Concert programme - November 2022

2022

Concert

Season

Concert Programme

The Trials of Life

The Victoria Hall Saturday 19th November 2022 7:30pm Conductor Ben Crick Leader Anita Levy

Supported by Friends of Bolton Symphony Orchestra

I am delighted to be able to welcome you to our final concert of this year our first full season of concerts since the coronavirus restrictions spoiled our plans.

The Orchestra really appreciates your loyalty and confidence in returning to the Victoria Hall to support our music making, and once again this evening we offer you something a bit different!

The evening starts with Francis Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine (‘the human voice’). We are delighted to welcome Lorna James as soprano soloist in the musical development of Jean Cocteau’s play of the same name. The libretto consists of a woman’s last telephone conversation with her lover, who now loves someone else. During the call, the woman reveals that she has attempted to take her own life because her lover has abandoned her.

The loss in La Voix Humaine is inextricably linked to nostalgia for a past that is gone and there is the link between that work and Vaughan Williams’ Pastoral Symphony. Inspired by the composer hearing a distant bugler making a mistake whilst practising, the work laments a lost land and a lost generation in music of gentle pathos and longing but, at the same time, asks a question that is ever pertinent: Do any of us lament what is actually lost or a nostalgic fantasy that never really existed? It is a wonderful work, and I am sure you will love it.

We have a special offer for you…!

For the first time, the Orchestra is offering a single ticket that admits the holder to our entire season. Our 2023 season ticket is available from our website and effectively gives you admission to all six of our concerts for the price of five a potential saving of £12!

Finally, I hope you have a lovely evening and, if you do, please tell your friends!

Nikki Lord Orchestra Manager, Bolton Symphony Orchestra

Welcome to this evening’s concert!

PROGRAMME

Francis Poulenc La Voix Humaine Interval

Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No 3 (“Pastoral”)

2023 SEASON

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Saturday 28th January 2023 - 7:30pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO Witches and Wizards

Saturday 11th March 2023 - 3:00pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO Once Upon A Time

Saturday 13th May 2023 - 7:30pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO Carmen

Saturday 1st July 2023 - 7:30pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO The Road Home

Saturday 23rd September 2023 - 7:30pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO A Distant Home

Saturday 25th November 2023 - 7:30pm at The Victoria Hall - BSO England Four Ways

www.boltonsymphony.org.uk

Our Conductor Ben Crick

Ben Crick has been working in music for 20 years, mainly as a freelance orchestral conductor and composer. He is a former BBC Music Fellow and has conducted such soloists as Tasmin Little, Peter Donohoe, Nicholas Daniel, Raphael Wallfisch, Lesley Garrett, Sir Willard White, Aled Jones and Dame Emma Kirkby. He has worked throughout the UK and internationally including performances in Germany, Norway and Lithuania.

His work aims to present western classical music stripped of surrounding pretensions, so that the music can speak for itself. To facilitate this, in 2004 he created Skipton Building Society Camerata, of which he is still the Artistic Director. With this ensemble he has performed in pubs, shopping centres, train stations and schools alongside many concerts in more traditional venues.

His compositions and arrangements have been performed at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Wigmore Hall and the Bridgewater Hall to name but a few venues, as well as festivals throughout the UK. Major projects include collaborations with Ian McMillan, Khadijah Ibrahiim and Simon Armitage.

Ben is a staff conductor at the Leeds Conservatoire, has written for BBC Music Magazine, Opera Now and Early Music Today, translated three operas and has been a guest contributor for BBC Radios 2, 3 and 4.

Outside of music, he’s into climbing, caving, fell running, rugby league and being a dad who ropes his son into the aforementioned activities.

Our Leader Anita Levy

Growing up in Liverpool, Anita Levy enjoyed a busy schedule of orchestral and chamber playing that eventually culminated in a period as Leader of Merseyside Youth Orchestra before going on to study under Benedict Holland at the Royal Northern College of Music. Following her time at the RNCM. Anita continued her tutelage under the watchful eye of Peter Maslin, Co Leader of Opera North.

Since graduating in 1999, Anita has pursued an extensive career as both a freelance and contract orchestral violinist performing regularly with orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Northern Ballet Theatre Orchestra, the Halle, and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to her extensive orchestral experience, Anita performs regularly with a number of chamber music ensembles and combines her performance schedule with a busy private teaching practice.

This evening’s soloist Lorna James - Soprano

We are delighted to welcome Lorna James as this evening’s soloist.

Lorna graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in 2010, and subsequently studied with Stuart MacIntyre and Jane Irwin. During 2015/16, she collaborated with director Emma Black and conductor/pianist Chris Pelly on a new production of La voix humaine, which they performed a number of times across the UK.

In 2016, Lorna joined the full time chorus of Opera North, and in May 2021 embarked on a new adventure, retraining as a therapeutic counsellor. During her time at Opera North, she covered/performed a range of roles including Governess (The Turn of the Screw), First Lady (The Magic Flute), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Marenka (The Bartered Bride), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), Helena (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Carrie (Carousel).

Lorna has also sung Will Todd's Mass In Blue on a number of occasions, including with The Will Todd Trio, in a programme also featuring jazz standards. She sings with the newly formed Northern Collective Big Band, based in Sheffield, and is enjoying returning to the Opera North Chorus on a freelance basis when her “full time” job as a professional parent allows!

"...Lorna stood almost motionless, her pitch perfect vibrato entrancing the hall while appearing like a young Rhine maiden."

Michael Clark, Bristol Evening Post (Strauss Vier letzte Lieder, Bristol New Sinfonia)

The Orchestra is very grateful to the Friends of Bolton Symphony Orchestra. The Friends offer practical and financial support, and, in return, they receive a range of benefits including priority booking and access to rehearsals and social events.

The Friends have provided financial support to the orchestra in many ways, including sponsoring soloists, contributing towards the CD recording and supporting the purchase of our timpani. The Friends are pleased and proud to support such a fine orchestra and contribute to its continuing success.

Members of BSO have developed close ties with the Friends, and we welcome them to come along and see how the Orchestra works. We regularly put on private concerts for them, and these are always convivial events greatly enjoyed by both Friends and performers alike.

The annual Friends subscription is just £15, and they very much welcome new members. So if you are looking for a new social group and would like to give the Orchestra further support, then please make contact at the Friends table tonight, email Christine Deacon (friends@boltonsymphony.org.uk) or use the contact form on our website.

www.boltonsymphony.org.uk

This evening’s concert supporter Friends of BSO

La Voix Humaine

Francis Poulenc (1899 1963)

Poulenc was a French composer almost as famous for his personal life as his music, including his Gloria and piano works.

Born in Paris in 1899, Poulenc's mother was an amateur pianist who taught him to play.

As a young composer, he was influenced by musicians like Debussy, Satie, and Stravinsky he caught the latter's attention with his first surviving composition, Rapsodie Nègre, written in 1917.

After performing several of his new pieces shortly before 1920, Poulenc met a gaggle of like-minded composers, with whom he formed Les Six. They reacted against the style of music composed by German composer Richard Wagner and French composers Debussy and Ravel, writing irreverent music and cheeky jazz fuelled tunes.

The death of his close friend Pierre Octave Ferroud led to a religious awakening in 1936. As well as composing light music, he turned to more sombre themes, and his newly fervent Catholicism influenced his first sacred pieces. He continued to write in a range of styles, penning secular tunes alongside religious pieces. Even his sacred music had a cheeky edge: his Gloria caused a scandal due to its irreverence.

In 1958, Poulenc had recently left a tempestuous love affair and, in La Voix Humaine, a play written by his close friend Jean Cocteau, Poulenc saw his experiences borne out on stage. Poulenc and Cocteau teamed up with the soprano Denise Duval, whose own tempestuous relationships were the subject of Paris gossip, to create an opera that explores love through a fluctuating lens of anguish, determination, hope, apathy, confidence and ultimately despair.

Symphony No 3 (“Pastoral”)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 1958)

1. Molto moderato

2. Lento moderato

3. Moderato pesante

4. Lento

During the First World War, Vaughan Williams heard a bugler practising. During their practice, the bugler played a 7th by mistake instead of an octave and, in that moment of melancholy sound, an image of a lost England was conjured up for the young composer. That moment of inspiration was the genesis of one of his least performed symphonies, the Pastoral.

In 1922, the first movement, Molto moderato, must have sounded very unconventional. Listen for the haunting sound of Vaughan Williams’ melodies, the simultaneous movement of two or three melodic lines and the exceptional number of distinctive instrumental solos.

The slow second movement, Lento moderato, is the movement most closely associated with the War. Strings are muted and the heavy brass is absent. After two tunes, the first on solo horn, the second on viola and flute, a solo trumpet marked pianissimo (very quiet) plays a cadenza redolent of bugle calls.

The Scherzo falls into four sections. The opening introduces three themes soon contrasted with a galumphing, invigorating dance on the heavy brass (Vaughan Williams said it was once ‘sketched for a ballet of oafs and fairies’).

The fourth movement is slow, but in it Vaughan Williams achieves such a remarkable degree of fulfilment and affirmation that one suspects it to be his personal song of thanksgiving at War’s end.