Sunday 10 June 2012 - London Symphony Orchestra

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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
Page 1: Sunday 10 June 2012 7.30pm Barbican
Page 5 and 6: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) C
Page 7 and 8: introduction’ the substantial And
Page 9 and 10: Maria João Pires Piano ‘Pires do
Page 11 and 12: On stage First Violins Roman Simovi

Sunday 10 June 2012 - London Symphony Orchestra

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