 4225 to make a donation by credit or debit card. Thank you.
Pieter Schoeman* Leader
Chair supported by Neil Westreich Kate Oswin
Lasma Taimina Chair supported by Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave
Minn Majoe
Alfredo Reyes Logounova
Yang Zhang
Chair supported by Eric Tomsett
Katalin Varnagy Chair supported by Sonja Drexler Catherine Craig Elizaveta Tyun Martin Höhmann Ruth Schulten Ricky Gore Rasa Zukauskaite Jamie Hutchinson Ronald Long Kay Chappell
Tania Mazzetti Principal Emma Oldfield Co-Principal Helena Smart Claudia Tarrant-Matthews
Fiona Higham Chair supported by David & Yi Buckley
Ashley Stevens Nancy Elan Joseph Maher Nynke Hijlkema Sioni Williams Kate Cole
Sheila Law Jessica Coleman Erzsébet Rácz
Richard Waters Principal Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp
Martin Wray
Katharine Leek
Benedetto Pollani
Laura Vallejo
Toby Warr
Lucia Ortiz Sauco Jisu Song Stanislav Popov
Daniel Cornford Jill Valentine
Kristina Blaumane Principal Chair supported by Bianca & Stuart Roden
Jonathan Ayling Francis Bucknall Sue Sutherley Susanna Riddell Tom Roff Helen Thomas George Hoult David Lale Sibylle Hentschel
Kevin Rundell* Principal Sebastian Pennar Co-Principal Hugh Kluger George Peniston Laura Murphy Lowri Morgan Charlotte Kerbegian Adam Wynter
Katie Bedford Guest Principal Imogen Royce Stewart McIlwham*
Stewart McIlwham*
Ian Hardwick* Principal Alice Munday
Sue Böhling* Principal Chair supported by Dr Barry Grimaldi
Benjamin Mellefont Principal
Thomas Watmough Chair supported by Roger Greenwood
Bass Clarinet Paul Richards* Principal
Contrabass Clarinet Martin Robertson
Bassoons
Jonathan Davies Principal Chair supported by Sir Simon Robey Helen Simons Claire Webster
Contrabassoon Simon Estell* Principal Horns
Annemarie Federle Principal John Ryan* Principal Martin Hobbs Mark Vines Co-Principal Gareth Mollison
Paul Beniston* Principal Tom Nielsen Guest Principal Anne McAneney* David Hilton
Mark Templeton* Principal Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton David Whitehouse
Lyndon Meredith Principal
Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra
Simon Carrington* Principal Chair supported by Victoria Robey OBE
Andrew Barclay* Principal Chair supported by Gill & Garf Collins
Erika Öhman
Karen Hutt Keith Millar Feargus Brennan Harp
Rachel Masters Principal
* Holds a professorial appointment in London
Welcome to Annemarie Federle, who has joined the Orchestra as Joint Principal Horn from January 2023. Annemarie was winner of the 2020 BBC Young Musician Brass category, and in April 2022, aged just 20, she stepped in at the last minute as the soloist in Knussen’s Horn Concerto with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall, receiving stellar reviews for her ‘astonishingly assured’ performance (The Guardian). We’re thrilled to welcome her as an LPO member!
Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. With every performance we aim to bring wonder to the modern world and cement our position as a leading orchestra for the 21st century.
Our home is here at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour throughout the UK and internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. Each summer we’re resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, combining the magic of opera with Glyndebourne’s glorious setting in the Sussex countryside.
We’re always at the forefront of technology, finding new ways to share our music globally. You’ll find us online, on streaming platforms, on social media and through our broadcast partnership with Marquee TV. During the pandemic period we launched ‘LPOnline’: over 100 videos of performances, insights and introductions to playlists, which led to us being named runner-up in the Digital Classical Music Awards 2020. During 2022/23 we’ll be working once again with Marquee TV to broadcast selected live concerts, so you can share or relive the wonder from your own living room.
Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In 2021 Edward Gardner became our 13th Principal Conductor, taking the Orchestra into its tenth decade. Vladimir Jurowski became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his impact as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor and Brett Dean our Composer-in-Residence.
Everyone will have heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whether it’s playing the world’s National Anthems at every medal ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, our iconic recording with Pavarotti that made Nessun Dorma a global football anthem, or closing the flotilla at The Queen’s Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. And you’ll almost certainly have heard us on the soundtracks for major films including The Lord of the Rings
We also release live, studio and archive recordings on our own label, and are the world’s most-streamed orchestra, with over 15 million plays of our content each month. Recent releases include the first volume of a Stravinsky series with Vladimir Jurowski; Tippett’s complete opera The Midsummer Marriage under Edward Gardner, captured in his first concert as
LPO Principal Conductor in September 2021; and James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio, recorded at the work’s UK premiere performance in December 2021.
We’re committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians and music-lovers: there’s nothing we love more than seeing the joy of children and families enjoying their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about equipping schools and teachers through schools’ concerts, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Today’s young instrumentalists are the orchestral members of the future, so we’re committed to offering them opportunities to progress. Our LPO Junior Artists programme is leading the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers.
We believe in the relevance of our music, and that our programmes must reflect the narratives of modern times. This season we’re exploring themes of belonging and displacement in our series ‘A place to call home’, delving into music by composers including Austrians Erich Korngold and Paul Hindemith, Hungarian Béla Bartók, Cuban Tania León, Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá and Syrian Kinan Azmeh. As we celebrate our 90th anniversary we perform works premiered by the Orchestra during its illustrious history. This season also marks Vaughan Williams’s 150th anniversary and we’ll be celebrating with four of his works, as well as both symphonies by Elgar and music by Tippett and Thomas Adès. Our commitment to everything new and creative includes premieres by Brett Dean and Heiner Goebbels, as well as new commissions from composers from around the world including Agata Zubel, Elena Langer and Vijay Iyer.
Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002. He is also a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance.
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 London’s Royal Festival Hall. As a chamber musician he regularly appears at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. His chamber music partners have included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Veronika Eberle, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Boris Garlitsky, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Martin Helmchen and Julia Fischer.
Pieter has performed numerous times as a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Highlights have included an appearance as both conductor and soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, the Brahms Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, and the Britten Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the LPO Label to great critical acclaim.
Pieter has appeared as Guest Leader with the BBC, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon and Baltimore symphony orchestras; the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Pieter’s chair in the LPO is generously supported by Neil Westreich.
lpo.org.uk
of the Age of Enlightenment, Oslo Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony, Utah Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic, Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Return engagements have included the Metropolitan Opera, Opernhaus Zurich, Bregenz Festival, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Quebec Symphony Orchestra and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.
Renowned as an expert interpreter and champion of bel canto opera and a specialist in French repertoire and early Verdi, Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola is in demand worldwide as both an operatic and a symphonic conductor. He is Music Director at Lyric Opera of Chicago and Principal Guest Conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin. In May 2022 he was named the first ever Conductor-in-Residence at the Bregenz Festival. From 2012–19 he served as Artistic & Music Director of the Orchestre National d’Île de France (ONDIF). Reflecting his significant contribution to musical life in France, he was made a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2018.
Plans for the 2022/23 season with Lyric Opera of Chicago include productions of Verdi’s Ernani and Don Carlos, Rossini’s Le comte Ory, and the Chicago premiere of Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light with Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry. This season also sees return engagements with the Orchestre National de France and the Detroit Symphony. On the operatic stage, Enrique will return to the Opernhaus Zurich (Roberto Devereux), Dutch National Opera (Maria Stuarda), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Massenet’s Hérodiade in concert) and the Bregenz Festival (Madama Butterfly and Ernani).
Enrique Mazzola last appeared with the LPO in April 2022, when he conducted a gala concert of opera highlights with soprano Renée Fleming at the Royal Festival Hall. Recent seasons have also included debuts at the Salzburg Festspiele (Orphée aux Enfers), Vienna State Opera (Don Pasquale), Dutch National Opera (Anna Bolena, Donizetti Queens in Concert), Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestra
Enrique is a regular guest at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he has conducted the LPO in productions of Don Pasquale, Poliuto, L’elisir d’amore, Luisa Miller and Il barbiere di Siviglia, the latter of which he also presented in concert at the 2016 BBC Glyndebourne Prom. Other opera credits include the Teatro del Maggio Musicale, Florence (L’italiana in Algeri); New National Theatre, Tokyo (Don Giovanni); Opera du Rhin (Macbeth, La Cenerentola); and Teatro alla Scala (Don Pasquale). European festivals have included Falstaff at Aix-en-Provence, the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, the Enescu Festival and the Haydn Festival with ONDIF; Bregenz, Salzburg and the BBC Proms with the Glyndebourne production of Il barbiere di Siviglia; and the Munich Opera Festival, Rossini Opera Festival, Biennale of Venice, Wexford Opera Festival, Festival de Granada and Les Chorégies d’Orange. From 1999–2003 Enrique was Artistic and Music Director of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano, where he conducted many symphonic concerts and new operatic productions with the Royal Northern College of Music Symphony Orchestra.
An accomplished interpreter of contemporary music, Enrique commissioned and premiered several works with ONDIF, and led many other premieres with major European orchestras. Opera credits also include the world premiere of Colla’s Il processo (La Scala); Il re nudo by Luca Lombardi (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma), Medusa by Arnaldo de Felice (Bavarian State Opera) and Isabella by Azio Corghi (Rossini Opera Festival).
Enrique has regularly devoted time to working with young musicians, including at the Accademia Teatro alla Scala, Académie de l’Opéra national de Paris, Opéra Studio de l’Opéra national du Rhin, Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Ryan Opera Center and Codarts of Rotterdam, and has given conducting masterclasses for the students of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon.
Amphitheatre, commissioned by Symphony Australia for conductor Daniel Harding‘s first Australian tour, is a dramatic scene for large orchestra. It is in one (essentially slow) movement, and takes its title from the opening of German author Michael Ende‘s mesmerising children‘s book Momo, in which he describes the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheatre situated on the outskirts of a big, modern city. Amphitheatres came in all shapes and sizes; magnificent ones in major cities were fitted out with lavish golden carpets and sunshades, massive columns and statues. Simple theatres in smaller towns made do with straw roofing and modest decorations. They were a reflection of the people and communities that built them; the main thing was that everyone had somewhere to gather in order to experience theatre, to satisfy their hunger for stories and spectacles, to be part of their culture.
The other unifying factor amongst most of these round or oval structures, whether large or small, was that they were made of massive blocks of stone. The initial musical idea in this orchestral amphitheatre, an oscillating chord change first heard in the brass, becomes the stone blocks upon which this piece‘s structure is built. Through a change of colours, from the low brass, to winds, strings and then back to brass, we take in different perspectives of the same object, as if taking a walk around its circumference.
The other motivic group that takes on more significance as the piece progresses consists of distant, heralding trumpet fanfares, reminiscences of past glories that took place in the old stone walls, momentarily replacing the stillness of time frozen. Like the tiered seating of these ancient arenas, radiating outwards from centre stage, the layers of sound and textures unfold and expand. In this process, the fanfares become increasingly larger than life and eventually almost grotesque in their directness. However as quickly as these phantasies have errupted, so too do they
dissipate, becoming once again little more than distant echoes of a bygone age. As Ende describes it, the daydreaming tourist returns to his senses, takes a photo and departs from the scene. ‘Then stillness is reinstated to the stony roundness.’
© Brett Dean, 20001976 Clarinet Concerto 2018 (UK premiere)
It was in 2017, less than a week after President Trump issued his infamous travel ban, that the Seattle Symphony got in touch with me and invited me to take part in a concert called ‘Music Beyond Borders’, celebrating the cultures and people of the seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens were temporarily banned from entering the US. While I was on stage performing my Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra in Seattle that night on 8 February 2017, I kept thinking what a rollercoaster of a week that was; within seven days I managed to experience the thrill of performing at the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the familiarity of being very close to home playing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in Beirut, the worry and anger that come with being stranded somewhere and not allowed to go home, and finally the relief of returning back to my apartment in New York, thanks to a block to the presidential executive order by Washington’s Attorney General.
These thoughts were about home; my home in Syria, my country’s men and women, my home in New York, my extended community here in the US, and all of those who spoke up against injustice everywhere.
When Classical Movements commissioned me to write a clarinet concerto for the Seattle Symphony’s 2018/19 season, all I wanted was to write a piece that would enjoy a lot of freedom. Therefore, what I have scored here is a piece that is free from any programmatic or autobiographical information. The only summary that can be given here is that there is an introduction,
there is a lullaby, and there is an ecstatic dance in one of my favourite rhythms in Arabic music, called ‘Katakufti’ or ‘Nawari,’ and in a similar fashion to many of my earlier works, the soloist has lots of room to improvise.
I am very grateful to the Seattle Symphony and Classical Movements for bringing this piece to life and for making me feel at home thousands of miles away from home, and who reminded me that small gestures of solidarity can travel far, freely!
Kinan Azmeh, Iowa City, 2018
An announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.
Hailed as ‘intensely soulful’ and a ‘virtuoso’ by The New York Times, and winner of an Opus Klassik Award in 2019, clarinettist and composer Kinan Azmeh has gained international recognition for his rich sound and his distinctive compositional voice across diverse musical genres. Originally from Damascus, Syria, Kinan takes his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer and improviser. Notable appearances have included at the Opera Bastille, Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Moscow; Carnegie Hall and the UN General Assembly, New York; London’s Royal Albert Hall; Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires; the Berlin Philharmonie; the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center, Washington DC; the Salzburg Mozarteum; Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie; and in his native Syria at the opening concert of the Damascus Opera House.
Kinan has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Dusseldorf Symphony, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Qatar Philharmonic and the Syrian Symphony Orchestra, among others, and has shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, Marcel Khalife, John McLaughlin, François Rabbath Aynur and Djivan Gasparyan.
Kinan’s compositions include several works for solo instruments, chamber and orchestral music, as well as music for film, live illustration and electronics. Recent works were commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, The Knights, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Apple Hill String Quartet, Quatuor Voce, Brooklyn Rider, Cello Octet Amsterdam,
the Aizuri Quartet and Bob Wilson. An advocate for new music, several concertos have been dedicated to Kinan by composers such as Kareem Roustom, Dia Succari, Dinuk Wijeratne, Zaid Jabri, Saad Haddad and Guus Janssen, in addition to a large number of chamber works. In addition to his own Arab-Jazz Quartet CityBand and his Hewar Trio, since 2012 Kinan has also played with the Silkroad Ensemble, whose 2017 Grammy Award-winning album ‘Sing Me Home’ features Kinan as clarinettist and composer.
Kinan Azmeh is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard School as a student of Charles Neidich, and of both the Damascus High institute of Music, where he studied with Shukry Sahwki, Nicolay Viovanof and Anatoly Moratof, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering. He earned his doctorate degree in music from the City University of New York in 2013.
Kinan Azmeh’s first opera, Songs for Days to Come, which is fully sung in Arabic, was premiered in June 2022 in Osnabruck, Germany to great acclaim, and Kinan has recently been appointed to the National Council for the Arts following a nomination by President Joe Biden.
event | Tonight 10.00pm
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Kinan Azmeh performs his own music alongside LPO musicians. Tickets available from the Southbank Centre Ticket Office.
It is one of music history’s most famous fiascos. 27 March 1897, and the promising young composer Serge Rachmaninoff – who at the age of 24 has already produced a piano concerto, a number of piano and chamber compositions and a well-received one-act opera – delivers his first full-scale symphony to almost unanimous derision. The images of him lurking on an iron spiral staircase in the wings of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Hall while the most important premiere of his career heads for spectacular failure, and then hurrying out of the building by a back exit without taking a bow or speaking to anyone, are vivid and distressing. One can well imagine that many other composers of his age would have found it an ordeal from which there was no recovery.
For Rachmaninoff, the well-known end to the story is that he locked the score away before enduring a three-year crisis of confidence that only a course of hypnosis eventually dispelled, freeing him to achieve a resounding comeback success with the Second Piano Concerto. Yet there are signs that his mental turmoil was mixed with a measure of clear-eyed detachment; only two months after that premiere he was writing to a friend: ‘I am not at all affected by its lack of success, nor am I disturbed by the newspapers’ abuse; but I am deeply upset and heavily depressed by the fact that my Symphony, though I loved it very much, and love it now, did not please me at all after its first rehearsal.’ Having gone on to assign some of the blame (apparently with some justification) to the inept conducting of Alexander Glazunov, he concludes ‘I will not reject this Symphony,
and after leaving it alone for six months I’ll look at it, perhaps correct it, and perhaps publish it, but perhaps by then my partiality for it will have passed. Then I’ll tear it up.’
Maybe he did, eventually. Although he talked briefly of revising the work in 1908 and mentioned its existence again in a letter of 1917, his own score has never been found. In 1945, however, two years after his death, the original orchestral parts were discovered, enabling the Symphony to receive a second performance, this time in Moscow. A full score reassembled from these parts was published in 1947, since when this bright, youthful and in places exhilarating work has slowly but surely made its way into the repertoire.
Listening to the Symphony today, it is hard to see quite how it could have stirred up such intemperate reviews as that of the composer César Cui, whose description of it as a grotesque amalgam of Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov was only the most polite of his assessments. Rachmaninoff later admitted that the work contained ‘much that is weak, childish, strained and bombastic’, but maintained nevertheless that it had ‘some good music’. Probably few would deny that now, and if there are places where it can seem to lose its way, and others which may have sounded brash and disjointed to the ears of the 1890s, it is certainly true that this is a work whose striking personality is easily recognisable as that of Rachmaninoff.
It is also a work of considerable motivic economy. Within a minute of the start we have heard most of the melodic fragments that will audibly dominate all four movements – the tight little curl of the first four woodwind notes, the five-note figure that follows immediately in the strings, a rippling semiquaver response first heard in the lower strings. Later, a longer undulating theme announced by a solo oboe after a winding, rhapsodic lead-in from the violins, is also significant. The central development is inaugurated by an orchestral ‘crash’ (based on the curling figure) and a vigorous fugue, and the main themes are then recapitulated with changed scoring, before another crash kicks off the long coda.
The curling figure returns to open the second movement, as it will do the third and fourth. In this case what follows is a scherzo with the characteristic light touch recognisable to anyone familiar with Rachmaninoff’s later music. If there is a feeling that the gloomy middle section of the slow third movement flags a little, surely few could find anything to criticise in the long-breathed, oriental-tinged woodwind melodies of its outer sections. The finale contains one of the Symphony’s most exciting and inspired passages in the fanfare-laden, martial extension of the first movement’s five-note theme, and Rachmaninoff shows considerable restraint in not bringing it back. Instead he opts to alternate rhythmic drive with broadly yearning Romantic melody, surging to a crashing tam-tam climax which clears the way for a slow but massively intense coda.
Programme note © Lindsay Kemp
Tan Dun Buddha Passion (UK premiere)
Tan Dun conductor Sen Guo soprano/indigenous female singer Huiling Zhu mezzo-soprano
Kang Wang tenor Shenyang bass-baritone
Batubagen indigenous male singer/Dunhuang xiqin Yining Chen pipa/dancer London Philharmonic Choir London Chinese Philharmonic Choir
Coleridge-Taylor Solemn Prelude (London premiere) Tippett Piano Concerto Elgar Symphony No. 1
Edward Gardner conductor Steven Osborne piano SPIRITS OF DELIGHT
Mendelssohn The Fair Melusina Overture Schumann Piano Concerto* Elgar Symphony No. 2
Edward Gardner conductor Víkingur Ólafsson piano
We are grateful to the following donors for their generous contributions to our Sound Futures campaign. Thanks to their support, we successfully raised £1 million by 30 April 2015 which has now been matched pound for pound by Arts Council England through a Catalyst Endowment grant. This has enabled us to create a £2 million endowment fund supporting special artistic projects, creative programming and education work with key venue partners including our Southbank Centre home. Supporters listed below donated £500 or over. For a full list of those who have given to this campaign please visit lpo.org.uk/soundfutures
Arts Council England
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Peter Mace
Mr & Mrs David Malpas
Dr David McGibney
Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner
Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill
Mr Christopher Querée
The Rosalyn & Nicholas Springer
Charitable Trust
Timothy Walker CBE AM
Christopher Williams
Peter Wilson Smith
Mr Anthony Yolland
and all other donors who wish to remain anonymous
We are extremely grateful to all donors who have given generously to the LPO over the past year. Your generosity helps maintain the breadth and depth of the LPO’s activities, as well as supporting the Orchestra both on and off the concert platform.
Anonymous donors
Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet
Aud Jebsen
In memory of Mrs Rita Reay Sir Simon & Lady Robey OBE
William & Alex de Winton
Patricia Haitink
Mr & Mrs Philip Kan
Neil Westreich
The American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Buxton
Gill & Garf Collins
In memory of Brenda Lyndoe
Casbon
In memory of Ann Marguerite Collins
Sally Groves MBE
George Ramishvili
Mrs Irina Andreeva
In memory of Len & Edna Beech
Steven M. Berzin
Ms Veronika BorovikKhilchevskaya
The Candide Trust
Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave
The Lambert Family Charitable Trust
Stuart & Bianca Roden
In memory of Hazel Amy Smith
The Tsukanov Family
The Viney Family
An anonymous donor
Chris Aldren
David & Yi Buckley
In memory of Allner Mavis Channing
Sonja Drexler
Jan & Leni Du Plessis
The Vernon Ellis Foundation
Peter & Fiona Espenhahn
Hamish & Sophie Forsyth
Mr Roger Greenwood
Malcolm Herring
John & Angela Kessler
Julian & Gill Simmonds
Eric Tomsett
Andrew & Rosemary Tusa
Guy & Utti Whittaker
Mr Florian Wunderlich
Dame Colette Bowe
David Burke & Valerie Graham
John & Sam Dawson
Bruno De Kegel
Ulrike & Benno Engelmann
Virginia Gabbertas MBE
Dmitry & Ekaterina Gursky
The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris
Charitable Trust
Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle
Sir George Iacobescu
Jamie & Julia Korner
Mr & Mrs Makharinsky
Mr Nikita Mishin
Andrew Neill
Tom & Phillis Sharpe
Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood
Laurence Watt Grenville & Krysia Williams
Anonymous donors
Michael Allen
Mr Mark Astaire
Nicholas & Christine Beale
Mikhail Noskov & Vasilina Bindley
Mr Anthony Blaiklock
Lorna & Christopher Bown
Mr Bernard Bradbury Simon Burke & Rupert King
Desmond & Ruth Cecil
Mr Evgeny Chichvarkin
Mr John H Cook
Georgy Djaparidze
Deborah Dolce
Cameron & Kathryn Doley
Mariana Eidelkind & Gene
Moldavsky
David Ellen Ben Fairhall
Mr Richard & Helen Gillingwater
Mr Daniel Goldstein David & Jane Gosman
Mr Gavin Graham
Lord & Lady Hall
Mrs Dorothy Hambleton Martin & Katherine Hattrell Michael & Christine Henry
Mr Steve Holliday J Douglas Home
Mr & Mrs Ralph Kanza
Mrs Elena & Mr Oleg Kolobov Rose & Dudley Leigh
Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE
JP RAF
Drs Frank & Gek Lim
Mr Nicholas Little
Geoff & Meg Mann
Mrs Elizabeth Meshkvicheva
Andrew T Mills
Peter & Lucy Noble
Mr Roger Phillimore
Mr Michael Posen
Mr Anthony Salz
Ms Nadia Stasyuk
Charlotte Stevenson Joe Topley
Mr & Mrs John C Tucker
Timothy Walker CBE AM Jenny Watson CBE Grenville & Krysia Williams
Anonymous donors
Dr Manon Antoniazzi
Julian & Annette Armstrong
Mr John D Barnard
Mr Geoffrey Bateman
Mr Philip Bathard-Smith
Mrs A Beare
Dr Anthony Buckland
Dr Simona Cicero & Mr Mario Altieri
Mr Peter Coe
Mrs Pearl Cohen
David & Liz Conway
Mr Alistair Corbett
Ms Mary Anne Cordeiro
Ms Elena Dubinets
Mr Richard Fernyhough
Jason George
Mr Christian Grobel
Prof Emeritus John Gruzelier Mark & Sarah Holford
Mrs Maureen Hooft-Graafland
Per Jonsson
Mr Ian Kapur
Ms Kim J Koch
Ms Elena Lojevsky
Mrs Terry Neale
John Nickson & Simon Rew
Oliver & Josie Ogg
Ms Olga Ovenden
Mr James Pickford
Filippo Poli
Sir Bernard Rix
Mr Robert Ross Priscylla Shaw
Martin & Cheryl Southgate
Mr & Mrs G Stein
Dr Peter Stephenson
Joanna Williams
Christopher Williams
Ms Elena Ziskind
Anonymous donors
Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle
Mr & Mrs Robert Auerbach
Mrs Julia Beine
Harvey Bengen
Miss YolanDa Brown OBE
Miss Yousun Chae
Mr Julien Chilcott-Monk
Alison Clarke & Leo Pilkington
Mr Joshua Coger
Miss Tessa Cowie
Mr David Devons
Patricia Dreyfus
Mr Martin Fodder
Christopher Fraser OBE
Will Gold
Ray Harsant
Mr Peter Imhof
The Jackman Family
Mr David MacFarlane
Dame Jane Newell DBE
Mr Stephen Olton
Mari Payne
Mr David Peters
Ms Edwina Pitman
Mr & Mrs Graham & Jean Pugh
Mr Giles Quarme
Mr Kenneth Shaw
Mr Brian Smith
Ms Rika Suzuki
Tony & Hilary Vines
Dr June Wakefield
Mr John Weekes
Mr C D Yates
Elliott Bernerd
Alfonso Aijón
Kenneth Goode
Carol Colburn Grigor CBE
Pehr G Gyllenhammar
Robert Hill
Victoria Robey OBE
Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE
Timothy Walker CBE AM Laurence Watt
David & Yi Buckley
Gill & Garf Collins
William & Alex de Winton
Sonja Drexler
The Friends of the LPO
Irina Gofman
Roger Greenwood
Dr Barry Grimaldi
Mr & Mrs Philip Kan
John & Angela Kessler
Sir Simon Robey
Victoria Robey OBE
Bianca & Stuart Roden
Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp
Julian & Gill Simmonds
Eric Tomsett
Neil Westreich
Guy & Utti Whittaker
Barclays
Principal Bloomberg Carter-Ruck
French Chamber of Commerce
Tutti
Lazard
Natixis Corporate Investment Banking Walpole
Trialist
Sciteb
Gusbourne Estate
Jeroboams
Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd
OneWelbeck Steinway
Google Inc
ABO Trust
BlueSpark Foundation
The Boltini Trust
Borrows Charitable Trust
The Candide Trust
Cockayne – Grants for the Arts
The London Community Foundation
The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust
Dunard Fund
Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Foyle Foundation
Garrick Charitable Trust
John Horniman’s Children’s Trust
John Thaw Foundation
Institute Adam Mickiewicz
Kirby Laing Foundation
The Marchus Trust
The Radcliffe Trust
Rivers Foundation
Rothschild Foundation Scops Arts Trust
Sir William Boremans' Foundation
The John S Cohen Foundation
The Stanley Picker Trust
The Thriplow Charitable Trust
Vaughan Williams Foundation
The Victoria Wood Foundation
The Viney Family
The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust
and all others who wish to remain anonymous.
We are grateful to the Board of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who assist with fundraising for our activities in the United States of America:
Simon Freakley Chairman
Kara Boyle
Jon Carter
Jay Goffman
Alexandra Jupin
Natalie Pray
Damien Vanderwilt
Marc Wasserman
Elizabeth Winter
Catherine Høgel Hon. Director Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP
Natasha Tsukanova Co-Chair
Martin Höhmann Co-Chair
Mrs Irina Andreeva
Steven M. Berzin
Shashank Bhagat
Veronika Borovik-Khilchevskaya Marie-Laure Favre Gilly de Varennes de Bueil Aline Foriel-Destezet
Irina Gofman
Countess Dominique Loredan
Olivia Ma
George Ramishvili
Sophie Schÿler-Thierry
Jay Stein
Dr Catherine C. Høgel Chair
Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Vice-Chair
Martin Höhmann* President
Mark Vines* Vice-President
Kate Birchall*
David Buckley
David Burke
Bruno De Kegel
Deborah Dolce
Elena Dubinets
Tanya Joseph Hugh Kluger*
Katherine Leek*
Al MacCuish
Minn Majoe*
Tania Mazzetti*
Jamie Njoku-Goodwin
Andrew Tusa
Neil Westreich
Simon Freakley (Ex officio –Chairman of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra)
*Player-Director
Martin Höhmann Chairman
Christopher Aldren
Dr Manon Antoniazzi
Roger Barron
Richard Brass
Helen Brocklebank
YolanDa Brown OBE
Simon Burke
Simon Callow CBE
Desmond Cecil CMG
Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG
Andrew Davenport
Guillaume Descottes
Cameron Doley
Christopher Fraser OBE
Jenny Goldie-Scot
Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS
Marianna Hay MBE
Nicholas Hely-Hutchinson DL
Amanda Hill
Rehmet Kassim-Lakha
Jamie Korner
Geoff Mann
Clive Marks OBE FCA
Stewart McIlwham
Andrew Neill
Nadya Powell
Sir Bernard Rix
Victoria Robey OBE
Baroness Shackleton
Thomas Sharpe KC
Julian Simmonds
Barry Smith
Nicholas Snowman OBE Martin Southgate Chris Viney Laurence Watt Elizabeth Winter
Elena Dubinets Artistic Director
David Burke Chief Executive Chantelle Vircavs PA to the Executive
Concert Management
Roanna Gibson Concerts and Planning Director
Graham Wood Concerts and Recordings Manager
Maddy Clarke Tours Manager
Madeleine Ridout Glyndebourne and Projects Manager
Alison Jones Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator
Robert Winup Concerts and Tours Assistant
Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant
Andrew Chenery Orchestra Personnel Manager
Sarah Thomas Martin Sargeson Librarians
Laura Kitson Stage and Operations Manager
Stephen O’Flaherty Deputy Operations Manager
Felix Lo Orchestra and Auditions Manager
Frances Slack Finance Director
Dayse Guilherme Finance Manager
Jean-Paul Ramotar Finance and IT Officer
Education and Community Talia Lash Education and Community Director
Lowri Davies Hannah Foakes Education and Community Project Managers
Hannah Smith Education and Community Co-ordinator
Development
Laura Willis Development Director Rosie Morden Individual Giving Manager
Siân Jenkins Corporate Relations Manager
Anna Quillin Trusts and Foundations Manager
Katurah Morrish Development Events Manager
Eleanor Conroy Al Levin
Development Assistants
Nick Jackman Campaigns and Projects Director
Kirstin Peltonen Development Associate Marketing
Kath Trout Marketing and Communications Director Sophie Harvey Marketing Manager
Rachel Williams Publications Manager
Harrie Mayhew Website Manager
Gavin Miller Sales and Ticketing Manager
Ruth Haines Press and PR Manager
Greg Felton Digital Creative
Hayley Kim Marketing Co-ordinator
Alicia Hartley Marketing Assistant
Archives
Philip Stuart Discographer
Gillian Pole Recordings Archive
Professional Services
Charles Russell Speechlys Solicitors
Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors
Dr Barry Grimaldi
Honorary Doctor
Mr Chris Aldren Honorary ENT Surgeon Mr Simon Owen-Johnstone Hon. Orthopaedic Surgeon
London Philharmonic Orchestra 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP
Tel: 020 7840 4200 Box Office: 020 7840 4242 Email: admin@lpo.org.uk lpo.org.uk
Cover illustration
Simon Pemberton/Heart 2022/23 season identity
JMG Studio Printer John Good Ltd