Thu 23 Jun programme - London Symphony Orchestra

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Welcome News Welcome to the final LSO concert of the 2010/11 season at the Barbican. It is a pleasure to welcome Bernard Haitink and tonight’s soloists, soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon, mezzo-soprano Daniela Lehner, narrator Sir Thomas Allen and the trebles of Eltham College Choir. I hope you enjoy tonight’s performance and that you can join us for our concert in the City of London Festival on Tuesday 28 June at St Paul’s Cathedral, and the LSO Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday 23 August and Sunday 4 September. We look forward to welcoming you all back to the Barbican for the start of the 2011/12 season with Valery Gergiev conducting an all-Tchaikovsky gala programme featuring the winners of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition. Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for your continued support of the LSO this season. In times of reductions in public funding it is ever more important that the LSO is able to generate income from many different sources. Your commitment to our music-making is deeply appreciated and I hope that we can continue to count on your support. Wishing you an enjoyable summer. Kathryn McDowell LSO Managing Director 2 Welcome & News Inside Out: Free lunchtime music outside LSO St Luke’s Enjoy a picnic and free music on the sunny lawns of LSO St Luke’s from 1pm on selected Fridays. On Friday 15 July we round off this lunchtime series with Voice Trio, a female a capella group performing secular and sacred music from the medieval chants by Hildegard of Bingen to 20th-century European folk songs. Also, join Inside Out artists Randolph Matthews and Byron Johnston at the Whitecross Street Party on Sunday 24 July performing a highly creative fusion of Spanish acoustic guitar and African soul. lso.co.uk/insideout Released this month on LSO Live: Sir Colin Davis’ The Seasons Earlier this month, LSO Live released Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten recorded live at the Barbican with Sir Colin Davis last year. Of Die Jahreszeiten, Classical Review says: ‘Davis’ affection is palpable at every turn of this handsomely balanced reading. The London Symphony Orchestra plays beautifully for him … the soloists are also strong, especially the pure-voiced soprano Miah Persson’. Find out more and buy your copy at lso.co.uk/lsolive Coming up at LSO St Luke’s It might be the end of our 2010/11 season here at the Barbican but there’s lots going on over the summer at LSO St Luke’s. On Saturday 2 July, LSO Principals join the UK’s most promising young woodwind musicians for a concert showcasing their work at the end of the week-long LSO Academy, while on Thursday 7 July we welcome Indian violinist Kala Ramnath and composer Max de Wardener as part of the UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica series. Then on Monday 18 July the LSO St Luke’s Community Choir gives a concert which celebrates LSO St Luke’s and the surrounding area, and finally, the Fusion Orchestra and Digital Technology Group join forces on Saturday 31 July to give a concert of genre-defying collaborations. lso.co.uk/lsostlukes Kathryn McDowell © Camilla Panufnik Thu 23 June 2011.indd 2 6/20/2011 11:50:02 AM
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) Mother Goose Ballet (1910 orch 1912) 1 Prelude and Spinning-Wheel Dance 2 Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane 3 Tom Thumb 4 The Plain Girl, Empress of the Pagodas 5 Conversations Between Beauty and the Beast 6 The Fairy Garden Generally, composers pen a ballet first and then the suites follow. Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé is a classic example, but with Mother Goose the process worked initially in reverse. Inspired by the illustrations to a fairytale book, between 1908 and 1910 he wrote for the two children of his friends Ida and Cipa Godebski a sequence of pieces for piano duet – quite easy to play but not beginners’ music, so that Mimi and Jean who gave the public premiere in 1911 at the ages of six and seven must have been exceptional. The impresario Jacques Rouche, soon to become a long-serving director of the Paris Opera, was responsible for bringing about Ravel’s ballet version. He had been trying to get French composers to match the current Paris successes of Stravinsky’s new scores with the Ballets Russes, but Ravel – who was already working on Daphnis et Chloé for the same company – offered instead to make a ballet from his new duets. He added a prelude, introductory scene and linking music, with a scenario that began and ended with ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and presented the other stories as her dreams. It was premiered with some success at the Théâtre des Arts in January 1912. Just five months later Daphnis followed at the Châtelet, inevitably overshadowing it, and Ravel duly published an orchestral version of the suite which remains more often performed. It’s quite a feat to devise insertions in pre-existing music that sound as though they were there all along. Ravel was perceptive enough to realise that the five pieces already had a strong character and a cohesion that would be undermined by, in effect, competing with them. For his new material he concentrated on lightness and deftness, and brought off a small masterpiece of perfect timing within the larger masterpiece of his fairytale portrayals. The delicacy of touch for key moments – the pricked finger, the transformation of beast into prince, the hint of musical exoticism for the pagoda scene, the wonder of reawakening – is constant. Though never a parent, Ravel knew what made children tick and could share their imaginative worlds in a way that touches adult listeners with its truth. The title of the work comes from Charles Perrault’s 1697 volume which first contained the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Tom Thumb’ stories. ‘Laideronette’ (The Plain Girl, Empress of the Pagodas), a story that failed to cross the Channel, was written by a contemporary, and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ the following century. Programme note © Robert Maycock Robert Maycock writes about music for The Independent and magazines from BBC Music to Songlines, with special interests in French, contemporary and world music. His book, Glass: A Portrait, was published by Sanctuary in 2002. INTERVAL: 20 minutes Programme Notes Thu 23 June 2011.indd 3 6/20/2011 11:50:03 AM 3
Page 1: Bernard Haitink © Clive Barda Lond
Page 5 and 6: Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Composer
Page 7 and 8: Second Fairy Weaving spiders, come
Page 9 and 10: Here come the lovers, full of joy a
Page 11 and 12: Tutti Trip away; make no stay; Meet
Page 13 and 14: Sarah-Jane Brandon Soprano Winner o
Page 15 and 16: On stage First Violins Roman Simovi
Page 17 and 18: This was, in fact, more Sir Colin
Page 19 and 20: LSO On Tour This summer LSO takes u

Thu 23 Jun programme - London Symphony Orchestra

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