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Principal Conductor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI Principal Guest Conductor YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN Leader PIETER SCHOEMAN Composer in Residence JULIAN ANDERSON Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER

AM†

MAHLER ANNIVERSARY

PROGRAMME £3

SOUTHBANK CENTRE’S ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Wednesday 27 October 2010 | 7.30pm

VLADIMIR JUROWSKI conductor SARAH CONNOLLY mezzo soprano

MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 5 in D (Reformation) MAHLER Kindertotenlieder

(33’)

(23’)

INTERVAL BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 in F

†

(33’)

supported by Macquarie Group

CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

CONTENTS 2 3 4 5 6 7 12 13 14 15 16

List of Players Orchestra History Leader Vladimir Jurowski Sarah Connolly Programme Notes Southbank Centre Supporters Recordings Administration Future Concerts

The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide.

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LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

FIRST VIOLINS Pieter Schoeman* Leader Vesselin Gellev Sub-Leader

CELLOS Kristina Blaumane Principal Chair supported by Simon Yates and Kevin Roon

Chair supported by

John and Angela Kessler Julia Rumley Katalin Varnagy Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner Tina Gruenberg Martin Hรถhmann Chair supported by Richard Karl Goeltz

Geoffrey Lynn Robert Pool Sarah Streatfeild Yang Zhang SECOND VIOLINS Clare Duckworth Principal Chair supported by Richard and Victoria Sharp

Jeongmin Kim Joseph Maher Kate Birchall Chair supported by David and Victoria Graham Fuller

Nancy Elan Fiona Higham Marie-Anne Mairesse Ashley Stevens Dean Williamson Sioni Williams Heather Badke Peter Graham VIOLAS Alexander Zemtsov* Principal Chair supported by The Tsukanov Family

Robert Duncan Katharine Leek Susanne Martens Benedetto Pollani Emmanuella Reiter-Bootiman Alistair Scahill Isabel Pereira Daniel Cornford Miranda Davis

Francis Bucknall Laura Donoghue Santiago Sabino Carvalho + Jonathan Ayling Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie and Zander Sharp

Gregory Walmsley Sue Sutherley Susanna Riddell Tom Roff David Bucknall DOUBLE BASSES Kevin Rundell* Principal Tim Gibbs Co-Principal Laurence Lovelle George Peniston Joe Melvin Tom Walley Helen Rowlands Louis Garson FLUTES Jaime Martin* Principal Jane Spiers Stewart McIlwham* PICCOLO Stewart McIlwham* Principal OBOES Ian Hardwick Principal Angela Tennick COR ANGLAIS Sue Bohling Principal Chair supported by Julian and Gill Simmonds

CLARINETS Nicholas Carpenter Principal Emily Meredith

2 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

BASS CLARINET Paul Richards Principal

* Holds a professorial appointment in London

BASSOONS Gareth Newman* Principal Stuart Russell Simon Estell

CONTRA BASSOONS Simon Estell Principal Claire Webster HORNS Abel Pereira Guest Principal Martin Hobbs Timothy Ball Gareth Mollison Marcus Bates TRUMPETS Nicholas Betts Principal Anne McAneney* Chair supported by Geoff and Meg Mann

TROMBONES Mark Templeton* Principal David Whitehouse BASS TROMBONE Lyndon Meredith Principal TIMPANI Simon Carrington* Principal PERCUSSION Andrew Barclay* Principal Chair supported by Andrew Davenport

HARP Rachel Masters* Principal CELESTE Catherine Edwards

Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco

ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR Nicholas Collon

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LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Patrick Harrison

Seventy-eight years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra, it is recognised today as one of the finest orchestras on the international stage. Following Beecham’s influential founding tenure the Orchestra’s Principal Conductorship has been passed from one illustrious musician to another, amongst them Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. This impressive tradition continued in September 2007 when Vladimir Jurowski became the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and, in a further exciting move, the Orchestra appointed Yannick Nézet-Séguin its new Principal Guest Conductor from September 2008. The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been performing at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since it opened in 1951, becoming Resident Orchestra in 1992. It plays there around 40 times each season with many of the world’s most sought after conductors and soloists. Concert highlights in 2010/11 include an exploration of Mahler’s symphonies and complete song cycles during the composer’s anniversary season; the premières of works by Matteo D’Amico, Magnus Lindberg and Brett Dean; a rare opportunity to hear Rossini’s opera Aureliano in Palmira in collaboration with long term partner Opera Rara; and works by the Orchestra’s new Composer in Residence, Julian Anderson. In addition to its London season and a series of concerts at Wigmore Hall, the Orchestra has flourishing

residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. It is unique in combining these concert activities with esteemed opera performances each summer at Glyndebourne Festival Opera where it has been the Resident Symphony Orchestra since 1964. The London Philharmonic Orchestra performs to enthusiastic audiences all round the world. In 1956 it became the first British orchestra to appear in Soviet Russia and in 1973 made the first ever visit to China by a Western orchestra. Touring continues to form a significant part of the Orchestra’s schedule and is supported by Aviva, the International Touring Partner of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Tours in 2010/11 include visits to Finland, Germany, South Korea, Spain, France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Having long been embraced by the recording, broadcasting and film industries, the London Philharmonic Orchestra broadcasts regularly on domestic and international television and radio. It also works with the Hollywood and UK film industries, recording soundtracks for blockbuster motion pictures including the Oscar-winning score for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and scores for Lawrence of Arabia, The Mission, Philadelphia and East is East. The London Philharmonic Orchestra made its first recordings on 10 October 1932, just three days after its first public performance. It has recorded and broadcast

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LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

PIETER SCHOEMAN

regularly ever since, and in 2005 established its own record label. The recordings on its own label are taken mainly from live concerts given with distinguished conductors over the years including the Orchestra’s Principal Conductors from Beecham and Boult, through Haitink, Solti and Tennstedt, to Masur and Jurowski. Recent additions to the catalogue have included acclaimed releases of Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 and Sea Pictures with Vernon Handley and Janet Baker; Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 conducted by Klaus Tennstedt; Brahms’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 2 conducted by Vladimir Jurowski; and Dvořák’s Requiem under the baton of Neeme Järvi. The Orchestra’s own-label CDs are also widely available to download. Visit www.lpo.org.uk/shop for the latest releases.

‘ … a simply tremendous performance of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony … Jurowski and his players plunged us into a winter of discontent so profoundly expectant that even the inveterate coughers were silenced.’ EDWARD SECKERSON, THE INDEPENDENT, 23 SEPTEMBER 2010

The Orchestra reaches thousands of Londoners through its rich programme of community and school-based activity in Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, which includes the offshoot ensembles Renga and The Band, its Foyle Future Firsts apprenticeship scheme for outstanding young instrumentalists, and regular family and schools concerts.

In 2002, Pieter Schoeman joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as Co-Leader. In 2008 he was appointed Leader. Born in South Africa, he made his solo debut with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra at the age of ten. He studied with Jack de Wet in South Africa, winning numerous competitions, including the 1984 World Youth Concerto Competition in America. In 1987 he was offered the Heifetz Chair of Music scholarship to study with Eduard Schmieder in Los Angeles and in 1991 his talent was spotted by Pinchas Zukerman who recommended that he move to New York to study with Sylvia Rosenberg. In 1994 he became her teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington. Pieter Schoeman has performed as a soloist and recitalist throughout the world in such famous halls as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Moscow’s Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. As a chamber musician he regularly performs at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. As a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he has performed Arvo Pärt’s Double Concerto with Boris Garlitsky and Benjamin Britten’s Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the Orchestra’s own record label to great critical acclaim. Earlier this season he performed the Brahms Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane.

In 1995 Pieter Schoeman became Co-Leader of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice. Since then he has performed frequently as Guest Leader with the symphony orchestras of Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon, To help maintain its high standards and diverse workload, Baltimore and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This season he has been invited to lead the Rotterdam the Orchestra is committed to the welfare of its Philharmonic on several occasions. musicians and in December 2007 received the Association of British Orchestras/Musicians Benevolent Pieter Schoeman has recorded numerous violin solos Fund Healthy Orchestra Bronze Charter Mark. with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos, Opera Rara, Naxos, X5, the BBC and for American film There are many ways to experience and stay in touch and television. He led the Orchestra in its soundtrack with the Orchestra’s activities: visit www.lpo.org.uk, recordings for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He teaches at subscribe to our podcast series, download our iPhone Trinity College of Music in London. application and join us on Facebook and Twitter.

4 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Patrick Harrison

LEADER

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VLADIMIR JUROWSKI

Karen Robinson

CONDUCTOR

Born in Moscow, the son of conductor Mikhail Jurowski, Vladimir Jurowski completed the first part of his musical studies at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990 he relocated with his family to Germany where he continued his studies in Dresden and Berlin, studying conducting with Rolf Reuter and vocal coaching with Semion Skigin. In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival, where he conducted Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night. The same year saw his brilliant debut at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in Nabucco. In 1996 he joined the ensemble of Komische Oper Berlin, becoming First Kapellmeister in 1997 and continuing to work at the Komische Oper on a permanent basis until 2001. Since 1997 Vladimir Jurowski has been a guest at some of the world’s leading musical institutions including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Opéra Bastille de Paris, Théâtre de la Monnaie Bruxelles, Maggio Musicale Festival Florence, Rossini Opera Festival Pesaro, Edinburgh Festival, Semperoper Dresden and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (where he served as Principal Guest Conductor between 2000 and 2003). In 1999 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York with Rigoletto. In January 2001 Vladimir Jurowski took up the position of Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and in 2003 was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor in September 2007. He also holds the title of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and from 2005 to 2009 served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra with whom he will continue to work in the years ahead.

Vladimir Jurowski is a regular guest with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Dresden Staatskapelle, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras as well as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Highlights of the 2010/11 season and beyond include his debuts with the Vienna Philharmonic, Cleveland, San Francisco Symphony and Mahler Chamber Orchestras, and return visits to the Chicago Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, St Petersburg Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras. His operatic engagements have included Jenůfa, The Queen of Spades and Hänsel und Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, Parsifal and Wozzeck at Welsh National Opera, War and Peace at the Opéra National de Paris, Eugene Onegin at La Scala Milan, as well as Die Zauberflöte, La Cenerentola, Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Don Giovanni, The Rake’s Progress and Peter Eötvös’ Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne Opera. Future engagements include new productions of Die Meistersinger and The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne, Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera, Russlan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi Theatre, and Iolanta at the Dresden Semperoper. Jurowski’s discography includes the first ever recording of Giya Kancheli’s cantata Exil for ECM (1994), L’Étoile du Nord by Meyerbeer for Naxos-Marco Polo (1996), and Werther for BMG (1999) as well as live recordings of works by Rachmaninov, Turnage, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Brahms and Shostakovich on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s own label, and Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery on Glyndebourne Opera’s own label. He also records for PentaTone with the Russian National Orchestra, with releases to date including Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3 and Stravinsky’s Divertimento from Le Baiser de la fée, Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 6, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 and Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet Incidental Music. Glyndebourne have released DVD recordings of his performances of La Cenerentola, Gianni Schicchi, Die Fledermaus and Rachmaninov’s The Miserly Knight, and other recent DVD releases include Hänsel und Gretel from the Metropolitan Opera New York, and his first concert as the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor featuring works by Wagner, Berg and Mahler (released by Medici Arts).

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SARAH CONNOLLY MEZZO SOPRANO

Opera, New York, the Paris Opera, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Glyndebourne Festival and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Born in County Durham, mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow. She was made CBE in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List. In opera, her recent engagements have included the role of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Scala Milan and La Monnaie, Brussels; the title role in Giulio Cesare and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Glyndebourne Festival; the title roles in Gluck’s Orfeo and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; and Nerone in L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona and at the Maggio Musicale in Florence. She has also sung the title role in Maria Stuarda and Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi for Opera North; Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier for Scottish Opera; and Sesto in Giulio Cesare at the Paris Opera. In the USA she has sung Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos and Annio in La clemenza di Tito at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; the title role in Ariodante and Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi for New York City Opera and Ino and Juno in Semele in San Francisco. She is a favourite at the English National Opera where her roles have included Octavian; the title roles in Handel's Agrippina, Xerxes and Ariodante as well as Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina; the title role in The Rape of Lucretia; Ottavia in L'Incoronazione di Poppea; Dido in Dido and Aeneas and The Trojans; Romeo; Susie in The Silver Tassie; and Sesto in La clemenza di Tito for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera. Future engagements include her debut at the Aix-enProvence Festival and returns to the Metropolitan

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Sarah Connolly has appeared in recital in London and New York and her many concert engagements include appearances at the Salzburg Festival, Tanglewood Festival, BBC Proms, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie and Amsterdam Concertgebouw with many of the world’s great orchestras. Her recent engagements have included performances of The Dream of Gerontius with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis; Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Harding; the St Matthew Passion and Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Herreweghe; and Mozart’s Requiem with Ivor Bolton in Salzburg. She is committed to promoting new music, her world première performances having included Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Twice through the heart with the Schoenberg Ensemble conducted by Oliver Knussen; Jonathan Harvey’s Songs of Li Po at the Aldeburgh Festival and, most recently, Sir John Tavener’s Tribute to Cavafy at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. She is a prolific recording artist, her many discs including Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Des Knaben Wunderhorn with L’Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and Herreweghe (winner of an Edison Award); Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for Naxos (nominated for a Grammy Award); Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Haydn’s Scena di Berenice with the Gabrieli Consort and McCreesh for Deutsche Grammophon; Handel’s Solomon for Harmonia Mundi; and Giulio Cesare on DVD for Opus Arte. Her recording of Handel arias with The Sixteen and Harry Christophers was described as ‘the definition of captivating’ and her two recital discs The Exquisite Hour and Songs of Love and Loss have both won universal critical acclaim. She also recorded the soundtrack Fragments of a Prayer by Sir John Tavener for the feature film Children of Men. Sarah Connolly studies with Gerald Martin Moore. Visit her website: sarah-connolly.com for more information.

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PROGRAMME NOTES

SPEEDREAD Each of the three works in tonight’s concert invites us to speculate on the nature and level of its composer’s personal involvement. Coming from a baptised Jew, Mendelssohn’s symphony explicitly focusing on the Protestant Reformation as a subject asks questions about his motives – is it a statement of faith, a homage

Felix MENDELSSOHN

to Bach, or a pièce d’occasion? Mahler’s heartrending ‘Songs on the Death of Children’ are inseparable in the listener’s mind from the early death of one of his own daughters, yet were composed well before that event. And Brahms’s Third Symphony makes prominent use of a personal motto theme, but offers no further clues as to what it may signify. In the end, we have to let our ears and emotions guide us.

SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN D, OP. 107 (REFORMATION) Andante – Allegro con fuoco | Allegro vivace | Andante | Andante con moto – Allegro maestoso

1809-1847 Despite its numbering and opus number, Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony was actually his second for full orchestra, predating both the ‘Scottish’ and ‘Italian’. He began it in December 1829, just after returning to Berlin from his first visit to the British Isles, his intention being to use it to mark the following year’s 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the assembly which had defined the core beliefs of Lutheran Protestantism. A number of factors conspired to prevent it from fulfilling this purpose, however, and the symphony was eventually premièred in Berlin in 1832. It may seem odd that a Jewish-born composer should have chosen the Protestant Reformation as a subject, but religious tolerance had been strong in the Mendelssohn family at least since his grandfather, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, had helped Prussian Jews obtain social equality; what is more, Felix and his siblings were baptised into the Christian faith in 1816, and grew up in an atmosphere of considerable spiritual enlightenment. But there may have been a musical impulse for the work too: since his mid-teens Mendelssohn had studied and enjoyed Bach, including some of the vocal works that at the time were considered impractical to perform, and in March 1829

he had conducted the first performance since Bach’s day of the St Matthew Passion; furthermore, he had himself composed a number of works based on Lutheran hymntunes (or chorales). In this context, a symphony with a finale based on one of the best-known of all chorales – Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott – must have seemed a natural enough progression. The first movement opens with a slow introduction in which slowly curling counterpoint and increasingly urgent fanfares lead to two ethereal renditions on high strings of a rising six-note figure known as the ‘Dresden Amen’. It has been suggested that this reference to the Catholic liturgy was meant to denote the old church beset by controversy, and certainly when the music plunges straightaway into the main body of the movement – now in the minor – it is with a sense of struggle and upheaval. At the end of the central development section the ‘Amen’ figure reappears, this time ushering in a recapitulation which is muted in tone, but which builds again to a stormy climax. The Scherzo is graceful and lighthearted, but though seemingly set apart from the general mood of the symphony – it is more bucolic than reverent – it retains

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PROGRAMME NOTES

thematic links with the falling woodwind motifs of the very opening. The solemn third movement is short, the feeling that it is at least half-conceived as an introduction to the finale reinforced by its recitative-like violin line. That finale opens with a warmly harmonised

statement of Ein’ feste Burg, the prelude to a sonata movement with themes of its own interlaced with occasional guest appearances from the chorale, the last of which brings the work nobly to a finish.

Gustav MAHLER

KINDERTOTENLIEDER (‘SONGS ON THE DEATH OF CHILDREN’)

1860-1911 The story left by Mahler’s wife Alma is, as so often, seductive. Recalling the summer of 1904, when Mahler composed the last two of his settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) on the deaths of his two children, she wrote: ‘I can understand setting such frightful words to music if one had no children, or had lost those one had... What I cannot understand is bewailing the deaths of children, who were in the best of health and spirits, hardly an hour after having kissed and fondled them. I exclaimed at the time: “For heaven’s sake, don’t tempt Providence!”’. The image of Mahler somehow writing into being the death of his own first daughter Maria, who died in 1907 at the age of five, needs, however, to be set against the fact that he composed the first three songs in 1901, before he had any children, or indeed had even met Alma. Perhaps she was forgetting that Mahler had not only ‘discovered’ Rückert as a fertile source for several other song-texts that year, but that he was already familiar with infant mortality, having endured the deaths of no fewer than six of his own siblings before they had reached the age of three, and been even harder hit by the death of his brother Ernst at the age of thirteen in 1875. Despite the three-year hiatus in composition, Kindertotenlieder makes a coherent cycle, and was premièred as such under the composer’s baton in

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SARAH CONNOLLY mezzo soprano Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n | Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen | Wenn dein Mütterlein | Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen! | In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus Vienna in January 1905. It has no narrative, yet draws a line from numb grief in the first song, through reminiscence in the central three, to stormy violence followed by celestial peace in the last. ‘Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n’ opens in the bleakness of loss, as winding lines on oboe and horn fruitlessly attempt to comfort a bereaved one unable to take joy in the sunrise. When the strings eventually attempt the task, they serve only to intensify the feeling of despair. ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen’ is more restless, with shifting key changes and anguished ‘leanings’ in the melodic lines groping for meaning in a memory of the child’s eyes. ‘Wenn dein Mütterlein’, a less complex portrayal of remembrance, is a funeral march in miniature, though with overtones of Bach – another composer who knew well how to write of death – in its contrapuntal texture and instrumental colourings. The fourth song, ‘Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen’, brings a change of mood as the illusion that the children have merely gone out or walked on ahead conjures from Mahler some typically sweet ‘outdoor’ music; that we know what has really happened to them prevents the atmosphere from warming too much. Finally, ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus’ conjures a tempest to mock the parent’s care. When eventually it blows out, a glowing apotheosis has the singer contemplating the children in their final resting-place, gently rocking and safe from all storms.

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PROGRAMME NOTES

1 Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n Als sei kein Unglück die Nacht gescheh’n! Das Unglück geschah nur mir allein! Die Sonne, sie scheinet allgemein! Du musst nicht die Nacht in dir verschränken, Musst sie ins ew’ge Licht versenken! Ein Lämplein verlosch in meinem Zelt! Heil sei dem Freudenlicht der Welt!

1 Now the sun will rise as bright As if no misfortune happened in the night! The misfortune happened to me alone! The sun shines for everyone! You must not enfold the night within you, You must drown it in eternal light! A little lamp went out in my tent! Hail to the light that gladdens the world!

2 Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen Ihr sprühtet mir in manchem Augenblicke, O Augen! O Augen! Gleichsam, um voll in einem Blicke Zu drängen eure ganze Macht zusammen. Doch ahnt’ ich nicht, weil Nebel mich umschwammen, Gewoben vom verblendenden Geschicke, Dass sich der Strahl bereits zur Heimkehr schicke, Dorthin, von wannen alle Strahlen stammen. Ihr wolltet mir eurem Leuchten sagen: Wir möchten nah dir bleiben gerne! Doch ist uns das vom Schicksal abgeschlagen. Sieh’ uns nur an, denn bald sind wir dir ferne! Was dir nur Augen sind in diesen Tagen, In künft’gen Nächten sind es dir nur Sterne.

2 Now I can see why such dark flames You flashed at me many a time. O eyes! O eyes! As though in one glance To concentrate all your strength. Yet I did not suspect, for mists woven by blinding fate enshrouded me, That the beam was already turning for home, Thither, whence all beams stem. You wanted to tell me with your light: We should love to stay close to you, But that is denied us by fate. Look at us, for soon we shall be far from you! What are just eyes to you at present In nights to come will be for you but stars.

3 Wenn dein Mütterlein tritt zur Tür herein, Und den Kopf ich drehe, ihr entgegen sehe, Fällt auf ihr Gesicht erst der Blick mir nicht, Sondern auf die Stelle, näher nach der Schwelle, Dort, wo würde dein lieb’ Gesichtchen sein, Wenn du freudenhelle trätest mit herein, Wie sonst, mein Töchterlein. Wenn dein Mütterlein tritt zu Tür herein Mit der Kerze Schimmer, ist es mir, als immer Kämst du mit herein, huschtest hinterdrein, Als wie sonst ins Zimmer! O du, des Vaters Zelle, ach, zu schnelle, Zu schnell erloschner Freudenschein!

3 When your mummy comes in at the door, And I turn my head to look towards her, My gaze falls first not upon her face But on the spot nearer the doorstep, There, where your dear little face would be If you, bright and happy, came in with her As you used to do, my little daughter. When your mummy comes in at the door With the candlelight, it seems to me as ever You come with her, darting behind As you used, into the room. O you, part of your father, alas, too quickly, Too quickly extinguished light of joy!

4 Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen! Bald werden sie wieder nach Hause gelangen! Der Tag ist schön! O sei nicht bang! Sie machen nur einen weiten Gang!

4 I often think they have only gone out! Soon they will be home again! It is a beautiful day! O don’t be anxious! They are only taking a long walk!

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Jawohl, sie sind nur ausgegangen Und werden jetzt nach Hause gelangen! O sei nicht bang, der Tag ist schön! Sie machen nur den Gang zu jenen Höh’n!

To be sure, they have only gone out And will now be coming home! O don’t be anxious, it’s a beautiful day! They are only walking to yonder heights!

Sie sind uns nur vorausgegangen Und werden nicht wieder nach Hause verlangen! Wir holen sie ein auf jenen Höh’n! Im Sonnenschein! Der Tag ist schön auf jenen Höh’n!

They have just gone ahead of us And will not come home again! We shall catch up with them on those heights! In the sunshine! It’s a beautiful day on those heights!

5 In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus Nie hätt’ich gesendet die Kinder hinaus! Man hat sie getragen hinaus, Ich durfte nichts dazu sagen! In diesem Wetter, in diesem Saus, Nie hätt’ich gelassen die Kinder hinaus. Ich fürchtete, sie erkranken; Da sind nun eitle Gedanken. In diesem Wetter, in diesem Graus, Nie hätt’ich gelassen die Kinder hinaus! Ich sorgte, sie stürben morgen; Da ist nun nicht zu besorgen. In diesem Wetter, in diesem Graus, Nie hätt’ich gesendet die Kinder hinaus! Man hat sie hinaus getragen, Ich durfte nichts dazu sagen! In diesem Wetter, in diesem Saus, In diesem Braus, Sie ruh’n als wie in der Mutter Haus. Von keinem Sturm erschrecket, Von Gottes Hand bedecket, Sir ruh’n wie in der Mutter Haus.

5 In this weather, in this bluster, I’d never have sent the children out! They were dragged out, I was allowed no say in it! In this weather, in this storm, I’d never have let the children out! I’d have feared it would make them ill; Those are now idle thoughts. In this weather, in this awfulness, I’d never have let the children out! I was afraid they would die tomorrow; There is nothing to be done about that now. In this weather, in this awfulness, I’d never have sent the children out! They were dragged out, I was allowed no say in it! In this weather, in this storm, In this bluster, They are resting as if at home with mother. Frightened by no storm, Sheltered by God’s hand, They are resting as at home with mother.

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

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Johannes BRAHMS

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN F, OP. 90 Allegro con brio | Andante | Poco Allegretto | Allegro

1833-1897 When Brahms’s famous and, for his contemporary admirers, frustrating reluctance to embark on a symphonic canon finally ended with the arrival of his First Symphony in 1876, it opened the way for a succession of large-scale orchestral works. The First Symphony had been about fifteen years in the making, but with it behind him Brahms composed his Second within a year, and then followed it with the Violin Concerto in 1878 and the Second Piano Concerto in 1881. The Third Symphony appeared in December 1883, having been composed the preceding summer, and was an immediate critical and public success. By this time in his life, Brahms had taken to spending the summer months out of Vienna, and in 1883 his chosen getaway was the south-west German spa town of Wiesbaden, with its fine view of the Rhine valley. The similarity of the opening theme of his Third Symphony to that of Schumann’s Third, the ‘Rhenish’, has often been remarked, and it may be that the great river awoke memories for Brahms of times spent with his early mentor in Düsseldorf, another Rhineland town, thirty years before. The fact that the first movement is permeated by the three-note sequence F-A-F, identified by one of Brahms’s early biographers as a personal cipher for the words ‘Frei aber froh’ (‘free but happy’), suggests a further level of reminiscence; in 1853 Brahms had contributed a movement to a violin sonata jointly composed with Schumann and Albert Dietrich as a gift for the violinist Joseph Joachim, making use of Joachim’s note-cipher of F-A-E – ‘Frei aber einsam’ (‘free but lonely’). Musical mottos such as these do not express anything in themselves, of course, but they do alert us to a heightened level of personal involvement on the composer’s part. The mood of the Third Symphony is not as easy to pin down as that of the ‘tragic’ First or the ‘pastoral’ Second, but its apparent references to happy former times, presented without

mawkish nostalgia or sense of regret, perhaps indicate that at the age of fifty Brahms was looking back on his life and, some storms notwithstanding, finding himself robustly content. The F-A-F motto is presented right at the beginning of the piece, in the rising top line of its first three chords, and then forms the bass to the proudly plunging first theme that immediately follows. Those chords have alternated major and minor (by changing the A of the second chord to an A flat), and this agile tonal ambivalence continues to be a feature of the movement, whose demeanour has been aptly described by Malcolm Macdonald as one of ‘irascible exhilaration’. A new theme in A major brings momentary calm, but the mood is soon whipped into a passion again, and when this second theme reappears in the central development section, it is in a whirling, almost macabre minor-key transformation. The main themes are then recapitulated as normal, after which a further portentous restatement of the motto and first theme initiates a toughly worked-out coda. The movement ends, however, in peace. Clara Schumann wrote of the Andante that it brought to mind ‘worshippers at a woodland shrine’, but if the opening hymn-like melody carries an immediate suggestion of pastoral music-making, the emotional shadows cast by the repeated notes of a troubled second theme ensure that a deeper philosophical landscape has opened up by the time the movement reaches its end. For the third movement Brahms provides an eloquent, medium-paced intermezzo instead of the customary scherzo. He had done the same in the First Symphony, but this time the music is more haunting, led off as it is by a yearningly plaintive cello melody, and although a central section injects what seems like some rather forced humour, it soon

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PROGRAMME NOTES

SOUTHBANK CENTRE

subsides to a reprise of this first theme melancholically rescored for horn and subsequently oboe.

WELCOME TO SOUTHBANK CENTRE

The finale opens in the minor with a stealthy running theme, but this is soon interrupted by a solemn transformation of the repeated-note material from the Andante, followed by a sudden, openly belligerent response from the full orchestra. The movement proceeds to juggle these components in a mood of intense excitability that not even the vain attempts of a smoother second theme can calm, but this is not how the symphony will end; eventually a muted horn blast ushers in a slowed-down viola version of the running theme, and from here the music winds down, switches to the major, and closes in a gentle reminiscence of the symphony’s first theme, with the F-A-F motto in attendance. Programme notes © Lindsay Kemp

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FREE Pre-Concert Event | Royal Festival Hall 1 December 2010 | 6 pm Vladimir Jurowski conductor FOYLE FUTURE FIRSTS orchestral apprenticeship programme Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (with Njabulo Madlala baritone) Kancheli Exil (with Allison Bell soprano)

The Foyle Future Firsts programme is generously funded by the Foyle Foundation with additional support from The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The Eranda Foundation, The Fenton Arts Trust and the Musicians Benevolent Fund.

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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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We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following Thomas Beecham Group Patrons, Principal Benefactors and Benefactors: Thomas Beecham Group Mr & Mrs Richard & Victoria Sharp Julian & Gill Simmonds The Tsukanov Family Simon Yates & Kevin Roon

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RECORDINGS ON THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA’S OWN RECORD LABEL

LPO-0012 Klaus Tennstedt conducts Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with Thomas Hampson and the Symphony No. 1 ‘... a stirring account, with his tight control causing Mahler’s climactic outbursts – both joyous and nostalgic – to hit home potently ... The LPO’s lead bassist tackling Mahler’s minor-key overhaul of ‘Frère Jacques’ is fittingly melancholic, while the finale is packed with energy and bracing inevitability.’ CLASSIC FM

LPO-0044 Klaus Tennstedt conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘This live version of the Resurrection is frequently startling – extremely expansive but exciting, dramatic and highly charismatic …The playing and singing are excellent, and the recording, made by the Music Performance Research Centre, is near-faultless.’ GRAHAM RICKSON, THE ARTS DESK, 22 MARCH 2010

LPO-0033 Jaap Van Zweden conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 ‘He unfolds the drama of the first movement with a sure grasp of the need for subtle variations of tempo … the finale is a joyous, life-affirming rondo that lifts the spirits.’ MICHAEL KENNEDY, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 10 AUGUST 2008

LPO-0043 Vladimir Jurowski conducts Brahms’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 2 ‘This pair of budget-priced CDs on the LPO’s own label demonstrate how, in the right hands, the first two symphonies can thrill and delight … exquisite wind playing …genuinely exciting …’ GRAHAM RICKSON, THE ARTS DESK, 22 FEBRUARY 2010

The recordings may be downloaded in high quality MP3 format from www.lpo.org.uk/shop. CDs may also be purchased from all good retail outlets or through the London Philharmonic Orchestra: telephone 020 7840 4242 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm) or visit the website www.lpo.org.uk

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