25 September programme - London Symphony Orchestra

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