London Symphony OrchestraLiving Music

London’s Symphony Orchestra

Friday 9 October 2015 7.30pm Barbican Hall

VALERY GERGIEV: MAN OF THE THEATRE

Bartók Dance Suite Bartók Piano Concerto No 2 INTERVAL Stravinsky The Firebird

Valery Gergiev conductor Yefim Bronfman piano

Concert finishes approx 9.45pm

Generously supported by Jonathan Moulds CBE

2 Welcome 9 October 2015

Welcome Kathryn McDowell

Living Music In Brief

Welcome to this evening’s LSO concert at the Barbican, the first in a series exploring the ballet scores of Bartók and Stravinsky. These two composers redefined the art form with bold, dramatic music, and there are few who can bring out these qualities quite like Valery Gergiev. Tonight he opens the final project of his tenure as LSO Principal Conductor with Bartók’s modernist re-imagining of the Baroque Dance Suite and Stravinsky’s first major ballet score, The Firebird.

We are also very pleased to be joined by pianist Yefim Bronfman, who recently appeared with the Orchestra at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Tonight, he performs Bartók’s Piano Concerto No 2.

This evening’s concert is generously supported by Jonathan Moulds, Chairman of the LSO Advisory Council. We are delighted to welcome Jonathan this evening, and also his mother Sheila, who is celebrating a special birthday.

I hope that you enjoy the concert and can join us again. The series continues with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on Sunday 11 October, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on Sunday 18 October.

Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Managing Director

THE LSO ON TOUR

Tonight’s concert marks the LSO’s return to London after a two-week tour of Japan with conductor Bernard Haitink, pianist Murray Perahia and soprano Anna Lucia Richter. Together they visited Tokyo, Kawasaki and Kyoto, while the LSO Brass Ensemble gave a concert in Shizuoka, and the Orchestra performed three concerts of the music from the popular Final Fantasy video games.

THE RITE OF SPRING ON LSO PLAY

This month, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring comes to LSO Play, the award-winning interactive online experience that allows you to get inside the orchestra. Using HD footage of the LSO in concert, LSO Play gives you the opportunity to see up to four different camera angles at once, focus in on different sections of the orchestra, get a close-up view of the conductor, and find out more about the music and the instruments of the orchestra. LSO Play is generously supported by The Reignwood Group.

play.lso.co.uk

A WARM WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S GROUPS The LSO offers great benefits for groups of 10 or more, including a 20% discount on standard tickets, a dedicated group booking hotline and the chance to meet LSO musicians at private interval receptions. At tonight’s concert, we are delighted to welcome: Mariinsky Theatre Trust and Tim Carter & Friends

lso.co.uk/groups

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER

JAN SMACZNY is the Sir Hamilton

Harty Professor of Music at

Queen’s University, Belfast. A well-

known writer and broadcaster, he

specialises in the life and works of

Dvorák and Czech opera, and has

published books on the repertoire

of the Prague Provisional Theatre

and Dvorák’s Cello Concerto.

lso.co.uk Programme Notes 3

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) Dance Suite Sz 77 (1923)

MODERATO – RITORNELLO (TRANQUILLO)

ALLEGRO MOLTO – RITORNELLO (TRANQUILLO)

ALLEGRO VIVACE

MOLTO TRANQUILLO – RITORNELLO (LENTO)

COMODO – FINALE (ALLEGRO)

FINALE (ALLEGRO)

Folk-dance rhythms run strongly through much of Bartók’s music, though rarely more pungently than in the Dance Suite. Completed in August 1923, it was written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the unifying of Buda, Pest and Óbuda (Old Buda) to create the Hungarian capital Budapest. Alongside the Dance Suite were premiered works by Bartók’s two great Hungarian composer compatriots: the Festival Overture by Erno Dohnányi and the Psalmus Hungaricus by Zoltán Kodály. All three works were given in a concert of much grandeur on 20 November 1923 with Dohnányi conducting.

From the end of World War I, Bartók’s reputation as a composer and pianist grew markedly with headline performances in Britain, France and Germany. At home, however, he was facing attacks from the right-wing Hungarian press which criticised his radical style and also questioned his national credentials owing to his use of Romanian folk songs. Against this background, the Dance Suite might have seemed rather ambiguous; while Bartók uses Hungarian folk melodies throughout, he also includes Arab and Romanian native material.

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The Dance Suite is arranged in six sections played without a break. Holding the work together is a Hungarian-inflected Ritornello, often defusing the tensions generated by the intoxicating vigour in many of the movements. The first section begins with a chromatic, Arab-influenced melody delivered by a pair of bassoons to which strings and piano respond with aggressive chords leading to an exciting climax. The Allegro molto second section generates breathtaking activity before the Ritornello reappears, as at the end of the first section, and restores calm.

The third section is a heady mix of Hungarian bagpipe melody and folk violin writing of a Romanian character. The fourth section is a tranquil interlude, at the end of which the now familiar Ritornello leads into a chromatic section, which in turn introduces the Finale. Here, melodic elements from previous sections are drawn together into an exhilarating climax, held up only briefly by a fleeting reappearance of the Ritornello.

A RITORNELLO (from the Italian,

meaning ‘little return’) is a recurring

passage of music, which alternates

with sections of contrasting material.

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER

EDWARD BHESANIA is a writer

and editor who reviews for The

Strad and The Stage. He has also

written for The Observer, BBC

Music Magazine, International

Piano, The Tablet and Country Life,

and contributed to 1,001 Classical

Recordings You Must Hear Before

You Die.

4 Programme Notes 9 October 2015

Béla Bartók Piano Concerto No 2 Sz 95 (1930–31)

ALLEGRO

ADAGIO – PRESTO – ADAGIO

ALLEGRO MOLTO

YEFIM BRONFMAN PIANO

As with Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov before him, Bartók’s stimulus for writing piano concertos was chiefly the need to provide a vehicle for his own pianistic skills on concert tours. By the 1920s his playing career had again taken wing, and by the end of the decade he had given tours in western Europe, the Soviet Union and the US. Only his third and final concerto was written for other hands – those of his second wife, Ditta, also a pianist – whom he hoped might make some money by performing the work after his death, since by the time of its composition (1945) he was succumbing to leukaemia.

Though Bartók was fond of his First Piano Concerto (1926), conductors and orchestras found it a challenge, and the composer soon recognised a need for a work that was ‘less bristling with difficulties for the orchestra’ – perhaps something of more immediate appeal to his growing international audience – and whose themes were by comparison ‘light and popular’.

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The Second Piano Concerto is actually far from light and popular, and its first movement, like that of the First Piano Concerto, is replete with irregular, mechanistic rhythms and angular folk-inflected melodies. It also continues Bartók’s preoccupation with exploring the percussive sonorities of the piano. But the overall mood is less starkly acerbic: stabbing orchestral chords are replaced by colourful fanfares, and dark-tinged ritual turns towards a brighter vein of theatricality.

FIRST MOVEMENT The influence of Stravinsky is strong in this movement. The perky trumpet opening recalls the theme from the final scene of The Firebird (1909–10), and the piano’s first entry mirrors the fast-shifting parallel chords of the ‘Danse russe’ from Petrushka (1910–11). A fleeting reference to Bachian counterpoint reflects Stravinsky’s later neo-Classicism, and the instrumental colouring of the whole of the first movement – which dispenses altogether with the orchestral strings – is a homage to Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923–4).

SECOND MOVEMENT The second movement brings a sea-change in sonority, opening with sustained muted strings playing a hushed, foggy chorale. The piano (partnered by rumbling timpani) alternates with this music before launching into the scurrying central Presto. The three-part layout of this movement, Adagio–Presto–Adagio, lies at the centre of the Second Piano Concerto’s symmetrical ‘arch-form’, which Bartók also employed in his Fourth and Fifth String Quartets (1928 and 1934). The outer Adagio sections, in their tranquillity, spaciousness and luminosity, represent notable examples of Bartók’s so-called ‘night music’ style.

‘I wished to compose the Piano Concerto No 2 with fewer difficulties for the orchestra [than the Piano Concerto No 1] and more pleasing in its thematic material … Most of the themes in the piece are more light and popular in character.’

BARTÓK on LSO LIVE

Tchaikovsky:

Serenade

& Bartók:

Divertimento

£7.99

‘A reminder – if a reminder were

needed – of just how world-class

the string section of the London

Symphony Orchestra is … Both

pieces here are given performances

of great authority.’

Classical CD Choice

Available to buy online at

lsolive.lso.co.uk or as a digital

download on iTunes

lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5

THIRD MOVEMENT A thwack of the bass drum and a primitive alternating pattern on timpani open the finale, which for the first time in the concerto draws the whole orchestra together. Again, Stravinsky is a key reference: in the appearance of folk elements (though Hungarian, not Russian) and in a celebration of primeval energy. The blustery rhetoric and percussive violence recall Bartók’s abrasive solo-piano Allegro barbaro of 1911. But optimistic exuberance eventually wins out, and the movement ends with a jubilant flourish.

INTERVAL – 20 minutes

There are bars on all levels of the Concert Hall; ice cream

can be bought at the stands on Stalls and Circle level.

Why not tweet us your thoughts on the first half of the

performance @londonsymphony, or come and talk to

LSO staff at the Information Desk on the Circle level?

Born in 1881 in Hungary, Bartók began piano lessons with his mother at the age of five. He studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where he created a number of works echoing the style of Brahms and Richard Strauss. After graduating he discovered Austro-Hungarian and Slavic folk music, travelling extensively with his friend Zoltán Kodály and recording countless ethnic songs and dances, which began to influence his own compositions. Kodály also introduced him to the works of Debussy in 1907, the year in which he became Professor of Piano at the Budapest Conservatory.

Bartók established his mature style with such scores as the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin and his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. He revived his career as a concert pianist in 1927, when he gave the premiere of his First Piano Concerto in Mannheim.

Bartók detested the rise of fascism and in October 1940 he quit Budapest and travelled to the US. At first he concentrated on ethno-musicological research, but eventually returned to composition and created a significant group of ‘American’ works, including the Concerto for Orchestra and his Third Piano Concerto.

His character was distinguished by a firm, almost stubborn, refusal to compromise or be diverted from his musical instincts by money or position. Throughout his working life, Bartók collected, transcribed and annotated the folk-songs of many countries, a commitment that brought little financial return or recognition but one which he regarded as his most important contribution to music.

Béla Bartók Composer Profile

COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER

ANDREW STEWART

PROGRAMME NOTE WRITER

STEPHEN WALSH is a well-known

writer on music, the author of a

major two-volume biography of

Stravinsky and also a book on his

music. He holds a personal Chair at

Cardiff University.

6 Programme Notes 9 October 2015

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) The Firebird (original ballet) (1909–10)

INTRODUCTION

FIRST TABLEAU

THE ENCHANTED GARDEN OF KASHCHEI

APPEARANCE OF THE FIREBIRD, PURSUED BY PRINCE IVAN

DANCE OF THE FIREBIRD

CAPTURE OF THE FIREBIRD BY PRINCE IVAN

SUPPLICATION OF THE FIREBIRD – APPEARANCE OF THE

THIRTEEN ENCHANTED PRINCESSES

THE PRINCESSES’ GAME WITH THE GOLDEN APPLES

SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF PRINCE IVAN

ROUND DANCE OF THE PRINCESSES

DAYBREAK – PRINCE IVAN PENETRATES KASHCHEI’S PALACE

MAGIC CARILLON, APPEARANCE OF KASHCHEI’S MONSTER

GUARDIANS, AND CAPTURE OF PRINCE IVAN – ARRIVAL

OF KASHCHEI THE IMMORTAL – DIALOGUE OF KASHCHEI

AND PRINCE IVAN – INTERCESSION OF THE PRINCESSES –

APPEARANCE OF THE FIREBIRD

DANCE OF KASHCHEI’S RETINUE, ENCHANTED BY THE FIREBIRD

INFERNAL DANCE OF ALL KASHCHEI’S SUBJECTS –

LULLABY – KASHCHEI’S AWAKENING – KASHCHEI’S DEATH –

PROFOUND DARKNESS

SECOND TABLEAU

DISAPPEARANCE OF KASHCHEI’S PALACE AND MAGICAL

CREATIONS, RETURN TO LIFE OF THE PETRIFIED KNIGHTS,

GENERAL REJOICING

Stravinsky was 27, and unknown outside Russia, when the impresario Sergei Diaghilev commissioned him to write a ballet on the legend of the Firebird for his Russian ballet season in Paris in 1910. The only work by Stravinsky that had previously been heard outside Russia was a pair of Chopin arrangements which he had made for Les Sylphides in Diaghilev’s 1909 season. These in turn had been a speculative commission by Diaghilev on the strength of a single hearing of Stravinsky’s Scherzo fantastique at a St Petersburg concert in January 1909.

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Nor was Stravinsky Diaghilev’s first choice for the Firebird project. Even though the Paris press had found fault with the 1909 season for the mediocre quality of its music as compared with the brilliantly innovative dance and design, Diaghilev’s first instinct was still to shuffle the old Russian musical pack: he approached Liadov and Tcherepnin (whose music had already been denigrated by the Paris critics), and considered asking Glazunov, among other orthodox Rimsky-Korsakov pupils, before finally taking the plunge with this largely untried son of a leading bass-baritone at the Mariinsky Opera.

Nobody knew what kind of music might correspond to the dazzling stage pictures of Bakst and Benois, or the intensely exciting and expressive choreography of Fokine. Even today, if we want to re-experience the frisson which ran through Proust’s Paris when The Firebird finally had its premiere at the Opéra in June 1910, we have to put ourselves in the position of an audience who knew no orchestral music by Scriabin, rather little by Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov, still less by Glinka or Glazunov. Stravinsky’s music alludes, more or less directly, to these and others. The Firebird has the simple derivativeness of inexperience.

Its debt to Rimsky-Korsakov is instantly apparent to anyone who knows the late operas of that composer. The idea of representing the oppositions of good/evil, normal/magical, through diatonic/chromatic harmony comes directly from The Golden Cockerel, but is in any case a commonplace of Russian 19th-century opera from Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila onwards. The folksong manner of the princesses’ round dance (‘Khorovod’) and the finale is pure kuchkism, derived from the colour variation technique of the Russian nationalists (the so-called ‘kuchka’, or ‘mighty handful’), of whom

lso.co.uk Programme Notes 7

Rimsky-Korsakov had been a leading member. But the score also draws on the very different style of the Moscow composer Alexander Scriabin, whose work Stravinsky at the time still admired (later he was invariably rude about it). The Firebird’s dance is indebted to the gasping, ejaculatory manner of The Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, subsequently described by Stravinsky as ‘those severe cases of musical emphysema’. And yet the music’s brilliance and assurance as a whole are still enough in themselves to take one’s breath away in a good performance. Combined with Fokine’s choreography, his and Karsavina’s dancing, and Golovine’s and Bakst’s intensely atmospheric designs, it had Paris at Stravinsky’s feet overnight.

The story, which was handed to the young composer on a plate, is a standard issue 19th-century Russian fairy tale. Diaghilev had stunned Paris in 1909 with what has since been unkindly dubbed travel-poster Russianism, and he had no intention of disappointing expectations in his second ballet season. So Stravinsky was landed with a plot involving the usual handsome prince lost in a forest and blundering into the magic garden of an evil sorcerer who has cast a spell on a baker’s dozen of beautiful princesses. The prince destroys the sorcerer with the help of the magic firebird and marries the most beautiful of the princesses.

Stravinsky’s great achievement was to match this farrago with music that seemed at the time – and in some ways can still seem – as extravagant and exotic as the scenario. In particular his handling of the large orchestra was almost miraculous in its flair and inventiveness, perhaps in part the outcome of his student work with Rimsky-Korsakov, which had involved score-copying and possibly even some touchings-in of his own.

020 7638 8891 lso.co.uk

LSO DISCOVERY DAY STRAVINSKY & DANCE

Sun 11 Oct 10am–5.30pm Barbican and LSO St Luke’s

Explore the great ballet composer of the 20th century in our first LSO Discovery Day of the season. Watch Valery Gergiev rehearse Stravinsky’s most iconic score, The Rite of Spring, in the morning. Then delve deeper into the composer’s lifelong fascination with movement and music that afternoon, with a special illustrated talk from Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, who reconstructed Nijinsky’s original choreography from historical sources. This is followed by live chamber music and a film screening.

Tickets £20 (£15 concessions) plus booking fee of £0.60 online or £0.70 by phone

LÉON BAKST (1866–1924) was a

revolutionary theatre designer who

was associated with Diaghilev’s

Ballet Russes. His costumes were

ornate, intricate and cast in bold

colours to heighten the effect of this

new choreography. The image below

is taken from his original design for

the character of the Firebird.

London Symphony Orchestra

THE LOST RITE by Millicent Hodson & Kenneth Archer

This unique book details the recreation of Nijinsky’s original lost ballet. Featuring stop-frame performance photography by Shira Klasmer of the reconstructed ballet performed by the Polish National Ballet; and original quotes to help readers to ‘see’ the ballet as they ‘hear’ the voices of 1913.

On sale now at the Barbican Shop for £81. Signed copies available at the LSO Discovery Day on Sunday 11 October.

8 Composer Profile 9 October 2015

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 Sergei 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).

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 World War II persuaded Stravinsky to move to the US 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.

Igor Stravinsky Composer Profile

COMPOSER PROFILE WRITER

ANDREW STEWART

020 7638 8891 lso.co.uk/lunchtimeconcerts

London Symphony Orchestra

BBC RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERTS AT LSO ST LUKE’S

CHOPIN, LISZT & BARTÓK

Thu 29 Oct 2015 1pm Alice Sara Ott piano

Thu 5 Nov 2015 1pm Ashley Wass piano

Thu 26 Nov 2015 1pm Maria João Pires, Ashot Khachatourian piano

LONDON RESOUNDING

Thu 15 Oct 2015 1pm Florilegium

Thu 22 Oct 2015 1pm Ronald Brautigam fortepiano

Thu 12 Nov 2015 1pm Fretwork

Thu 19 Nov 2015 1pm Musica ad Rhenum

Tickets £12 (£10 concessions) plus booking fee

lso.co.uk Timeline 9

Valery Gergiev LSO Principal Conductor

An electrifying musical personality.

After his triumphant cycle of the complete Prokofiev Symphonies in the LSO’s 2004 centenary year, Valery Gergiev was named Principal Conductor and took up his post in January 2007, one of the most talked about appointments in classical music. Here we look back at some of the highlights of the past nine years with Gergiev at the helm …

NOVEMBER 2007

First recording for LSO Live:

Mahler Symphony No 6

2010

‘Russia’s Jeux d’Esprit’ series

explores Russian music from

Tchaikovsky to Shchedrin

NOVEMBER 2014 Major tour to Singapore

and Australia, the Orchestra’s first visit to

the continent for 30 years

2015 Final release on

LSO Live as Principal

Conductor: Scriabin

Symphonies 3 & 4

OCTOBER 2015

Final three concerts as LSO Principal

Conductor. ‘Gergiev: Man of the

Theatre’ explores the stage works

of Bartók and Stravinsky

JANUARY 2007 First concert

as LSO Principal Conductor,

including Stravinsky’s The Firebird

and Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite

SEPTEMBER 2007 First cycle as

Principal Conductor: ‘Gergiev’s Mahler’

MAY 2012

Gergiev conducts the first BMW LSO Open Air Classics

concert in London’s Trafalgar Square. For the past four years

this annual concert has introduced crowds of thousands to

the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Berlioz and Shostakovich

2007

2015

SEPTEMBER 2008 First concert

of the ‘Émigré’ series featuring

works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev,

Bartók, Schoenberg and Korngold

2009 ‘20th Century Remembered’

series features a major focus on

the works of Dutilleux

NOVEMBER 2014 ‘Revolutionary Russians’

series with pianist Denis Matsuev explores

the music of Gergiev’s Russian homeland:

Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

2012–13

2012 and 2013 saw several key projects

including a Szymanowski and Brahms

cycle and an in-depth Berlioz exploration

10 Article 9 October 2015

Gareth Davies, LSO Principal Flute Toothpicks and Triumphs

We had a week to learn and perform all seven, many of which were unfamiliar. Difficult enough, but to add to the excitement, the concerts were broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and recorded for release by Philips. It was a bold statement of intent, and a thrilling, if terrifying week. The results were extraordinary and it was no surprise that shortly afterwards he was appointed Principal Conductor of the LSO.

When Valery Gergiev arrived, it was like an electrical storm had blown into town. Most conductors when working with a new orchestra might begin with their party piece, a favourite symphony, a well trusted soloist in an old warhorse concerto, safe territory for maestro and musicians to weigh each other up before getting in the ring.

But Gergiev isn’t most conductors. He came with a complete cycle of Prokofiev symphonies.

lso.co.uk Article 11

That first glimpse of the intensity and speed at which he worked has proven to be the blueprint for the way Gergiev’s version of the LSO has evolved. In many ways, it was always destined to be an exciting partnership. The LSO (in my opinion) is the fastest and most flexible ensemble a conductor could ask for; coupled with a man who famously jets around the world playing multiple concerts in different time zones, sometimes on the same day, a champion of Russian repertoire, a man who demands flexibility and fleetness of foot from his players. After our explosive courtship the relationship has continued at the same trajectory – with speed, colour, excitement and risk.

There have been many highlights along the way and the repertoire has been varied. A Mahler cycle, the Brahms and Szymanowski pairings, Scriabin, a different take on Berlioz … the expected and unexpected, the dazzling and visceral. However,

as the formal relationship draws to a close in these concerts, there is a beautiful symmetry in the return to the repertoire which perhaps draws the finest performances of this passionate partnership.

It’s no surprise that Valery should have a particular affinity for the music of his homeland, and yet there is something else, something in the performances that you can’t quite describe in words. I will never forget a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in Dublin a few years back. It’s one of those favourites that gets played to death, though more often than not, a hollow shell of its true self. The thing with Gergiev is this: I don’t think we’ve ever given the same performance of a work twice. That’s not to say it’s unreliable or inconsistent, but every performance has something unique to say. I can guarantee that the performance of The Firebird or The Rite of Spring you hear in London will not be the same as the performances next week in New York.

A man who demands flexibility and fleetness of foot …

It’s no surprise that Valery should have a particular affinity for the music of his homeland …

12 Article 9 October 2015

Toothpicks and Triumphs continued

How can a man influence the same notes on the page and get such different but equally thrilling performances? The truth is, I don’t know, and don’t really think he does either. I often remember tiny details in performance; the way the leader lingered on a phrase, a distant off stage trumpet, the warm embrace of the string section. In Dublin that night, I don’t recall the details. What I do remember is Valery ushering in the bass section at the beginning and then urging them on to play quieter and quieter at the end. Somewhere in between was a perfectly judged arc of music. Unforgettable. I came off stage exhausted and wrung out. Ironically, a performance I remember so little about is the one that haunts me the most.

The questions I get asked regularly are, ‘how do you follow his beat’, usually followed by, ‘is it a toothpick?’. The answer to the second question is ‘yes’. Why? Does it matter? Not really. The first question is a little more tricky to answer.

Even if you have only the most basic knowledge of conducting technique you’ll recognise that Gergiev’s style is unconventional. Beats often move horizontally where you’d expect a vertical, the fingers quiver, there are times when it looks more like he’s trying to play the violins rather than direct them. But it works, which is sort of the point.

I came off stage exhausted and wrung out. Ironically, a performance I remember so little about is the one that haunts me the most.

GARETH DAVIES has been LSO

Principal Flute since 2000.

Alongside playing with the LSO,

Gareth writes regularly for BBC

Music Magazine, Classic FM and his

own blog, has written a book on a

century of LSO touring, and is a

professor of flute at the Royal College

of Music and Guildhall School.

Is it a toothpick? Does it matter? Not really.

lso.co.uk Article 13

I don’t know where you’ll be sitting in the auditorium tonight, but when you see him conduct you’ll watch his swooping arms, the flicks of his head, the jerking of his body and the fluttering of his fingers. But take a moment and look at the musicians. When they look up from the blur of notes, they will be watching his eyes. The ride with the LSO and Gergiev, all 327 concerts, has been exhilarating and exhausting, but one which I’d happily strap myself in for again.

The ride with the LSO and Gergiev … has been exhilarating and exhausting, but one which I’d happily strap myself in for again.

GARETH DAVIES

THE SHOW MUST GO ONGareth Davies’ book, The Show Music Go On, tells stories from LSO tours, from its first trip to the US in 1912, fast-forwarding to a century later with tales of tours from 2012. Both accounts include many trials and tribulations – volcanoes, the joy of airports, travel strikes, illness and life and death situations – but also the vivid descriptions of the magic of the music-making. Get a glimpse into the backstage goings on and see inside the mind of the professional musician like never before. Available online and at all good retailers.

London Symphony Orchestra

VALERY GERGIEV’S SEASON CONTINUES

Sun 11 Oct 2015 7pm

Stravinsky Symphony in C major

Bartók Piano Concerto No 3

Stravinsky The Rite of Spring

Valery Gergiev conductor | Yefim Bronfman piano

Sun 18 Oct 2015 7pm

Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin (concert version)

Stravinsky Chant du rossignol

Bartók Concerto for Orchestra

Valery Gergiev conductor

Sun 11 Oct 2015 10am–5.30pm,

Barbican and LSO St Luke’s

LSO Discovery Day: Stravinsky and Dance

Witness the LSO rehearse scores by Stravinsky

in the morning, followed by chamber music and

discussion in the afternoon.

lso.co.uk | 020 7638 8891

14 Artist Biographies 9 October 2015

Valery Gergiev Conductor

Valery Gergiev has been Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra since 2007, with performances at the Barbican, BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival, as well as leading the LSO on extensive tours of Europe, North America and Asia. As Artistic and General Director of St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre since 1988, he has taken the Mariinsky ballet, opera and orchestra ensembles to more than 45 countries. He is Principal Conductor of the World Orchestra for Peace and assumes the role of Principal Conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in autumn 2015. His other roles include Founder and Artistic Director of the Stars of the White Nights, New Horizons and Mariinsky Piano festivals in St Petersburg, the Moscow Easter Festival, Rotterdam Philharmonic’s Gergiev Festival, and the Gergiev Festival in Mikkeli.

Gergiev has led numerous composer-centred concert cycles in New York, London and other international cities, featuring works by Berlioz, Brahms, Dutilleux, Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner, as well as introducing audiences around the world to several rarely performed Russian operas. He also serves as Chair of the Organisational Committee of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Honorary President of the Edinburgh International Festival and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the St Petersburg State University.

Gergiev’s recordings on LSO Live and the Mariinsky Label continually win awards in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Recent releases on LSO Live include Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 3; Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, The Death of Cleopatra and Symphonie fantastique; Brahms’ German Requiem and complete symphonies; Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater and complete symphonic works. Earlier releases include the symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Mahler.

Recent releases on the Mariinsky Label include Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 1, Stravinsky’s Capriccio, and Shchedrin’s Piano Concerto No 2 with Denis Matsuev; Shchedrin’s The Left Hander; Shostakovich’s Symphony No 9 and Violin Concerto No 1 featuring Leonidas Kavakos; Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Dances of Death and Night on Bare Mountain. Earlier releases include Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and The Gambler on DVD, Shostakovich’s Symphonies No 4, 5, 6 and 8, Tchaikovsky Piano Concertos No 1 and 2 and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 with Denis Matsuev and Prokofiev’s Symphony No 5.

Valery Gergiev’s many awards include the People’s Artist of Russia, the Dmitri Shostakovich Award, the Polar Music Prize, the Netherlands’ Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion, Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun and the French Order of the Legion of Honour.

Principal Conductor

London Symphony Orchestra

Artistic & General Director

Mariinsky Theatre

Principal Conductor

World Orchestra for Peace

Artistic Director

Stars of the White Nights Festival

Artistic Director

Moscow Easter Festival

lso.co.uk Artist Biographies 15

Yefim Bronfman Piano

Internationally recognised as one of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors and recital series. His commanding technique, power and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike.

At the centre of the current season is a residency with the Staatskapelle Dresden, which includes all of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos conducted by Christian Thielemann in Dresden and on tour in Europe. Recital performances will capture audiences with the cycles of the daunting complete Prokofiev sonatas over three programmes in Berlin, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and Cal Performances, Berkeley.

As a regular guest, Bronfman will return to the Vienna, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, Mariinsky, Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, as well as the Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and Seattle.

Following the success of their first US tour last spring, Bronfman will rejoin Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lynn Harrell in May for a European tour that takes them from Madrid to Berlin, Moscow and Milan. Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, his partners have also included Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kožená, Emmanuel Pahud, Pinchas Zukerman and many others.

Yefim Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti,

Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst and David Zinman. Summer engagements regularly take him to the major festivals of Europe and the US.

He has also given numerous solo recitals in the leading halls of North America, Europe and the Far East, including acclaimed debuts at Carnegie Hall in 1989 and David Geffen Hall, formerly Avery Fisher Hall, in 1993. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Bronfman’s first public performances there since his emigration to Israel at age 15. That same year he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honours given to American instrumentalists. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University.

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman emigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, under Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher and Rudolf Serkin. He received an honorary doctorate in 2015 from the Manhattan School of Music.

16 The Orchestra 9 October 2015

London Symphony Orchestra On stage

FIRST VIOLINS Roman Simovic Leader Carmine Lauri Lennox Mackenzie Clare Duckworth Nigel Broadbent Ginette Decuyper Gerald Gregory Jörg Hammann Maxine Kwok-Adams Claire Parfitt Laurent Quenelle Harriet Rayfield Ian Rhodes Sylvain Vasseur Rhys Watkins Shlomy Dobrinsky

SECOND VIOLINS David Alberman Thomas Norris Miya Väisänen David Ballesteros Richard Blayden Matthew Gardner Julian Gil Rodriguez William Melvin Iwona Muszynska Andrew Pollock Louise Shackelton Oriana Kriszten Gordon MacKay Katerina Nazarova

VIOLAS Edward Vanderspar Gillianne Haddow German Clavijo Lander Echevarria Anna Bastow Julia O’Riordan Robert Turner Jonathan Welch Elizabeth Butler Carol Ella Francis Kefford Melanie Martin

CELLOS Tim Hugh Alastair Blayden Jennifer Brown Noel Bradshaw Eve-Marie Caravassilis Daniel Gardner Hilary Jones Amanda Truelove Judith Herbert Orlando Jopling

DOUBLE BASSES Colin Paris Patrick Laurence Matthew Gibson Thomas Goodman Joe Melvin Jani Pensola Benjamin Griffiths Simo Väisänen

FLUTES Gareth Davies Adam Walker Alex Jakeman

PICCOLO Sharon Williams

OBOES Emanuel Abbühl Katie Bennington Daniel Finney

COR ANGLAIS Maxwell Spiers

CLARINETS Andrew Marriner Chris Richards Chi-Yu Mo

BASS CLARINET Lorenzo Iosco

E-FLAT CLARINET Chi-Yu Mo

BASSOONS Rachel Gough Daniel Jemison Joost Bosdijk

CONTRA BASSOONS Dominic Morgan Fraser Gordon

HORNS Timothy Jones Jose Garcia Gutierrez Angela Barnes Alexander Edmundson Jonathan Lipton

TRUMPETS Philip Cobb Jason Evans Gerald Ruddock Paul Mayes

TROMBONES Dudley Bright Peter Moore James Maynard

BASS TROMBONE Paul Milner

TUBA Patrick Harrild

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 15 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.

London Symphony Orchestra Barbican Silk Street London EC2Y 8DS

Registered charity in England No 232391

Details in this publication were correct at time of going to press.

The Scheme is supported by Help Musicians UK The Lefever Award The Polonsky Foundation

Editor Edward Appleyard edward.appleyard@lso.co.uk

Photography Igor Emmerich, Kevin Leighton, Bill Robinson, Alberto Venzago, Ranald Mackechnie, Dario Acosta

Print Cantate 020 3651 1690

Advertising Cabbell Ltd 020 3603 7937

TIMPANI Nigel Thomas Antoine Bedewi

PERCUSSION Neil Percy David Jackson Sam Walton Antoine Bedewi Jeremy Cornes Tom Edwards

HARPS Bryn Lewis Nuala Herbert Ruth Holden

CELESTE/PIANO Elizabeth Burley

PIANO/CELESTE Catherine Edwards

Rider Dyce @londonsymphony Mind-blowing Bruckner at the Barbican! Thank you Maestro Haitink. on the LSO with Bernard Haitink & Murray Perahia (15 Sep 2015)

Paul Davies A very big, expansive and forceful Bruckner 7 – a great start to the season and the first of three fantastic concerts under Maestro Haitink. on the LSO with Bernard Haitink & Murray Perahia (15 Sep 2015)

Keith McDonnell A magnificent #Bruckner 7 from @londonsymphony @BarbicanCentre. Haitink incomparable – superb. Unforgettable. on the LSO with Bernard Haitink & Murray Perahia (15 Sep 2015)

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