ECO Programme, Christian Zacharias (QEH, 29 Oct 2018)

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

London Concert Series 2018/19

Christian Zacharias Piano/Conductor

Queen Elizabeth Hall - Monday 29 October 2018, 7.30pm

ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA LEADER STEPHANIE GONLEY

PA T R O N H R H T H E P R I N C E O F WA L E S

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to this concert given by the English Chamber Orchestra as part of its 2018/19 London Series.

We are the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world but we have always been committed to ‘live’ music. I once asked a player whether he would rather record or play a concert. He replied without hesitation that a concert is ‘the real thing’.

We rapidly approach our 60th year and in all that time our achievements have become legendary and exciting relationships have been forged with great artists. One such artist was Benjamin Britten (our first patron) who conducted the ECO at the opening of Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

We are delighted to continue that link this evening at our first concert of the series, where we perform with the eminent pianist Christian Zacharias.

We are pleased that you are part of this performance and look forward to your involvement in the future of the ECO. Sincerely,

Michael Facey Trustee, English Chamber Orchestra Charitable Trust

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Photograph Colin Sheen

Welcome

Queen Elizabeth Hall Monday 29 October 2018, 7.30pm

English Chamber Orchestra Beethoven Movements from ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’, Op. 43

· Poco adagio – Allegro con brio · Minuetto (Allegro vivace) · Andantino – Adagio – Allegro Overture

Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for String Orchestra, Op. 4

Interval Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Christian Zacharias Piano/Conductor Welcome to Southbank Centre We hope you enjoy your visit.

We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you have any queries, please ask any member of staff for assistance.

Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, wagamama, YO! Sushi, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Honest Burger, Côte Brasserie, Skylon and Topolski, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall.

If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit, please contact the Visitor Experience Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, phone us on 020 3879 9555, or email customer@southbankcentre.co.uk

We look forward to seeing you again soon A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment: PHOTOGRAPHY is not allowed in the auditorium.

LATECOMERS are only admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance.

RECORDING is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of Southbank Centre.

Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended.

MOBILES, PAGERS AND WATCHES should be switched off before the performance begins.

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ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Music from ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’, Op. 43 Overture · Poco adagio – Allegro con brio · Minuetto (Allegro vivace) · Andantino – Adagio – Allegro

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n Greek mythology, Prometheus was a Titan who defied Jupiter by stealing fire from heaven and giving it to the creatures he had fashioned from clay, thus creating the Human Race and liberating it from the tyranny of the gods. The Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th Century saw the story as an allegory of human free will and atheism, and it became a popular subject for 18th- and 19th-Century artists, writers and composers; Goethe’s powerful poem, ‘Prometheus’, was set by Schubert and Hugo Wolf. Beethoven, too, must have felt a personal affinity with Prometheus, the bearer of the divine flame of creativity.

On 28 March 1801, the Burgtheater in Vienna gave the first performance of a ballet entitled Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus), to a scenario by Salvatore Viganò, ballet master to the Viennese court, with music by Beethoven. Prometheus gives life to two clay statues and leads them to Parnassus to be instructed in the art of music, drama and dance by Apollo and the Muses, Orpheus, Pan and Bacchus. The ballet music, consisting of an Overture, Introduction and 16 numbers, proved to be one of Beethoven’s earliest successes.

Beethoven composed the short but colourful Overture at the same time as he was writing his First Symphony, and it shares the Symphony’s

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energy, vitality and wit, as well as its key, C major. The Overture’s slow introduction also shares the Symphony’s iconoclastic opening chord sequence, beginning with a C major chord with a B flat in it – a ‘wrong’ note to 18th-Century ears. A noble melody, imbued with a sense of expectation, abruptly gives way to the fleet-footed Allegro, with bustling string scales and occasional unexpectedly cheeky turns of phrase.

The movement marked Poco adagio followed by Allegro con brio depicts Prometheus’s two clay figures falteringly coming to life as man and woman. In the graceful Minuetto, which ends Act One of the ballet, the creatures reveal their lack of human thoughts and feelings. The last number we hear this evening was written as an expressive solo display-piece for Salvatore Viganò, dancing the role of Prometheus. Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, had stabbed Prometheus in punishment for daring to imbue his creatures with human consciousness; he now celebrates his return to life.

NOTES & LETTERS

F o r o n e n i g h t o n l y , a c t o r S i m o n C a l l o w , s o p r a n o J o a n R o d g e r s , a n d pianist Roger Vignoles – three of City Music Foundation's celebrated patrons – join in an unique entertainment based on Tchaikovsky's music and writings. The evening also includes Tchaikovsky's searing string sextet 'Souvenir de Florence' performed by an ensemble of CMF Artists.

FRIDAY 16TH NOVEMBER 2018 6.30PM GUILDHALL ART GALLERY & ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE TICKETS: £95 (includes drinks & canapés)

citymusicfoundation.org/events/tchaikovsky

ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for String Orchestra, Op. 4

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In the autumn of 1899 Arnold Schoenberg was 25 and largely unknown, scraping a precarious living from conducting workers’ choirs and making arrangements of other people’s music. Schoenberg’s exploration of atonality and serialism was to bring him notoriety as the world’s leading ‘modernist’ composer; but this still lay some 20 years in the future. As the 19th Century drew to a close, Schoenberg was seeking to extend the boundaries of the lateRomantic idiom of Brahms, Mahler and Richard Strauss, under the spell of the chromatic harmonies of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde.

Schoenberg composed Verklärte Nacht for string sextet in September 1899. His friend and mentor, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, was impressed, and submitted the score to an influential Viennese music society, the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein; but the work proved too modern for the judges, who commented ‘It sounds as if someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet!’

Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’) is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel. Two lovers are walking in the moonlight; she confesses that she is pregnant by another man, but so great is his love for her that he agrees to bring the child up as his own. Schoenberg’s

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work closely follows the five sections of Dehmel’s poem. An introduction depicting the couple’s hesitant steps through the moonlit wood is followed by the woman’s confession; a brief interlude introduces the man’s reply. His declaration of selfless devotion is followed by a serene postlude, as they walk on through the ‘high, bright night’.

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ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Allegro con brio · Largo · Rondo (Allegro)

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eethoven jotted down some thoughts for a C minor piano concerto as early as 1796 but laid them aside in favour of the work we now know as the Concerto No. 1 in C major, which he first performed in 1798. (Despite its numbering, the Concerto No. 2 in B flat is earlier, dating from 1795.) He resumed work on the C minor Concerto some years later, and first performed it at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1803, in an allBeethoven benefit concert which also included the First and Second Symphonies and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. At the age of 32, Beethoven’s hearing was not yet so impaired as to threaten his career as a virtuoso pianist, and the C minor Concerto shows him in supreme command of his powers as both composer and performer.

For Beethoven as for Mozart, C minor was a key of darkness and foreboding; five years later it was to be the key of the Fifth Symphony. He had evidently studied Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto (K491); both works open with a rising unison figure, though Beethoven adds a note of defiance with a ‘drumbeat’ continuation. The orchestral tutti introduces a charmingly simple second subject melody in E flat major, before a plaintive oboe theme heralds a return to C minor. The piano announces its arrival on the scene with heroic rising scales, taking control of the situation by re-stating and expanding the orchestra’s material. In the closely argued development section, the soloist’s rising scales preface a discussion of the ‘drumbeat’ motif, which now sounds like a pre-echo of the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony.

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At the end of the movement, following the soloist’s cadenza, Beethoven has a surprise up his sleeve: instead of the expected triumphal playout, there is a hushed pianissimo passage featuring the drumbeat figure on the timpani (this was the idea Beethoven had first jotted down in 1796). The drumbeat motif briefly expands to a four-note figure startlingly anticipating the Fifth Symphony, in a crescendo to a thunderous conclusion.

The slow movement, in the disturbingly remote key of E major, is a glowing songlike melody treated to increasingly florid decoration by the piano in a mood of rapt concentration. In the central section, rippling piano arpeggios and pizzicato string chords form the background to a dialogue between flute and bassoon.

For the final Rondo we are firmly back in C minor; Beethoven overcomes the inherent gloominess of the key in a dazzling display of virtuosity and wit (although one commentator, Roger Fiske, detects ‘a latent desperation behind the high spirits’). After an amiably relaxed clarinet melody, Beethoven shows off his contrapuntal credentials by threatening to begin a four-part fugue in the strings. The piano repeats the note A flat and turns it enharmonically into G sharp – the third of the chord of E major – for a surprise excursion into the key of the slow movement. The clouds are finally lifted for a jubilant coda in C major, with the rondo theme transformed into a bouncing 6/8 rhythm.

Programme notes by Jonathan Burton © 2018

NICOLA BENEDETTI WITH NCO MAIN ORCHESTRA

CELEBRATING TING 40 YEARS

Programme features

PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2

Sunday 9 December | 7pm

Queen Elizabeth Hall Southbank Centre

Book Now

southbankcentre.co.uk 020 3879 9555

Photo: Andrew McCoy

Celebrating the Life of

Neil Black OBE

1932 - 2016

Thursday 6th December 2018 7.30pm

In aid of the Neil Black Award

in association with the Countess of Munster Trust

Endellion String Quartet Jonathan Kelly oboe

Roderick Williams baritone

Tickets: £25 £35 £40 £42 £45 Online: visit www.wigmore-hall.org.uk There is a non-refundable administration charge of £3 for each ticket order.

36 Wigmore Street, London W1U 2BP Director: John Gilhooly The Wigmore Hall Trust Registered Charity No. 102 4838

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ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

Christian Zacharias Piano/Conductor

‘Zacharias offers a masterclass of reason, temperament, imagination and integrity.’

The Financial Times

C Photograph Constanze Zacharias

‘One must “speak” music...’ hristian Zacharias is a narrator among the conductors and pianists of his generation. In each of his elaborate, detailed and clearly articulated interpretations, Zacharias is interested in what lies behind the notes.

With his distinctive combination of integrity, unique style, surpassing linguistic expressiveness, deep musical insight and assured artistic instinct paired with his charismatic and captivating personality, Zacharias has made a name for himself not only as one of the world’s leading pianists and conductors, but also as a musical thinker.

Beginning as a pianist and later moving on to work as a conductor as well, his international career burgeoned through numerous widely acclaimed concerts with the world’s leading orchestras, renowned conductors, not to mention several awards and recordings.

In the 2017/18 season, Christian Zacharias took over as first guest conductor of the Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid

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for three seasons and is presenting its Schumann Festival, which includes all four symphonies and the great Solokonzerte. Poetry without Words - Schumann’s music is a central point in Zacharias’s musical work and is thus also on offer at his concerts in Toulouse, Gävle and Barcelona.

Zacharias’s work in the world of music has earned him numerous awards and prizes, including the 2007 Midem Classical Award ‘Artist of the Year’. The French government also honoured him as an ‘Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ and he was awarded for his contributions to culture in Romania in 2009.

In 2016 he was named member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

During his time as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, his recordings with the orchestra garnered widespread critical acclaim among the international press.

In 2015 and 2017, Christian Zacharias chaired the Jury of the Clara Haskil Competition and as president of the jury of the 2018 Geza Anda Competition he conducted the final concert.

KIRKER MUSIC FE ST IVAL S FOR DISCERNING TRAVELLERS Kirker Holidays offers an extensive range of independent and escorted music holidays. These include tours to leading festivals in Europe such as the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago and the Verdi Festival in Parma, as well as Glyndebourne, Buxton and opera weekends in Vienna, Milan and Venice.

We also host our own exclusive music festivals on land and at featuring internationally acclaimed musicians. For those who prefer to travel independently we arrange short breaks with opera, ballet or concert tickets, to all the great classical cities in Europe.

THE KIRKER MUSIC FESTIVAL IN TENERIFE A SEVEN NIGHT HOLIDAY | 12 JANUARY 2019 For our fourth exclusive music festival on the island of Tenerife, we will present a series of six concerts featuring the Gould Piano Trio, pianist Benjamin Frith, soprano Ilona Domnich and violist Simon Rowland-Jones.

Staying at the 5* Hotel Botanico, surrounded by lush tropical gardens, we shall also enjoy a programme of fascinating excursions. Highlights include the Sitio Litro Orchid Garden, a cable car journey to the peak of Mount Teide and a visit to the primeval cloud forest of the Anaga Mountains.We will also visit historic and picturesque villages along the spectacular north coast, including Garachico with its 17th century convent.

Price from £2,698 per person (single supp. £375) for seven nights including flights, transfers, accommodation with breakfast, six dinners, six private concerts, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

THE KIRKER MUSIC FESTIVAL IN MALLORCA A SIX NIGHT HOLIDAY | 29 MAY 2019 The works of Frédéric Chopin are central to our Festival in Mallorca and for our seventh visit we will be joined by the Phoenix Piano Trio, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, soprano and Lorena Paz Nieto, mezzo-soprano.

Based in the village of Banyalbufar, we will discover the gloriously unspoilt north coast of Mallorca. There will be visits to the picturesque artists’ village of Deia, the capital Palma and the villa of San Marroig. Our series of private concerts includes a recital in the monastery at Valldemossa where Chopin spent three months with his lover the aristocratic Baroness Dudevant, better known as the writer George Sand.

Price from £2,290 per person (single supp. £189) for six nights including flights, accommodation with breakfast, two lunches, six dinners, five concerts, all sightseeing and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

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ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA LEADER STEPHANIE GONLEY

PA T R O N H R H T H E P R I N C E O F WA L E S

Photographs, top: ONURACIMAZ bottom: Nigel Luckhurst

T

he English Chamber Orchestra is the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world, its discography containing nearly 900 recordings of over 1,500 works by more than 400 composers.

Throughout its history, the ECO has performed in numerous countries and played with many of the world’s greatest musicians; the American radio network CPRN selecting it as one of the world’s greatest ‘living’ orchestras. Its illustrious past features many major musical figures, including Benjamin Britten who was the orchestra’s first Patron and a significant musical influence. The ECO has enjoyed long relationships with such great musicians as Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim, whose partnership with the orchestra led to an acclaimed complete cycle of Mozart piano concertos as live performances and recordings.

This was followed by two further recordings of the complete cycle, with Murray Perahia and Mitsuko Uchida.

Last Season, the ECO performed across the UK and enjoyed a successful London series with artists including Christian Zacharias,

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Tenebrae, Jennifer Pike, Tasmin Little and Howard Shelley. International highlights included a tour in Mexico with José Serebrier and a sold-out European tour with Julian Rachlin culminating in a concert at the Musikverein in Vienna.

The ECO has recorded many successful film soundtracks including Dario Marianelli’s prizewinning scores for Atonement and Pride and Prejudice and several James Bond soundtracks. It has taken part in a variety of television and film projects and features on the soundtrack of the recent Oscar-nominated film ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri’, accompanying Renée Fleming in Last Rose of Summer.

This year, the ECO was honoured to participate in the ceremony for the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle and over the summer was on tour at the Lucerne Festival and in Turkey, performing with pianists Guher and Suher Pekinel at the Izmir and Istanbul music festivals.

Stay in touch with the ECO by subscribing to our monthly e-newsletter at www.englishchamberorchestra.co.uk Follow and engage with the ECO on Facebook and Instagram(@EnglishChamberOrchestra) and Twitter(@ECOrchestra).

First violins

Stephanie Gonley Michael Gurevich Katerina Nazarova Jamie Campbell Julia Rumley Michael Trainor Tom Aldren Jonathan Storer

Second violins

Marcus Barcham-Stevens Natalia Bonner Edward Bale Ruth Funnell Natasha Hall Caroline Bishop

Violas

Roger Chase Cara Coetzee Tetsuumi Nagata Bryony Gibson-Cornish

Cellos

Caroline Dale* Tim Lowe Alexandra Mackenzie Dietrich Bethge

Bass

Stephen Williams Lucy Shaw

Flutes

Harry Winstanley Robert Manasse

Oboes

David Thomas Nicky Holland

Clarinets

Anthony Pike Jill Turner

Bassoons

Julie Price Claire Webster

Horns

John Thurgood** Samuel Pearce

Trumpets

Andrew Crowley Toby Coles

Timpani

David Corkhill General Management Fabio Sarlo Lydia Brookes Juliette Barber

* The Chair of Principal Cello is generously supported by the Phair Family Foundation ** The Chair of Principal Horn is generously supported by Lynn Holmes in memory of Brian Holmes The list of players was correct at the time of going to press.

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ECO London Series 2018/19 Queen Elizabeth Hall

Join the ECO Friends and get closer to the music

Whether you’re a long-standing ECO fan or we’ve only just met, share your love of music and be a part of the ECO by joining our network of supporters.

Whatever your motivation…

• Meeting the musicians off the concert platform • Seeing behind the scenes of an orchestra at work • Socialising with other music lovers at our events • Enabling school pupils and other young people to experience a live orchestra for the first time, …or just the feeling of sitting in the concert hall and knowing that you made it happen: your support will make a real difference.

Become an ECO Friend from £60 per year (£5 per month) • Meet other music lovers • Be the first to know what we’re up to with our newsletter • Come and watch a rehearsal during our London Season For further information or to join us, come and say hello at the ECO desk in the foyer at tonight’s concert or contact Lydia Brookes on lydia.brookes@ englishchamberorchestra. co.uk /020 8840 6565

Other ways to get involved There are a number of other ways to get involved with and support the orchestra, including sponsoring an orchestral chair or concert, corporate sponsorship and leaving a gift in your will.

For an informal discussion please contact Lydia Brookes on lydia.brookes@ englishchamberorchestra. co.uk /020 8840 6565

The ECO Friends scheme is operated on behalf of the English Chamber Orchestra Charitable Trust, registered charity number 1071240.

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ECO London Concert Series 2018/19

Mon 29 Oct 2018, 7.30pm Christian Zacharias piano / conductor Beethoven / Schoenberg Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Sun 2 Dec 2018, 6.00pm Christmas with Vivaldi Stephanie Gonley violin / director Michael Collins conductor Cadogan Hall, London

Tues 19 Feb 2019, 7.30pm Ana de la Vega flute Stephanie Gonley director Grieg / Mozart / Myslivecek / Tchaikovsky Cadogan Hall, London

Tues 16 Apr 2019, 7.30pm Stephanie Gonley violin / director Bartรณk / Mendelssohn / Schubert / Suk Cadogan Hall, London

Sat 16 Mar 2019, 7.30pm Ben Goldscheider horn Ben Johnson tenor Jessica Cottis conductor Ravel / Britten / Purcell / Stravinsky Cadogan Hall, London

Wed 22 May 2019, 7.30pm Behzod Abduraimov piano Stephanie Gonley director Stravinsky / Beethoven / Mozart Cadogan Hall, London

www.southbankcentre.co.uk 020 3879 9555 / www.cadoganhall.com 020 7730 4500 The orchestra is indebted to the generous support of its two charitable trusts, the English Chamber Orchestra Charitable Trust and the English Chamber Orchestra and Music Society.

This information was correct at the time of printing. However, the English Chamber Orchestra reserves the right to substitute artists or change programme details if necessary.

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

www.englishchamberorchestra.co.uk/concerts

Sunday 2 December 2018, 6.00pm

/ 19N

18 O 20O N DSO N L EA S

Cadogan Hall, London

Christmas with Vivaldi - Michael Collins conductor Stephanie Gonley violin/director · Caroline Dale cello Harry Winstanley flute · Choir of the 21st Century with soloists Raphaela Papadakis and Lotte Betts-Dean

Vivaldi ‘Winter’ from the Four Seasons Vivaldi Concerto for Violin, Op.8 No.5, RV 253 ‘La Tempesta di Mare’ Vivaldi Concerto for Violin and Cello in B flat major, RV ß547 Vivaldi Concerto for Flute in D major, RV 428 ‘The Goldfinch’ Vivaldi Gloria in D major, RV 589

Tickets: £15 - £45

All bookings subject to a £3 transaction fee (no booking fees for ENCORE Members).

www.cadoganhall.com

The Orchestra is indebted to the English Chamber Orchestra and Music Society for its invaluable support, without which this concert would not be possible.