NCH Season 2024-2025: NSO perform Dukas, Chopin & Tchaikovsky
National Symphony Orchestra
Jaime Martín conductor
Yeol Eum Son piano
Friday 13 December 2024, 7.30pm
National Concert Hall
Presented by Paul Herriott, RTÉ lyric fm
Programme
Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice / 12’
Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 / 32’
Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Suite / 38’
JANUARY 2025
NATIONAL CONCERT HALL , DUBLIN
NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | STEFAN GEIGER conductor
*Broadcast live on RTÉ lyric Live on RTÉ lyric fm
PLEASE NOTE: The NCH does not permit photography or videography during the performance (without prior permission). We kindly ask you to refrain from using any recording equipment for the duration of tonight’s performance.
CEO
Robert Read
NCH Board Members
Maura McGrath Chair | James Cavanagh | Cliona Doris
Rebecca Gageby | Hilary Hough | Peter McKenna
Niamh Murray | Michelle O’Sullivan | Don Thornhill
Patron
Michael D. Higgins President of Ireland
Fáilte Welcome
I am so happy to be back in Dublin to play again with the wonderful and amazing National Symphony Orchestra! So many memories come to my mind of the very special years I had with all of you! For this concert we are playing music by Dukas, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.
I watched the film Fantasia by Walt Disney when I was a young boy; I remember my father explaining to me about how Dukas used the orchestra colours to show us the story. Listening to the bassoons we can almost see the brooms carrying buckets of water, while Mickey Mouse is trying to stop the spell that brought them to life. I have always loved this great piece of music that surprisingly doesn’t appear very often in the concert halls around the world and showcases the incredible sounds a symphony orchestra can produce.
For the Chopin Piano Concerto we are lucky to have Yeol Eum Son as our soloist; she is just fantastic. I have performed with her on several occasions in Europe and Australia and look forward to meeting Yeol again in Dublin.
We will finish our concert with a suite from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, with some of the most beautiful melodies ever written and a sound that always warms my heart. I can’t wait to be back with the orchestra again and to share with you this beautiful music just a few days before Christmas.
¡Feliz Navidad!
Jaime Martín
Programme Notes
Paul Dukas (1865-1935)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Although the intensely self-critical Paul Dukas destroyed many of his compositions just before his death at the age of 69 in 1935, those few works that survive reveal one of the most distinctive – if also inconsistent – voices of his generation.
Besides occasional stagings of his ballet La Péri and even rarer productions of the opera Ariane et barbe-bleue (Ariane and Bluebeard) Dukas is today best remembered for his richly coloured symphonic poem L’apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice).
Although popular in the concert hall, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is familiar to a much wider audience largely due to its use by Walt Disney in his 1940 animated film Fantasia (and again in Fantasia 2000). There, Mickey Mouse took the role of the eponymous apprentice eager to lighten his domestic duties by casting a spell on a broom to help him fetch water. Near disastrous consequences ensue, the Sorcerer returning just in time to avoid his home and hapless helper being washed away by an army of self-duplicating brooms emptying pails brimming over with water.
That the strong and abiding imprint of Fantasia on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has made too many listeners regard it as primarily a piece for children is to overlook the achievement of the score. With astonishing precision, every note seems to evoke a vivid and vital image while the jaunty orchestration marches unstoppably on into chaos with an altogether beguiling ease that enables Dukas’ highly sophisticated design to cast its magical and mirthful spell just as readily on adult audiences.
Dukas composed the work in 1897. Although the legend of an errant wizard’s pupil stretches back into antiquity – the Second Century AD Greek author Lucian’s The Lie-Fancier is the earliest written version – Dukas based The Sorcerer’s Apprentice on the poem of the same name by Goethe published in 1797.
Closely following the events in Goethe’s poem, it bears all the qualities of ‘programme music’ – a pronounced feature of mid- and late-Romanticism in the latter years of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries – where music deliberately described and illustrated a specific narrative (the hallucinogenic delirium of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, for example, or Richard Strauss’s fauxautobiographical Till Eulenspiegel).
In essence, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an extended scherzo full of evocatively bold, broad orchestral brush strokes and dazzling instrumental details delivered with an impressionistic brilliance tightly, seamlessly, woven together with knowingly infectious wit.
The magical atmosphere is conjured straight away in wavering violins, twitching flutes and plucked harps. The supernatural atmosphere conjured by unusual (for 1897) chords soon infects muted brass and the ghostly sparkles of a glockenspiel. But, eschewing something more Gothic, Dukas instead takes a decidedly humorous view of magic gone wrong, most memorably in the trio of comically pompous bassoons (later joined by a menacingly portly double bassoon) that depicts the wilful broom summoned to life by magic.
Frédéric Chopin (1810-49)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21
I. Maestoso
II. Larghetto
III. Allegro vivace
Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto was actually his first such work. Aged 19 when he began it in the autumn of 1829, it was first performed in Warsaw on St Patrick’s Day in 1830. He had barely turned 20 when he started his E minor Concerto (No.1) the following month. They were to be the last substantial orchestral statements by a composer soon to become a master of the solo piano miniature. As such, they are riddled with riddles.
The confusion about their irregular numbering resulted from an enthusiastic publisher rushing into print the E minor Concerto before its earlier F minor sibling. Less easily explained is why Chopin then all but abandoned large-scale form in favour of the atomised piano pieces that would come to define him. It seems all the more peculiar given his aspiration for the concertos as a ‘perhaps overbold but at least not ignoble desire to create a new world for myself’.
The riddle of his abrupt shift of focus must be left unanswered. Tellingly, however, both concertos were composed shortly before Chopin left his native Poland never to set foot on home soil again. Both speak of his fervent connection with his Polish roots.
They also speak of his musical inheritance. Caught on the cusp between the Classical and the Romantic eras, the concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel were key in shaping Chopin’s concept of the form. Other voices are heard: the Austrian pianist, composer and piano manufacturer Friedrich Kalkbrenner (to whom Chopin dedicated his First Piano Concerto) and the Irish-born John Field, whose nocturnes would influence Chopin’s later development.
There is something operatic about both concertos, the piano an unabashedly grandstanding soloist in the Second, placed firmly centre stage as an opera orchestra would spotlight a leading tenor or soprano, and carrying itself with all the bel canto élan found in the operas of Chopin’s contemporaries, Rossini and Bellini.
The first movement opens with a Hummel-like double exposition by piano and orchestra, strings heralding the initial theme, a second introduced by solo oboe and echoed by first violins. The piano lights upon those twin themes with gleefully inventive rhetorical relish to produce a dazzling coloratura display.
In the ensuing Larghetto the highly-wrought arioso-like piano line encourages it to sing with a lachrymose intensity worthy of its unrequited inspiration, the soprano Konstancja Gładkowska.
‘Six months have elapsed,’ Chopin wrote tremulously to a friend, ‘and I have not yet exchanged a syllable with her of whom I dream about every night. While my thoughts were with her, I composed the Adagio for my concerto’.
There the intensity of unrealised love is underlined by the greater role afforded the orchestra – strikingly so in the intimate counterpointed bassoon commentary towards the end – and by the opulent lyricism of the piano writing.
The infectious finale returns to the more rewarding love of Chopin’s homeland. Its energetic mazurka-like theme in the opening piano passage is echoed by a second subject of comparable vivacity. A late flourish of col legno strings and a dramatic shift from minor to major heralded by solo horn notwithstanding, the piano dominates throughout with due theatricality, reclaiming the limelight as it races towards and through a virtuosic coda before a dramatic orchestral flourish brings the curtain down.
INTERVAL
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93)
Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20a
I. Scene
II. Waltz
III. Dance of the Swans
IV. Scene
V. Danse Espagnole
VI. Danse Napolitane
VII. Hungarian Dance – Czárdás
VIII. Mazurka
IX. Final Scene
Despite the failure of Swan Lake’s premiere in Moscow in 1877, Tchaikovsky’s first ballet score heralded the dawn of a golden age for Russian dancers and choreographers.
A work of symphonic scale and complexity shot through with surging emotions, driving drama and intense orchestral colours, it is steeped in Russian folklore. Composed to a commission from the Bolshoi Ballet for ‘a fantastic subject from knightly times’, it tells the fateful tale of the beautiful Princess Odette – cursed by a sorcerer to become a swan by day – who falls in love with Prince Siegfried. When he is tricked into declaring his love for another, Odette decides to end her life to escape her unbearable spell. When Siegfried fails to persuade her against suicide, he too takes his own life.
The story drew from Tchaikovsky music of enormous finesse and fire. The notion for a Suite drawn from the ballet and intended for the concert hall was the composer’s own, inspired by Delibes having done the same with his own ballets; Tchaikovsky ruefully noting – erroneously as history would prove with Swan Lake – that ‘ballets are not things with a permanent existence’.
The Suite wasn’t published until seven years after Tchaikovsky’s death and it remains unclear whether the selection of numbers was the composer’s own or that of his publisher, Pyotr Jurgenson.
It begins with Swan Lake’s most immediately recognisable moment in which a flock of star-lit swans are silhouetted against the evening sky. Rippling harps and liquescent strings mimic the bewitchingly fluid elegance of the sight, its beauty pierced by darkly lustrous melodies and the haunting keening of a solo oboe.
A boisterous Waltz is followed by ‘Dance of the Swans’ in which the harp returns to accompany a romantic duet between violin and cello as Odette and Siegfried dance in blissful innocence of the tragedy that lies ahead.
Two characterful national dances follow – the passionate Danse Espagnol, infused with sun-scorched Spanish idioms and powered by a bolero-like rhythm; and the Danse Napolitane, where refined Italianate poise gives way to an explosion of polite manners into a bacchanalian frenzy.
A splendid Hungarian czárdás – a slow-fast folk dance dating back to the 18th century whose supple stridency owes something to the peculiar tradition of dances intended to recruit soldiers – is heard during a crowded Ball where excited revellers await Siegfried’s revelation of who he intends to marry.
The Mazurka provides Tchaikovsky with a showcase opportunity he couldn’t resist. A veritable ballet in miniature, it’s an admittedly glossy take on the Polish folk dance, but dispatched with delectable feeling for its passion and poetry.
The final scene, characterised by music of scorching intensity, finds Siegfried rushing to the lake to declare his true love for Odette. He reaches her as she slips beneath the water to her death. Heartbroken, Siegfried follows her into the depths. United in death, the pair rise from the lake to be together for all eternity.
‘A visionary conductor, discerning and meticulous’ (Platea), with an ‘infectious enjoyment of music’ (The Telegraph), Jaime Martín is Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
In his native Spain he also currently holds the post of Principal Guest Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra, served as Artistic Director of the Santander International Festival, and was a founding member of the Orquesta de Cadaqués, with whom he was associated for 30 years, and where he was Chief Conductor from 2012 to 2019. He was Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland from 2019 to 2024.
In recent years Martín has conducted an impressive list of orchestras that includes the London, Dallas, Colorado and Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestras, the Dresden, London, Royal Stockholm and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics, Royal Scottish National, Netherlands Philharmonic, Swedish Radio, Antwerp and Barcelona Symphonies, the New Zealand Symphony, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony and Philharmonia Orchestras, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra from 2013 to 2022.
He has forged strong relationships with renowned soloists such as Anne Sophie von Otter, Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Christian Tetzlaff and Viktoria Mullova, among many others.
Before turning to conducting full-time in 2013, Martín was Principal Flute of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, English National Opera, Academy of St Martin the Fields and London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jaime Martín is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London, and in 2022 the jury of Spain’s Premios Nacionales de Música underlined his ‘pedagogical work and his constant commitment to the young generations of musicians’ alongside his ‘indisputable musical talent and his extraordinary ability to transmit his musical idea to the ensembles with which he works’, awarding him their annual prize for his contribution to classical music.
Yeol Eum Son piano
Pianist Yeol Eum Son, born in South Korea in 1986, is renowned for her exceptional artistry and captivating performances. From a young age, she displayed remarkable talent, beginning piano lessons at just three and a half-years-old. Yeol Eum has captivated audiences worldwide with her boundless artistic exploration and profound musicality, establishing herself as one of the foremost pianists of her generation.
Yeol Eum’s playing is marked by its poetic elegance, nuanced expressiveness, and a gift for conveying dramatic contrasts. Her artistry is underpinned by breathtaking technical prowess and a deep emotional connection to the music she interprets. She possesses an insatiable curiosity that drives her to explore a diverse range of musical genres and styles, always striving to reveal the pure essence of each piece.
Her extensive repertoire spans classical masterpieces by composers such as Bach and Mozart to contemporary works by Shchedrin and Kapustin, chosen for their quality and depth. Yeol Eum Son is highly sought after as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician, earning critical acclaim for her intelligent interpretations.
Throughout the 2022-2023 season, Yeol Eum served as an Artist-in-Residence with the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, performing works by Mozart, Gershwin, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel. She made impressive debut appearances with renowned orchestras worldwide, including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Her international reach extends to collaborations with esteemed orchestras like the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, BBC Philharmonic, and Budapest Festival Orchestra.
Yeol Eum Son’s discography features a range of remarkable recordings, including Mozart’s Complete Piano Sonatas, hailed as Classic FM’s Album of the Week in March 2023. Her discography also includes works by Berg, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ravel and Schumann.
Meet The Orchestra
Get to know the people behind the instruments of the National Symphony Orchestra
Margarete Clark Viola
When did you join the National Symphony Orchestra?
November 8,1994.
Why did you choose to play your instrument?
As a child I loved listening to chamber music being played at home and I wanted to join in. I took up violin and fairly soon changed to viola because there was always a need for viola players.
What made you decide to pursue a career in music?
When I was young, my mother took me to concerts. We went to hear Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gidon Kremer and the Melos Quartet. I was enthralled.
Where did you study?
In Karlsruhe and in Vienna.
Who is your favourite composer and what is your favourite work?
Hard to say. I love Bach, Mozart and Brahms. The string quintets and sextets by Brahms would be one of my favourites.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not playing with the orchestra?
Playing tennis. We also recently got a rescue kitten which is a lovely new experience.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you most like to be?
Something to do with languages. I like words.
What is your greatest achievement –musical or general?
Playing one of the viola d’amore solos in Bach’s St John Passion in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.
What is the best piece of advice you ever received – either musical or general?
Take a breather.
You’re stranded on a desert island. You’re allowed 3 CDs. What would they be, and why?
Brahms string sextets with the Vienna String Sextet; William Lawes Five- and Six-part Fantasias with the Oberlin Consort of Viols; Hugo Wolf’s MörikeLieder with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, one of my mum’s records I loved.
If you could have dinner with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be, and why?
The Dalai Lama. Although I wouldn’t really know what to say to him!
National Symphony Orchestra
The National Symphony Orchestra has been at the centre of Ireland’s cultural life for over 75 years. Formerly the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, it was founded in 1948 as the Raidió Éireann Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, the Orchestra transferred from RTÉ to the remit of the National Concert Hall.
Resident orchestra of the National Concert Hall since its opening in 1981, it is a leading force in Irish musical life through year-long programmes of live music –ranging from symphonic, choral and operatic to music from stage and screen, popular and traditional music, and new commissions – alongside recordings, broadcasts on RTÉ and internationally through the European Broadcasting Union. Schools concerts, family events, initiatives for emerging artists and composers, collaborations with partner promoters and organisations extend the orchestra’s reach.
As a central part of the National Concert Hall’s 2024-2025 Season, the NSO presents more than 55 performances shared between Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork. They include collaborations with international and Irish artists, ensembles and conductors – including a number of events with the National Concert Hall’s Artists-in-Residence: the renowned American musician and composer Bryce Dessner, the internationally acclaimed Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, and the dynamic musician and presenter Jessie Grimes. The programme is rich and varied, presenting repertoire from across the centuries to the present day including world and Irish premieres, choral masterpieces, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family concerts and screenings, schools concerts, and professional initiatives for emerging singers and composers. A focus on nature and the environment is a central part of the season’s programming.
Highlights with the Artists-in-Residence are many. They include three Irish premieres by Bryce Dessner: Mari, his Violin Concerto performed by its dedicatee, Pekka Kuusisto, and his Concerto for Two Pianos performed by Katia and Marielle Labèque, for whom it was written. Tara Erraught performs virtuosic works by Mozart, Haydn and Marianne von Martínez, with historical performance specialist Laurence Cummings conducting, and arias by Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, with Clelia Cafiero conducting. Tara is also the driving force behind Celebrating the Voice, a week-long professional development programme for young singers which culminates in an opera gala with the NSO conducted by Anu
Tali. Jessie Grimes leads immersive, family-friendly concerts including Our Precious Planet and explorations of iconic works: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as part of the ASD-friendly Symphony Shorts, as well as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, featuring new and specially commissioned shadow puppetry, and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
Other exciting highlights include Dame Sarah Connolly joining conductor Mihhail Gerts for Alma Mahler’s Six Songs; an 80th birthday celebration for conductor Leonard Slatkin which includes the world premiere of his son Daniel’ s cosmic journey, Voyager 130; Hugh Tinney performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto; Speranza Scappucci conducting a Ravel Birthday Celebration; John Storgårds conducting Rachmaninov and Shostakovich; Anja Bihlmaier conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; and Ryan McAdams conducting the First Violin Concerto by Philip Glass with NSO Leader Elaine Clark as soloist; and John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean. Jaime Martín returns to conduct Chopin’s Second Concerto with Yeol Eum Son as the soloist, and former Principal Conductor Gerhard Markson returns for Stanford’s Requiem featuring the National Symphony Chorus and soloists including Máire Flavin and Sharon Carty.
World premieres by Deirdre McKay and Ailís Ní Ríain and, as part of Composer Lab, by Amelia Clarkson, Finola Merivale, Barry O’Halpin, and Yue Song all feature. Irish premieres include a new orchestral setting of Philip Glass’s film score Naqoyqatsi with the Philip Glass Ensemble; Stephen McNeff’s The Celestial Stranger with Gavan Ring as soloist; James MacMillan’s St. John Passion with the National Symphony Chorus and Chamber Choir Ireland; and Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá’s Third Symphony.
Additional family events include popular screenings of classic children’s stories by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – Stick Man and The Snail and the Whale – and Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. Music in the Classroom returns with Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate Music Guide events, and Musical Adventures for Primary School children.
National Symphony Orchestra
1st Violin
Elaine Clark (Leader)
Bogdan Şofei
Sebastian Liebig †
Orla Ní Bhraoin °
Catherine McCarthy
Ting Zhong Deng
David Clark
Anne Harte
Bróna Fitzgerald
Sylvia Roberts
Claudie Driesen
Molly O’Shea
Mafalda Galante
Jisun Min
2nd Violin
Siobhán Doyle
Martin Clark
Rosalind Brown
Paul Fanning
Dara O’Connell
Melanie Cull
Evelyn McGrory
Elena Quinn
Magda Kowalska
Matthew Wylie
Katherine Sung
Yuzhe Qui
Viola
Abigail Fenna
Francis Harte °
Ruth Bebb
Neil Martin
Cliona O’Riordan
Margarete Clark
Anthony Mulholland
Carla Vedres
Róisín Ní Dhúill
Jane Tyler
Cello
Martin Johnson • Polly Ballard ‡
Violetta-Valerie Muth °
Úna Ní Chanainn
Filip Szkopek
Maria Kolby-Sonstad
Matthew Lowe
Keith Hewitt
Double Bass
Billy Cole
Mark Jenkins ‡
Andy Vickers
Waldemar Kozak
Helen Morgan
Jenni Meade
Elena Marigomez
Flute
Catriona Ryan • Ríona Ó Duinnín ‡
Piccolo
Sinéad Farrell †
Oboe
Matthew Manning •
Sylvain Gnemmi ‡
Clarinet
Soo-Young Lee
Seamus Wylie
Bass Clarinet
Fintan Sutton †
Bassoon
Greg Crowley •
Sinead Frost
John Hearne
Contra Bassoon
Hilary Sheil †
Horn
Tim Thorpe
Peter Ryan
Mark Bennett
David Atcheler ◊
Thomas Taffinder
Trumpet
Jack Wilson
Simon Bird
Pamela Stainer
Jonathan Corry
Trombone
Jason Sinclair • Gavin Roche ‡
Bass Trombone
Josiah Walters †
Tuba
Francis Magee •
Timpani
Niels Verbeek
Percussion
Rebecca Celebuski
Bernard Reilly ◊
Richard O’Donnell
Brian Dungan
Harp
Andreja Malir •
• Section Leader
† Principal
‡ Associate Principal
° String Sub Principal
◊ Sub Principal 1
Go spreaga an ceol tú. Bain sult as ceol binn sa Cheoláras Náisiúnta. Is leatsa an Ceol. Is leatsa an Ceoláras Náisiúnta. nch.ie
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NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
2024 — 2025 SEASON
INTERNATIONAL ORCHESTRAS AND RECITALS
SATURDAY 1
FEB 2025
7:30PM
NOBUYUKI TSUJII piano
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 21, Waldstein
Liszt En rêve
Liszt Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Chopin Nocturne No. 7
Chopin Nocturne No. 8
Chopin Piano Sonata No. 3
The young Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, who has been blind from birth, is ‘one of the most unique classical pianists performing today’ (Classical Voice).
