It is with excitement that I warmly welcome you to our concert this evening, the obvious reason being that a well-established composer has taken a leap of faith to write a double bass concerto, and our management team to commission one. That this is shared by three other organisations will enable its performance in many concert halls. The Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös, who was part of the avant-garde movement, explored a multi-layering system employing blocks of sound with groups within the orchestra, creating not so much a universe as a multiverse. In tonight's concerto a seeming miniverse is present, where the three double basses are tuned a semitone apart from each other. Harmonics, present throughout the score, can explore new ground - or space, as the title 'Aurora' might suggest. And the interpreter of this concerto is our principal bassist Nikita Naumov. We are so very fortunate to have in this orchestra so many star players, and Nikita's skill and expressive lyricism are ideally suited to this new work. While on the subject of basses, it is becoming more and more difficult to do intercontinental travel with such an instrument. More and more frequently do we have to provide one for visiting players, and so it is our aim to build a fund for the purchase of a good double bass. If there is anyone who would like to help grow this fund, we would be delighted to hear from you! More details are within the leaflet you should find in your programme. Another Hungarian composer opens the concert. Also, a commission, Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste by Béla Bartók came into being through the enthusiasm and vision of Dr Paul Sacher. The SCO was fortunate to give a series of concerts with him conducting several of his commissions. He was responsible for many of the 20th century's most famous works, from composers such as Stravinsky, Strauss, Hindemith, Britten, Boulez and Bartók. Indeed, I remember the SCO playing Bartók's 'Divertimento' in Budapest's Franz Liszt Academy where, above the stage, his teaching room was located. Our newish orchestra had barely vacated its cradle, causing a degree of nervous energy to invade the performance. In this programme, Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste takes us into a ghostly and chilling world. That this music has been used in many films, including 'Being John Malkevich' and 'The Shining', gives an idea of its content. And then to Haydn, who also lived and worked in Hungary for a number of years. With his 'Oxford' symphony you may think yourself on safe and familiar territory, but the audiences of his day would have been unsettled by the first movement's strong contrasts of stability and instability; and amused by the third movement's 6 bar phrases as opposed to the usual 4 bar idea. Whether or not these compositional quirks are noted, we can still enjoy Haydn's humour and optimism which continued to illuminate his work and enthral his audiences for many more years. This programme provides a rich and varied palette. I do hope it will delight, as it will us in the offering. Adrian Bornet Sub-Principal Double Bass
WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Let’s start with a spot of maths. Don’t worry – nothing too taxing. Imagine a series, each of whose numbers is the sum of the previous two – in other words, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on. That’s called the Fibonacci series, named after the medieval Italian mathematician who investigated it. And the higher the series climbs, the closer its numbers get to what’s known as the golden ratio, a relationship between two numbers where the ratio between their sum and the larger number is the same as the ratio between the larger number and the smaller one. Still with me? The golden ratio is found hidden everywhere in the natural and man-made worlds, from seashells to pinecones, the lengths of human bones and limbs, window frames and Greek temples.
Now, what’s any of that got to do with tonight’s concert? Well, not only is the golden ratio the unseen guiding force behind a lot of the world around us, but it’s also a silent but defining aspect of tonight’s opening piece, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The climax of the work’s first movement, for example, happens at precisely the movement’s golden ratio point. Even the phrases of its opening theme obey Fibonacci rules. If that makes the piece sound mathematical, cold and abstract – well, in some ways it is, but that’s just one side to a remarkably rich work that’s brimming over with contradictions: it’s both cool and passionate; primitive and sophisticated; scary and goofy; bracingly dissonant and ringingly consonant.
The piece was commissioned in 1936 by the Swiss and conductor and impresario Paul Sacher, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, which he had founded in 1926. Bartók completed the piece in just ten weeks, working on its during his 1936 summer holiday in Switzerland with his family, and it was premiered to immediate acclaim in Basel on 21 January 1937.
Its rather bald title might reinforce the impression that this is somewhat austere, clinical music, but in fact it’s simply Bartók’s working title that he ended up deciding to keep. What the piece’s title does, however, is draw attention to its unusual instrumentation. Bartók requests two identical groups of stringed instruments on opposite sides of the stage, separated by an array of percussion plus harp, piano and celesta, thereby allowing music to zip back and forth between the two string groups, the keyboards and percussion acting as go-betweens.
Bartók’s Fibonacci-inspired first movement is a hypnotic, creeping fugue, whose sinuous main theme is introduced by the violas. A thwack on the bass drum marks the movement’s golden-ratio climax, and after a bit of eerie glitter from the celesta, the music gradually winds back to where it began. In complete contrast, the second movement draws on the raw power and driving rhythms of Hungarian folk music, with plenty of interplay between the two string groups.
The chilling third movement is one of very few classical pieces that begin with an extended xylophone solo, chirruping cricket-like in groups of 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 notes (now, where have we seen those numbers before?). If some of it sounds like it comes straight from a horror movie – well, director Stanley Kubrick found it effective enough to include on his soundtrack to The Shining. By way of another complete contrast, Bartók’s closing movement is a wild dance in a Bulgarian rhythm that builds to a raucous, rather abrupt conclusion.
Fellow Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös was born the year before Bartók died. Of his double bass concerto Aurora, he writes: ‘In 1971, I was flying over Anchorage in Alaska when I saw an incredible light effect through the aeroplane window: it was the aurora borealis. I have never ever seen anything so powerful or such a blaze of colour in motion. It was not only beautiful, but also extremely powerful, almost threatening and simply monumental. In my composition Aurora, I have attempted to reproduce my own impressions of this moment when I felt myself as an element of this cosmos. ‘Aurora is my first piece for solo double bass. Up until now, I have always used the lower registers of this instrument and was astounded that the double bass could also soar up into the highest ranges, sounding as powerful and colourful as the aurora borealis itself. Accompanying the solo double bass is a small string orchestra and an accordion, as well as two additional orchestral double basses, which are placed in the concert hall to form a triangle with the soloist.’ There’s a Hungarian connection, too, of course, with tonight’s closing piece. It was in Hungary – at far-flung Esterházy Palace – that Haydn spent almost 30 years of his life, as Prince Nikolaus Esterházy’s music director. His Symphony No. 92, however, tells of a different time in the composer’s career. Realising he’d grown rather isolated amid the splendours of Esterházy, Haydn decided it was time to move on, and, following hugely popular premieres in Paris, was invited by the German-born impresario Johann Peter Salomon to visit London. He stayed for two seasons, both of them enormously successful, and conducted his Symphony No. 92 at his first London concert, on 11 March 1791. It went
down so well that it was repeated the following month, and on 7 July 1791 at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, where the much-fêted composer received an honorary doctorate from the University. Haydn clearly enjoyed the honour, later writing to a friend: ‘I felt very silly in my gown, and I had to drag it around the streets for three whole days. But I have much to thank this doctor’s degree in England; indeed, I might say everything; as a result of it, I gained acquaintance of the first men in the land and had entrance into the greatest houses.’ The Symphony had almost certainly already been premiered at one of Haydn’s muchacclaimed Paris concerts, but we’re not sure for certain. In any case, it’s a particularly fine example of the elegance and wit of his later style, with an opening movement whose later, faster section works wonders with a simple downward scale; a warm, song-like slow movement; a minuet full of rhythmic tricksiness; and an appropriately playful, breathless finale. David Kettle