SCO.ORG.UK PROGRAMME

B A R O Q U E B R I O7 – 8 Oct 2021

Season 2021/22

Thursday 7 October, 7.30pm The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Friday 8 October, 7.30pm City Halls, Glasgow

Leclair Violin Concerto in D major Op 7 No 2 Poulenc Suite française Locatelli Concerto Capriccioso ‘Il pianto d’Arianna’ Vivaldi Concerto ‘per la Solennità di San Lorenzo’ RV 562 Farkas (arr. Emelyanychev) Five Ancient Hungarian Dances

Maxim Emelyanychev Conductor Dmitry Sinkovsky Violin

B A R O Q U E B R I O

4 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5AB +44 (0)131 557 6800 | info@sco.org.uk | sco.org.uk

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra is a charity registered in Scotland No. SC015039. Company registration No. SC075079.

Please note there will be no interval.

Our Musicians

Y O U R O R C H E S T R AFIRST VIOLINCecilia Ziano Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’DeaSiún Milne Fiona Alexander

SECOND VIOLINMarcus Barcham Stevens Gordon BraggRachel SpencerRachel Smith Niamh LyonsSarah Bevan Baker

VIOLAJohn Crockatt Felix Tanner Brian SchieleSteve King

CELLOPhilip Higham Su-a LeeDonald Gillan

BASS Nikita Naumov Adrian Bornet

FLUTE André Cebrián

OBOE Robin Williams Katherine Bryer

CLARINET Maximiliano Martín William Stafford

BASSOON Cerys Ambrose-Evans Alison Green

HORN Daniele Bolzonella Jamie Shield

TRUMPET Peter Franks Brian McGinley

TROMBONE Duncan Wilson Nigel Cox Alan Adams

TIMPANI/ PERCUSSION Louise Goodwin

THEORBO Eligio Quinteiro

Alison Green

Sub-Principal Bassoon

The orchestra list is correct at time of publication

W H A T Y O U A R E A B O U T T O H E A RLeclair (1697-1764) Violin Concerto in D major Op 7 No 2 (1737)

Adagio - Allegro ma non troppo Adagio Allegro

Poulenc (1899-1963) Suite française (1935)

Bransle de Bourgogne Pavane Petite marche militaire Complainte Bransle de Champagne Sicilienne Carillon

Locatelli (1695-1764) Concerto Capriccioso ‘Il pianto d’Arianna’(1741)

Adagio Andante Allegro Largo Largo andante Grave Allegro Largo

Vivaldi (1678-1741) Concerto ‘per la Solennità di San Lorenzo’ RV 562 (1716)

Andante Grave Allegro

Farkas (1905-2000) Five Ancient Hungarian Dances arr. Emelyanychev (1959)

Intrada Lassu Lapckas tane Chorea Ugros

–––––We are each the product of our histories, of our family and teachers, our homes and our travels. And composers, of course, are no different. Tonight’s concert leaps back and forth between the 20th century and earlier eras, contrasting music by some of the greatest violin virtuosos of the Baroque with music from nearer our own times that pays affectionate homage to its predecessors. But look more closely, and interconnections and influences between eras and composers are everywhere, as composers travel, meet one another, exchange ideas, learn new styles and enrich their creations with a whole gamut of inspirations.

We begin in Paris, probably between 1728 and 1736, when Jean-Marie Leclair was wowing audiences with his breathtaking violin skills at Le Concert Spirituel, one of the world’s earliest concert series, held in the Tuileries Palace. He’d begun his career as a dancer, first learning from his father in Lyon before crossing the border to Turin in 1722, where he worked as a dancer and ballet-master. His prowess on the violin was quickly recognised, however, and he took the plunge to change career. It was a wise move: before long he was being called ‘the Corelli of France’, and was widely hailed as the equal of that revered Italian violinist and composer, as well as of Handel, Telemann and others, though his music hardly receives the attention it deserves today. He held posts at the Paris court (as ordinaire de la musique to Louis XV), then in Orange, the Hague and again in Paris, but met a gruesome end: he was stabbed to death on his doorstep

in the dodgy Marais district of the French capital, probably by his nephew, though the case was abandoned due to insufficient evidence.

Leclair’s music reflects his extensive travels, most clearly in bringing together the elegant dance forms of French music with the fire and virtuosity of Italian works. Indeed, he took particularly deep inspiration from Pietro Locatelli, then considered the foremost virtuoso and composer of the age (and who we’ll meet properly later). He first encountered the elder composer in Kassel in 1728, when the two men were playing in the same concert, and from that point on Leclair’s own music grew increasingly virtuosic

Tonight's concert conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev

© Gordon Burniston

and showy, while retaining its distinctive sense of refinement.

Leclair published two sets of six violin concertos during his lifetime, of which his Op 7 is the first. The Second Concerto is in four movements: a brief introductory Adagio hints at the harmonic complexities to come with its unexpected shifts between major and minor, while Leclair maintains a noble elegance to the athletic violin line in the faster second movement. Following a plaintive slow movement, he ends with a dashing finale that spotlights the soloist’s agility, yet remains delicate and transparent throughout.

We stay in France but jump forward two centuries to 1935, to find Francis Poulenc peering back in time, this time all the way to the 16th century, and the book of dance tunes (or Livre

de danceries) compiled by French Renaissance composer Claude Gervaise. It seemed an appropriate inspiration for the music that Poulenc was creating for Édouard Bourdet’s play La reine Margot, about 16th-century Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henri de Navarre, who would later become Henri IV of France.

A decade and a half earlier, Stravinsky had done something similar with music by Pergolesi in his ballet score Pulcinella, and there’s a sense here of Poulenc consciously doffing his cap to his colleague in his Suite française, though the simplicity of Gervaise’s melodies arguably offers greater opportunities for Poulenc’s sly 20th-century twists. Nonetheless, he imagined his miniature orchestra of winds, brass, percussion and harpsichord as emulating many of the instruments from Gervaise’s own

Leclair’s music reflects his extensive travels, most clearly in bringing together the elegant dance forms of French music with the fire and virtuosity of Italian works.

Jean-Marie Leclair

time, most notably keening shawms (precursors of today’s oboe) and powerful sackbuts (an early trombone).

He opens with a vigorous ‘Bransle de Bourgogne’ before a solemn, hymn-like ‘Pavane’ (with surprisingly dissonant moments), a catchy, brassy ‘Petite marche militaire’, a haunting, lullaby-like ‘Complainte’ and a brighter ‘Bransle de Champagne’. After the melancholy ‘Sicilienne’, he brings things to a perky conclusion with the spirited ‘Carillon’ – which ends unexpectedly in the ‘wrong’ key.

If Leclair took inspiration and influence from Locatelli, then Locatelli himself was surely inspired and influenced by opera, and almost certainly looked back to Monteverdi, in his unconventional concerto ‘Il pianto d’Arianna’. Born in Bergamo, he studied extensively

in Rome (possibly with Corelli) and travelled extensively throughout Italy and Germany before ending up in Amsterdam in 1729, where he remained until his death in 1764. It was there that he wrote ‘Il pianto d’Arianna’ in 1741, drawing on the classical legend of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, a tough outcome after she’d helped him escape the clutches of the Minotaur on Crete.

It’s a story that would have been familiar to Locatelli’s audiences from classical mythology and also from the opera fragment ‘Lamento d’Arianna’, all that remained of Monteverdi’s lost 1608 opera L’Arianna, which inspired many 18th-century composers. (And it’s possibly more familiar to audiences in our own time as the inspiration behind Richard Strauss’s meta-opera Ariadne auf Naxos.) It’s hardly a concerto in the

It seemed an appropriate inspiration for the music that Poulenc was creating for Édouard Bourdet’s play La reine Margot, about 16th-century Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henri de Navarre, who would later become Henri IV of France.

Francis Poulenc

traditional sense: cast across six short movements, it casts its violin soloist in the dramatic role of Ariadne, charting her tempestuous moods from fury and despair to resignation and – perhaps – hope, though its major-key conclusion might sound a touch unconvincing after all the turbulent emotion that’s gone before it.

Just as unusual – at least in its elaborate instrumentation – is Vivaldi’s Concerto in D, RV 562. He coined the term ‘concerto con molti istromenti’ (literally ‘concerto with several instruments’) for about 30 of his 500 total concertos, works that are particularly lavish and elaborate, combining winds, strings and other instruments in often large groups of soloists against his string ripieno accompaniment. Vivaldi’s RV 562 is one of the more modest examples, using violin, two oboes, two horns, cello and

strings. It comes (probably) from 1716, and was (probably) written for the mass of the Feast of St Lawrence celebrated that year at the Ospedale della Pietà for Venetian orphans, where Vivaldi worked. His habit was to showcase the considerable talents of the Ospedale’s young players in a short performance of instrumental music after the mass had ended.

The Concerto’s arresting opening is a call to attention that stays stubbornly in D major for a remarkable 16 bars, before suddenly bursting into flamboyant life as the solo instruments come into their own in a bustling Allegro. A solo violin melody floats over the top of the brief second movement, before a graceful, dance-like closing movement, where another long, written-out solo cadenza puts the violinist in the spotlight. It’s been suggested, in fact, that the

Pietro Locatelli Antonio Vivaldi

gigantic closing cadenza may have been a stand-alone work that Vivaldi had up his sleeve for use as needed across many concertos.

We end the concert back in the 20th century, further east in Hungary, though with the flavours of Italy still very much around us. Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas looked not to his elder compatriots Bartók and Kodály for inspiration, but further afield: after studies in Budapest, he travelled to Rome to study with Respighi, and remained deeply inspired by Italian and sunny Mediterranean culture throughout his extensive output, which ranged across just about every musical form, including more than 70 film scores.

Nonetheless, he followed in the footsteps of his Hungarian colleagues in his fascination with his country’s folk

music, which he researched extensively from 1934 onwards, unearthing tunes that he collected together in his Five Ancient Hungarian Dances in 1959. He reworked the piece for several different instrumental groupings, and it’s played today in a new arrangement by SCO Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev.

Farkas took what he described as ‘ancient airs and dances’ (in a conscious reference to one of his Roman teacher’s most beloved works) from the 14th to the 18th centuries, setting out to recreate the sound of a provincial Hungarian band. Following a curtain-raising introduction, Farkas moves on to a slow dance, a lively shoulder dance, a more stately circle dance and a perky jumping dance.

© David Kettle

Ferenc Farkas

Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas looked not to his elder compatriots Bartók and Kodály for inspiration, but further afield: after studies in Budapest, he travelled to Rome to study with Respighi, and remained deeply inspired by Italian and sunny Mediterranean culture.

T H O M A S Z E H E T M A I R Thomas Zehetmair Conductor/Violin

Bach Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041 Mozart (arr. Zehetmair) String Trio fragment, K. Anhang 66 Mendelssohn Overture, Die schöne Melusine Haydn Symphony No 92 ‘Oxford’

Thu 14 Oct, 7.30pm | The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Fri 15 Oct, 7.30pm | City Halls, Glasgow

H I D D E N G E M SPeter Whelan Conductor/Fortepiano / Anna Dennis Soprano

CPE Bach Symphony in F, Wq 183/3 Mozart Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio KV 418 / Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner KV 383 Haydn Symphony No 102 in B-flat major

Thu 28 Oct, 7.30pm | The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Fri 29 Oct, 7.30pm | City Halls, Glasgow

S H O S T A K O V I C H 1 4 Mark Wigglesworth Conductor / Elizabeth Atherton Soprano / Peter Rose Bass

Mozart Symphony in D Major, after Serenade K320 ‘Posthorn’ Shostakovich Symphony No 14

Wed 3 Nov, 7.30pm | Holy Trinity, St Andrews Thu 4 Nov, 7.30pm | The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Fri 5 Nov, 7.30pm | City Halls, Glasgow

U P C O M I N G A U T U M N 2 0 2 1 C O N C E R T S

Rebecca Tong Conductor Colin Currie Percussion Rachel Leach Presenter

Kindly supported by The Gannochy Trust, Gordon Fraser Charitable Trust and The JTH Charitable Trust

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