MOOT - music of our time presents
A CONCERT ON THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY IN EUROPE DAY
Kantanti Ensemble conducted by Lee Reynolds
8pm Friday, May 8, 2015 The Music Room, Brighton Royal Pavilion
Artistic Director: Norman Jacobs
In the presence of the Mayor & Mayoress of Brighton & Hove
A CONCERT ON THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY IN EUROPE DAY 8pm Friday, May 8, 2015 The Music Room, Brighton Royal Pavilion Music by British, American, Austrian and Russian composers reflecting Remembrance, Reconciliation, Peace and Harmony Martin James Bartlett pianoforte Louise Moseley soprano Kantanti Ensemble conducted by Lee Reynolds
FROM THE MAYOR OF BRIGHTON Though I find it incredible from this great perspective, I was just a four year old boy on VE Day. As you might expect my memories of that time are somewhat fuzzy, but I do remember a huge street party on Halland Road and lots and lots of jelly. Given the very steep rise of Halland Road it’s a wonder that all the jelly didn’t end up at the bottom of the street … but perhaps that’s the four year old me worrying? As I grew and came to realise just what Victory in Europe meant, the date itself grew in significance; I was close enough to the generation of people who had experienced loss and sacrifice to know what it meant to them and I began to appreciate the reasons for their joy and relief. By the time I was a young man I certainly appreciated how much had been given and why; and I developed a strong sense of gratitude. To fight against tyranny, hatred, fascism and win was a remarkable achievement, particularly when one considers the odds. To expect generations of people born so long after those events to really appreciate
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what that meant is folly, so it is vitally important that we remember; it is vitally important that we show respect and it is vitally important that we learn. VE Day and the celebrations that came with it were the emotional outpouring of a world going mad with relief, of peoples freed from fear and anxiety; seventy years later many of those fears and anxieties remain; and for some they are very real. I themed my Mayoral year as one of ‘Peace and Harmony’ and my hope is that in remembering VE Day we will pursue peace and harmony for all peoples; whether they be here or abroad, whatever their race, religion or creed and whether they are a seventy four year old Mayor or a four year old boy.
Cllr Brian Fitch, Mayor of Brighton & Hove
A CONCERT ON THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF VE-DAY 1945 Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony was nominated by Russian concert audiences as the piece which best expressed their feelings after the prolonged tragedy of the Second World War. This and the other pieces in this evening’s programme represents four of the principal nations involved in the Second World War, music by British, American, Austrian and Russian composers. Together, they offer the possibility of reflecting the ethos of Remembrance, Reconciliation, Peace & Harmony underscored by the Mayor of Brighton & Hove in his inaugural address. With the mayor, I share the belief that the arts can be used as an agent for change in the world, something which is as crucial today as ever. This evening’s concert marks the 70th anniversary of the exact day on which Allied Victory in Europe was declared. It is one of the last times for surviving Second World War veterans and their families to mark an event which shaped Europe geographically, politically and, most importantly, paved the way for the multicultural global village of the post-war period. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, in countries occupied and controlled by the Third Reich, music was being employed as a tool of propaganda and mass deception. Nazi leaders made the dubious assertion of German superiority based on cultural supremacy, demonstrated in music through the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. While so-called ‘Entartete’ (‘degenerate’) modernist music was banned, officers of the extermination camps relaxed to the soothing sound of classical music as an anaesthetic to their wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews, Roma & Sinti, homosexuals and political prisoners, acts which were often accompanied by prisoners forced to play popular marches and tangos. The world had turned in on itself.
This evening’s concert features the Kantanti Ensemble, comprising young emerging professional musicians, founded by the talented conductor Lee Reynolds. Thanks to them and tonight’s soloists for participating in this concert. The hard earned task of the instrumentalist involves discipline and much unseen work to make music. Thank you also to Brighton Royal Pavilion’s management and staff for the use of these beautiful surroundings, which played a central role in the care of wounded British Empire soldiers from India during the First World War.
Norman Jacobs, MOOT - music of our time Artistic Director READ Music of Another World (Northwestern University Press, 1989) by Szymon Laks Inherit the Truth (Vallentine-Mitchell, 1996) by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch Music Wars 1937-1945 (East & West Publishing, 2012) by Patrick Bade Forbidden Music (Yale University Press, 2013) by Michael Haas
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FRANK BRIDGE LAMENT (for Catherine) Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Lusitania on 7th May, 1915 Frank Bridge composed the Lament for strings on June 14, 1915 in memory of Catherine, a young friend aged 9 who with her family was drowned in the sinking of RMS Lusitania. The Cunard passenger liner was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat of the southern coast of Ireland, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. The work, one of his most effective miniatures, had its first performance at a Queens Hall promenading concert on September 15, 1915, conducted by Sir Henry Wood. The string and solo piano versions were both published that year. LISTEN Charles Ives’s Orchestral Set No. 2 concludes with a movement recounting the composer’s experience waiting for a train in New York City as the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came through. The music re-evokes the sounds of passengers assembled on the platform singing the hymn In the Sweet By and By in time to a barrel organ which played that tune.
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Frank Bridge was born in Brighton on 26, February 1879. The tenth of twelve children, he grew up at 7 North Road, learning to play the violin from the age of 6, before going studying at London’s Royal College of Music. Bridge came from a musical family. His father, originally a lithographer, gave up his former trade to become a fulltime musician and director at Brighton’s Empire Theatre. He founded the English String Quartet, one of the world’s oldest continuously constituted chamber groups, widely known for its broad repertory and emphasis on British music. The Sea was Bridge’s best known orchestral work during his lifetime, a musical portrait of the seascape next to his home city, which he revisited. The Sea had an impact on the young Benjamin Britten who chose Bridge to be his teacher after hearing the work. Britten wrote several pieces in tribute to his friend and mentor and played and recorded his music regularly. Britten also admired Bridge’s pacifism. Bridge wrote several pieces in memory of composer friends killed during the First World War and three piano pieces for left hand alone for his friend Douglas Fox, a musiciansoldier whom had lost his right arm in battle. Bridge died in 1941.
Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Ethel Bridge
Image of the MOOT - music of our time plaque at 7 North Road, Brighton unveiled by Mayor Cllr Denise Cobb in May, 2014. Plaque supported by Oakley Residential and Sanctuary Housing Group. Original image from Uneasy Listening by John Minnion.
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SAMUEL BARBER KNOXVILLE: SUMMER OF 1915
‘We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I live there so successfully disguised to myself as a child...’ Composed in 1947, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24 portrays an innocent time before the industrial global conflict of the two worlds wars. The text is taken from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee, looking at the distant past through the eyes of a child. Barber and Agee were born in 1910 and 1909 respectively, young children when America entered the First World War. During the Second World War, Barber joined the Army Air Corps; Agee worked as a writer and film critic for Time magazine. 1915 was a significant year for James Agee. It was the last year his family was intact; his father died in an automobile accident in 1916, and the remaining family members left Knoxville, never to return. According to Agee, it was the point around which his life began to evolve. When Barber was writing his Knoxville, his father’s was rapidly approaching death. Barber had been struck by Agee’s text, the two men clearly shared a sense of nostalgia and atavistic kind of inspiration; they both appear to have written their pieces quickly and without much revision. It is likely that Barber was also compelled by the feelings of loss and revulsion after the war. So much so, that Samuel Barber withdrew his 1942 Second Symphony, commissioned by the army, requesting the entire destruction of the score and parts. His explanation was that ‘it was not a good work’, implying that this piece was an empty piece of official war propaganda. Knoxville, on the other hand, is an intensely private work while remaining one of Barber’s best-loved and most enduring works.
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Photograph of James Agee’s childhood home in Knoxville, Tennessee
James Agee Samuel Barber
Louise Moseley soprano
Louise began studying singing from the time she was six years old. Encouraged to explore opera by her tutor Elizabeth Brice she undertook leading roles at Glyndebourne Opera in productions of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Louise has also appeared in musicals by the Brighton Theatre Group, including We Will Rock You and Les Misérables. Louise intends study at music college in order to pursue the vocation of a professional opera singer. She looks forward to one day playing her favourite role, that of Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor K.466 Piano Concerto No. 20 from 1785 was Mozart’s first concerto in a minor key and was his own favourite among the nearly thirty keyboard concertos he wrote. Beethoven shared this opinion and Haydn, on the occasion of the second performance declared to Mozart’s father Leopold that his 29-year-old son was ‘the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name’.
Numerous composers have written virtuoso cadenzas for it. Martin will be playing the Johann Nepomuk Hummel cadenza in the first movement (played by Glenn Gould in his recording of the concerto) and the traditional Beethoven cadenza in the last movement. The tragic, often sombre mood of the first movement evokes Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni and looks forward to the Romantic expressionism of later composers in the application of chromatic movement and periods of stormy instability prior to the work’s closure in a triumphant D Major. The first performance took place at the Mehlgrube Casino in Vienna on February 11, 1785, with the composer as soloist.
INTERVAL - 20 Minutes
Mozart by his brother-in-law Joseph Lange, 1782
READ Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon (Yale University Press, 2010) by Erik Levi
Concerto entry from Mozart’s personal thematic catalogue
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Martin James Bartlett was awarded the title of
BBC Young Musician 2014. His winning performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with conductor Kirill Karabits and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, received overwhelming acclaim from Edinburgh’s Usher Hall audience and from those tuning into the live recording broadcast on BBC4 and BBC Radio 3. Martin receives expert advice and guidance from Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) through an aftercare scheme for the finalists of BBC Young Musician Competition.
YCAT identifies outstanding young musicians and chamber ensembles, promoting and supporting them through the challenging period between university study and a full-time professional career. Once selected, artists receive between 3 and 5 years of full artist management, providing guidance through strategic diary and repertoire planning, career advice and support, and the provision of high quality publicity material in order to build their professional public profile. Towards the end of their time with YCAT, we aim to pass on a fully formed performing artist to suitable commercial management.
Identifying, nurturing, promoting and supporting exceptional young artists
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PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor Pathétique Opus 74 (1893)
‘Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.’ Tchaikovsky 1. Adagio – Allegro non troppo – Andante – Allegro vivo – Andante come prima 2. Allegro con grazia 3. Allegro molto vivace 4. Adagio lamentoso – Andante Within a week of conducting the premiere of this symphony, Tchaikovsky drank a glass of unboiled tap water – a reckless act in Saint Petersburg in a year when countless cases of cholera had been reported – and four days later he was dead. At the time, Tchaikovsky was one of the great figures in music, beloved far beyond his native Russia, and at the age of 53, his death came as a shock. The suspicious circumstances surrounding his last days, coupled with the tragic tone of his last symphony produced speculation that still persists today, and inextricably linked the symphony to his death in a way perhaps only shared by Mozart’s Requiem. As scholars have learned more about Tchaikovsky’s suppressed homosexuality, the temptation to read this symphony as the composer’s heartbreaking confession of a painful, repressed life has inevitably proved irresistible. Even the composer, who didn’t want to divulge the symphony’s meaning, admitted before the premiere that it had something of the character of a requiem – indeed the coda of the first movement, in a restful B major, quotes a Russian Orthodox chant for the dead. More striking still is the decision to end the symphony with a slow and mournful finale, trailing off into silence at the end, with just cellos and basses playing pppp. More than a century later, devotees of the now-debunked notion that Tchaikovsky was ordered to commit suicide in order that his secret affair with the nephew of Duke Stenbock-Thurmor should not be made public, were to make much of the slowly fading final bars as a depiction of suicide.
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At the premiere, the reception was muted; applause was half-hearted, the audience seemed not to know what to make of this sober, gloomy music, and the overriding impression was one of bewilderment. The following morning, the composer told his brother Modest that the symphony needed a title. Modest first suggested Tragic and then Pathétique, which in Russian carries a meaning closer to ‘passionate’, or ‘full of emotion and suffering’. Tchaikovsky agreed at once, and made the addition to the title page, but soon had second thoughts: however Tchaikovsky’s publisher, who knew the marketing value of a good title, ignored the composer’s urgent request a day later that it simply be printed as Symphony No. 6. A slow introduction, in the ‘wrong’ key of E minor, works its way into a scurrying moto perpetuo B minor, before the energy dissipates and a soaring second theme emerges, to be played “tenderly, songfully, and elastically”, which itself floats weightlessly away to a wisp of sound, marked pppppp. The full force of the orchestra shatters this as a demonic fugue unfolds, arriving at a heartrending plateau of tormented dissonance. The closing moments are soothed by the return of the magical tender melody, as walking pizzicato scales in the strings bring the turbulent movement to rest. The central movements are of a lighter disposition. The second movement is a graceful but undanceable waltz, famously set in 5/4 time, but containing a trio section of typically Russian bleakness. The third
movement is both a scherzo and a march, which develops into an ending of such bombast that, even when dulled by familiarity, feels like the true ending of a three-movement symphony. It is followed by a gesture of such contrast that it has the power to shock even today: the finale begins with a cry of despair, and despite a warm and consoling theme begun by the violins against the heartbeat of a horn ostinato, the mood only continues to darken, building to ragefuelled intensity. A cavernous abyss opens up with a single soft stroke of the tam-tam, and marks the point of no return, the music fragmenting and disintegrating over a fading, faltering pulse. Notes © Lee Reynolds 2014
Lee Reynolds, Conductor & Kantanti Ensemble Director Lee Reynolds is an Arts Foundation Award winning conductor and has made his debuts at the Barbican Centre, the Berlin Philharmonie and Glyndebourne. Lee has conducted orchestral recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra at all of the major London studios, including Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto at Henry Wood Hall, and an album of his own works at Abbey Road Studios, appearing on the Sessionworks, Sony, Claudio and Naxos labels. Lee is Music Director of Glyndebourne Youth Opera, has conducted the premières of three new opera commissions there, was Assistant Conductor on Don Giovanni in the 2014 Festival, and was part of the team to win an RPS Award for Imago. Lee is also Director of The Kantanti Ensemble, recognised as one of the most exciting young professional orchestras of the time, giving performances and running community performance projects throughout the year. His orchestrations have been performed at national concert halls across Europe, Japan, China, Australia and the USA, by orchestras including the LPO, the LSO, and MDR Leipzig.
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KANTANTI ENSEMBLE ‘Classical music on your doorstep doesn’t get any better than this.’ The Argus The group was formed in 2009 on the cross-channel ferry from St Malo to Portsmouth after a concert tour of Brittany - there was a shared desire amongst the musicians on the tour to make some really highclass concerts happen, and to create a group with a personality - something energetic and attentiongrabbing. The group made its London debut in August 2010, and has grown ever since, performing the critically acclaimed UK premiere of Lotti’s Requiem, and specialises in bringing large-scale repertoire to smaller venues in reduced orchestrations that lose little of the original punch and colour, helping audiences to hear great orchestral masterworks nearby in their community. The Kantanti Ensemble is a group of young professional musicians founded by conductor Lee Reynolds, which gives performances throughout the year. The finest young instrumentalists are drawn together from an area that covers London, Sussex and Kent, and stretches as far as Oxford, Birmingham and Manchester.
MUSICIANS VIOLIN 1
Molly Cockburn, leader Catrin Pryce-Jones, co-leader Charlotte Ward-Caddle Emma Purslow Ana Vale
VIOLIN 2
Sophie Belinfante, principal Nick Hardisty Hannah Priestley Camino Carrión
VIOLA
Raisa Zapryanova, principal Vic Strudwick Emily Hoyle
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CELLOS
HORN
George Hoult, principal Hannah Morrow James Douglas
Edward Griffiths Catie Igoe
BASS
Dominic Hammett Jon Reed
Alison Shamrock, principal Giuseppe Ciraso Calì
FLUTE & PICCOLO Anna Thomas
OBOE & COR ANGLAIS Rebecca Watt Ellie Doddford
CLARINET
Will Knight Emily Anderson
BASSOON
Catherine Bennett Tom Hickman
TRUMPET
TROMBONE Dominic Hales
TIMPANI & PERCUSSION
Alun McNeil-Watson Richard Cartlidge
HARP
Elizabeth McNulty
ORGAN
Ash Beauchamp
THANK YOU Without the support of the following organisations, this series would not have been able to take place:
Arts Council England Brighton & Hove City Council Brighton Royal Pavilion Oakley Residential Thanks also to: YCAT Trust Rutland Piano Services Brighton Fringe MOOT Volunteers: Thomas Jones Will Kemp Hind Nemmassi
Special thanks to: The Mayor and Mayoress of Brighton & Hove Richard Butcher Tuset, Brighton & Hove Council Janita Bagshawe, Brighton Pavilion Trish Baker, Brighton Pavilion Martin Warren, Mayor’s Office Lee Reynolds, Kantanti Ensemble Helen Pearce, YCAT James Epps, Oakley Residential Ackerman Music, Brighton Maxx Media Philip Botteley, Rutland Piano Services Gemma Prior-Shooter, Brighton Piano Warehouse Martin Russell, Cathedral Organs Lynn Rashid, St Nicholas Church
Brighthelm Community Centre Brighton Jubilee Library Maff Littlemore, Draw Blank Design Glyndebourne Opera Hardings Catering Sarah Harvey, Brighton Hove Photography Mail Boxes Etc. GENIE Print Terry Bryan, University of Sussex, Hannah Chilton & Sarah Perryman, Brighton Fringe
MOOT Friends & Patrons and all the musicians involved in this project
MOOT is a non-profit group promoting contemporary music arts education MOOT – music of our time, Community Base, 113 Queens Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 3XG Patrons: Pierre Boulez, Alexander Waugh, Dr Paul Whittaker OBE (Music and the Deaf) Committee: Norman Jacobs, Lynn Rashid, Thomas Jones, Will Kemp, Dr Adam Swayne
Programme photo credits: Glyndebourne Opera (Louise Moseley), Lusitania medallion © Imperial War Museum. National Portrait Gallery (Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten). All performer images unless credited are the property of the individuals. Historical images are sourced via Wikipedia. We apologise for any unintentional credit errors or omissions. They will be corrected in future editions.
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