Sunday 10 June 2012 - London Symphony Orchestra

Sunday 10 June 2012 7.30pm 

Barbican Hall 

Purcell Chacony in G minor 

Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 

INTERVAL 

Schubert Symphony No 9 (‘The Great’) 

Bernard Haitink conductor 

Maria João Pires piano 

Concert ends approx 9.35pm 

Bernard Haitink © Clive Barda & Todd Rosenberg, Maria João Pires © Felix Broede 

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London Symphony Orchestra 

Living Music

Welcome News 

Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the Barbican, the first of two 

concerts which reunite conductor Bernard Haitink with pianist Maria 

João Pires, who last performed with the Orchestra in June 2011. 

Bernard Haitink has a rich history with the LSO and is one of the 

Orchestra’s most loved guest conductors. Into the 2012/13 season, 

the LSO looks forward to working with Haitink to present works by 

Britten, Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner across three concerts in 

February 2013 (see page 5 for more details). Maria João Pires has 

had a highly successful season across Europe and will be joining 

Bernard Haitink on tour with the Orchestra to perform tonight’s 

programme, and the programme for 14 June, at Salle Pleyel in Paris 

on 17 and 18 June. 

I hope you enjoy tonight’s concert and can join us for our next 

performance on Thursday 14 June when Bernard Haitink and 

Maria João Pires will join forces once more for Mozart’s Piano 

Concerto No 23, alongside Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary 

and Bruckner’s lyrical Symphony No 7. 

Kathryn McDowell 

LSO Managing Director 

Sir Colin Davis awarded Order of the Dannebrog 

Congratulations to LSO President Sir Colin Davis, who was bestowed 

with a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog on Friday 25 May. 

The decoration is presented to those who make a special contribution 

to the public, the arts and sciences in Denmark, and is one of the 

oldest orders in existence. Sir Colin Davis was honoured this for his 

recordings of Nielsen’s symphonies, recorded with the LSO in 2011. 

The award was presented at a ceremony at the Danish Embassy 

hosted by the Danish Ambassador, Ms Anne Hedensted Steffensen. 

lso.co.uk 

City of London Festival 

The City is alive with culture this summer and the LSO is delighted 

to be taking part in a highlight of the City’s cultural calendar: the 

50th anniversary of the City of London Festival (24 June to 27 July). 

The LSO’s contribution comes in the form of two performances 

of Berlioz’s Requiem at St Paul’s Cathedral under Sir Colin Davis 

(Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 June). In addition, there is also an 

independent four-day Celebrate the City event, Four Days in the 

Square Mile from 21 to 24 June. 

colf.org and visitthecity.co.uk/culture2012 

London 2012 

As part of the London 2012 celebrations, the LSO will also perform 

in three special concerts in association with the Barbican, the first 

with South American singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil and conductor 

François-Xavier Roth (4 July), then on 21 July award-winning composer 

and producer Nitin Sawhney will conduct the Orchestra in his newly 

written score for Hitchcock’s film The Lodger, and finally on 25 and 

26 July jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis joins Sir Simon Rattle and the 

LSO with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for two concerts featuring 

the UK premiere of Marsalis’ Swing Symphony. 

lso.co.uk/whatson 

2 Welcome & News Kathryn McDowell © Camilla Panufnik

Henry Purcell (1659–95) arr Benjamin Britten 

Chacony in G minor (date unknown) 

‘Chacony’ is an idiosyncratic English spelling of the French 

‘Chaconne’, the term applied to a triple-time dance movement in 

which a short bass-line theme or chord progression is repeated a 

number of times while other instruments or voices spin variations 

over the top. The practice – whether applied to a ‘ciacona’ or other 

popular basses such as the bergamasca or a follia – had its origins 

in improvised dance music, but found its way into many genres 

of instrumental music during the 16th and 17th centuries, from 

Elizabethan keyboard pieces to Italian violin sonatas, to the orchestral 

chaconnes which traditionally appeared towards the end of French 

operas. This last is perhaps the most pertinent model for a piece like 

Purcell’s G minor Chacony for three (probably solo) violins and basso 

continuo, though it is not known exactly when and why he composed it. 

Purcell’s own assessment of composing ‘upon a ground’ (as the 

English called it) was that it was ‘a very easie thing to do, and requires 

but little Judgement’, but that rather belies the evidence of such well- 

known examples as ‘Dido’s Lament’ from the opera Dido and Aeneas 

or the song ‘Music for a while’ that he was a master of the genre, 

able to balance with perfect naturalness the competing demands 

of variational freedom and repetitive continuity. Yet the Chacony is 

more than just an exercise in craftsmanship; with its elegant minor- 

key melancholy and typically rich Purcellian inner part-writing, it is a 

powerfully affecting snapshot of its composer’s artistic personality. 

Benjamin Britten, one of the 20th century’s most influential lovers of 

Purcell, admired it for its ‘mixture of clarity, brilliance, tenderness and 

strangeness’ and made his sympathetic realisation of it for modern 

string orchestra in 1948. 

Programme Note © Lindsay Kemp 

Lindsay Kemp is a senior producer for BBC Radio 3, Artistic Director 

of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, and a regular contributor 

to Gramophone magazine. 

Henry Purcell (1659–95) 

Composer Profile 

Henry Purcell was born, married, fathered six children of whom only 

two made it past infancy, and died just a stone’s throw away from 

Westminster Abbey. 

Following his father’s death in 1664, Purcell was placed in the care of 

his uncle, Thomas Purcell, who was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal 

where Purcell duly became a chorister until his voice broke in 1673. 

Purcell received tuition from John Blow, who later passed on his office 

as organist of Westminster Abbey to Purcell in 1679, a position which 

Purcell also held in conjunction with being organist at the Chapel Royal 

from 1682. Purcell is thought to have been composing from just nine 

years of age but his earliest certified work was an ode for the King’s 

birthday in 1670. Purcell quickly developed a reputation for his choral 

works, most notably the anthems I was glad and My heart is inditing 

for the coronation of James II in 1685 and Come ye Sons of Art, a 

gloriously elaborate birthday ode for Queen Mary. Purcell’s Te Deum 

and Jubilate Deo were written for St Cecilia’s Day in 1693 and was the 

first English Te Deum ever composed with orchestral accompaniment. 

Purcell also had a long-standing association with the theatre, 

composing music for The Fairy-Queen (an adaptation of Shakespeare’s 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and by far his most famous dramatic 

output, Dido and Aeneas, as well as incidental music for Shakespeare’s 

The Tempest and Robert Howard’s The Indian Queen, for which 

Purcell’s younger brother Daniel completed much of the music for 

the final act after Purcell’s death. 

Purcell died a successful and wealthy, albeit young, man in 1695. 

Many theories have circulated around the circumstances of his death 

but the most prevalent are that he either caught a chill after finding 

himself locked out of the house by his wife or that he contracted 

tuberculosis. Purcell was buried adjacent to the organ in Westminster 

Abbey where his epitaph reads, ‘Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq, who left 

this life and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can 

be exceeded’. 

Programme Notes 

3

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) 

Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor, K466 (1785) 

1 Allegro 

2 Romance 

3 Rondo: Allegro assai 


The decade which Mozart spent in Vienna from 1781 until his death 

was when he truly found his own voice as a composer, and nowhere 

is this new maturity and individuality better shown than in his piano 

concertos of the period. Altogether he wrote 17 of them while in the 

Imperial capital, mostly for himself to play at the public and private 

concerts which helped provide him with financial support, and as such 

they were the works with which he was most closely associated by his 

audiences. More importantly, it was with them that he established the 

piano concerto for the first time as a sophisticated means of personal 

expression rather than a vehicle for polite public display. 

The high-point in the series came with the five concertos composed 

in the period of just over a year from the beginning of 1785. K466 – 

completed and first performed in February 1785 – is chronologically 

at the head of this group, but musically speaking it also stands out 

in many ways. The composer’s father Leopold, visiting Vienna at the 

time, heard the premiere, and a little over a year later was organising 

a performance by a local pianist back in Salzburg. He later described 

the occasion in a letter to his daughter: ‘Marchand played it from 

the score, and [Michael, brother of Joseph] Haydn turned over the 

pages for him, and at the same time had the pleasure of seeing with 

what art it is composed, how delightfully the parts are interwoven 

and what a difficult concerto it is. We rehearsed it in the morning and 

had to practise the rondo three times before the orchestra could 

manage it’. One can well imagine the impression the piece made in 

the composer’s home town; there can be few clearer demonstrations 

of how far he had left Salzburg behind. D minor is a relatively unusual 

key for Mozart, and therefore a significant one. Later he would use it 

both for Don Giovanni’s damnation scene and for the Requiem, and 

there is something of the same grim familiarity with the dark side, 

a glimpse of the grave it seems, in the first movement of this concerto. 

4 Programme Notes 

The opening orchestral section contrasts brooding menace with 

outbursts of passion, presenting along the way most of the melodic 

material that will serve the rest of the movement. Even so, it is with a 

new theme, lyrical but searching and restless, that the piano enters; 

this is quickly brushed aside by the orchestra, but the soloist does not 

give it up easily, later using it to lead the orchestra through several 

different keys in the central development section. The movement 

ends sombrely, pianissimo. 

The slow second movement, in B-flat major, is entitled ‘Romance’, 

a vague term used in Mozart’s day to suggest something of a song- 

like quality. In fact this is a rondo, in which three appearances of the 

soloist’s artless opening theme are separated by differing episodes, 

the first a drawn-out melody for the piano floating aristocratically 

over gently throbbing support from the strings, and the second a 

stormy minor-key eruption of piano triplets, shadowed all the way by 

sustained woodwind chords. Storminess returns in the finale, though 

this time one senses that it is of a more theatrical kind than in the 

first movement. This is another rondo, and although the main theme 

is fiery and angular, much happens in the course of the movement to 

lighten the mood, culminating after the cadenza in a turn to D major 

for the concerto’s final pages. A purely conventional ‘happy ending’ 

to send the audience away smiling? Perhaps so, but the gentle 

debunking indulged in by the horns and trumpets just before the end 

suggests that Mozart knew precisely what he was doing. 

Programme Note © Lindsay Kemp 

Music’s better shared! 

The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10+ including 20% off 

standard ticket prices, priority booking, free interval hot drinks and, 

for bigger groups, the chance of a private interval reception. 

To reserve tickets, call the dedicated Group Booking line on 

020 7382 7211. If you have general queries, please call LSO Groups 

Rep Fabienne Morris on 020 7382 2522. Tonight we welcome: 

Shirley Arber & Friends, Classical Partners, Farnham U3a 

Concert Club, Faversham Music Club, Dan Petersen & 

Friends, Redbridge & District U3a and Frances Sell & Friends

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) 


Born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756, Mozart began to pick out 

tunes on his father’s keyboard before his fourth birthday. His first 

compositions, an Andante and Allegro for keyboard, were written 

down in the early months of 1761; later that year, the boy performed 

in public for the first time at the University of Salzburg. Mozart’s 

ambitious father, Leopold, court composer and Vice-Kapellmeister 

to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, recognised the money-making 

potential of his precocious son and pupil, embarking on a series of 

tours to the major courts and capital cities of Europe. 

In 1777 Wolfgang, now 21 and frustrated with life as a musician-in- 

service at Salzburg, left home, visiting the court at Mannheim on 

the way to Paris. The Parisian public gave the former child prodigy a 

lukewarm reception, and he struggled to make money by teaching 

and composing new pieces for wealthy patrons. A failed love affair 

and the death of his mother prompted Mozart to return to Salzburg, 

where he accepted the post of Court and Cathedral Organist. 

In 1780 he was commissioned to write an opera, Idomeneo, for the 

Bavarian court in Munich, where he was treated with great respect. 

The servility demanded by his Salzburg employer finally provoked 

Mozart to resign in 1781 and move to Vienna in search of a more 

suitable position, fame and fortune. In the last decade of his life, he 

produced a series of masterpieces in all the principal genres of music, 

including the operas The Marriage of Figaro (1785), Don Giovanni 

(1787), Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute, the Symphonies Nos 40 

and 41 (‘Jupiter’), a series of piano concertos, a clarinet quintet and 

the Requiem, left incomplete at his death on 5 December 1791. 

Composer Profile © Andrew Stewart 

INTERVAL: 20 minutes 


Bernard Haitink & Maria João Pires 

this season and next with the LSO 

Thu 14 Jun 2012 

Purcell arr Steven Stucky 

Funeral Music for Queen Mary 


Bruckner Symphony No 7 



Supported by LSO Patrons 

Box Office 

020 7638 8891 (bkg fee) 

lso.co.uk (reduced bkg fee) 

Tue 12 Feb 2013 

Britten Four Sea Interludes 


Beethoven Symphony No 7 



Sun 17 & Thu 21 Feb 2013 


Bruckner Symphony No 9 



21 Feb supported by LSO Premier 


5

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) 

Symphony No 9 in C major (‘The Great’) D944 (1825, rev 1826) 

1 Andante – Allegro ma non troppo 

2 Andante con moto 

3 Scherzo: Allegro vivace 

4 Finale: Allegro vivace 

It is not clear when people first began referring to Schubert’s last 

completed symphony as the ‘Great C major’. Apparently the tag was 

first applied to differentiate it from the ‘little’ C major symphony, 

known as ‘No 6’, which Schubert wrote in 1817–18. But the nickname 

is well deserved: apart from Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ it is the great Symphony 

in C. Not only is it conceived on a huge scale, its sophistication and 

formal mastery are as impressive as its vitality, imaginative range and 

the infectious memorability of its main themes. 

That mastery is all the more impressive when one considers that it 

was only the year before he began work on the score that Schubert 

had declared his intention in a letter ‘to pave my way to grand 

symphony’. That same year, 1824, Schubert had also heard the 

premiere of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Ninth – a big influence to digest, 

one might have thought, and yet Schubert’s response to that 

challenge is confident and utterly original. Indeed Schubert clearly 

felt so sure of himself that he was able to invoke Beethoven’s Ninth 

without fear of comparison: the woodwind figures at the beginning of 

the development section of Schubert’s finale contain an unmistakable 

reference to a phrase from Beethoven’s famous ‘Ode to Joy’ theme. 

Almost certainly the C major Symphony’s vigour and assurance reflect 

something of Schubert’s mood in the summer of 1825, when he made 

a long walking tour with friends in Upper Austria. At one point in that 

extended holiday the party stayed at the house of Anton Ottenwalt, 

brother-in-law of Schubert’s close friend Josef von Spaun. Ottenwalt 

wrote that ‘Schubert looks so well and strong, is so bright and relaxed, 

so genial and communicative, that one cannot but be sincerely 

delighted’. In the next sentence, Ottenwalt reports that Schubert 

‘had been working on a symphony … which is to be performed in 

Vienna this winter’. For Ottenwalt there was clearly a connection 

between Schubert’s state of mind and his current musical fertility. 

6 Programme Notes 

But one could go further than that. The symphony is dominated 

by images of physical movement: the muscular, striding theme of 

the first movement; the exuberant waltz-tunes of the Scherzo; the 

hurtling vitality of the Finale – even the ‘slow’ second movement 

is carried forward by a march-like tread, introduced on the strings 

before the oboe sounds the leading melody. It is hard to imagine a 

greater contrast with the lyrical, introverted character of the B minor 

‘Unfinished’ Symphony, composed in much less happy times three 

years earlier. It is surely also significant that that productive summer 

of 1825 saw the completion of one of Schubert’s most awe-inspiring 

songs, a hymn to the God revealed in nature entitled ‘Die Allmacht’ 

(Omnipotence) – also in C major and, like the finale of the new 

symphony, dominated by repeated triplet rhythms. An invigorating 

walking regime, a delight in nature, thoughts of God inspired by sublime 

landscapes – all of this is implicit in the ‘Great’ C major Symphony. 

Despite his excellent spirits and abundant inspiration, Schubert had to 

wrestle with the symphony before it arrived at its final form. The score 

was extensively revised in 1826, as a result of which it became even 

longer than that already ambitious first version. Finally the symphony 

was handed over to the Vienna Philharmonic Society; parts were 

duly copied, and at some time towards the end of 1826 there was a 

run-through by the orchestra. But the hoped-for public performance 

did not materialise. According to one account, the symphony was 

‘provisionally put aside, because of its length and difficulty’. Schubert 

was never to hear the work performed in concert. It wasn’t until March 

1839 – eleven years after the composer’s death – that Mendelssohn 

conducted it at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. And despite enthusiastic 

championship, especially by the composer Robert Schumann – 

who made a point of praising its ‘heavenly length’ – it was not widely 

recognised as the masterpiece it is until much later. Even well into 

the 20th century it was not uncommon for the symphony to be 

performed with cuts. 

It is obvious from the opening bars that this is to be a symphonic 

journey on a grand scale. Two horns, unaccompanied, announce a 

quietly majestic tune that is to find echo in many of the symphony’s 

later ideas. Instead of providing a conventional classical ‘slow

introduction’ the substantial Andante first section is more in the 

nature of a set of free variations on the horns’ melody, building 

steadily to a powerful full-orchestral climax, at which the main Allegro 

ma non troppo theme (clearly alluding to the horns’ final phrase) 

sweeps in. Later, after the gentler second theme (woodwinds), 

trombones take another phrase from the horn melody and develop it 

in a thrilling long crescendo – one of the passages Schubert added in 

his revision of 1826. The first movement concludes with two impressive 

restatements of the horn tune in a new, condensed form: the journey 

has come full circle, but the perspective has changed radically. 

The following Andante con moto leads off at a walking pace – the 

kind of measured, almost hypnotic tread one encounters in several 

of Schubert’s later songs and chamber works. There are stiller, 

reflective, mysterious passages, but it is the march movement that 

provokes the movement’s astonishing climax: a huge fff (extremely 

loud) dissonance followed by an awe-struck silence – not everything 

in this symphony is joyous or good-humoured. The Scherzo is an 

elemental symphonic waltz: Schubert was clearly impressed by the 

scale of the scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth, but responded with a 

kind of movement that is entirely personal – at no point inhibited by 

Beethoven’s gigantic shadow. 

For sustained drive and soaring intensity the Finale is unparalleled. 

The writer Donald Francis Tovey described the second theme as having 

‘the momentum of a planet in its orbit’, but the description could 

just as well apply to the movement as a whole. The final crescendo 

is electrifying, culminating in massive pounding unison Cs – perhaps 

Schubert was thinking of the statue of the Commendatore knocking at 

the door in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Whatever the case, it adds a note 

of ambiguity to the symphony’s final pages. Joy or terror? As so often 

in the later Schubert, the exhilaration also leaves room for doubt. 

Programme Note © Stephen Johnson 

Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber). He 

also contributes regularly to the BBC Music Magazine, and broadcasts 

for BBC Radio 3 (Discovering Music), Radio 4 and the World Service. 

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) 


In childhood, Schubert was taught violin by his schoolmaster father 

and piano by his eldest brother. He rapidly became more proficient 

than his teachers, and showed considerable musical talent, so 

much so that in 1808 he became a member of Vienna’s famous 

Imperial Court chapel choir. He was educated at the Imperial City 

College, where he received lessons from the composer Salieri. His 

father, eager that Franz should qualify as a teacher and work in the 

family’s schoolhouse, encouraged the boy to return home in 1814. 

Compositions soon began to flow, although teaching duties interrupted 

progress. Despite his daily classroom routine, Schubert managed 

to compose 145 songs in 1815, together with four stage works, two 

symphonies, two Masses and a large number of chamber pieces. 

Though the quantity of Schubert’s output is astonishing enough, 

it is the quality of his melodic invention and the richness of his 

harmonic conception that are the most remarkable features of his 

work. He was able to convey dramatic images and deal with powerful 

emotions within the space of a few bars, as he so often did in his 

songs and chamber works. The public failure of his stage works 

and the reactionary attitudes to his music of conservative Viennese 

critics did not restrict his creativity, nor his enjoyment of composition; 

illness, however, did affect his work and outlook. In 1824 Schubert 

was admitted to Vienna’s General Hospital for treatment for syphilis. 

Although his condition improved, he suffered side-effects from his 

medication, including severe depression. During the final four years 

of his life, Schubert’s health declined; meanwhile, he created some 

of his finest compositions, chief among which are the song-cycles 

Winterreise and Schwanengesang, and the last piano sonatas. 

Composer Profile © Andrew Stewart 


7

Bernard Haitink 

Conductor 

‘On a night such as this, 

the London Symphony 

Orchestra seems to be 

a confederacy of virtuosos’ 

The Evening Standard on Haitink and the LSO 

With an international conducting career 

that has spanned more than five and a half 

decades, Amsterdam-born Bernard Haitink is 

one of today’s most celebrated conductors. 

Bernard Haitink was Chief Conductor of the 

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for 27 years 

and is now their Conductor Laureate. In 

addition, Haitink has previously held posts 

as Music Director of the Royal Opera, Covent 

Garden, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 

the Dresden Staatskapelle, and Principal 

Conductor of the Chicago Symphony 

Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. 

He is Conductor Emeritus of the Boston 

Symphony Orchestra. He has made frequent 

guest appearances with most of the world’s 

leading orchestras. 

Bernard Haitink began the 2011/12 season 

with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and 

the New York Philharmonic, to which he 

returned for the first time in over 30 years. 

February 2012 saw the conclusion of a 

Beethoven Cycle with the Chamber Orchestra 

of Europe in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 

and the Salle Pleyel, Paris. Other highlights of 

2011/12 included the Christmas Day concert 

with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 

and engagements with the symphony 

orchestra of the Bayerischer Rundfunk and 

the Tonhalle Orchestra, as well as a three 

week residency with the Boston Symphony. 

Haitink brings the season to a close with 

concerts in London and Paris with the London 

Symphony Orchestra, and in the Proms, 

Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals with the 

Vienna Philharmonic. 

Bernard Haitink has recorded widely for Phillips, 

Decca and EMI with the Concertgebouw 

Orchestra, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic 

orchestras and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 

His discography also includes many opera 

recordings with the Royal Opera, Glyndebourne, 

the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and Dresden 

Staatskapelle. Most recently he has recorded 

extensively with the London Symphony 

Orchestra for LSO Live, including the complete 

Brahms and Beethoven symphonies, and with 

the Chicago Symphony on their Resound 

label. Haitink’s recording of Janáček s Jenu˚ fa 

with the Royal Opera received a Grammy Award 

for best opera recording in 2004, and his 

Shostakovich Symphony No 4 recording with 

the Chicago Symphony was awarded a Grammy 

for Best Orchestral Performance of 2008. 

Bernard Haitink has received many 

international awards in recognition of his 

services to music, including both an honorary 

Knighthood and the Companion of Honour in 

the United Kingdom, and the House Order of 

Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. He was 

named Musical America’s Musician of the 

Year for 2007. 

8 The Artists Bernard Haitink © Clive Barda

Maria João Pires 

Piano 

‘Pires doesn’t pull phrases 

about yet her playing has 

infinite flexibility ... there was 

a real sense of conversation’ 

The Evening Standard on Pires and the LSO 

One of the finest musicians of her generation, 

Maria João Pires continues to transfix 

audiences with the spotless integrity, 

eloquence, and vitality of her art. 

She was born on 23 July 1944 in Lisbon and 

gave her first public performance in 1948. 

In Portugal she studied with Campos Coelho 

and Francine Benoit, later continuing her studies 

in Germany with Rosl Schmid and Karl Engel. 

Since 1970 she has dedicated herself to 

reflecting on the influence of art on life, 

community and education, and in trying 

to develop new ways of implementing 

pedagogic theories within society. In the last 

10 years she has held many workshops with 

students from all round the world, and has 

taken her philosophy and teaching to Japan, 

Maria João Pires © Felix Broede 

Brazil, Portugal, France, and Switzerland. In 

2005 she formed an experimental theatre, 

dance and music group, Art Impressions, 

and together they have produced two major 

projects – Transmissions and Schubertiade. 

In 2012, in addition to her chamber music 

recitals with the Brazilian cellist Antonio 

Meneses, she appears with all the major 

European orchestras under the batons 

of Bernard Haitink, Claudio Abbado and 

Riccardo Chailly, among others. A frequent 

visitor to Japan she returns there in spring 

2013 with the London Symphony Orchestra 

and Haitink. 

Maria João Pires recorded with Erato for 

15 years and subsequently, for the last 24 

years, with Deutsche Grammophon. Her 

large and varied discography covers solo 

repertoire, chamber music and concertos. 

Her latest recording, of two Mozart concertos 

conducted by Claudio Abbado, will be 

released in autumn 2012. 

LSO Season 2011/12 

Gianandrea Noseda 


Thu 21 Jun 7.30pm 


Wagner Prelude and Liebestod 

from ‘Tristan und Isolde’ 

Berg Three Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’ 

Gianandrea Noseda conductor 

Angela Denoke soprano 

Sponsored by BAT 

Recommended by Classic FM 

Tickets from £10 

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lso.co.uk 

The Artists 

9

Sir Colin Davis in 2012/13 

Last few tickets left! 

Thu 27 Sep 2012 7.30pm 

85th Birthday Concert 

with pianists Radu Lupu and Mitsuko Uchida 

Thu 18 Oct 2012 7.30pm 

Beethoven and Elgar 

with pianist Simon Trpčeski 

Wed 5 Dec 2012 7.30pm 

Queen’s Medal for Music Gala 

with violinist Maxim Vengerov 

Returns only 

Sun 13 Jan 2013 7.30pm 

Mozart Requiem 

with the London Symphony Chorus 

Season 2012/13 

Other Best-sellers 

Thu 8 Nov 2012 7.30pm 

Music for the Big Screen: 

The Best of John Williams 

with conductor Frank Strobel 

12 Feb 2013 7.30pm 

Mozart, Bruckner and Beethoven 

with Bernard Haitink and Maria João Pires 

Wed 22 May 2013 7.30pm 

Valery Gergiev 

60th Birthday Gala Concert 

with violinist Leonidas Kavakos 

Sun 9 Jun 2013 7.30pm 

Michael Tilson Thomas 

conducts Britten and Shostakovich 

with cellist Yo-Yo Ma 


Living Music 

Tickets from £10 

Resident at the Barbican 

lso.co.uk 

020 7638 8891

On stage 

First Violins 

Roman Simovic Leader 

Tomo Keller 

Lennox Mackenzie 

Ginette Decuyper 

Jörg Hammann 

Maxine Kwok-Adams 

Claire Parfitt 

Elizabeth Pigram 

Laurent Quenelle 

Harriet Rayfield 

Colin Renwick 

Ian Rhodes 

Sylvain Vasseur 

David Worswick 

Second Violins 

Evgeny Grach 

Thomas Norris 

Sarah Quinn 

Miya Vaisanen 

Matthew Gardner 

Belinda McFarlane 

Philip Nolte 

Andrew Pollock 

Paul Robson 

Raja Halder 

Hazel Mulligan 

Violas 

Edward Vanderspar 

Gillianne Haddow 

Malcolm Johnston 

German Clavijo 

Lander Echevarria 

Anna Green 

Richard Holttum 

Robert Turner 

Heather Wallington 

Jonathan Welch 

Cellos 

Timothy Hugh 

Alastair Blayden 

Jennifer Brown 

Noel Bradshaw 

Daniel Gardner 

Hilary Jones 

Minat Lyons 

Amanda Truelove 

Double Basses 

Rinat Ibragimov 

Colin Paris 

Nicholas Worters 

Patrick Laurence 

Thomas Goodman 

Jani Pensola 

Flutes 

Adam Walker 

Siobhan Grealy 

Oboes 

Christopher Cowie 

Michael O’Donnell 

Clarinets 

Chris Richards 

Chi-Yu Mo 

Bassoons 

Rachel Gough 

Joost Bosdijk 

Horns 

Timothy Jones 

Angela Barnes 

Geremia Iezzi 

David McQueen 

Trumpets 

Philip Cobb 

Roderick Franks 

Gerald Ruddock 

Trombones 

Dudley Bright 

James Maynard 

Bass Trombone 

Paul Milner 

Timpani 

Antoine Bedewi 

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. 

The Scheme is supported by: 

The Barbers’ Company 

The Carpenters’ Company 

Charles and Pascale Clark 

Fidelio Charitable Trust 

The Ironmongers’ Company 

Robert and Margaret Lefever 

LSO Friends 

Musicians Benevolent Fund 

The Polonsky Foundation 

List correct at time of 

going to press 

See page xv for London 

Symphony Orchestra members 

Editor 

Edward Appleyard 

edward.appleyard@lso.co.uk 

Photography 

Mark Harrison, Kevin Leighton, 

Bill Robinson, Alberto Venzago, 

Nigel Wilkinson 

Print 

Cantate 020 7622 3401 

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The Orchestra 

11

Inbox 

Your thoughts and comments about recent performances 

‘Surprise and inspire’ 

Selena Lemalu 

This programme was like taking 

a guided tour of a beautifully 

curated exhibition of an iconic 

figure’s work but from an 

unusual perspective. Instead 

of wandering from room to 

room taking in images, rich 

soundscapes materialised in 

the space before us, through 

the artistry of the LSO chamber 

ensemble. Most exciting to get an 

insight into Stravinsky’s creative 

process and his influence on the 

development of jazz music. 

Truly an evening that did ‘surprise 

and inspire’. 

LSO Chamber Orchestra / 

Stravinsky Festival, 

LSO St Luke’s 17 May 

12 Inbox 

‘Great stuff LSO’ 

David Valentine 

Sir Colin does it again! 

A wonderful night at the 

Barbican, an amazing, rarely 

heard work, with a superb cast, 

choir and orchestra. Lars Woldt’s 

performance at short notice was 

memorable. Great stuff LSO. 

Weber’s Der Freischütz 

with Sir Colin Davis 

Barbican, 19 & 21 April 

Katie Bishop 

Hey guys! Have been lucky 

enough to see you a few times 

and just wanted to thank you for 

being so fantastic and bringing 

music and life into our hearts! 

Bachtrack 

Fabulous concert last night at 

Barbican from London Symphony 

Orchestra. Stravinsky’s L’Histoire 

du Soldat [The Soldier’s Tale] 

was wonderful and so fresh and 

modern sounding. We noted 

Simon Callow’s scrutiny of the 

score and enjoyment of the 

music as well as giving a riveting 

performance! 

Barbican, 13 May 

facebook.com/ 

londonsymphonyorchestra 

Send us your thoughts on 

tonight’s concert 

Using a smartphone QR code reader, 

scan this barcode to go to our reviews page, 

email comment@lso.co.uk, or go to our 

facebook or twitter pages 

Nathan Madsen 

People, the @londonsymphony’s 

‘learn the Rite of Spring’s 

rhythms’ campaign is 100,000 

tons of AWESOME. 

The Rite of Spring clapping 

video made for Trafalgar Square 

concert, 12 May 

Mike Hill 

@londonsymphony Enjoyed 

Oedipus Rex – not a work I 

knew. Nice that @simonhalsey 

got a rousing cheer at the end. 

Great evening. 

Barbican, 15 May 

Chamber Orchestra of Europe 

@londonsymphony Loved the 

Gergiev Rite! Amazing. What a 

guy and what a band. Bravo all! 

twitter.com/londonsymphony 

Please note that the LSO may edit your comments and not all emails will be published.

Sunday 10 June 2012 - London Symphony Orchestra

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