25 September programme - London Symphony Orchestra

Valery Gergiev © Gautier Deblonde
London Symphony Orchestra
Living Music
Resident at the Barbican
Roman Simovic leader
Saturday 25 September 2010 7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Bizet arr Rodion Shchedrin Carmen Suite
Rodion Shchedrin Piano Concerto No 5
INTERVAL
Mussorgsky orch Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
Valery Gergiev conductor
Denis Matsuev piano
Concert ends approx 9.55pm
Recommended by Classic FM
Recorded for broadcast on Wednesday 29 September on BBC Radio 3

Welcome News
A very warm welcome to the LSO’s opening concert of the 2010/11
season, conducted by LSO Principal Conductor Valery Gergiev. We are
delighted to be back at our Barbican home after a summer of highly
successful concerts in the UK and abroad, including at the BBC Proms,
in Aix-en-Provence and in Germany, and a major tour to China.
Tonight’s concert begins with two works by the Russian composer
Rodion Shchedrin: a composer much admired by Valery Gergiev and
one whose music Gergiev has been eager to share with London
audiences for some time. We are delighted and honoured that
Shchedrin is able to be with us in the audience tonight, and look
forward to hearing more of his music later in the season.
Tonight we also welcome our piano soloist Denis Matsuev, who will
perform Shchedrin’s Piano Concerto No 5. This is Matsuev’s second
visit to the LSO following his highly-acclaimed debut in March 2010.
On behalf of everyone at the LSO I would like to extend my thanks
to our media partners BBC Radio 3, who are recording this concert
for broadcast on 29 September, and to Classic FM for their
continued support.
I hope you enjoy this evening’s performance and that you will be
able to join us for many more concerts this season!
Kathryn McDowell
LSO Managing Director
BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts at LSO St Luke’s
A new series of chamber concerts begins at LSO St Luke’s this
autumn, starting with solo recitals of Chopin piano music by Sergio
Tiempo (30 Sep), Nicholas Angelich (7 Oct) and Benjamin Grosvenor
(14 Oct). Later in the autumn we’ll welcome former BBC New
Generation Artists the Pavel Haas Quartet, who will perform string
quartets by Dvořák, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel and Schubert.
All concerts begin at 1pm. Call 020 7638 8891 to book (tickets £9),
or book online.
lso.co.uk/lunchtimeconcerts
Musical events for everyone from LSO Discovery
LSO Discovery have lots of events planned to kick off the autumn
season. As well as the regular groups for all ages, from the Early
Years Workshops to our Youth and Community choirs and our Digital
Technology Group, there’s a chance to hear violinist Viktoria Mullova
– the subject of our LSO Artist Portrait this season – in conversation
at LSO St Luke’s on Friday 1 October. In discussion with LSO players,
and illustrated by practical demonstrations, Viktoria will focus on her
transition from Russian to Baroque repertoire. Or find out more
about Czech composer Leoš Janáček at a Discovery Day on Sunday
10 October, including access to an LSO rehearsal, a talk, chamber
music and the chance to meet LSO players. For more ideas and
information, visit
lso.co.uk/getinvolved
There's never been a better time to bring your friends to an
LSO concert. Groups of 10+ receive a 20% discount on all tickets,
plus a host of additional benefits. Call the dedicated Group Booking
line on 020 7382 7211, visit lso.co.uk/groups, or email
groups@barbican.org.uk.
The LSO is delighted to welcome Classical Partners tonight.
Bizet arr Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932)
Carmen Suite (1967)
Introduction
Dance
First Intermezzo
Changing of the Guard
Carmen’s Entrance and Habanera
Scene
Second Intermezzo
Bolero
Torero
Torero and Carmen
Adagio
Fortune-telling
Finale
Ever since Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodney Bennett
collaborated on Carmen Jones in 1943, the idea of adapting Bizet’s
opera to different media has been irresistibly attractive. In the world
of ballet it started in 1949 with Roland Petit for Les Ballets de Paris,
in a production that premiered in London. Seemingly unaware of
that version, it had long been the dream of Shchedrin’s wife, the
celebrated prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, to dance the title role.
At one stage she even went to Shostakovich with the proposal,
but despite their friendship he refused, on the grounds that it was
impossible to compete with Bizet’s music. A similar response came
from Aram Khachaturian, of Spartacus fame.
Then in 1966 the Cuban National Ballet visited Moscow. Their
passionate style worked on Plisetskaya, so she later said, like a snakebite.
More calculatedly, she realised that a potential collaboration with
virtually the only functioning communist regime in the West might
conceivably gain approval from the Soviet powers-that-be, and she
persuaded the Ministry of Culture to commission a Carmen ballet.
Choreographer Alberto Alonso came up with a politically correct
scenario, in which Carmen would be the victim of ‘a totalitarian
system of universal slavery and submission’, and since time was
short, Shchedrin produced a persiflage of Bizet rather than an
original composition, with all sorts of additional colours and minor
adjustments based on Alonso’s stipulations for drama and pacing.
In the course of 20 days, four of which were spent in Hungary at
the funeral of Zoltán Kodály, the composer ran up a score for strings
and percussion that has since become a favourite in the concert
hall. Plisetskaya herself would go on to dance the role some 350
times, despite having to fight to reverse an official ban after the first
performance (it seems that even as late as 1967 the Bolshoi Theatre
and its political masters had problems with the spectacle of bare
thighs and entwined legs).
In addition to all the favourite tunes from the opera, the 13-movement
Suite borrows two numbers from Bizet’s incidental music to
L’Arlésienne and one from his opera La Jolie Fille de Perth. Shchedrin’s
writing for percussion is the essential ingredient in his translation of
the score, initially to comic-satirical effect, but with ever-increasing
seriousness. If his model was, perhaps, the extraordinary percussion
coda to the second movement of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony
– at that time recently rehabilitated in the Soviet Union – the debt
would be handsomely repaid when Shostakovich composed his 14th
Symphony two years later, scored for strings and percussion and with
even a Carmen-ish ‘Malagueña’ as its second movement.
The Introduction to Shchedrin’s Suite steals in as though in a
dream, with tubular bells and col legno strings apparently sensing
impending doom. Then a succession of numbers illustrates the wit
and verve of the scoring, almost as if the composer is imagining a
rebellious orchestra determined to subvert a rehearsal of the opera.
Woodblocks, cowbells and bongos add their wry comments to
‘Changing of the Guard’, insinuating an extra beat before allowing
the music to play ‘straight’. And who could resist the sexy güiro or
the sinuous vibraphone in the famous Habanera, or the sudden
withholding of the theme in the Toreador’s movement?
Already by this stage the hand of Fate has been sensed, and
Bizet’s leitmotiv takes over in the Adagio, the movement whose
choreography had most offended officialdom at the premiere.
Shchedrin plays no tricks with the tragic dénouement, and the Suite
ends as it began, except that, as we know, premonitions have now
been fulfilled.
2 Welcome & News Kathryn McDowell © Camilla Panufnik Programme Notes 3

Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932)
Piano Concerto No 5 (1999)
Allegretto moderato
Andante
Allegro assai
Denis Matsuev piano
Since Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the number of front-rank
composers who could also claim to be first-rate concert pianists has
dwindled remarkably, and of the remaining few, hardly any have made
piano music as strong a feature of their output as Rodion Shchedrin.
Trained as a composer under Yuri Shaporin and as a pianist under
Yakov Flier, he has composed six piano concertos to date, as well as a
substantial body of solo piano works.
In this area Shchedrin has generally shown more affinity for Prokofiev
than for Shostakovich, especially the concertos, which at least initially
were marked by vivid colours, forceful energy and total absence of
self-doubt. His First Piano Concerto, for instance, a graduation piece
from 1954, was a cheerfully extrovert romp that could have been
designed as a tribute to Prokofiev, who had died the previous year.
Twelve years later, the Second Concerto retained that influence,
alongside a playful indulgence in twelve-note techniques.
However, nearly 20 years separate the first three piano concertos,
all of which Shchedrin premiered and recorded with himself as soloist,
from the last three (No 3 was composed in 1973, No 4 in 1991).
In this second phase, exhibitionism gives way to a more private,
exploratory tone.
The Fifth Piano Concerto was composed in 1999 for Finnish pianistcomposer
Olli Mustonen, who gave the premiere in October that
year with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Esa-Pekka
Salonen. Indeed the first movement seems initially designed to
showcase Mustonen’s trademark pecking staccato touch, which is set
off firstly against slow, singing lines, then against attractively scored
scalic flourishes. The extended central section is slightly slower as
well as weightier in tone, and it eventually inspires a more songful
transformation of the opening material. This lengthy movement closes
with a brief return of textures from the first section.
4 Programme Notes
The slow movement opens with an austere orchestral chorale, which
the piano immediately takes up in a short cadenza. Ghosts of the first
movement pass across the stage, but the main musical character
seems to focus on four-note descending figures, highly malleable
but almost always song-like.
In essence a perpetuum mobile, the finale deliberately emulates
the ‘crescendo with music’ of Ravel’s Bolero. For long stretches this
movement demands greater virtuosity from the orchestra than the
soloist, at least in terms of rhythmical precision. Finally the soloist cuts
loose in a cadenza worthy of Shostakovich for its manic leaps, and
when the orchestra rejoins it is with a Prokofievian style mécanique in
overdrive, concluding the work with its most physically exciting pages.
Shchedrin programme notes and profile © David Fanning
David Fanning is a professor of music at the University of Manchester.
He is an expert on Shostakovich, Nielsen and Soviet music. He is also
a reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, Gramophone and BBC Radio 3.
INTERVAL: 20 minutes
I still today continue to be convinced that
the decisive factor for each composition is
intuition. As soon as composers relinquish
their trust in this intuition and rely in its
place on musical ‘religions’ such as serialism,
aleatoric composition, minimalism or
other methods, things become problematic.
Rodion Shchedrin
Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932)
The Man
The generation of Soviet composers after Shostakovich produced
charismatic and exotic figures such as Galina Ustvolskaya,
Alfred Schnittke and Sofiya Gubaydulina, whose music was initially
controversial but then gained cult status. At the other end of the
stylistic spectrum it featured highly gifted craftsmen such as
Boris Tishchenko, Boris Tchaikovsky and Mieczysław Weinberg, all
of whom worked more or less within the parameters laid down by
Shostakovich and were highly respected in their heyday but gradually
fell from favour.
Somewhere in between we can locate Rodion Shchedrin – an
individualist with a broader and more consistent appeal, who could
turn himself chameleon-like to virtuoso pranks or to profound
philosophical reflection, to Socialist Realist opera or to folkloristic
Concertos for Orchestra (a particular speciality), to technically solid
Preludes and Fugues, to jazz, and, when he chose, even to twelvenote
constructivism.
Trained at the Moscow Conservatoire in the 1950s, as a composer
under Yuri Shaporin and as a pianist under Yakov Flier in the early
years of the Post-Stalinist Thaw, Shchedrin was one of
the first to speak out against the constraints of
musical life in the Soviet Union. He went on to play
a significant administrative role in the country’s
musical life, heading the Russian Union of Composers
from 1973 to 1990. Married since 1958 to the star
Soviet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, he established a
significant power-base from which he was able to promote
not only his own music but also that of others – such as
Schnittke, whose notorious First Symphony received its
sensational premiere only thanks to Shchedrin’s support.
An unashamed eclectic, and suspicious of dogma from
either the arch-modernist or arch-traditionalist wings of
Soviet music, Shchedrin occupied a not always comfortable
position, both in his pronouncements and in his creative
work. With one foot in the national-traditional camp and the
other in that of the internationalist-progressives, he was
tagged with the unkind but not unfair label of the USSR’s
Rodion Shchedrin © www.lebrecht.co.uk
‘official modernist’. From 1992 he established a second home in
Munich, but he still enjoyed official favour in post-Soviet Russia,
adding steadily to his already impressive roster of prizes.
Shchedrin has summed up his artistic credo as follows: ‘I continue to
be convinced that the decisive factor for each composition is intuition.
As soon as composers relinquish their trust in this intuition and rely in
its place on musical ‘religions’ such as serialism, aleatoric composition,
minimalism or other methods, things become problematic.’
Programme Notes
5

Rodion Shchedrin & Valery Gergiev
Russian Compatriots
Rodion Shchedrin
Valery Gergiev
16 Dec 1932
Born, Moscow
6 Programme Notes
1945–50
Joined the
Moscow
Choral School
1950–55
Trained at
the Moscow
Conservatory
1958
Married
ballerina Maya
Plisetskaya
2 May 1953
Born, Moscow
Valery Gergiev’s Rodion Shchedrin
1960
The Little
Humpbacked
Horse, Moscow
1961
Not only love,
Moscow
1963
Naughty Limericks,
Warsaw
Fri 19 Nov 2010 Piano Concerto No 4 (‘Sharp Keys’) with Olli Mustonen
Wed 23 & Thu 24 Mar 2011 Lithuanian Saga
1964–69
Professor of Composition,
Moscow Conservatory
1967
Carmen Suite,
Moscow
1968
The Chimes,
New York
1969
Becomes freelance
composer
1968
Refused to sign open
letter sanctioning the
invasion of Warsaw Pact
troops in Czechoslovakia
1972
Anna Karenina,
Moscow
1973
Succeeds Shostakovich
as President of the Union
of Composers of the
Russian Federation
1972
Receives the USSR
State Prize
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
1972–77
Trained at the Leningrad
Conservatory
1977
Dead Souls,
Moscow
1976
Wins Herbert von Karajan
Conducting Competition,
Berlin
1977
Appointed Assistant
Conductor to Kirov
Opera
1978
Kirov debut
– War and
Peace
1981–85
Appointed Chief
Conductor of the
Armenian Philharmonic
Orchestra
1989
Khorovody,
Tokyo
1985
Honorary member of the
International Music Council
1983
Honorary member of the
Academy of Fine Arts, GDR
1984
Receives the Lenin Prize
1985
UK debut at the
Lichfield Festival
1988
The Sealed
Angel,
Moscow
1988
LSO debut
1989
Member of Berlin
Arts Academy
1988
Appointed Chief
Conductor and
Artistic Director
of the Mariinsky
Theatre
1990
Old Russian Circus
Music, Chicago
1991
USA debut with
War and Peace
1994
Lolita, Stockholm;
Sotto voce Concerto,
London;
Trumpet Concerto,
Pittsburgh
1993
Receives Dmitri
Shostakovich Prize
1998
Four Russian Songs,
London
1997
Honorary Professor,
Moscow Conservatory
1997
Receives Dmitri
Shostakovich Prize
1998
Fifth Piano Concerto,
Los Angeles
1999
Marries Natalya Debisova
1995–2008
Appointed Principal Conductor
of the Rotterdam Philharmonic
Orchestra
1996
Russian government appoints
him overall Director of the
Mariinsky Theatre
1997
Appointed Principal Guest
Conductor of the Metropolitan
Opera, New York
2002
Dialogues with
Shostakovich,
Pittsburgh
2003
Sixth Piano Concerto,
Amsterdam
2002
Order for Service to
the Russian State:
Third Degree
2005
2008
Honorary Professor, Honorary Professor,
St Petersburg State Central Conservatory
Conservatory of Music, Beijing
2003
UNESCO Artist for Peace
2003
Order for Service to the
Russian State: Third Degree
2003
First performance
of Wagner’s Ring in
Russia for 90 years
2006
Boyarina Morozova,
Moscow
2007
Order for Service to
the Russian State:
Fourth Degree
2006
Opens the new
Mariinsky Concert
Hall
2008
Order for Service to
the Russian State:
Fourth Degree
2004
2007
Second appearance Takes Mariinsky
with the LSO Wagner’s Ring to
New York
2005
Appointed 15th Principal
Conductor of the LSO
(first official concert
23 Jan 07)
2010
Named one of the 100 Most
Influential People in the World
by Time magazine
Programme Notes
7

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81) orch Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874 orch 1922)
Promenade
1 Gnomus
Promenade
2 Il vecchio castello
Promenade
3 Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux)
4 Bydło
Promenade
5 Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
6 Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle
7 Limoges: Le marché (La grande nouvelle) –
8 Catacombae (Sepulchrum romanum) –
Cum mortuis in lingua morta
9 The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba Yaga) –
10 The Great Gate of Kiev
Victor Hartmann’s promising career as an architect, painter, illustrator
and designer was cut short by his death at the age of 39 in 1873.
In February 1874 there was a memorial exhibition of his work in
St Petersburg, and this was the stimulus for Mussorgsky to compose
his piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition to the memory of his dead friend.
The Hartmann exhibition contained 400 items. Only a quarter of them
have survived, and of these only six relate directly to Mussorgsky’s
music. Among the lost works are the inspirations behind Gnomus,
Bydło, Tuileries, Il vecchio castello and Limoges. This hardly matters,
though, because Mussorgsky’s imagination goes far beyond the
immediate visual stimulus. It tells us little about the music to learn that
the half-sinister, half-poignant Gnomus was inspired by a design for a
nutcracker (you put the nuts in the gnome’s mouth), or that Baba Yaga
was a harmless and fussy design for a clock, hard to connect with
Mussorgsky’s powerful witch music. Goldenberg and Schmuÿle are
actually two separate drawings, and the dialogue between them is an
invention of the composer’s.
Mussorgsky, a song composer of genius, could sum up a character,
mood or scene in brief, striking musical images, and this is what he
does in Pictures. The human voice is never far away: Bydło, a picture
of a lumbering ox-cart, and Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle) could
well be songs; some of the Promenades and The Great Gate of Kiev
suggest the choral tableaux in his operas; in Goldenberg and Schmuÿle,
the differences between the rich Jew and the poor Jew are suggested
by their different ‘speech patterns’; in Tuileries we hear the cries of
children playing and in Limoges the squabbling of market-women.
Pictures might have been just a loose collection of pieces, but
Mussorgsky in fact devised something far more complex and
interesting. The Promenade that links the pictures is on one level a
framing device, representing the composer (or perhaps the listener)
walking around the exhibition. Sometimes he passes directly from one
picture to another, without reflection. Sometimes he is lost in thought.
On one occasion, he seems to be distracted by seeing something out
of the corner of his eye (the false start to the Ballet of the Unhatched
Chicks), and turns to look more closely. Cum mortuis is not itself a
picture, but represents the composer’s reflections on mortality after
seeing the drawing of Hartmann and two other figures surrounded
by piles of skulls in the Paris catacombs. The composer is also drawn
personally into the final picture as the Promenade emerges grandly
from the texture of The Great Gate of Kiev.
Although Mussorgsky must have played Pictures to his friends, there
is no record of any public performance until well into the 20th century.
It was indeed only after the success of Ravel’s orchestration that
performances of the piano version became at all common. The piano
writing of Pictures is often said to be unidiomatic, and Mussorgsky
certainly never cared for conventional beauty of sound or pianistic
virtuosity for its own sake. There are certainly aspects of the texture
that are hard to bring off successfully, such as the heavy chordal style
of some Promenades, Bydło and The Great Gate of Kiev; the tricky
repeated notes in Goldenberg and Schmuÿle and Limoges; and the
sustained tremolos in Cum mortuis and Baba Yaga. But these are all
part of Mussorgsky’s desired effect.
Pictures at an Exhibition has been subjected to many arrangements
(including one by Proms founder-conductor Henry Wood), but none
so brilliant as Ravel’s, which was commissioned by the Russian
conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and first performed by him in Paris
on 19 October 1922. Ravel was
already a great enthusiast for
the music of Mussorgsky. He had
collaborated with Stravinsky on
orchestrating parts of his opera
Khovanshchina for Diaghilev’s
Paris performances in 1913, and
far preferred Mussorgsky’s barer
original score of Boris Godunov
to the more colourful edition by
Rimsky-Korsakov. With Pictures
there are only three major
The Great Gate of Kiev differences between Ravel’s
Victor Hartmann
orchestration and the piano
original, which he knew only
from Rimsky’s 1886 edition: the omission of a Promenade between
Goldenberg and Schmuÿle and Limoges; the addition of some extra
bars in the finale; and the dynamics of Bydło, which Mussorgsky
marked to begin loudly, not with a slow crescendo.
Ravel’s orchestral colours and techniques are far more elaborate
than anything that Mussorgsky might ever have conceived, so his
work must be considered more a free interpretation than a simple
transcription. Some of his choices of instrumentation for solo
passages are unforgettable: the opening trumpet, for example, or
the alto saxophone in Il vecchio castello and the tuba in Bydło.
Even more remarkable is the range of colour that Ravel achieves, and
the way in which the essence of the music is faithfully reproduced
while the original piano textures are presented in an altogether
different sound medium. Ravel and Mussorgsky could hardly have
been more different as men and as composers, but Pictures at an
Exhibition has justly become famous as a collaboration between two
great creative minds.
Programme note © Andrew Huth
Andrew Huth is a musician, writer and translator who writes
extensively on French, Russian and Eastern European music.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81)
Composer Profile
Modest Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, the youngest son of a
wealthy landowner. His mother gave him his first piano lessons, and
his musical talent was encouraged at the Cadet School of the Guards
in St Petersburg, where he began to compose (despite having no
technical training) – in 1856, the year that he entered the Guards, he
attempted an opera. In 1857 he met Balakirev, whom he persuaded
to teach him, and shortly afterwards began composing in earnest.
The following year Mussorgsky suffered an emotional crisis and
resigned his army commission, but returned soon afterwards to
his studies. He was, however, plagued by nervous tension, and this,
combined with a crisis at the family home after the emancipation of
the serfs in 1861, stalled his development quite severely. By 1863,
though, he was finding his true voice, and he began to write an opera
(never completed) based on Flaubert’s Salammbô. At this time he
was working as a civil servant and living in a commune with five
other young men passionate about art and philosophy, where he
established his artistic ideals.
In 1865 his mother died; this probably caused his first bout of
alcoholism. His first major work, Night on Bare Mountain, was
composed in 1867, and soon afterwards, fired by the ideas discussed
in Balakirev’s circle (‘The Mighty Handful’) he began writing his opera
Boris Godunov; a little later he also began work on another opera,
Khovanshchina. Heavy drinking was once again affecting his creativity,
though he did write the piano work Pictures at an Exhibition in a
short time. By 1880 he was obliged to leave government employment,
and despite the support of his friends, he lapsed still further,
eventually being hospitalised in February 1881 after a bout of
alcoholic epilepsy. It was during a brief respite that Repin painted his
famous portrait of the composer, but within two weeks of that work,
Mussorgsky died.
Profile © Alison Bullock
Alison Bullock is a freelance writer and music consultant whose
interests range from Machaut to Messiaen and beyond. She is a
former editor for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and the LSO.
8 Programme Notes Programme Notes 9

Valery Gergiev
Conductor
Body
Principal Conductor of the London Symphony
Orchestra since January 2007, Valery Gergiev
performs regularly with the LSO at the
Barbican, at the Proms and at the Edinburgh
Festival, as well as regular tours of Europe,
North America and Asia. During the 2010/11
season he will lead them in appearances in
Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan and
the USA.
Valery Gergiev is Artistic and General
Director of the Mariinsky Theatre, founder
and Artistic Director of the Stars of the
White Nights Festival and New Horizons
Festival in St Petersburg, the Moscow Easter
Festival, the Gergiev Rotterdam Festival, the
Mikkeli International Festival, and the Red
Sea Festival in Eilat, Israel. He succeeded
Sir Georg Solti as conductor of the World
Orchestra for Peace in 1998 and leads them
this season in concerts in Abu Dhabi.
His inspired leadership of the Mariinsky
Theatre since 1988 has taken the Mariinsky
ensembles to 45 countries and has brought
universal acclaim to this legendary institution,
now in its 227th season. Having opened a
new concert hall in St Petersburg in 2006,
Maestro Gergiev looks forward to the opening
of the new Mariinsky Opera House in the
summer of 2012.
Born in Moscow, Valery Gergiev studied
conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad
Conservatory. Aged 24 he won the Herbert
von Karajan Conductors’ Competition in
Berlin and made his Mariinsky Opera debut
one year later in 1978 conducting Prokofiev’s
War and Peace. In 2003 he led St Petersburg’s
300th anniversary celebrations, and opened
the Carnegie Hall season with the Mariinsky
Orchestra, the first Russian conductor to do
so since Tchaikovsky conducted the Hall’s
inaugural concert in 1891.
Now a regular figure in all the world’s major
concert halls, he will lead the LSO and
the Mariinsky Orchestra in a symphonic
Centennial Mahler Cycle in New York in the
2010/11 season. He has led several cycles in
New York including Shostakovich, Stravinsky,
Prokofiev, Berlioz and Richard Wagner’s Ring.
He has also introduced audiences to several
rarely-performed Russian operas.
Valery Gergiev’s many awards include a
Grammy, the Dmitri Shostakovich Award,
the Golden Mask Award, People’s Artist of
Russia Award, the World Economic Forum’s
Crystal Award, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize,
Netherlands’s Knight of the Order of the Dutch
Lion, Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Valencia’s
Silver Medal, the Herbert von Karajan prize and
France’s Royal Order of the Legion of Honour.
He has recorded exclusively for Decca
(Universal Classics), and appears also on
the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon
labels. Currently recording for LSO Live, his
releases include Mahler Symphonies Nos
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8, Rachmaninov Symphony
No 2, Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet and Bartók
Bluebeard’s Castle.
His recordings on the newly formed Mariinsky
Label are Shostakovich The Nose and
Symphonies Nos 1, 2, 11 & 15, Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture, Rachmaninov Piano Concerto
No 3 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,
Shchedrin The Enchanted Wanderer,
Stravinsky Les Noces and Oedipus Rex,
many of which have won awards including
four Grammy nominations. The most recent
release is Wagner Parsifal (September 2010),
featuring René Pape and Gary Lehman.
Valery Gergiev conducts
Fri 19 Nov 7.30pm
Rodion Shchedrin Piano Concerto No 4
(‘Sharp Keys’) with Olli Mustonen piano
Mahler Symphony No 1 (‘Titan’)
Tue 18 & Sun 23 Jan 7.30pm
Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 2
with Sergey Khachatryan violin
Tchaikovsky Symphony No 1 (‘Winter
Daydreams’)
Wed 2 & Thu 3 Mar 7.30pm
Mahler Symphony No 9
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Denis Matsuev
Piano
Denis Matsuev has become a fast-rising
star on the international concert stage
since his triumphant victory at the Eleventh
International Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow in 1998, and has quickly established
himself as one of the most sought-after
pianists of his generation.
Matsuev has collaborated with the world’s
best known orchestras, such as the
New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony,
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, London
Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic,
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Bavarian
Radio Symphony, National Symphony,
Pittsburgh Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony,
WDR Symphony Cologne, BBC Symphony,
Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish
National Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala,
Orchestre National de France, Orchestre
de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de
Radio France, Orchestre National du
Capitole de Toulouse, Budapest Festival
Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and
the European Chamber Orchestra; he is
continually engaged with the legendary
Russian orchestras such as the St Petersburg
Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Orchestra and
the Russian National Orchestra.
Denis Matsuev’s worldwide festival
appearances include Leipzig’s Mendelssohn
and Schumann Festival, the Chopin Festival
in Poland, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and
the Mito Festival, both in Italy, Les Chorégies
d’Orange in France, Verbier Festival in
Switzerland, Enescu Festival in Romania and
the Ravinia Festival in the USA.
In the 2010/11 season, Denis Matsuev will
appear under the batons of Valery Gergiev,
Paavo Järvi (Orchestre de Paris and Frankfurt
Radio Symphony Orchestra), Kurt Masur
(Orchestre National de France), Zubin Mehta
(Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Florentino),
Mikhail Pletnev (Philharmonia Orchestra,
Russian National Orchestra), Vladimir
Spivakov (National Philharmonic Orchestra
of Russia in France and Russia), and Yuri
Temirkanov (Philharmonia Orchestra, and
St Petersburg Philharmonic in Taiwan,
Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong).
In 2011 he will also return to the Pittsburgh
Symphony with Gianandrea Noseda, and
will undertake a North American recital
tour including Boston, Washington, Toronto,
Montreal, Vancouver and San Francisco.
In December 2007, Sony BMG released a CD
of Matsuev: Unknown Rachmaninoff, and
garnered strong positive reviews praising
his execution and creativity. His Carnegie
Hall debut recital in 2007 was recorded live
by Sony BMG: Denis Matsuev – Concert
at Carnegie Hall. In December 2009, the
new Mariinsky Label released Matsuev’s
Rachmaninov Concerto No 3, with Valery
Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra,
recorded in the Mariinsky Concert Hall in
St Petersburg.
Over the past four years, Denis Matsuev has
collaborated with the Sergei Rachmaninov
Foundation and its President, Alexander
Rachmaninov, the grandson of the composer.
He was chosen by the Foundation to perform
and record unknown pieces by Rachmaninov
on the composer’s own piano at the
Rachmaninov house in Lucerne. In October
2008, at the personal invitation of Alexander
Rachmaninov, Denis Matsuev was named
Artistic Director of the Sergei Rachmaninov
Foundation. As part of this partnership, he
will perform in a series of gala concerts in
some of the most prestigious concert halls
throughout Europe and the United States.
Denis Matsuev is Artistic Director of two
Russian festivals: Stars on Baikal in Irkutsk,
Siberia, and Crescendo, a series of events
held in many different international cities
including Moscow, St Petersburg, Tel-Aviv,
Paris and New York. These remarkable
festivals present a new generation of
students from Russia’s music schools
by featuring gifted Russian soloists from
around the world performing with the best
Russian orchestras. Additionally, Matsuev
is the President of the charitable Russian
foundation New Names.
10 The Artists Valery Gergiev © Gautier Deblonde
Denis Matsuev © Andrey Mustafaev
The Artists 11

On stage tonight
First Violins
Roman Simovic Leader
Carmine Lauri
Lennox Mackenzie
Nicholas Wright
Nigel Broadbent
Ginette Decuyper
Jörg Hammann
Michael Humphrey
Maxine Kwok-Adams
Claire Parfitt
Laurent Quenelle
Colin Renwick
Sylvain Vasseur
Alain Petitclerc
Hazel Mulligan
Helen Paterson
Second Violins
David Alberman
Thomas Norris
Sarah Quinn
Miya Ichinose
Richard Blayden
Belinda McFarlane
Iwona Muszynska
Philip Nolte
Paul Robson
Stephen Rowlinson
David Worswick
Caroline Frenkel
Roisin Walters
Oriana Kriszten
Violas
Paul Silverthorne
Gillianne Haddow
German Clavijo
Lander Echevarria
Richard Holttum
Robert Turner
Heather Wallington
Jonathan Welch
Martin Schaefer
Michelle Bruil
Caroline O’Neill
Fiona Opie
12 The Orchestra
Cellos
Rebecca Gilliver
Alastair Blayden
Jennifer Brown
Mary Bergin
Noel Bradshaw
Daniel Gardner
Hilary Jones
Minat Lyons
Amanda Truelove
Penny Driver
Double Basses
Rinat Ibragimov
Colin Paris
Nicholas Worters
Patrick Laurence
Matthew Gibson
Thomas Goodman
Jani Pensola
Nikita Naumov
Flutes
Gareth Davies
Adam Walker
Siobhan Grealy
Piccolo
Sharon Williams
Oboes
Emanuel Abbühl
Joseph Sanders
Fraser MacAulay
Cor Anglais
Christine Pendrill
Clarinets
Andrew Marriner
Chris Richards
Chi-Yu Mo
Bass Clarinet
Lorenzo Iosco
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
Bernardo Verde
Joost Bosdijk
Contra Bassoon
Dominic Morgan
Horns
Timothy Jones
David Pyatt
Angela Barnes
Estefanía Beceiro Vázquez
Jonathan Lipton
Trumpets
Philip Cobb
Nicholas Betts
Gerald Ruddock
Nigel Gomm
Trombones
Dudley Bright
Katy Jones
James Maynard
Bass Trombone
Paul Milner
Tuba
Patrick Harrild
Timpani
Antoine Bedewi
Percussion
Neil Percy
David Jackson
Scott Bywater
Helen Edordu
Tom Edwards
Sacha Johnson
Harps
Bryn Lewis
Karen Vaughan
Celeste/Piano
John Alley
LSO String
Experience Scheme
Established in 1992, the
LSO String Experience
Scheme enables young string
players at the start of their
professional careers to gain
work experience by playing in
rehearsals and concerts with
the LSO. The scheme auditions
students from the London
music conservatoires, and 20
students per year are selected
to participate. The musicians
are treated as professional
’extra’ players (additional to
LSO members) and receive
fees for their work in line with
LSO section players. Students
of wind, brass or percussion
instruments who are in their
final year or on a postgraduate
course at one of the London
conservatoires can also
benefit from training with LSO
musicians in a similar scheme.
The LSO String Experience
Scheme is generously
supported by the Musicians
Benevolent Fund and Charles
and Pascale Clark.
Leslie Boulin Raulet (first violin),
Yan Beattie (viola) and Damian
Rubido González (double bass)
are all playing in tonight’s
concert as part of the LSO
String Experience Scheme.
List correct at time of
going to press
See page xv for London
Symphony Orchestra members
Editor
Edward Appleyard
edward.appleyard@lso.co.uk
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