01
London Symphony
Orchestra
Resident at the Barbican
Valery Gergiev conductor
Andrew Haveron guest leader
Wed 13 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Sponsored by Canon
Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements
Prokofiev Violin Concerto No 1
Interval
Debussy (orch Colin Matthews) Three Préludes
Stravinsky Petrushka
Image © Borggreve/Decca / cover image © Getty Images
Vadim Repin violin
Thu 14 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Supported by LSO City Circuit
Stravinsky Les Noces
Interval
Debussy First Rhapsody for Clarinet
Prokofiev October Cantata
Andrew Marriner clarinet
Concerts end approx 9.40pm on 13 Jun and
9.30pm on 14 Jun
Concerts
recorded
for future
broadcast on:
13 Jun sponsored by
Contents
02 Welcome & LSO News 06 About the LSO
i Programme notes for Wed 13 Jun viii Programme
notes for Thu 14 Jun xiv Conductor’s Biography
xv Soloists’ Biographies 41 On stage this evening
42 LSO members 42 LSC 44 Mariinsky Chorus
02
Welcome
News in Brief
From our Managing Director
Top Stories
Welcome to the Barbican for the last two performances
in this dynamic series of music by Stravinsky,
Debussy and Prokofiev, with our Principal Conductor
Valery Gergiev.
On behalf of the Orchestra I would like to thank Canon
for their generous sponsorship of the 13 June concert
and for their ongoing support, and the LSO City Circuit
for their support of the 14 June concert.
As part of the Barbican’s 25th Birthday, the LSO’s
Barbican concerts on 13 and 14 June will be broadcast
live on a big screen in Broadgate Arena, just outside
Liverpool Street Station.
© Clive Barda
On 13 June the Orchestra is delighted to welcome
back Russian violinist Vadim Repin for Prokofiev’s
Violin Concerto No 1, a work of ravishing lyric invention.
On 14 June our Principal Clarinet Andrew Marriner
performs Debussy’s First Rhapsody for Clarinet,
before we hear Prokofiev’s October Cantata, scored
for a massive symphony orchestra, large chorus,
accordion band, alarm-bells, siren and speaker.
A legend retires (again)
On Sunday 3 June, we said farewell to LSO Principal
Trumpet Maurice Murphy on his retirement from the
LSO after 30 years. Many of you will remember the
tribute concert held for Maurice at the Barbican back
in 2000 – he assures us that this time his retirement
is for real! But we’re delighted that he is playing in
these concerts and going with the Orchestra to Russia
next weekend.
Maurice is something of a legend in the music world,
due in part to his key role in the opening chords of
John Williams’s music for the Star Wars films, and
he has helped to shape the ‘sound’ of the LSO ever
since. He will be much missed.
Kathryn McDowell
Visit lso.co.uk to listen to our podcast tribute to
Maurice on the LSO website, including an interview
with Maurice himself, Star Wars composer John
Williams, conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and
Richard Hickox and Maurice’s LSO colleagues.
© Camilla Panufnik
CANON ARE DELIGHTED TO
WELCOME YOU TO THIS
EVENING’S CONCERT
AND
HOPE YOU ENJOY THE
PERFORMANCE
Canon are proud to sponsor this LSO concert
do something different
The best
of the Barbican
outdoors
and all for free!
Blockbusters, classic movies, short films,
live music, concert relays, family events
and more as part of the Barbican’s
25th birthday celebrations
Including live relays of two Gergiev
London Symphony Orchestra concerts
from the Barbican Hall
Mon 11–Fri 15 June / 11am to late
Broadgate Arena
Principal Sponsor
Media Partner
www.barbicanbigscreen.org.uk
The Barbican Centre is provided
by the City of London Corporation
which has also given additional
funding for this event
i
Programme Notes
Information for Wed 13 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements
Prokofiev Violin Concerto No 1
Interval
Debussy (orch Colin Matthews) Three Préludes
Stravinsky Petrushka
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Symphony in Three Movements (1942–45)
1 Crotchet = 160
2 Andante – più mosso – tempo 1
3 Con moto
‘The more characteristic a work of Stravinsky, the further it is from
the symphonic idea’ wrote Robert Simpson in the long-superseded
Pelican guide to the Symphony. Although Simpson may have been
rather prescriptive in admitting the Symphony in Three Movements
into the canon of 20th-century symphonies, he certainly admired
this ‘brilliant and original work’, and he was right in the sense that
the young Stravinsky’s attempt to write a well-made symphony
under the guidance of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov – the E flat
specimen of 1905–07 ranked as his official Opus One – has no
individuality at all, while the Symphony in Three Movements is an
utterly characteristic and dynamic masterpiece of his maturity.
The hybrid origins of tonight’s work did, in fact, cause Stravinsky
to wonder whether he ought not to have called the result ‘Three
Symphonic Movements’. The first movement material, composed in
1942, was originally intended as a dark, tense concerto for orchestra
with a role for the piano employed, as it often had been in the
Capriccio for piano and orchestra, concertante style. The piano
then bowed out to harp in what became the second movement –
sketches for Stravinsky’s unlikely (and swiftly terminated)
contribution to Franz Werfel’s film The Song of Bernadette
(not the only film music to be reworked in an orchestral score –
the Ode’s second movement, a hunting scene, had been intended
for Stevenson’s Jane Eyre). The finale was completed some time
later, before the New York premiere of 1946.
What unites the Symphony in Three Movements is the powering
rhythmic intensity which holds the sectional structure together.
It is the most insistent since The Rite of Spring over 30 years
earlier and it has its roots in Stravinsky’s response to newsreel
images of the Second World War which, in an unguarded moment,
he specifically attached to certain sections. In the first movement,
the timpani’s ‘rumba’ – ‘associated in my imagination with the
movements of war machines’, he told Robert Craft – and the spiky
shuffling of piano and strings yield to brighter, more lightly-scored
sequences; but the ‘war’ element gains the upper hand in insistent,
semiquaver figures for clarinet, piano and strings. These in turn lead
to full-orchestral explosions which Stravinsky described as
‘instrumental conversations showing the Chinese people scratching
and digging in their fields’ before being overrun by scorched-earth
tactics. The writing for woodwind that follows is surely a requiem,
although thanks to the movement’s uniform tempo, tension
never slackens.
ii
Bernadette’s vision, a cantabile flute melody offset by strings and
harp, brings a change of air, though there is disquiet in this
Andante’s middle section, as well as sparely eloquent writing for
string quartet. The brass, silent except for horns here, goose-steps
into action near the start of the third movement – an image of
military force as graphic as anything in the later symphonies
of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Stravinsky was unequivocal on
the imagery of German arrogance, overturned and immobile in
the fugue launched by trombone and piano before the Allies fight
against the first movement’s ‘rumba’ figure and move on to victory.
The composer’s disingenuous claim, ‘in spite of what I have said,
the Symphony is not programmatic’ is best interpreted by noting
that the description does not account for some of the surprisingly
good-humoured invention along the way. It is, then, a symphony
with war footage, but nothing as straightforward as a ‘war symphony’.
Programme note © David Nice
Hear this
Composer Notes
A brief guide to Stravinsky
The son of the Principal Bass at the Mariinsky Theatre, Stravinsky
was born at the Baltic resort of Oranienbaum near St Petersburg
in 1882. Through his father he met many of the leading musicians
of the day and came into contact with the world of the musical
theatre. In 1903 he became a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, which
allowed him to get his orchestral works performed and as
a result he came to the attention of Sergey Diaghilev, who
commissioned a new ballet from him, The Firebird.
The success of The Firebird, and then Petrushka (1911) and
The Rite of Spring (1913) confirmed his status as a leading young
composer. Stravinsky now spent most of his time in Switzerland
and France, but continued to compose for Diaghilev and the
Ballets Russes: Pulcinella (1920), Mavra (1922), Renard (1922),
Les Noces (1923), Oedipus Rex (1927) and Apollo (1928).
Tue 26 & Fri 29 Jun 7pm
(please note earlier start time)
Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini
Sir Colin Davis conductor
Soloists include: Giuseppe Sabbatini Cellini
Laura Claycomb Teresa | Peter Coleman-Wright Fieramosca
London Symphony Chorus
26 Jun Takeda Global Concert
Tickets £6 £12 £18 £24 £30
Book now at lso.co.uk or 020 7638 8891
Stravinsky settled in France in 1920, eventually becoming a
French citizen in 1934, and during this period moved away from
his Russianism towards a new ‘neo-classical’ style. Personal
tragedy in the form of his daughter, wife and mother all dying
within eight months of each other, and the onset of the Second
World War persuaded Stravinsky to move to America in 1939,
where he lived until his death. From the 1950s, his compositional
style again changed, this time in favour of a form of serialism.
He continued to take on an exhausting schedule of conducting
engagements until 1967, and died in New York in 1971. He was
buried in Venice on the island of San Michele, close to the grave
of Diaghilev.
Profile © Andrew Stewart
iii
Programme Notes
Information for Wed 13 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Violin Concerto No 1 in D major, Op 19 (1916–17)
1 Andantino – Andante assai
2 Scherzo. Vivacissimo
3 Moderato – Allegro moderato – Moderato – Più tranquillo
Vadim Repin violin
‘How could it have happened that he did not hear the true music
of the Revolution?’, asks Prokofiev’s dutiful Soviet biographer, Israel
Nestyev, of his subject’s role in the crucial year of 1917. It happened
because, although Prokofiev had been very much present in
Petrograd, dodging the shooting, throughout the February uprising,
he spent very little time in the cities during the turbulent months
leading up to the yet more crucial events that October. He completed
the ‘Classical’ Symphony in the country outside Petrograd that spring,
and the limpid purity of Russia’s eastern rivers found its way in to
the orchestration of the First Violin Concerto. The river trip was a
holiday which Prokofiev the careful Soviet autobiographer would be
at pains to pass over. Travelling south-west to pick up a boat along
the Volga to Kazan, he decided with apparent spontaneity to explore
the river Kama. His detour took him as far east as the foot of the
mighty Ural mountains, home to The Stone Flower’s Mistress of
the Copper Mountains. He described the scenery to his friend
Myaskovsky as ‘wild, virginal and exceptionally beautiful, with its
red mountainous shores covered in dark Siberian pines.’
The virginal and the beautiful aspects could certainly be applied
to the opening theme of the Concerto, though it had already been
sketched as the beginning of a concertino back in 1915. Its genesis
remains unclear; six years later, when the work finally received its
first performance in Paris on 18 October 1923, with the 18-year-old
leader of Koussevitzky’s orchestra, Marcel Darrieux, as soloist,
Prokofiev wrote to another musical friend, Pyotr Souvchinsky, that
‘the first movement and the finale were conceived in 1913 and
executed in 1916 and now, to be sure, I’d do a lot of it very differently.’
Never mind the precise origins; what remains significant is the high
degree of gentle lyricism in a relatively early work by a composer
regarded, whether in 1917 or 1923, as a noise-making enfant
terrible. Pure song for the soloist at the very beginning of a violin
concerto was nothing new, and the Parisian audience looked
down its nose at one possible source, the Mendelssohn concerto.
It seems more likely that Prokofiev had taken note of the shimmering
string support for the violinist in the opening bars of the Sibelius
Concerto as well as the roving, seemingly improvised quality of
Sibelius’s melody.
‘the harpist and soloist provide a
gleaming reflection which surely
owes something to the magic of that
summer journey down the Kama’
His own concerto, predominantly sweet and dreamy rather than
dark and dramatic like Sibelius’s, runs for some 44 bars before
dissolving its profile in low, irresolute trills. At first the secondary
material which follows, a gavotte rather more contorted than the
familiar third movement of the ‘Classical’ Symphony, seems to come
from a different world. Yet the magical negotiation back to the silkspinning of the opening seems perfectly natural. This time the flute
takes over the melody in all its pristine beauty while the harpist and
soloist provide a gleaming reflection which surely owes something
to the magic of that summer journey down the Kama, and the spell
is cast even more wistfully at the end of the concerto.
Between these fugitive visions Prokofiev entertains his listeners
and the soloist with a scherzo – the movement he liked best in
1923 – running wild with every conceivable violinistic effect:
pizzicato (plucking), harmonics, spiccato (fast bouncy bowing)
iv
and sul ponticello (playing close to the bridge of the instrument).
The orchestration snaps back with the resourcefulness of rushing
clarinet figurations, pulsing horns and the baleful rearing of the
tuba. Although the finale soon gives the impression of treading
water before the work’s initial haven can be reached again, its
opening sets up a curious tension between the violinist’s cantabile
melody and the dry, tick-tocking accompaniment – anticipating the
ambiguous slow movement of the Second Violin Concerto by nearly
two decades. The affecting elaborations of clarinet and flute in the
final vision were added in 1924 after early performances, Prokofiev
told Myaskovsky, ‘because without some sort of divertissement
like that it sounded dreadfully like the overture [Wagner’s Prelude]
to Lohengrin’.
Programme note © David Nice
David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts on music, notably for BBC
Radio 3 and BBC Music Magazine. The first volume of his Prokofiev
biography, From Russia to the West 1891–1935, was published in 2003
by Yale University Press.
Composer Notes
A brief guide to Prokofiev
Prokofiev was born in the Ukraine and from an early age showed
a prodigious ability both as composer and pianist. He gained a
place at the St Petersburg Conservatory at the age of 13 and
shortly thereafter acquired a reputation for the uncompromising
nature of his music. According to one critic, the audience at the
1913 premiere of the composer’s Second Piano Concerto were
left ‘frozen with fright, hair standing on end’. He left Russia after
the 1917 Revolution, but decided to return to Moscow with his
wife and family 19 years later, apparently unaware of Stalin’s
repressive regime. Before he left for exile, Prokofiev completed
his ‘Classical’ Symphony, a bold and appealing work that revived
aspects of 18th-century musical form, clarity and elegance.
He received commissions from arts organisations in the United
States and France, composing his sparkling opera The Love for
Three Oranges for the Chicago Opera Company in 1919–20.
His engagements as a recitalist and concerto soloist brought
Prokofiev to a wide audience in Europe and the USA, and he
was in great demand to perform his own Piano Concerto No 3.
The ballet Romeo and Juliet and the score for Feinzimmer’s film
Lieutenant Kijé were among Prokofiev’s first Soviet commissions.
Both scores were subsequently cast as concert suites, which
have become cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire. ‘The Fifth
Symphony was intended as a hymn to free and happy Man, to his
mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.’ Prokofiev’s comments,
written in 1944 as the Russian army began to march towards
Berlin, reflected his sense of hope in the future. Sadly, his later
years were overshadowed by illness and the denunciation of his
works as ‘formalist’ by the Central Committee of the Communist
Party in 1948.
Profile © Andrew Stewart
v
Programme Notes
Information for Wed 13 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Achille-Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Three Préludes (1910–13), orchestrated by
Colin Matthews
1 La Puerta del Vino
2 Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir
3 Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest
Making orchestral versions of all 24 of Debussy’s Préludes, a project
commissioned by the Hallé Orchestra in 2001 and completed earlier
this year, has been an extraordinary journey. I am no pianist myself,
but have taken much pleasure in trying to find my way through
these wonderful pieces, composed between 1910 and 1913, for
as long as I can remember. Some of them seem almost as if they
were conceived as orchestral miniatures; others are so pianistic
that to translate them into orchestral form has meant substantially
reworking them. Always I’ve had it at the back of my mind that
I should try to make them feel so natural in their new shape that
it would be a very hard task for anyone, not knowing the originals,
to convert them back into piano pieces.
The particular joy of making these transcriptions has been the
opportunity to get inside the mind of one of my favourite composers.
But it brought with it many challenges, not least that of trying to
find an equivalent to the piano sonorities of which Debussy was
such a master. Although my aim has never been to write a pastiche
of Debussy’s own orchestral style, his language is so individual that
almost any form of arrangement is bound to retain the essence of
the composer.
‘La Puerta del Vino’, inspired by a postcard of a gate near the
Alhambra sent to Debussy by Manuel de Falla, is a habanera,
marked by Debussy ‘with abrupt oppositions of extreme violence
and passionate sweetness’. Debussy’s fascination with Spain here
produces, as in Ibéria, some of his most evocative music.
‘Les sons et les parfums ...’ is a line from Baudelaire’s ‘Harmonie du
Soir’, a poem which Debussy had set in 1888. Here, and in La Puerta,
I found it necessary to change the key of the original so that it
would work orchestrally. If in the process this Prélude has lost some
of its mysterious depth, it has perhaps gained in range and sonority.
‘Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest’ derives either from a description of
the West Wind by Hans Christian Andersen, or from Shelley’s ‘Ode
to the West Wind’ (Debussy left few clues as to the origin of his
titles). A Liszt-like study of great bravura, it was the first of the
Préludes that I transcribed, with the feeling that, if this one were
possible, the rest might follow.
Programme note © Colin Matthews
A brief guide to Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews was born in London in 1946 and studied music
at Nottingham and Sussex. He worked with Benjamin Britten in
Aldeburgh from 1972–76, and with Imogen Holst, and collaborated
with Deryck Cooke for many years on the performing version of
Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. From 1992–99 he was Associate
Composer with the London Symphony Orchestra, writing amongst
other works, a Cello Concerto for Rostropovich. In 1997 his choral
and orchestral work Renewal, commissioned for the 50th
anniversary of BBC Radio 3, was given the Royal Philharmonic
Society Award for large-scale composition. His ballet score Hidden
Variables opened the Royal Ballet’s 1999/2000 season, and the
large-scale ensemble piece Continuum was toured in Europe
by the BCMG and Simon Rattle in 2000. Recent works include
Reflected Images for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and
Berceuse for Dresden for the New York Philharmonic. Turning Point
was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in January 2007.
He is currently Composer-in-Association with the Hallé.
vi
Programme Notes
Information for this evening’s performance
Wed 13 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Composer Notes
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Petrushka (1911)
A brief guide to Debussy
Despite an insecure family background (his father was imprisoned
as a revolutionary in 1871), Debussy took piano lessons and was
accepted as a pupil of the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, but failed
to make the grade as a concert pianist. The gifted musician
directed his talents towards composition, eventually winning the
coveted Prix de Rome in 1884 and spending two years in Italy.
During the 1890s he lived in poverty with his mistress Gabrielle
Dupont, eventually marrying the dressmaker Rosalie (Lily) Texier
in 1899. His Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, although regarded
as a revolutionary work at the time of its premiere in December
1894, soon found favour with concertgoers and the habitually
conservative French press. Late in the summer of the previous
year he had begun work on the only opera he completed, Pelléas
et Mélisande, which was inspired by Mæterlinck’s play. It was an
immediate success after its first production in April 1902.
In 1904 he met Emma Bardac, the former wife of a successful
financier, and moved into an apartment with her; his wife, Lily
Texier, attempted suicide following their separation. Debussy and
Emma had a daughter and were subsequently married in January
1908. The composer’s troubled domestic life did not affect the
quality of his work, with such magnificent scores as La mer for
large orchestra and the first set of Images for piano produced
during this period. Debussy’s ballet Jeux was first performed by
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in May 1913, a fortnight before the
premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Although suffering
from cancer, he managed to complete the first three of a
projected set of six instrumental sonatas. He died at his Paris
home and was buried at Passy cemetery.
Profile © Andrew Stewart
A mere four years after finishing his private studies with RimskyKorsakov, Stravinsky was embarking on the work that would alienate
him forever from his teacher’s circle. His first collaboration with the
great Ballet Russes impresario Sergey Diaghilev – The Firebird – had
already met with a mixed reception in Russia, some feeling it was
lacking in originality, others finding it brilliant but superficial.
Petrushka, however, caused serious outrage. Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov,
Stravinsky’s childhood friend and son of his revered teacher, had
already questioned Stravinsky’s intention to use popular songs in his
new work. On receiving the composer’s letter from France, containing
fragments of half-remembered ‘street or factory songs’ together with
a request to jog his memory, he obligingly sent Stravinsky the
completed songs, but queried his intention to use such ‘trash’.
At the root of Rimsky-Korsakov’s displeasure was the urban nature
of much of Petrushka’s borrowed material. The scholarly work of
Russian ethnographers and folklorists had been deeply admired by
his father Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and the Russian national school.
Stravinsky’s apparent addiction to the cheap urban songs of his
youth was a different matter entirely. One of the songs Stravinsky
had already written into Petrushka was not even Russian: it was a
‘polka populaire’ by Emile Spencer entitled La jambe en bois, which
he had heard played on a barrel-organ. The song – popular in France
at the time – was about the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt and
her wooden leg, with a text that might have provoked as many
frowns in St Petersburg circles as smiles in France: ‘She had a
wooden leg/and so it should not be seen/she had it fitted from
beneath/with rubber washers.’ Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov would no
doubt have appreciated the poetic justice in the legal proceedings
that ensued, resulting in Stravinsky’s paying Spencer royalties from
Petrushka for the rest of his life. What is certain, however, is that
vii
Stravinsky had never intended to cause offence, and was genuinely
hurt by his compatriots’ rejection. From the first, Petrushka had
been conceived as a lovingly nostalgic tribute to an emblem of
‘old Russia’ – the Shrovetide fairs, with their puppet shows, dancing
bears and pantomimes – which had vanished by the early 1900s.
Alexandre Benois, who conceived the scenario and much of the
stage design, jumped at the chance to revisit his childhood
experiences, describing Petrushka enthusiastically as a ‘symphony
of the street’. There was also more than a little nostalgia in
Stravinsky’s colourful borrowings from some of the most popular
Russian songs of his own youth. The character of Petrushka himself
in Benois’s scenario, though, was a transformation of the cheeky,
abusive hero of the Russian fairground into a tragic Pierrot. Benois
conflated the puppets Petrushka and the Blackamoor with the lovetriangle of Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot. As such, Stravinsky’s
Petrushka is both a vivid celebration of Russian ‘street’ culture, and
a serious drama: the tragic tale of a puppet brutally treated by the
Magician, rejected by the Ballerina and finally killed by the Moor.
The symbolism was not lost on contemporary audiences. When
Diaghilev toured the ballet throughout America in 1916, a St Louis
critic mused ‘Was the original Petrushka a symbol of the Russian
people in the hands of their rulers?’ Edith Sitwell, in her essay on
the Russian ballet, saw Petrushka as a pitiful metaphor for the
human condition, and Benois himself regarded his puppet hero as
the ‘personification of the spiritual and suffering side of humanity’.
The First Tableau opens on the Shrovetide Fair: an organ grinder
plays two tunes, the second of which (accompanied by the triangle)
is Spencer’s song La jambe en bois. A dramatic drum-roll signals the
appearance of the Magician and his puppets. As he plays his flute,
the three little figures emerge from the showbooth; three touches
with the flute brings them to life and they dance together in a
Russian Dance. The show ends; the curtain falls, and the Second
Tableau opens on Petrushka’s cell, into which the puppet is abruptly
kicked. The rising clarinet arpeggio figure – Petrushka’s signature
motif – gives way to a melancholy bassoon solo, and then an
outburst of anger and frustration. After a while, the Ballerina enters
Petrushka’s room, but becomes alarmed by his strange behaviour
and leaves. Petrushka, enraged and in despair, flings himself through
the paper walls of his cell. The Third Tableau is set in the Moor’s cell,
where he is soon joined by the Ballerina, and they waltz together
awkwardly. The muted sound of Petrushka’s motif tells them that he
is jealously listening at the door. A scuffle breaks out and the Moor
ejects Petrushka from the room. Back in the hurly-burly of the
fairground, the Fourth Tableau presents a series of dances: first
come the Nursemaids; next, a dancing bear and a peasant playing
his dudka; a merchant plays the accordion; coachmen and stable
boys dance a heavy two-step. A group of mummers perform a short
pantomime and dance, joined by the crowd. As they dance, little
cries are heard from the showbooth. The dance stops suddenly as
Petrushka dashes out, pursued by the Moor, who kills him with his
sabre. A crowd gathers around him as he dies. The Magician picks
up his corpse and begins to drag it towards the showbooth, when
Petrushka’s ghost suddenly appears over his head, thumbing his
nose at him and shaking his fist. Terrified, the Magician drops the
puppet and hurries away.
Programme note © Pauline Fairclough
Pauline Fairclough is lecturer in music at the University of Bristol.
She has published articles on Shostakovich and Soviet music, and
is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich.
viii
Programme Notes
Information for this evening’s performance
Thu 14 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Stravinsky Les Noces
Interval
Debussy First Rhapsody for Clarinet
Prokofiev October Cantata
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Les Noces (‘The Wedding’) (1923)
Scene 1: The Bride’s Chamber | Scene 2: At the Bridegroom’s
Scene 3: The Bride’s Departure | Scene 4: The Wedding Feast
Irina Vasilieva soprano | Olga Savova mezzo-soprano
Andrey Ilyushnikov tenor | Gennady Bezzubenkov bass
John Alley | Catherine Edwards | Elizabeth Burley
Andrew Ball piano | Neil Percy | David Jackson | Chris Thomas
Ben Hoffnung | Helen Yates | Sam Walton percussion
Nigel Thomas timpani | Members of the Mariinsky Chorus
These ‘Russian choreographic scenes’ took Stravinsky longer to
complete than any other of his major works. The time and thought
he devoted to perfecting his score are some indication of its
importance to him as a distillation of his ideal Russia of the
imagination. It’s also a model of his rhythmic and harmonic
techniques, of his inventive approach to the blend of words and
music, of his transformation of earthy folklore into timeless ritual.
In 1912, while working on The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky was looking
ahead to ‘a choral work on the subject of a Russian peasant wedding’.
The composition of what he then decided was to be a voice-led
ballet took place between 1914 and 1917, but even when the short
score was complete it took him years to find the right instrumental
sound to accompany the voices. He first thought of a huge orchestra,
even larger than that of The Rite, presumably rejecting this on
practical grounds. Another projected instrumentation was for a 39-
piece ensemble with only a handful of strings, but including
harpsichord, harmonium and cymbalom; a further idea was for a
combination of mechanical player-piano, harmonium, two cimbaloms
and percussion. Only in 1922 did he settle on the final instrumentation:
four pianos, with an assortment of tuned and untuned percussion.
Les Noces was first performed by Diaghilev’s company in Paris in 1923,
conducted by Ernest Ansermet. The dancers and four pianos were on
stage, the singers and percussion players in the pit. Natalia Goncharova
designed the simple costumes and décor, the choreography, also plain
and essential, was by Bronislava Nijinska. Since then, the French title
has stuck, but there’s no reason for English speakers not to call it
The Wedding. The Russian title is Svadebka, diminutive of ‘Svadba’,
suggesting the sort of wedding customs commonly practised among
the 19th-century peasantry. Stravinsky wrote of ‘typical wedding
episodes told through quotations of typical talk’. His text, compiled
from various folk collections, is a collage that evokes a bewildering
mixture of Christian and pagan traditions: ‘As a collection of clichés and
quotations of typical wedding sayings it might be compared to one of
those scenes in Ulysses in which the reader seems to be overhearing
scraps of conversation without the connecting thread of discourse.’
What unifies the work is not the sense of the words, but the music
that springs from them. The driving rhythms are rigidly organised,
a common pulse underlying all the changes of tempo and meter.
Everything is stylised and de-personalised. There’s no particular
narrative, nor do the voices, in their various combinations, represent
specific characters. The four scenes are continuous. In the first,
the bridesmaids plait the weeping bride’s hair; in the second the
bridegroom is prepared by his friends and seeks his parents’
blessing. The third scene shows the bride’s departure from her
parents’ house and the lamenting of the two mothers. The fourth
and longest scene is the riotous wedding feast, at the end of which
the newly-weds withdraw, the voices fall silent and bell sounds
extend the moment into eternity.
Programme note © Andrew Huth
ix
Programme Notes
Information for Thu 14 Jun 2007 7.30pm
Achille-Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
First Rhapsody for Clarinet (1909–10)
Andrew Marriner clarinet
Debussy wrote few pieces for solo instrument and orchestra:
only this work, the Saxophone Rhapsody, the two Dances for Harp
and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. Somehow the display
element, traditional in setting a solo instrument against an
orchestra, was not in Debussy’s nature although, curiously enough,
the Nocturnes were originally conceived for solo violin and
orchestra. Why then the Clarinet Rhapsody?
Recent biographical information, for a long time suppressed, may
help us to build a picture of the composer during 1909 and 1911,
the period when the work took shape. It was first written as a
morceau de concours: a competition piece for conservatoire
students, in this form with piano accompaniment. Debussy’s
manuscript is precise in its dates: it was started in December 1909
and completed the following month. The composer himself was on
the jury when eleven clarinet players presented the piece for
examination. He wrote to his publisher Jacques Durand in advance
of the event which took place in July 1910: ‘I’ll tell you about it, that
is if I’m still alive!’ A week later he was able to report that the
concours went well and had the impression that his piece was liked.
He commented on the correctness but mediocrity of the performers
with the exception of one named Vandercruyssen who played the
piece from memory and was, according to Debussy, a grand musician.
Those who know Debussy’s piece in the version with piano will have
an extra dimension of enjoyment added as they hear Debussy’s
thoroughly pianistic sonorities transformed rather than transcribed.
Its accompaniment, often reliant on a cloud of resonance created
by the sustaining pedal, here takes on quite a different character.
Maybe the piece ranks more among those pieces whose impetus
was external rather than stemming from a burning artistic idea,
but if it is a pot boiler then it is none the worse for it. Certainly the
financial aspect was important when it came to the orchestration.
In June he had been in Turin conducting a concert including works
by Chabrier, Roger-Ducasse and Paul Dukas as well as some of his
own. The orchestra had been recently formed and was entirely
unaccustomed to the French style. Furthermore they were ill
prepared. Debussy was not at ease in such situations, having no
natural authority over orchestral musicians at the best of times.
The whole event left him in a state of nervous exhaustion, and in
July he was ordered to rest for at least a month by his doctor. He
took the opportunity of pleading poverty to Durand who advanced
him 3000 francs in anticipation of an orchestration of the Clarinet
Rhapsody, commissioned by Elisa Hall of the Orchestral Club of
Boston. It was she who had commissioned the Saxophone Rhapsody
some years before and this second commission enabled Debussy
to take his well-earned holiday.
Unfortunately the holiday was by no means a success. With his
second wife Emma he settled for a month at the beach resort of
Houlgate, near Pourville on the Normandy coast. While he loved
the sea and the landscape, the high season crowds annoyed him
intensely. To the composer André Caplet he said he was “doing
nothing, not from laziness but because he couldn’t even think in
this caravanserai”. But to his publisher he wrote that the
orchestration of the Rhapsody ‘was nearly done’.
Durand published his correspondence with Debussy in 1927,
at which time Emma Debussy was still alive, and many passages
revealing personal details were cut. Recent examination of the
original letters sheds a good deal of light on the strained relations
between Debussy and his wife at this time, for he used Durand as
someone in whom he could confide his feelings. ‘At the end of the
holiday we’ll have to admit that we don’t know why we bothered
x
Programme Notes
Information for Thu 14 Jun 2007 7.30pm
to come. Maybe we have lost the ability to enjoy ourselves together.’
Quite a different light is thrown on the composer at this time by a
study of the suppressed passages unavailable to previous biographers.
As far as the orchestration of the Rhapsody is concerned it may be
suggested that Debussy threw himself willingly into this professional
task to escape from stormy times in his marriage to Emma. Why
it was entitled the ‘first’ rhapsody is a matter of surmise: there is
no sequel.
Programme notes © Richard Langham Smith
Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October
Revolution, Op 74 (1936–37)
1 Introduction
2 Philosophers
3 Interlude
4 Marching in Close Ranks
5 Interlude
6 Revolution
7 Victory
8 The Pledge
9 Symphony
10 The Constitution
Eddie Hesian | Ian Watson | Karen Sweet |
Tracey Goldsmith | Owen Murray accordion
Band players
Members of the Mariinsky Chorus
London Symphony Chorus
‘Prokofiev ... ended up like a chicken in the soup ...’
(Shostakovich, purportedly quoted in Solomon Volkov’s
Testimony)
‘Prokofiev and his wife Lina spent the New Year of 1936 in Moscow,
celebrating with friends and making final preparations to move back
to the Soviet Union with their children. In an interview published in
the Moscow Evening News on 28 January, Prokofiev announced:
Richard Langham Smith is a well-known writer on French Music. He
is currently Arnold Kettle Distinguished Scholar in Music at the Open
University and is currently writing a book on Carmen. His edition of
this opera was premiered at the Châtelet in Paris in May this year.
‘I’ve thought up for the 20th anniversary of
the October Revolution a big cantata on texts from
the works of Lenin. As far as I know, this will be
the first time that Lenin’s words have been used
as the basis for a large-scale musical work.’
xi
Prokofiev made several public announcements at this period
about his new piece, even though almost nothing had yet been
written. Perhaps this was a gamble to ensure that his return to
his native land would be a resounding success. If so, it was a
gamble that failed.
According to Rita McAllister, the composer began sketching
the cantata while he was in Paris. As he often did, he included
several ideas which had been written years before. The text,
which he himself appears to have compiled by degrees, seems
at this stage to have involved only words from Lenin, although
it eventually came to include quotations from Marx, Engels and
even Stalin. Back once again in Moscow in March (his wife was
still looking after the children in Paris), Prokofiev moved into the
Metropol Hotel, where, within a few weeks, he wrote Peter and
the Wolf for the Moscow Children’s Musical Theatre. This enchanting
piece became a huge success within days of its first performance
on 2 May. On 15 May his wife and children arrived, and by the end
of June the whole family had moved into a new flat on the east side
of the centre of town.
By the beginning of July the hot weather had begun and Prokofiev
and his wife and children left the dusty city to spend the summer in
the countryside. In fact he did little work on the cantata at this point
as he was preoccupied with three Pushkin projects, a film score for
The Queen of Spades and incidental music for theatrical productions
of Boris Godunov and Eugene Onegin (1937 was to be not only the
20th anniversary of the October Revolution, but the centenary of
Pushkin’s death). Towards the end of the summer, the family came
back to Moscow, arriving home at the same time as the news of
the start of the great show trials of Zinoviev and Kamenev, marking
the opening of the floodgates of the Stalinist Terror. How this ghastly
historical episode touched Prokofiev we do not know, but even he
cannot have remained indifferent to the general atmosphere of
mounting fear, and to the increasing number of arbitrary arrests.
In November, Prokofiev set off on a tour of Europe and the USA.
That he was able to go at all, at a time when most Soviet citizens
had no chance of travelling abroad, is a remarkable indicator of
the deal that he thought he had struck with the authorities when
he decided to go home. For the time being, those authorities were
sticking to what they had promised. His well-publicised departure
also coincided with the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets,
at which Stalin forced through the ratification of his new Constitution.
Extracts from Stalin’s speech at this Congress would eventually
form the text of the final section of Prokofiev’s Cantata.
In the early months of 1937 Prokofiev returned to Moscow
(with a smart new blue Ford purchased in America) and it was
possibly at this time that he began to get down to serious work
on the music.
By the time summer came he had again removed his family from
the city, this year to a pretty little village beyond the suburbs to
the south-west, Nikolina Gora. Here, in the place where he was
eventually to spend most of his time in his later years, Prokofiev
completed the composition and orchestration of the Cantata for
the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, finishing the
enormous full score on 16 August 1937.
Soon afterwards, he gave a performance of the piece (playing the
score on the piano and singing the vocal parts himself) to a closed
session of the Committee for Artistic Affairs, chaired by its
president, the ideologist and propagandist Platon Mikhailovich
Kerzhentsev. In a transcript of this occasion which appeared only
in 1967, Moisey Grinberg, who was present, recalled:
‘I remember how Platon Mikhailovich said:
“What on earth do you mean, Sergey Sergeyevich,
by taking such texts, which have become the
people’s, and setting them to such music?”’
xii
Grinberg added:
‘It must be pointed out that Prokofiev sang very nastily,
although he played the piano brilliantly ...’
Against this story must be set a diary entry by the composer
Nikolay Myaskovsky (one of Prokofiev’s closest friends), who
heard the piece at the same time:
‘Prokofiev showed us his cantata for the
20th anniversary of October – tremendous.’
Nonetheless, and despite Myaskovsky’s favourable opinion, the
result of this secret session was that the new cantata was declared
unworthy of performance.
For a while Prokofiev seems to have clung to the idea that the
decision was not final. He wrote to a friend:
‘I sat for two months at Nikolina Gora ...
scribbling a cantata for the twentieth anniversary,
and it has already provoked more indignation
than rapture. What will happen when it is performed?’
Even months later on 31 December 1937, he defiantly told
a journalist from Pravda that:
‘My main work this year has been a large cantata
dedicated to the 20th anniversary of
October. The main themes of this composition
are the Great October Socialist Revolution, its
victory, the industrialisation of the country and
the Constitution.’
The cantata is written for two choruses (professional and amateur)
and four orchestras (symphony, brass band, sound effects and
accordionists).
‘I wrote this cantata with great enthusiasm.
The complex events which it treats demanded an
equal complexity of musical language. But I hope
that the impetuosity and sincerity of the music
will carry it to our listeners.’
These last words are particularly interesting as they give the first
hint that Prokofiev is trying to defend himself publicly against the
attacks of Kerzhentsev and his cronies.
In fact, the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October
Revolution was never performed in the composer’s lifetime. Only
on 5 April 1966, more than 12 years after his death, did it receive
its premiere in Moscow under the conductor Kiril Kondrashin. Even
then the eighth and tenth movements were cut because of their
texts by Stalin, the ninth movement (‘Symphony’) was given only in
fragments, and the performance ended with a peculiar reprise of
the second movement, presumably in order to find some way of
finishing the piece in C major. Only in very recent years has it had
its first complete performances.
The Cantata, for all its immense size, the massive forces it demands,
its cumbersome title and its repulsive texts, represents one of
Prokofiev’s most magnificent musical utterances on the large scale,
a choral and orchestral feast to rank with his world-famous film
scores for Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible.
The work is cast in ten movements, which follow one another
without a break. It begins with a stormy prelude, over the first page
of which Prokofiev has written a quotation from The Communist
Manifesto:
xiii
‘A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism.’
The second movement introduces the chorus with another famous
quotation from Marx:
‘Philosophers simply explained the world in
different ways. The point is to change it.’
A brief and dramatic interlude leads to the fourth movement, a
setting of extracts from Lenin’s writings from before the Revolution,
urging his followers towards the great task ahead.
Another stormy interlude leads to the heart of the work,
‘Revolution’. This, the longest section, is a gigantic choral and
dramatic scena. Its texts, taken from Lenin’s writings and sayings
from the very first few weeks of the October Revolution, have been
arranged by the composer to suggest a vivid picture of an event
unfolding before our eyes. It begins with the first violins alone
playing a nervous message in morse code and builds eventually
to a tremendous climax, when the composer introduces the whole
arsenal of special effects: shots from heavy and light artillery,
machine-guns, an alarm bell and a siren. As the revolutionaries gain
the upper hand, the splendidly unexpected sound of an orchestra
of accordions comes in, presumably to suggest the joy of the
people as their cause is won. A speaker, representing Lenin himself,
shouts out:
‘The success of the revolution hangs on two or
three days! Fight to the death, but do not let the
enemy through!
The seventh movement, ‘Victory’, is a haunting slow movement
into which Prokofiev introduces another of his sound effects,
the noise of distant tramping feet. ‘This is followed by ‘The Pledge’,
setting parts of Stalin’s speech on the eve of Lenin’s funeral in 1924.
The next movement, the purely orchestral ‘Symphony’ was
presumably what Prokofiev had in mind when he told the
Pravda journalist that one of the themes of the piece was the
industrialisation of the country. Industrial construction of some
sort would seem to be suggested by the energetic first theme of
this movement, while the pastoral-sounding second theme seems
closer to the soundtracks of the many newsreel films of the period
depicting the bliss of life in the Soviet countryside on the new
collective farms.
The Cantata ends with a rapturous setting of fragments from Stalin’s
speech to the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets in November
1936. The composer’s sweet and lyrical music to these extremely
unlikely words brings the work to a glowing end in the home key of
C major. But, as always with Prokofiev, his C major is not plain and
simple, but full of surprises, harmonic twists and turns. Perhaps it
was these that brought down Kerzhentsev’s immediate ire on that
unhappy day in August 1937, when the composer had finished
singing and playing his new work, and turned to hear what the
committee had to say.
Programme note © Gerard McBurney
Gerard McBurney is Artistic Programming Advisor at the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra. He studied at the Moscow Conservatoire,
and also divides his time between composing, arranging, teaching
and writing and broadcasting on radio and television, especially
on contemporary Russian and Soviet music.
Hear this
Sun 2 Mar 7.30pm 2008, Barbican
Xian Zhang conducts the LSO in a screening of Prokofiev’s film
Alexander Nevsky with live music. Part of the LSO’s Chronicle
series. For more information visit lso.co.uk/0708season.
Tickets £6–£30
xiv
Conductor’s Biography
Valery Gergiev
Valery Gergiev is Principal Conductor of the
London Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor
of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Principal Guest
Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. He is Founder
and Artistic Director of the Gergiev Rotterdam
Festival; the Mikkeli International Festival, the
Moscow Easter Festival and the Stars of the
White Nights Festival in St Petersburg.
Valery Gergiev’s inspired leadership as Artistic and
General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre has brought
universal acclaim to this legendary institution. With
the Kirov Opera, Ballet and Orchestra, Valery Gergiev
has toured in 45 countries including extensive tours
throughout North America, South America, Europe,
China, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Jordan and Israel.
Born in Moscow to Ossetian parents, Gergiev studied
conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad
Conservatory. At age 24, he was the winner of the
Herbert von Karajan Conductors’ Competition in
Berlin. He made his Kirov Opera debut one year later
in 1978 conducting Prokofiev’s War and Peace and
was appointed Artistic Director and Principal
Conductor in 1988.
In 2003 he celebrated his 25th anniversary with the
Mariinsky Theatre, planned and led a considerable
portion of St Petersburg’s 300th anniversary
celebration, conducted the globally televised
anniversary gala attended by 50 heads of state,
and opened the Carnegie Hall season with the
Kirov Orchestra, the first Russian conductor to
do so since Tchaikovsky conducted the first-ever
concert in Carnegie Hall.
That same autumn The Wall Street Journal observed,
‘The Mariinsky Theatre’s artistic agenda under
Mr Gergiev’s leadership has burgeoned into a
diplomatic and ultimately a broadly humanistic
one, on a global scale not even the few classical
musicians of comparable vision approach.’
Maestro Gergiev is the recipient of the Dmitry
Shostakovich Award, the Golden Mask Award, the
People’s Artist of Russia, and the World Economic
Forum’s Crystal Award. He is also the 2006 winner
of the Karajan Prize (Germany) and the Polar Prize
(Sweden) for outstanding international performance
and leadership.
He has recorded exclusively for Decca (Universal
Classics), but appears also on Philips and DG labels.
His vast discography includes
many Russian operas
(introduced to international
audiences by his initiative),
a cycle of Shostakovich
War Symphonies (Nos 4–9),
a cycle of Prokofiev
symphonies with the LSO
and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth,
Fifth and Sixth Symphonies
with the Vienna Philharmonic
among many others.
Visit lso.co.uk for details of
Gergiev’s Mahler cycle with
the LSO at the Barbican in 2007/08.
© Alberto Venzago
xv
Vadim Repin (violin)
Born in Siberia in 1971, Vadim started to
play the violin at the age of five, and six
months later had his first stage performance.
At only eleven he won the gold medal in all
age categories in the Wieniawski Competition.
In 1985 he made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich,
Berlin, Helsinki; a year later in Carnegie
Hall. Two years later Vadim Repin was the
youngest ever winner of the Reine Elisabeth
Concours. Since then he has appeared
with the world’s greatest orchestras including
the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston
Symphony. Vadim Repin has been a frequent
guest at festivals such as the Tanglewood,
and the BBC Proms. His busy season includes
concerts in Asia, Australia, New Zealand
and a European tour with the Melbourne
Symphony. Vadim plays on the magnificent
1736 Guarneri del Gesù ‘von Szerdahely’
violin. Visit www.vadimrepin.com.
© Nina Large
© Kasskara/DG
Soloists for 13 & 14 June
Andrew Marriner (clarinet)
Andrew Marriner became Principal Clarinet
of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1986.
During his orchestral career he has also
maintained his place on the worldwide
solo and chamber music platform. His
professional musical career began at the
age of seven when he was a boy chorister
at King’s College Cambridge. Joining the
National Youth Orchestra in 1968 he
studied briefly at Oxford University and
then extensively in Hanover, Germany with
Hans Deinzer. Andrew has recorded the
core solo and chamber clarinet repertoire
with various record companies including
Philips, EMI, Chandos, and Collins Classics.
Andrew is visiting Professor at the Royal
Academy of Music, and was awarded an
Hon RAM in 1996. He will perform with
the renowned soprano Edita Gruberova
in Wigmore Hall in 2008.
Irina Vasilieva (soprano)
Irina Vasilieva was a soloist with the
Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers
in 1999, and made her Mariinsky Theatre
debut in 2000 as Wellgunde in Wagner’s
Das Rheingold, and joined the Mariinsky
Opera Company in 2005. Irina is the
recipient of a special diploma and prize
for best performance of a work by a
20th century composer at the Fourth
International Rimsky-Korsakov Young
Opera Singers’ Competition in 2000, and
a prizewinner at the International Izabella
Yurieva Competition in Tallinn in 2004.
Her repertoire includes Anna (Nabucco),
High Priestess (Aida), and Mercédès
(Carmen). She has worked with conductors
including Gergiev, Bertini, Glinka, Bashmet,
Walander, Kantorov and Sokhiev, and has
toured the USA, Finland and Japan.
xvi
Soloists for 14 June
Olga Savova (mezzo-soprano)
Mezzo-soprano Olga Savova was born in
St Petersburg, and graduated from the
piano and vocal faculties of the School of
Music of the St Petersburg State RimskyKorsakov Conservatoire. She has been a
Mariinsky Theatre soloist since 1996. Olga
was the prizewinner at the Voci Verdiani
international competition in Italy in 1992
and was nominated for a Grammy for the
best opera recording in 2001. Her
repertoire includes Olga (Eugene Onegin),
Lyubov (Mazeppa), Princess Evpraksiya
(The Enchantress), Polina (The Queen of
Spades), Emilia (Otello), Carmen (Carmen),
Brünnhilde (Die Walküre), Wellgunde (Das
Rheingold), Berlioz’s La Damnation de
Faust and Verdi’s Requiem.
Andrey Ilyushnikov (tenor)
Andrey Ilyushnikov graduated from the
Novosibirsk State Conservatoire. He has
been a soloist with the Mariinsky Academy
of Young Singers since 2000. Andrey was
a prizewinner at the Fifth International
Rimsky-Korsakov Competition in St
Petersburg in 2002. His repertoire includes
Vladimir Igorevich (Prince Igor), Chaplitsky
(The Queen of Spades), Prince (The Love
for Three Oranges), Malcolm (Macbeth).
He has taken part in the Aix-en-Provence
Festival in France numerous times,
performing in Stravinsky’s Renard in 2003
and Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges
in 2004. He has also performed as the
Prince in The Love for Three Oranges on
tour to Luxembourg in 2005 and given solo
concerts in the USA, the UK and Germany.
Gennady Bezzubenkov (bass)
Gennady Bezzubenkov was born in Staraya
Vitelevka in the Ulyanovsk Region. He
graduated from the Leningrad State RimskyKorsakov Conservatoire in 1979. He has
been a Mariinsky Theatre soloist since 1989.
Gennady was the recipient of the State Prize
of Russia and the Baltika prize in 2002. His
repertoire includes over 50 roles, among
them: Konchak (Prince Igor), Prince Gremin
(Eugene Onegin), Banco (Macbeth), Ramfis
(Aida), Timur (Turandot), Commendatore
(Don Giovanni), Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte),
King Marke (Tristan und Isolde), Donner (Das
Rheingold), Hunding (Die Walküre), and Verdi’s
Requiem. He has toured with the Mariinsky
Opera Company to Germany, France,
Scotland (the Edinburgh Festival), Israel,
the USA (Metropolitan Opera), Finland, Italy,
Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Japan, Portugal, Luxembourg and Turkey.
41
On stage this evening
See page 43 for London Symphony Orchestra members
Orchestra
First Violins
Andrew Haveron Guest Leader
Carmine Lauri Co-Leader
Lennox Mackenzie Sub-Leader
Anna Gebert
Robin Brightman
Nigel Broadbent
Ginette Decuyper
Jörg Hammann
Michael Humphrey
Maxine Kwok
Claire Parfitt
Elizabeth Pigram
Laurent Quenelle
Ian Rhodes
Sylvain Vasseur
Nicholas Wright
Second Violins
Evgeny Grach Principal
Tom Norris Co-Principal
Sarah Quinn Sub-Principal
Miya Ichinose
David Ballesteros
Matthew Gardner
Belinda McFarlane
Philip Nolte
Paul Robson
Stephen Rowlinson
Iwana Muszynska
Gabby Painter
Anna-Liisa Bezrodny
Violas
Edward Vanderspar Principal
Gillianne Haddow Co-Principal
Malcolm Johnston Sub-Principal
Maxine Moore
Peter Norriss
Robert Turner
Jonathan Welch
Gina Zagni
Florent Bremand
Caroline O’Neill
Nancy Johnson
Emmanuella Reiter
Cellos
Tim Hugh Principal
Rebecca Gilliver Co-Principal
Jennifer Brown
Mary Bergin
Noel Bradshaw
Hilary Jones
Minat Lyons
Andrew Joyce
Alexandra Mackenzie
Liz Parker
Double Basses
Rinat Ibragimov Principal
Colin Paris Co-Principal
Patrick Laurence
Axel Bouchaux
Michael Francis
Matthew Gibson
Tom Goodman
Gerald Newson
Flutes
Gareth Davies Principal
Martin Parry
Clare Robson* (& piccolo)
Patricia Moynehan# (& piccolo)
Siobhán Grealey#
Piccolo
Sharon Williams principal
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
and Robert Bourton Principals
Joost Bosdijk
Contra-Bassoon
Dominic Morgan Principal
Horns
Tim Jones Principal
David Pyatt# Principal
John Ryan Co-Principal
Angela Barnes
Jonathan Lipton
Max Gerrard#
Jeff Bryant#
Brendan Thomas*
Jonathan Bareham#
David McQueen#
Trumpets
Bo Fuglsang Guest Principal
Rod Franks Principal
Maurice Murphy
Nigel Gomm
Gerald Ruddock
Trombones
Dudley Bright Principal
James Maynard
Katy Jones
Paul Milner
Oboes
Emanuel Abbühl Principal
Kieron Moore Principal
John Lawley
Tuba
Patrick Harrild Principal
David Kendall
Cor Anglais
Christine Pendrill Principal
Timpani
Nigel Thomas Principal
Clarinets
Andrew Marriner* Principal
John Bradbury Guest Principal
Chi-Yu Mo
Tom Watmough#
Bass Clarinet
John Stenhouse Principal
Percussion
Neil Percy Principal
David Jackson
Chris Thomas
Ben Hoffnung
Helen Yates
Sam Walton
Jeremy Cornes#
Oliver Yates#
Michael Doran#
Harps
Karen Vaughan Co-Principal
Gabriella Dall’Olio
Piano
John Alley (& celesta) Principal
Catherine Edwards
Elizabeth Burley
Andrew Ball
Celesta
Clive Williamson*
* 13 Jun only
# 14 Jun only
List correct at time of going
to press
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
PROMIS Award is made annually
to the most outstanding String
Experience student, and enables
further periods of work with the
LSO to be undertaken by the
recipient. 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. The
PROMIS Award is given annually
by Dr and Mrs Lefever.
LSO String Experience Scheme
participants Guillem Calvo Martínez
de Albéniz (violin), Victoria
Sutherland (violin), Dunja Lavrova
(violin), Reinoud Ford (cello), and
Juan Marquez Fandino (bass) took
part in rehearsals for these
concerts, and may also perform
with the Orchestra this evening.
42
London Symphony Orchestra
Patron: Her Majesty
The Queen
President
Sir Colin Davis CH
Principal Conductor
Valery Gergiev
Principal Guest Conductors
Daniel Harding
Michael Tilson Thomas
Conductor Laureate
André Previn KBE
Associate Guest Conductor
Richard Hickox CBE
Assistant Conductor
Michal Dworzyński
(winner of the Donatella
Flick Conducting Competition)
HONORARY MEMBERS
OF THE LSO
Alfonso Aijon OBE
Alderman Sir Robert Finch
Sir Clive Gillinson CBE
Sir Jack Lyons
Jack Maxwell JP
Key
* LSO Board Member
† Professor at the Royal
Academy of Music
+ Professor at the Royal
College of Music
$ Prince Consort Professor
of Violin at the
Royal College of Music
‡ Professor at the Guildhall
School of Music & Drama
¥ Professor at the Royal Scottish
Academy of Music & Drama
Orchestra
First Violins
Gordan Nikolitch $ Leader
Chair endowed by The Hon
Sir Rocco and Lady Forte and
Mr & Mrs lan Stoutzker
Carmine Lauri Co-Leader
Chair endowed in loving memory
of the conductor Yuri Ahronovitch
by his wife Tami
Lennox Mackenzie* Sub-Leader
Robin Brightman
Nigel Broadbent
Ginette Decuyper
Jörg Hammann
Michael Humphrey
Maxine Kwok
Claire Parfitt
Elizabeth Pigram
Laurent Quenelle
Harriet Rayfield
Colin Renwick
lan Rhodes
Sylvain Vasseur*
Nicole Wilson
Nicholas Wright
Second Violins
David Alberman Principal
Chair endowed by Linklaters
Evgeny Grach Principal
Tom Norris Co-Principal
Sarah Quinn Sub-Principal
Miya Ichinose
David Ballesteros
Richard Blayden
Norman Clarke
Matthew Gardner
Belinda McFarlane
Philip Nolte
Andrew Pollock
Paul Robson
Stephen Rowlinson
Louise Shackelton
Violas
Paul Silverthorne†
and Edward Vanderspar Principals
Gillianne Haddow Co-Principal
Malcolm Johnston Sub-Principal
Maxine Moore
Regina Beukes
Richard Holttum
Peter Norriss
Robert Turner
Jonathan Welch
Natasha Wright
Gina Zagni
Cellos
Tim Hugh
and Moray Welsh Principals
Chair endowed by
British American Tobacco
Rebecca Gilliver Co-Principal
Alastair Blayden+ Sub-Principal
Jennifer Brown
Mary Bergin
Noel Bradshaw*
Keith Glossop
Hilary Jones
Double Basses
Rinat Ibragimov‡ Principal
Colin Paris‡ Co-Principal
Nicholas Worters Sub-Principal
Patrick Laurence
Axel Bouchaux
Michael Francis
Matthew Gibson*
Tom Goodman*
Gerald Newson
Flutes
Gareth Davies Principal
Chair endowed by LSO Patrons
Martin Parry
Bass Clarinet
John Stenhouse Principal
Member Emeritus
Robert Retallick
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
and Robert Bourton Principals
Joost Bosdijk
Medical Adviser
to The Orchestra
Dr Kenneth Lewis
Contra-Bassoon
Dominic Morgan Principal
LSO Board of Directors
Horns
Timothy Jones
and David Pyatt Principals
Chair endowed by
Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust and
Baker & McKenzie LLP
Angela Barnes
John Ryan Co-Principal
Jonathan Lipton*‡
Trumpets
Rod Franks
and Maurice Murphy Principals
Gerald Ruddock
Nigel Gomm
Trombones
Dudley Bright† Principal
James Maynard†
Tuba
Patrick Harrild*† ‡ Principal
Piccolo
Sharon Williams Principal
Timpani
Nigel Thomas Principal
Oboes
Emanuel Abbühl
and Kieron Moore Principals
Chair endowed by
Stephen L Barter
John Lawley‡
Percussion
Neil Percy† Principal
David Jackson
Cor Anglais
Christine Pendrill† Principal
Chair endowed in memory of
Alan Benjamin
Clarinets
Andrew Marriner† Principal
Chair endowed by Jonathan Moulds
Chi-Yu Mo
John Stenhouse
Public Relations Consultant
Dvora Lewis
Harps
Bryn Lewis‡ Principal
Chair endowed in memory of
Kathleen Mary Dowsing
Karen Vaughan¥† Co-Principal
Keyboard
John Alley Principal
Chair endowed by LSO Friends
Principals Emeritus
Kurt-Hans Goedicke¥ Timpani
Maurice Murphy Trumpet
Lennox Mackenzie (Chairman)
Matthew Gibson (Vice-Chairman)
Kathryn McDowell (Managing
Director)
Hiroaki Yamataka (International
Vice-President)
Noel Bradshaw
Jeremy Delmar-Morgan
Michael Francis
Tom Goodman
Patrick Harrild
Jonathan Lipton
Christopher Moran
Jonathan Moulds
Orchestral Committee
of the Board
Noel Bradshaw
Michael Francis
Matthew Gibson
Tom Goodman
Patrick Harrild
Jonathan Lipton
Lennox Mackenzie
Kathryn McDowell
Sue Mallet
Sarah Quinn
Karen Vaughan
LSO Productions Ltd Board
Sir Robert Finch (Chairman)
Christina Coker
Matthew Gibson
Lennox Mackenzie
Kathryn McDowell
Lady Camilla Panufnik
John Stephens
Ian Martin (observer)
43
London Symphony Chorus
President
Sir Colin Davis CH
London Symphony Chorus
President Emeritus
André Previn KBE
Soprano Esther Arnold, Kerry Baker, Carol Capper, Jenny Chant, Ann Cole, Vicky Collis*,
Vice Presidents
Claudio Abbado, Michael Tilson Thomas
Debra Colvin, Shelagh Connolly, Lucy Craig, Emma Craven, Susan Crocker, Anna Daventry,
Gabrielle Edwards, Kate Faber, Lorna Flowers, Eileen Fox, Gabriella Galgani, Kate Gardner,
Rachel Gibbon, Fulva Giust, Jane Goddard, Elizabeth Graham, Deborah Grant, Joanna Gueritz,
Conductor Emeritus
Richard Hickox CBE
Carolin Harvey, Lucy Heyman, Emily Hoffnung*, Gladys Hosken, Claire Hussey, Katrina Hyde,
Sarah Illingworth, Debra Jones*, Rachel Kingston, Helen Lawford*, Cinde Lee, Rachael
Chorus Director
Joseph Cullen
Chairman
James Warbis
Accompanist
Roger Sayer
‘The LSC delivered a performance
that emphatically demonstrated
why they are world class … as
close to perfection as anyone
is likely to hear’ Denver Post
Leggett, Sophie Lloyd, Clare Lorimer, Fiona MacDonald, Meg Makower, Alison Marshall,
Flora Medlicott, Clara Meloni, Jane Morley, Jeannie Morrison, Dorothy Nesbit,
Jennifer Norman, Emily Norton, Jane O’Regan, Maggie Owen, Varuni Paranavitane,
Emma Pauncefort, Margaret Pearman, Ann Pfeiffer, Susan Pollard, Carole Radford,
Mikiko Ridd, Stephanie Rumpelt, Hye Won Sa, Melissa Scott, Liz Smith, Amanda Thomas,
Katharine Turner, Julia Warner, Ruth Wheal, Zoe Williams, Mary Withall, Caryl Wright
Alto Primrose Arnander, Sarah Baird, Mary Baker*, Sarah Biggs, Elizabeth Boyden,
The London Symphony Chorus was formed in 1966. It has a broad repertoire and has
commissioned works from Sir John Tavener, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Berkeley
and Jonathan Dove.
Jo Buchan*, Alexis Calice, Jane Cargin, Sarah Castleton, Glynis Charrot, Rosemary Chute,
Margery Cohen, Yvonne Cohen, Elizabeth Cole, Genevieve Cope, Jane Crawford, Janette
Daines, Zoe Davis, Maggie Donnelly, Diane Dwyer, Linda Evans, Lydia Frankenburg, Amanda
Freshwater, Christina Gibbs, Amanda Holden, Dee Home, Valerie Hood, Elisabeth Iles,
The Chorus tours extensively throughout Europe and has visited Israel, Australia, the
Far East and the USA. Since September 2006 it has appeared in New York performing
Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 with the LSO under Bernard Haitink, in Denver where it
performed Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra under Lawrence
Golan, in Lille, Douai and Paris performing Mahler’s Symphony No 3 with the ONL under
Jean-Claude Casadesus, and in Bremen where it performed Mendelssohn’s Lobegesang
and Brahms’s Schicksalslied with the Bremen Philharmonic under Fabrice Bollon.
Sue Jones, Jenny Kennedy, Vanessa Knapp, Gillian Lawson, Susan Lee, Selena Lemalu,
The Chorus has an extensive discography, including many recordings with Richard Hickox.
Its latest collaborations with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO on LSO Live are Sibelius’s Kullervo,
Verdi’s Falstaff which won the ‘Best Opera Recording’ Grammy, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius
and Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 with Bernard Haitink.
Lorne Cuthbert, John Farrington, Shin Han, John Harding, Suen Tsi Ho, Warwick Hood,
While maintaining special links with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chorus has
partnered many other orchestras in the UK, including the Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia,
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, CBSO, BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC National
Orchestra of Wales. Internationally, it has worked with many of the world’s leading
orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, European
Union Youth Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Takeshi Stokoe, Richard Street, John Streit, Anthony Stutchbury, Malcolm Taylor, Owen Toller,
Catherine Lenson, Belinda Liao, Suzanne Louvell, Anne Loveluck, Etsuko Makita, Barbara
Marchbank, Liz McCaw, Aoife McInerney, Siu-wai Ng, Helen Palmer, Lucy Reay, Clare Rowe,
Betty Rueda, Rachel Sloan, Lis Smith, Jane Steele, Suleen Syn, Claire Trocmé, Curzon
Tussaud, Emma Vallender, Tricia Wallis, Sharon Willmott, Judith Youdell, Mimi Zadeh
Tenor David Aldred, Paul Allatt, Robin Anderson, Martin Bishop, Conway Boezak,
Gareth Humphreys*, Anthony Instrall, David Leonard, Chris Manasseh, John Marks,
Simon Marsh, Alastair Mathews, John Moses, Malcolm Nightingale, Panos Ntourntoufis,
Stuart Packford, Eric Phillips, Harold Raitt, Kevin Rigg, Peter Sedgwick, Graham Steele,
Claudio Tonini, James Warbis*, Robert Ward*, Paul Williams-Burton
Bass David Armour, Joseph Bahoshy, Mark Bamforth, Dennis Bowen, Bruce Boyd, Andy
Chan, Hubert Chan, Stephen Chevis, James Chute, Patrick Curwen, Damian Day, Alastair
Forbes, Robert French, Robert Garbolinski*, Trevor Glover, John Graham, Robin Hall, Bryan
Hammersley, Timothy Hammond, Owen Hanmer*, Christopher Harvey, Derrick Hogermeer,
Forthcoming performances include concerts with the LSO under Sir Colin Davis, Richard
Hickox, Valery Gergiev and Yan Pascal Tortelier.
Anthony Howick*, Alex Kidney, Gregor Kowalski, Georges Leaver*, Keith Montgomery,
The London Symphony Chorus is always interested in recruiting new members, welcoming
applications from singers of all backgrounds, subject to an audition. For further information
call Helen Lawford, Auditions Secretary, on 020 8504 0295 or apply online at www.lsc.org.uk.
Seager, Edwin Smith*, Gordon Thomson, Paul Warburton, John Wareing, Nicholas Weekes
Geoffrey Newman, Peter Niven*, Bill Pargeter, Alan Rochford, Malcolm Rowat, Nicholas
*denotes Council member
44
Mariinsky Chorus
Chorus Director
Andrei Petrenko
Mariinsky Chorus
Chorus Master
Leonid Teplyakov
Soprano 1
Chorus Master
Pavel Petrenko
Accompanist
Maria Ralko
Yulia Antonova, Rada Baklunova, Tatiana Bogdanova, Angelina Dashkovskaya,
Elena Gulyaeva, Margarita Ivanova, Irina Khaustova, Olga Kuznetsova, Elena Lukonina,
Natalia Orlova, Svetlana Petrenko, Svetlana Petukhova, Nadezhda Selyugina,
Olga Shakhanova, Elena Shmyglevskaya, Larisa Shorikova, Lyudmila Stepanova,
Lyudmila Tarasova, Tamara Yusupova
Chorus Manager
Alexandra Potemkina
Soprano 2
Alina Arzamastseva, Tatiana Balturina, Larisa Borisova, Anna Galichina, Zalina Gudieva,
Galina Kulikova, Elina Lebedeva, Vera Pabuzina, Alla Papushina, Irina Shendevitskaya,
Natalia Shubina, Tamara Stashevskaya, Viktoria Utekhina
Alto 1
With the opening of the Mariinsky theatre in 1860, a permanent Russian opera company
was established, the most important component of which was the chorus. Mikhail Glinka’s
music, which drew together the achievements of previous generations, became the
foundation for the development of choral music in the Russian school of composition.
The international significance of Russian opera was confirmed by the composers
Alexander Borodin, Modest Musorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
The rich and complex nature of life, embodied in the works of these composers,
corresponds to the diverse types of operatic works and musical drama in general.
Eduard Napravnik also played a special role in the emergence and development of
Russian choral music. It was under his direction that many famous Russian operas
were first staged, the chorus playing a particularly important role.
Tatiana Basharina, Irina Bystrievskaya, Natalia Inkova, Yulia Khazanova, Yulia Khramtsova,
Marina Mareskina, Alla Martynenko, Elena Petrenko, Olga Semenova, Yevgenia Shalamova,
Galina Stepanova, Elena Tilkeridi, Maria Uvarova
Alto 2
Inna Alexeyeva, Olga Bakareva, Olga Chistiakova, Antonina Davydova, Lyudmila Ivanova,
Natalia Kedrova, Nadezhda Khadzheva, Alla Kirichenko, Marina Kolesova, Bairta Kudinova,
Viktoria Menkova, Tatiana Rentsova, Lyudmila Serova, Lyudmila Shamova, Galina Smirnova,
Yekaterina Vorobieva
Tenor 1
Viktor Antipenko, Alexander Bolotov, Alexei Burtsev, Alexei Dmitruk, Alexander Goroshkov,
Nikita Gribanov, Sergei Kozlov, Yuri Kupreev, Alexander Martynov, Vitaly Shein,
The Mariinsky Theatre Chorus’s rich traditions of choral art and singing skills make it
a unique ensemble today. It possesses the necessary skills to perform all genres of
music, ranging from operas and cantata-oratorio works to a capella programmes.
Its repertoire includes over 50 operas by Russian and European composers, as well
as a huge number of cantata-oratorio works by composers such as Tchaikovsky,
Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Sviridov, Gavrilin and Gubaidulina.
Today, the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus regularly takes part in world premieres and
international festivals including the Stars of the White Nights and the Moscow Easter
Festival, both of which were founded by Valery Gergiev.
The Chorus has been directed by Andrei Petrenko since 2000 after he was invited to the
position by Valery Gergiev, Artistic and General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre. Under
his direction, the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus has performed a capella programmes in
Russia, Finland, Switzerland, the UK, Italy and Israel.
Valery Sobanov, Sergei Zavalin
Tenor 2
Yuri Andrushko, Vladimir Fedorov, Roman Gibatov, Alexei Gromashev, Sergei Kamenev,
Vladimir Knyazev, Andrei Leibov, Sergei Melenevsky, Artem Melikhov, Yuri Orlov, Igor Silakov,
Daniil Vasiliyev, Sergei Yukhmanov
Bass 1
Gennady Anikin, Alexei Baranov, Yuri Gavrilenko, Alexander Gorev, Andrei Khrapovitsky,
Nikolai Kruk, Dmitry Kusov, Sergei Matveev, Mikhail Mozol, Vyacheslav Nizovtsev, Alexander
Peretyatko, Konstantin Rylov, Fyodor Uvarov, Andrei Vasin
Bass 2
Erikh Eglit, Anatoly Gryaznov, Yevgeny Kocheregin, Yuri Kovalenko, Mikhail Kornblit,
Pyotr Kuznetsov, Edward Matveyev, Oleg Mitsura, Alexander Maximenkov, Yegor Pavlov,
Sergei Pozdnyakov, Pavel Raevsky, Mikhail Romashin, Sergei Simakov