14 May 2010 - Debut Sounds programme

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Supported by

Programme £2

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DEBUT SOUNDS

Debut Sounds is a celebration of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s young talent programmes: Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts. Over the past year members of both programmes have been supported by the Orchestra and its Education and Community Department to explore new ideas, learn new skills and work closely with the Orchestra’s musicians. Tonight gives you the opportunity to hear the culmination of this work by some of the most exciting young musicians in classical music.

Foyle Future Firsts This evening members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing alongside members of the Foyle Future Firsts orchestral apprenticeship programme. The 16 members of the programme are gifted and talented young instrumentalists, who aspire to be professional orchestral musicians. The programme

aims to bridge the gap between completing formal instrumental training and finding work as a full time orchestral musician. Now in its seventh year, our unique programme has gone from strength to strength.

Members are supported and nurtured to the highest standards and we are proud to see current and past Foyle Future Firsts taking professional engagements with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and other professional ensembles.

Members of the Foyle Future Firsts programme benefit from individual lessons and mentoring from London Philharmonic Orchestra Principals, training seminars on audition techniques and mock auditions. The Foyle Future Firsts also have opportunities to play in full orchestra rehearsals throughout the year, to take part in high profile chamber performances with Vladimir Jurowski and to work alongside LPO musicians on Education and Community projects.

The 2009/2010 Foyle Future Firsts

Young Composers Tristan Brookes, Isa Khan, Aaron Parker and Sasha Siem have worked with an ensemble comprising members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Foyle Future Firsts programme throughout the academic year.

In a series of workshops dedicated to trying out their compositional ideas, the four composers have received advice and support from Composer in Residence Mark�Anthony Turnage, composer Jonathan Cole and conductor Clement Power.

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DEBUT SOUNDS

Tristan Brookes was born in Oxford in 1986. In 2007 he graduated from King’s College, London, where he had studied composition, analysis and musicology. From 2007 to 2008 he studied for a MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music under the tutelage of Jonathan Cole. Lontano, the Composers Ensemble and the London Contemporary Orchestra have performed his pieces in workshops. Current projects include Ur, for ensemble and live-relayed sounds, to be performed at Snape Maltings by the London Contemporary Orchestra on 15 May 2010, and a new work commissioned by the Impuls Composition Academy, to be performed in Graz by the Klangforum Wien in February 2011.

Aaron Parker has just commenced undergraduate composition studies with Gary Carpenter at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. His works have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC 1 and performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra and the RNCM Brand New Orchestra in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, The Sage Gateshead, Symphony Hall Birmingham, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Centre, Leeds Town Hall and Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, as well as in France, Italy and The Netherlands. Current projects include a new work for Mark Simpson and the Oxford Contemporary Music Group to be premièred in June, and an oboe sonata for Melanie Rothman.

Isa Khan was awarded a full scholarship to study at the Purcell School from the age of eight.

During his ten years there he studied composition with Jonathan Cole and briefly with Dai Fujikura.

His works have been heard at Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Sadler’s Wells. In 2004 Isa won the Purcell School Orchestral Composition prize for his work Blocco Liniere which was conducted by Diego Masson at the Royal Academy of Music’s Duke’s Hall.

More recently, he had a work performed at the National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. He is currently in his second year at the Royal College of Music. Future projects include work with the Ossian Ensemble.

Sasha Siem has recently composed music for the London Sinfonietta, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Opera North, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Opera House, as well as for the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals. Born in London, she was educated at Cambridge University where she graduated with a double starred first and completed an MPhil in composition for which she was awarded the Arthur Bliss Prize. She is currently finishing a PhD in composition at Harvard University and has also been an exchange scholar at Columbia University. Sasha is a Society for the Promotion of New Music shortlisted composer and was recently awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society composition prize.

YOUNG COMPOSERS MENTORS Mark-Anthony Turnage is indisputably among the most significant creative figures to have emerged in British music of the last two decades. The success of his first opera, Greek, established his reputation as an artist who dared to forge his own path between modernism and tradition by means of a unique blend of jazz and classical styles. Among his subsequent successful works have been Blood on the Floor, The Silver Tassie and his Violin Concerto Mambo, Blues and Tarantella, written for the London Philharmonic Orchestra of which he is Composer in Residence. His current major project is an opera, Anna Nicole, to be premièred at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, next February.

Jonathan Cole is a Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music. His works have been featured at many festivals and, since winning the Royal Philharmonic Composition Prize in 1999, he has built up a continuing relationship with the London Sinfonietta. Many of his works have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as well as in Scandinavia, Japan and the USA. In 2009 he took up the post of composer-in-association with the London Contemporary Orchestra for whom he wrote a largescale music theatre piece burburbabbar za which is being revived this month at this year’s Faster than Sound Festival at Snape.

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PERFORMERS

Clement Power, the young English conductor, is rapidly gaining a reputation, notably in the field of contemporary music. He has a close relationship with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Paris, having been assistant conductor from 2006 to 2008.

He recently returned to conduct Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître, and the world première of Hypermusic Prologue, an opera by Hector Parra, in Paris’s Centre Pompidou, the Teatro Liceu, Barcelona, and the Philharmonie, Luxembourg. This season also saw Clement’s debut appearances with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Bretagne, and NHK Symphony Orchestra in Suntory Hall, Tokyo, conducting Stockhausen’s Gruppen.

In 2005/06, Clement was the London Philharmonic Orchestra Junior Fellow in Conducting. He continues his links with the Orchestra, having conducted its Young Composers scheme since its inception, as well as concerts with the Orchestra’s Foyle Future Firsts. Future engagements will take him to the Philharmonia Orchestra for its Music of Today series, Orchestre de Bretagne and Klangforum Wien.

Born in London in 1980, Clement studied at Cambridge University, the Royal College of Music, and the

Violins Jeongmin Kim Artem Kotov† Sarah Sew Violas Katherine Leek Laura Vallejo Jennifer Edwards† Cellos Francis Bucknall Andrei Simion†

Oboes Daniel Bates Will Oinn† Clarinets Emily Sutcliffe James Burke† Bassoons Claire Webster Joanna Stark†

Double Basses George Peniston Damián Rubido González†

Horns John Ryan Martin Hobbs Tiffany Stirling† Gareth Mollison

Flutes Kate Bicknell Laura Pou†

Trumpets Lucy Leleu† Alan Blair

International Ensemble Modern Academy. His debut CD, conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain, will be released on KAIROS this month.

Rachael Lloyd (mezzo soprano) made her debut with Glyndebourne on Tour singing the role of Shelley in Tangier Tattoo in 2005. In 2009, she sang Cornelia in Handel’s Giulio Cesare at the Glyndebourne Festival and will be singing the role of Meg Page in Glyndebourne Touring Opera’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff. Other roles have included Blanche in Offenbach’s Bluebeard at the Buxton Festival in 2007. In 2000, Rachael sang the mezzo soprano solos at the première of Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace at the Royal Albert Hall and made her BBC Proms debut in 2002 singing the role of the Queen in Mendelssohn’s Elijah, conducted by Kurt Masur. As a recitalist, she has sung at Lille Opera House in France, where she performed Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Elgar’s Sea Pictures, and is featured on a recording of works by Claudio Monteverdi, Giulio Caccini and John Dowland with La Nuova Musica. This season she has already performed the role of Mrs Anderssen in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris alongside Leslie Caron. Future plans include the role of Maddalena in Rigoletto.

Trombone Andy White†

For the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Tuba Carl Woodcroft†

Timothy Walker AM Chief Executive and Artistic Director

Percussion Sarah Cresswell† Harp Stephanie Beck† Piano Michele Gamba†

†2009/10 Foyle Future Firsts

Matthew Todd Education and Community Director Isobel Timms Community Officer

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DEBUT SOUNDS

PROGRAMME Witold Lutosławski Mini Overture Aaron Parker Moiré Isa Khan 06 Maurice Ravel Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé Edgard Varèse Octandre

creating a frenetic, constantly shifting backdrop for a skittish trumpet solo, elements of which in turn spark new textures as the music progresses. The second movement is a distillation of some of the ideas from the first movement, and is predominantly slow, quiet and distant. A high violin solo at the centre of the movement, and muted brass, cor anglais and a solo cello towards the end, are distorted fragments and echoes of the trumpet theme from the beginning of the first movement. (AP)

INTERVAL Sasha Siem Queen Anne’s Lace Richard Strauss Serenade in E flat Tristan Brookes SERRA: Pessoa Igor Stravinsky Concerto in E flat (Dumbarton Oakes) Clement Power conductor Rachael Lloyd mezzo soprano

ISA KHAN (born 1989) 06 In 06 my interest lay in setting up a sound-world in which a process of clarification takes place. This emerges as the listeners’ perception becomes increasingly aware of the innate structure of the material being formed. An internal logic is revealed as the material undergoes processes of decay and disintegration, the effect of which strengthens the clarity of these ideas. I see this revelation as being an organic process mirrored in the nature that surrounds us. (IK)

WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI (1913-1994) Mini Overture The great Polish composer Witold Lutosławski wrote this miniature for brass quintet (two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba) to be played by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble at a Lucerne Festival concert in March 1982. It is a brilliant collective toccata in constantly changing time-signatures. (AB)

AARON PARKER (born 1991) Moiré Moiré was written between November 2009 and early April 2010. It is scored for chamber orchestra and the music is split into two brief movements. The title refers to the optical effect whereby two identical patterns or lines are superimposed upon each other to create a new resulting pattern, a ‘moiré’. The shape of the moiré will alter as the patterns or lines which make it up are realigned. This concept seemed to me to suggest various interesting musical possibilities, some of which are explored in this short work. In the first movement, for example, overlapping isorhythmic phrases in the upper woodwinds create a kind of aural moiré while also

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé Soupir Placet futile Surgi de la croupe et du bond This short song-cycle, composed in 1913, shows Ravel – like Stravinsky at the same time – at the apogee of his modernist phase. It is no coincidence that it is on texts

by Mallarmé, the most modernist of French poets. The accompanying ensemble consists of two flutes (including piccolo), two clarinets (including bass clarinet), string quartet and piano – an expansion of the scoring of Schoenberg’s influential Pierrot Lunaire, and exactly the instrumentation of Stravinsky’s then brand new Three Japanese Lyrics. ‘Sigh’ begins and ends with sprays of string harmonics evoking the ‘white fountain’ of the poem; the ‘Futile supplication’ to a princess on a teacup includes elusive hints of Ravel’s favourite waltz time; and the final sonnet, obscure in its negativity, is set to what Roger Nichols has called ‘music of a sustained dissonance, edgy, sinister and thoroughly uncomfortable’. (AB)

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Soupir

Sigh

Mon âme vers ton front où rêve, ô calme soeur, Un automne jonché de taches de rousseur, Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angélique Monte, comme dans un jardin mélancolique, Fidèle, un blanc jet d’eau soupire vers l’Azur!

– Vers l’Azur attendri d’Octobre pâle et pur Qui mire aux grands bassins sa langueur infinie Et laisse, sur l’eau morte où la fauve agonie Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon, Se traîner le soleil jaune d’un long rayon.

My soul rises toward your brow where, calm sister, An autumn strewn with russet spots is dreaming, And toward the restless sky of your angelic eye, As in some melancholy garden A white fountain faithfully sighs toward the Azure!

– Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October That mirrors its infinite languor in the vast pools, And, on the stagnant water where the tawny agony Of leaves wanders in the wind and digs a cold furrow, Lets the yellow sun draw itself out in one long ray.

Placet futile

Futile supplication

Princesse! à jalouser le destin d’une Hébé Qui poind sur cette tasse au baiser de vos lèvres, J’use mes feux mais n’ai rang discret que d’abbé Et ne figurerai même nu sur le Sèvres.

Princess! In envying the fate of a Hebe Who appears on this cup at the kiss of your lips, I expend my ardour but have only the modest rank of abbé And shall not figure even naked on the Sèvres.

Comme je ne suis pas ton bichon embarbé Ni la pastille ni du rouge, ni jeux mièvres Et que sur moi je sais ton regard clos tombé Blonde dont les coiffeurs divins sont des orfèvres!

Since I am not your bearded lap-dog, Nor lozenge, nor rouge, nor affected games, And know you look on me with indifferent eyes, Blonde, whose divine coiffeurs are goldsmiths –

Nommez-nous... toi de qui tant de ris framboisés Se joignent en troupeau d’agneaux apprivoisés Chez tous broutant les voeux et bêlant aux délires,

Appoint me ... you whose many laughs like raspberries Are gathered among flocks of docile lambs Grazing through all vows and bleating at all frenzies,

Nommez-nous... pour qu’Amour ailé d’un éventail M’y peigne flûte aux doigts endormant ce bercail, Princesse, nommez-nous berger de vos sourires.

Appoint me ... so that Love winged with a fan May paint me there, fingering a flute and lulling this fold, Princess, appoint me shepherd of your smiles.

Surgi de la croupe et du bond

Risen from the crupper and leap

Surgi de la croupe et du bond D’une verrerie éphémère Sans fleurir la veillée amère Le col ignoré s’interrompt.

Risen from the crupper and leap Of an ephemeral ornament of glass, Without garlanding the bitter vigil, The neglected neck stops short.

Je crois bien que deux bouches n’ont Bu, ni son amant ni ma mère, Jamais à la même Chimère, Moi, sylphe de ce froid plafond!

I truly believe that two mouths never Drank, neither her lover nor my mother, From the same Chimera, I, sylph of this cold ceiling!

Le pur vase d’aucun breuvage Que l’inexhaustible veuvage Agonise mais ne consent,

The vase pure of any draught Save inexhaustible widowhood Though dying does not consent –

Naïf baiser des plus funèbres! À rien expirer annonçant Une rose dans les ténèbres.

Naive and most funereal kiss – To breathe forth any annunciation Of a rose in the shadows.

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Translation © Richard Stokes, reprinted by his kind permission from A French Song Companion, published by Oxford University Press.

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PROGRAMME NOTES

EDGARD VARÈSE (1883-1965) Octandre

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) Serenade in E flat, Op. 7

Assez lent – Très vif et nerveux – Grave – Animé et jubilatoire

Richard Strauss wrote his Serenade for wind instruments in 1881, as a precociously gifted 17-yearold Munich schoolboy. Its première, in the major musical centre of Dresden in November 1882, and a later performance by the celebrated Meiningen Orchestra helped to put Strauss on the musical map at the very beginning of his long career. The piece is scored for an expanded version of the classical Harmonie, or wind band, consisting of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, two pairs of horns, and contra-bassoon.

But, unlike classical serenades, it is in a single movement – so perhaps its title is meant literally, to suggest a depiction of outdoor serenading. However, it follows the traditional ‘tunes–development–tunes’ outline of sonata form with perfect correctness – at least until the exultant climax of the opening section is replaced in the recapitulation by a tender leave-taking.

(AB)

Edgard Varèse’s only piece of true chamber music, Octandre (literally ‘a flower with eight stamens’), was composed in New York in 1923. It is scored for flute (and piccolo), clarinet (and the shrill E flat clarinet), oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, and double bass. For much of the 7-minute piece, this ensemble is used to create sonorities of strident intensity; though by way of contrast there are also moments of angular but eloquent melody. Unusually for Varèse, the work falls into separate movements: the first is linked to the second by a long, uninterrupted silence; and a single double bass note leads from the second into the slow introduction of the third. The tempo and mood of the ‘very lively and nervous’ second movement are recalled, without direct quotation, in the middle section of the ‘animated and jubilatory’ finale. (AB)

TRISTAN BROOKES (born 1986) SERRA: Pessoa

INTERVAL 20 minutes An announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.

SASHA SIEM (born 1984) Queen Anne’s Lace Queen Anne’s Lace is the name given to a type of wild carrot, which produces intricate white flowers the texture of lace. Queen Anne’s Lace is also the title of a poem by William Carlos Williams in which he renders these flowers in slow, sensuous detail. I think of it as a love poem. Lace invites the viewer to perceive beyond surface detail to whatever lies beyond. I was interested in the musical implications of such an invitation and wanted to create a musical texture which would open for (but also close on) the listener as though revealing secrets hidden behind a perceived surface. (SS)

In November 2008 I visited a Richard Serra exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery. One sculpture, Fernando Pessoa, was presented in a room of its own, to one side of the main exhibition space. Fernando Pessoa is an imposing weatherproof steel wall over 9m long, 3m tall and 20cm thick. At first I was struck by the sheer size and weight of the object, and the brutal way in which it inhabited its space (a small room), but closer inspection revealed a spectrum of surface detail from the broad to the minute. Rhythmic patterns (caused by oxidization?) and flaking material cover every inch of the structure, which made its appearance more awesome when I stepped back again. (TB)

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Concerto in E flat (Dumbarton Oaks) Tempo giusto – Allegretto – Con moto Stravinsky conceived his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, written in 1937/38 and named after the home of the

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PROGRAMME NOTES

American couple who commissioned it, as ‘a little concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos’. Like most of Bach’s Brandenburgs, it is scored for a mixed group of wind and strings: the instruments are flute, clarinet, bassoon and two horns, three violins, three violas, two cellos and two double basses. There is even an allusion to the Third Brandenburg at the very beginning. But the characteristic propulsive rhythms and open contrapuntal textures of Bach’s music are translated into a musical language which is entirely Stravinskyan in the sharp tang of its harmonies and the nervous energy of its changing time-signatures. There are moments of relaxation, though: the luminous slow coda of the first movement, which returns to punctuate the following Allegretto; the nearly static, drily humorous main theme of this second movement; and the graceful, rather nostalgic episode which briefly interrupts the steady tread of the finale. (AB) Programme notes of new works by the Young Composers.

Notes on Lutosławski, Ravel, Varèse, Strauss and Stravinsky by Anthony Burton © 2010

Foyle Future Firsts Presents ... Friday Lunch Friday 28 May 2010 | 1pm Level 2 Central Bar at Royal Festival Hall FREE A free lunchtime performance, programmed and performed by members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Foyle Future Firsts orchestral apprenticeship programme featuring movements from piano quartets by Mahler, Mozart, Schumann and Brahms. www.lpo.org.uk/futurefirsts

The Foyle Future Firsts programme is generously funded by the Foyle Foundation with additional support from The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The Fenton Arts Trust, Musicians Benevolent Fund and The UK Friends of the Felix-Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Foundation. The Orchestra’s Young Composers Scheme is supported by Eranda Foundation, The Idlewild Trust and the Paul Morgan Charitable Trust.

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A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment: PHOTOGRAPHY is not allowed in the auditorium LATECOMERS will only be 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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