The London Sinfonietta acknowledges Arts Council England for its support of the ensemble, as well as many other individuals, trusts and individuals who enable us to realise our ambitions. This concert is produced by London Sinfonietta. The broader work of the London Sinfonietta is significantly supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation and the John Ellerman Foundation.
HALL TWO, KINGS PLACE
8pm
Evening Concert
Judith Weir
Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album (9’)
James MacMillan
Love Bade Me Welcome –
World Public Premiere (13’)
Electra Perivolaris
A Wave of Voices – World Premiere (5’)
Peter Maxwell Davies
Hymn to Artemis Locheia (29’)
James MacMillan
After the Tryst (3’)
There is no interval in tonight’s performance
Jennifer France soprano
Mark van de Wiel clarinet
Simon Haram saxophone
London Sinfonietta
Surround sound recordings are playing as you enter the hall and between each of the pieces in the programme, created by Electra Perivolaris
Welcome to tonight’s concert at Kings Place. We are pleased to be part of their Scotland Unwrapped year.
This concert evolved around the passion our Principal clarinettist, Mark van de Wiel, has for the Peter Maxwell Davies clarinet quintet Hymn to Artemis Locheia. He will go on, with the other musicians this evening, to record this rarely heard and performed work for the Signum label over the weekend. He was also keen to include the Judith Weir, which is such an evocative and apposite piece for this programme. It was then a pleasure to put together the rest of the concert around these work.
The evening presented then a much needed opportunity for us to give the public world-premiere of Love Bade Me Welcome by Sir James MacMillan, which was especially commissioned by Matthew Pike and his family. It was also a pleasure to commission the new work from Electra, and to involve her in Kings Place’s installation of the d&b SoundScape system. We hope it will be an aural sensation and, with the surround sound moments linking the pieces together, may transport you as if to a music festival on a Scottish island. To reinforce this, we would very much like to invite you all to share in a small taste of whisky after the concert in the foyer.
We continue to value our association with Kings Place and the special projects we can make in performing here, often using the excellent sound and light facilities and the expertise of the great crew in the venue.
We are also working hard for our future, making the most of the now reduced funding from the Arts Council and finding new trusts, foundations and individuals to support our passion for this music. As has been the case for decades, we still work closely in partnership with schools and communities in and out of London to inspire them through composition, often reaching places where there is less opportunity. We continue to commission and will be doing so more over the coming seasons because of the enlightened support of the Cockayne Foundation and others. The London Sinfonietta project, which has shaped the contemporary music landscape in the UK for over 50 years, has we believe an exciting future and if you would like to be a closer part of it by supporting it, we would love to hear from you.
I hope you enjoy this evening
Andrew Burke
Chief Executive & Artistic Director London Sinfonietta
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Kings Place is an adventurous music and arts venue with an ambition to inspire local community and promote the power of the arts in our society. Its venues enable learning, discovery, debate and experiences that are powerfully intimate, enabling human connection between artists and audiences.
The dedicated and supportive team programmes a series of festivals and events, developing cross-arts collaborations and artistic relationships that deliver unforgettable live experiences.
Making new music is at the heart of what we do, from commissioning pieces from the best emerging and established composers, to collaborating with artists from other genres and disciplines. We have performed this music not only in concert halls but in clubs, factories, art galleries and even underground stations. Our recorded catalogue of these pieces over 50 years and more recently our online films have reached new audiences around the world. Since our founding in 1968, we have commissioned over 470 pieces of new music, and premiered many hundreds more.
The London Sinfonietta has held commissioning relationships with some of the great names of the post-war period, at the heart of which was the life-long partnership with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who created over 20 new works for the ensemble of different scale for both concert hall and for the stage. This tradition of building relationships with great composers has led to works by Sir John Tavener, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elisabeth Lutyens, Oliver Knussen, Sir George Benjamin, Elliot Carter, Tōru Takemitsu, Simon Bainbridge, Simon Holt, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Wolfgang Rihm, Witold Lutosławski, Colin Matthews, Hans Abrahamsen, James Dillon, James MacMillan, Tom Adès, Julian Anderson, Gavin Bryars and Gérard Grisey. In the 21st Century, this tradition has continued to include Judith Weir, Dai Fujikura, Unsuk Chin, Steve Reich, Heiner Goebbels, Tansy Davies, Thomas Larcher, Louis Andriessen, Anna Meredith, Gerald Barry, Samantha Fernando, Michel van der Aa, Karin Rehnqvist, Philip Venables, Tom Coult, Hannah Kendall and George Lewis.
As well as our ongoing series of commissions offered to established composers, we have evolved different projects to inspire composition in those who are just starting out or are developing their practice.
Composition Challenges teach the rudiments of composition in an engaging and visual manner to school students. This season we are working schools in person and online around the UK, and performing some of the compositions in our concerts.
In 2023, London Sinfonietta launched the fifth edition of our Writing the Future scheme. With over 280 applicants, four early-career music creators were selected. With mentoring and feedback these composers will create new pieces culminating in main-stage performances in the 2024/25 season and beyond.
In February 2024, the London Sinfonietta was awarded £100,000 grant by Cockayne Grants for the Arts to continue our vital work in commissioning new music. This grant will see the creation of new works for the 2025/26 and 2026/28 seasons.
These three pieces form a very short instrumental opera (lasting about nine minutes) based on the life of James Reid, a bagpiper in Prince Charlie’s Jacobite army, who was captures by the English in 1746 and executed, after a judge had classified the bagpipes as a weapon.
The melodies were built out of the basic intervals of Scottish pipe tunes: the piano is used to reinforce and modulate the clarinet melody, rather than to accompany it.
The three pieces are: Salute; Nocturne (in this case, a fast, nervous march); and Lament.
Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album was written in 1984 for the clarinettist Kevin Corner, who commissioned much new clarinet music and encouraged many composers to write it, before his untimely death at the age of 35.
© Judith Weir
Tonight we are presenting this work with its suggested alternative instrumentation of soprano saxophone, Eb clarinet, and basset clarinet in A.
Love (III)
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Love Bade Me Welcome was commissioned by Matthew and John Pike for Margaret and Stephen Pike. It is scored for soprano, two violins and two cellos. It is a setting of the mystical, eucharistic poem by George Herbert (1593-1633). I am sometimes asked to set poems by Herbert and some of the other English mystical poets of that era but the resulting works are usually choral pieces and initially used for liturgy. This piece is different - not just in its scoring but in the opportunity provided to take the music in a very different direction.
First of all the instrumental ensemble accompanying the soprano is unusual. It is not an expected string quartet - the viola is replaced with another cello. Consequently the psychological texture is different to what might have been in an “ecclesial” choral setting and allows the music to inhabit a different subconscious context. The strings bring a mystery and a range of instrumental colour and shadings which open up a probing and ever-shifting underlay and background for Herbert’s strange sacred scenariothe encounter between the subject and his loving God who shares his very transubstantiated self as self-giving food.
Herbert’s text provides a stream of consciousness for the instrumental ensemble which accompanies the singer but also departs into more dreamy, independent territory, presenting prelude, interludes, episodes and postlude round about the words.
© James MacMillan
- George Herbert
This piece was composed for the London Sinfonietta’s Love Lines performance at London’s Kings Place, during the Scotland Unwrapped season. It fits within a specially devised sonic landscape I created for the Kings Place d&b surround sound speaker system, framing the concert and transitioning between the separate works which make up the programme. All of the soundscapes are created using recordings I made around my home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and its surrounding islands and areas, as well as in Gaelic storytelling and folk music sessions in Glasgow and in Edinburgh. This is intended to transport the audience into the atmospheres of a Scottish island, through both natural and man made sounds.
In the work for soprano saxophone and soundscape, A Wave of Voices, I draw upon multiple West of Scotland and Gaelic influences, including psalm singing, clarsach playing, and the inflections of Gaelic folk singing, reflecting on the strong sense of love for community which can be found on islands like Arran and which is often reflected in communal music making.
© Electra Perivolaris
Peter Maxwell Davies spent a day at a gynaecological clinic in London at the invitation of Professor Ian Craft, who commissioned the piece in memory of his father. During his time there he met many people and shared in some of the deep emotions they experienced.
Artemis Locheia is the Greek Goddess of Fertility. In this one movement, 25 minute work, the joy and exuberance experienced by couples when pregnancy is confirmed is captured. There are many tempo changes and two extended cadenzas for the clarinet. The work was premiered by Dmitri Ashkenazy and the Brodsky Quartet.
© Schott Music
In 1984 I set William Soutar’s love poem The Tryst to music in the style of an old Scottish ballad. This I sang in folk clubs and bars around Scotland with my old folk group Broadstone. The composition and performances of this song made a lasting impression on me as it felt as if I had tapped into a deep reservoir of shared tradition as my setting was quite faithful to the old ballad style.
Four years later I started developing this music into something else. In After The Tryst I elongated and ornamented the original melody into a virtuosic and highly expressive miniature for violin with piano accompaniment. The original harmonic outline is still adhered to and emphasized by the most simple series of arpeggiated chords on the piano. This work was the initial sketch for Búsqueda and Tryst.
© James MacMillan
A previous Emerging Artist at Scottish Opera, British soprano Jennifer France was winner of the 2018 Critics’ Circle Emerging Talent Award.
A prolific contemporary artist, she has sung Gerald Barry’s The Eternal Recurrence with the Britten Sinfonia, which was recorded for Signum, and in the world premiere of Brett Dean’s In This Brief Moment with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Nick Collon. She made her BBC Proms debut (2017) and Salzburg Festival debut (2019) singing Pascal Dusapin’s Medeamaterial with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. She also made her Edinburgh International Festival debut with Hans Abrahamsen’s Let me tell you (Ryan Wigglesworth) and returned to the BBC Proms with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner for Ligeti’s Requiem. Contemporary opera includes the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen for Opera Holland Park, Alice in Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, First Niece Peter Grimes, and Lessons in Love and Violence for The Royal Opera House, La Princesse in Philip Glass’ Orphée for English National Opera, and Ophelia in Brett Dean’s Hamlet for Glyndebourne On Tour.
Mark van de Wiel is established as one of Britain’s leading clarinettists. As principal clarinettist with the Philharmonia Orchestra (since 2000), with the London Sinfonietta (since 2002), London Chamber Orchestra (since 1997), a founder member of Endymion, and as a soloist, he appears at major venues throughout the world. He works closely with leading composers and conductors and has given many world and UK premieres, including works by Carter, Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle, and a concerto by Joseph Phibbs, which he commissioned jointly with the Philharmonia. Mark was born in Northampton and studied at Oxford and the RCM. He has been awarded Honorary Membership by the Royal Academy of Music, where he is a professor, and an Honorary Doctorate by Northampton University.
Recently Mark premiered a new clarinet quintet and solo pieces by Phibbs, commissioned jointly with Jouko Heikura, at Kings Place with the Brodsky Quartet, and has jointly commissioned with the Philharmonia a new clarinet concerto by Jonathan Dove for a 2026 premiere with Santtu-Matias Rouvali at the Royal Festival Hall.
24/25 sees Jennifer make her Opéra National de Paris debut singing Beatrice in Dusapin’s Il viaggio, Dante conducted by Kent Nagano and First Niece at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.
These, together with a programme of Peter Maxwell Davies recorded with the London Sinfonietta, will be among a number of new releases by Mark on the Signum label in 2025 and 2026.
Currently Simon is Professor of Saxophone at the Royal Academy of Music. He was Professor of Saxophone at the Guildhall for over 10 years, was Visiting Professor of Saxophone at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music, and has given masterclasses at the Royal College of Music and the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music.
As a soloist, Simon has appeared with the London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Of St John’s, Soloists of the Royal Opera House, East of England Orchestra, Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has released CDs with Black Box Music, Naxos, Virgin Classics, NMC, Cala Records and Sospiro.
Mark van de Wiel* clarinet/Eb clarinet/basset clarinet
Simon Haram* saxophone
David Alberman violin
Hilaryjane Parker violin
Paul Silverthorne* viola
Sally Pendlebury cello
Sarah Nicolls piano
Juliet Welchman cello
*London Sinfonietta Principal Player
Our ethos is to experiment constantly with the art form, working with the world’s best composers, performers, and artists to produce projects often involving film, theatre, dance and art. We challenge audience perceptions by commissioning work which addresses issues in today’s society, and we work closely with our audience as creators, performers and curators of the events we stage. We support and encourage musical creativity and the skills of composition in schools and communities across the UK as well as working in partnership with Higher Education Institutions to give emerging musicians the opportunity to experience specialist training in understanding and playing contemporary classical music.
The London Sinfonietta is one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles. Formed in 1968, our commitment to making new music has seen us commission over 470 works and premiere many hundreds more. Resident at the Southbank Centre and Artistic Associate at Kings Place, with a busy touring schedule across the UK and abroad, London Sinfonietta’s Principal Players are some of the finest musicians in the world.
The London Sinfonietta has also broken new ground by launching its own digital channel, featuring video programmes and podcasts about new music. We created Steve Reich’s Clapping Music App, a participatory rhythm game that has been downloaded over 600,000 times worldwide, while our back catalogue of recordings has helped cement our world-wide reputation.
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We would like to thank the following for their support:
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Principal Players
Michael Cox flute (supported by Michael and Patricia McLaren-Turner)
Gareth Hulse oboe (supported by John Hodgson)
Mark van de Wiel clarinet
Simon Haram saxophone
Byron Fulcher trombone
Jonathan Morton violin (supported by Paul & Sybella Zisman)
Paul Silverthorne viola
London Sinfonietta Council
Fiona Thompson Chair
Sud Basu
Andrew Burke
Tim Gill (principal player)
Annabel Graham Paul
Kathryn Knight
Arber Koci
Paul Silverthorne (principal player)
James Thomas
Ben Weston
Stephen Reid
Mark van de Wiel (principal player) Fay Sweet
London Sinfonietta Staff
Andrew Burke
Chief Executive & Artistic Director
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Sinfonietta Circle
Susan Costello
Susan Grollet
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Andy Spiceley
Paul & Sybella Zisman
Tim Gill cello
Enno Senft double bass
(supported by Anthony Mackintosh)
Helen Tunstall harp
David Hockings percussion (supported by Andy Spiceley)
The London Sinfonietta is grateful to its auditors and accountants
MGR Weston Kay LL
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For full details and to book visit londonsinfonietta.org.uk or southbankcentre. co.uk and join our e-list to receive further details of workshops and open rehearsals throughout the year.
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