Programme Notes
Shostakovich with Tarmo PeltokoskiFri 14 June 2024 • 19.45
PROGRAMME
conductor Tarmo Peltokoski
trombone Jörgen van Rijen
Jimmy López Bellido (*1978)
Shift: Trombone Concerto (2024)
commissioned work; world premiere
• Sound
• Water
• Light
• Sonoluminescence
intermission
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)
Symphony No. 10 in E minor, opus 93 (1953)
• Moderato
• Allegro
• Allegretto
• Andante - Allegro
Concert ends at around 22.15
Most recent performances by our orchestra:
López Belllido Shift: world premiere Shostakovich Symphony No. 10: May 2017, conductor Krzysztof Urbański
One hour before the start of the concert, Ronald Ent will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
A farewell to
This concert bids farewell to George Wiegel, who has been associated with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for a full twenty years: from 1987 to 1998 as solo trombone player, and from 2015 to 2024 as management director. This summer George retires; this evening we open the programme with a tribute in word, image, and music.
Cover: Photo Kevin Butz (Unsplash) Shostakovich at home, early 1950s George WiegelImages of nature
They wished to know what the music was actually about. The Soviet authorities could not identify any heroes, any images of nature, any love theme, in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony when they first listened to it in 1953. Perhaps they would have had a better understanding of Jimmy López Bellido’s trombone concerto Shift, which translates very concrete natural phenomena into music.
López Bellido
Road traffic as inspiration? And the laws of physics? For Jimmy López Bellido, certainly. Another journey through the noisy streets of his birthplace gave the Peruvian composer an idea. ‘I have always been very aware of the noise around us. Lima is a very busy city. During one walk I heard a change in the sound of the honking horns of passing cars and ambulance sirens, what is known as the Doppler effect.’ Natural science teaches us that the Doppler effect occurs not just with sound waves, but with other sorts of wave movements. López Bellido used these different manifestations of waves as the starting point for the four movements of his trombone concerto Shift. In the quick and lively opening movement we hear how sound travels in waves through the air. The second movement conjures up images of waves upon water. The greater resistance to these waves is depicted by a slower pace of music and more compact sound, with glissandi (‘sliding’ changes in pitch) played by solo trombone and orchestra. This immediately leads into the mercurial third movement which imagines the Doppler effect in light waves, a phenomenon known as blueshift and redshift. Astronomers use this
effect - from which López Bellido derives the title to this work - to measure the distance between our world and the stars.
The final movement unites the elements of the three preceding movements under the title ‘Sonoluminescence’, which describes the phenomenon that for a long time had only been studied under laboratory conditions. Only relatively recently was it also discovered in the natural world, first in the pistol shrimp, and then in the mantis shrimp. These small sea creatures have one extremely well developed set of pincers which, when closed, produce a vacuum bubble with a sound pressure enough to kill small fish. When the bubble bursts it produces a flash of light, an effect that López Bellido spectacularly renders in sound in this final movement. The tension builds slowly, until a fiery trombone solo heralds the climax of Shift and the listener is blown across the finish line in a growing surge of energy and excitement.
Shostakovich
It must also have been with a growing surge of excitement with which on the morning of 6 March 1953 Dmitri Shostakovich listened to the Moscow radio broadcast. It was huge news: Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili,
Sonoluminescence. Photo K. S. Suslick and K. J. Kolbeck, University of Illinois
more notoriously known as Stalin, had died at 21.50 the previous evening.
The dictator Stalin was dead: the end of an era. An era that for many people, especially artists and intellectuals, had been a period of fear, state control, and the endless risk of being arrested by the security services and sent to the gulags of Siberia. Shostakovich had been able to give a voice to this situation; as far back as 1936 the authorities had branded his music – and thus the composer himself - as thoroughly hostile due to their modern, western character. Ever since then he was fearful: ‘Can you imagine, I can’t breathe here, people can’t live here’ - a complaint he only dared share with his closest circle of friends. To the outside world, Shostakovich exhibited the anxious appearance of loyalty: ‘In my work I have made many mistakes, even though throughout my career as a composer I have always tried to write music that the people could accept. I have always listened carefully to criticism’, he declared ‘guiltily’ when in 1948 his music was banned for the second time. And again, shortly before Stalin’s death, he was quoted in an article entitled Men should follow the wise instructions of the party of Lenin and Stalin: ‘Yes, the party and the government are my teachers…’
But to return to March 1953: Stalin was dead. Was Shostakovich free to breathe again? Stalin’s henchmen remained firmly at the helm. Nevertheless, the composer dared to unveil a new symphony, his Tenth. For a long time, the courage to write anything deserted him; a big orchestral work would make him too conspicuous. He composed this symphony at great speed, completing it on 25 October. The Tenth, premiered on 17 December of that year by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Yevgeny
Mravinsky, bringing a storm of reactions. The Composers Union even organised a three-day conference revolving around the work. Shostakovich himself wisely kept his own counsel about the meaning behind his
As far back as 1936 the authorities had branded Shostakovich’s music – and thus the composer himself - as thoroughly hostile.
music. Although he did say that he ‘wanted to express human emotions and passions in this symphony’, he would not elaborate on those emotions and passions at all. Instead, he mumbled something with excessive modesty about structural faults: ‘The second movement is perhaps a little short...The introduction to the final movement is a little too long’, etc.
The Soviet ideologues listened with different ears. They had no problem with the structure of the symphony, but were more troubled by the sombre tone of the work. ‘The world is [...] absolutely not like Shostakovich here paints it’, argued the critics. ‘[his music] portrays no heroes, nor images of nature or of love.’ Only recently had the composer submitted to the Party his patriotic work Song of the Forests –how disappointing that he had now reverted to his old errors… Fortunately, however, nothing truly damning was said at the conference. Stalin’s death did indeed appear to herald a period of thaw.
Stephen Westra
Tarmo Peltokoski • Principal Guest Conductor
Born: Vaasa, Finland
Current position: Music Director Latvia
National Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
Bremen, Music Director Designate Orchestre
National du Capitole de Toulouse
Education: piano at Kuula College (Vaasa) and the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), conducting with Jorma Panula, Sakari Oramo, Hannu Lintu and Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Breakthrough: 2022: positions in Bremen, Riga, Rotterdam, and Toulouse
Before: concerts with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Subsequently: debuts with Hong Kong
Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2022
van Rijen • trombone
Born: Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Education: trombone at the Rotterdam Conservatory with George Wiegel and at the Lyon Conservatory with Michel Becquet and Daniel Lassalle
Awards: Netherlands Music Prize 2004, Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2006, First Prize at the international trombone competitions of Guebwiller and Toulon
Breakthrough: 1996: principal trombone Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
Solo appearances: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Hague Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Tokyo Philharmonic Chamber music: New Trombone Collective, RCO Brass, Brass United, musicians’ collective Splendor
World premieres: Works by Aho, Grahl, MacMillan, Maier, Padding, Ter Veldhuis, Verbey and Van Vlijmen
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 1996
Jörgen Photo: Peter Rigaud Photo: Marco BorggreveAgenda
Fri 13 Sep 2024 • 20.15
Sun 15 sep 2024 • 14.15
conductor Valentin Uryupin
clarinet Paul Meyer
Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Smetana My Fatherland
Proms: A Night at the Opera
Fri 20 Sep 2024 • 20.30
Sat 21 Sep 2024 • 20.30
conductor Bassem Akiki
soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek
Rossini, Verdi and Puccini
Overtures and arias
Thu 26 Sep 2024 • 20.15
Fri 27 Sep 2024 • 20.15
conductor Lahav Shani
piano Martha Argerich
Roukens New Werk (world premiere)
Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3
Dvořák Symphony No. 9
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Chief Conductor
Lahav Shani
Honorary Conductor
Musicians
Viola
Anne Huser
Roman Spitzer
Galahad Samson
José Moura Nunes
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Principal Guest Conductor
Tarmo Peltokoski
First Violin
Marieke Blankestijn, concertmeester
Quirine Scheffers
Hed Yaron Meyerson
Saskia Otto
Arno Bons
Mireille van der Wart
Rachel Browne
Maria Dingjan
Marie-José Schrijner
Noëmi Bodden
Petra Visser
Sophia Torrenga
Hadewijch Hofland
Annerien Stuker
Alexandra van Beveren
Second Violin
Charlotte Potgieter
Cecilia Ziano
Frank de Groot
Laurens van Vliet
Elina Staphorsius
Jun Yi Dou
Bob Bruyn
Eefje Habraken
Maija Reinikainen
Wim Ruitenbeek
Babette van den Berg
Melanie Broers
Lana Trimmer
Kerstin Bonk
Lex Prummel
Janine Baller
Francis Saunders
Veronika Lénártová
Rosalinde Kluck
León van den Berg
Olfje van der Klein
Cello
Emanuele Silvestri
Eugene Lifschitz
Joanna Pachucka
Daniel Petrovitsch
Mario Rio
Gé van Leeuwen
Eelco Beinema
Carla Schrijner
Pepijn Meeuws
Yi-Ting Fang
Double Bass
Matthew Midgley
Ying Lai Green
Jonathan Focquaert
Robert Franenberg
Harke Wiersma
Arjen Leendertz
Ricardo Neto
Flute
Juliette Hurel
Joséphine Olech
Flute/piccolo
Beatriz Da Baião
Oboe
Remco de Vries
Karel Schoofs
Anja van der Maten
Oboe/Cor Anglais
Ron Tijhuis
Clarinet
Julien Hervé
Bruno Bonansea
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet
Romke-Jan Wijmenga
Bassoon
Pieter Nuytten
Lola Descours
Marianne Prommel
Bassoon/ Contrabassoon
Hans Wisse
Horn
David Fernández Alonso
Felipe Santos Freitas Silva
Wendy Leliveld
Richard Speetjens
Laurens Otto
Pierre Buizer
Trumpet
Alex Elia
Simon Wierenga
Jos Verspagen
Trombone
Pierre Volders
Alexander Verbeek
Remko de Jager
Bass trombone
Rommert Groenhof
Tuba
Hendrik-Jan Renes
Percussion
Danny van de Wal
Ronald Ent
Martijn Boom
Adriaan Feyaerts
Harp
Charlotte Sprenkels