LPO-0066 Turnage CD - Orchestral works

Mark-Anthony turnage Mambo, Blues AND Tarantella Riffs AND Refrains | Texan Tenebrae On Opened Ground | Lullaby for Hans vladimir jurowski, marin alsop and MARKUS STENZ conductors Christian TETZLAFF violin michael collins clarinet LAWRENCE POWER viola LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE

© Philip Gatward / ArenaPAL

advocate. He continued his studies at the senior College with Knussen and Knussen’s own teacher John Lambert, and at the Tanglewood summer school in New England with Gunther Schuller. Through Tanglewood, he also came into contact with Hans Werner Henze, who kick-started Turnage’s international career by commissioning an opera for the 1988 Munich Biennale festival, an adaptation of Steven Berkoff’s play Greek.

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a composer widely admired for his distinctive blending of jazz and contemporary classical traditions, high energy and elegiac lyricism, hard and soft edges. Born in Essex, he began inventing music to enliven his childhood piano practice. On Saturdays at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music in London, he had the good fortune to be taught composition by Oliver Knussen, who has remained a significant mentor and

Turnage’s subsequent career has been defined largely by collaborations, both with improvising jazz performers and in a series of residencies, which have allowed him to develop pieces under the workshop conditions he prefers. These have included associations with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, leading to several high-profile premières under Simon Rattle; with English National Opera, culminating in 2000 in his second full-length opera, The Silver Tassie; with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer in Focus in the 2004/05 season, and its Composer in Residence from 2005 to 2010.

The viola concerto On Opened Ground was a milestone in Turnage’s career, his first work for a major American orchestra. Commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for the Russian violist Yuri Bashmet, it was written in 2000/01 and first performed in November 2002. The title of the work may in part be a pun on its inclusion of a chaconne, on a ‘ground bass’, that opens out into a coda. But it also pays homage to the Northern Irish writer Seamus Heaney, who called a collection of his poems Opened Ground. There are no references to specific poems, but in a general sense the piece perhaps suggests Heaney’s gift for lyricism against a troubled background. The solo viola is sometimes gruff and forceful, sometimes playfully virtuosic, but also frequently expressive in long singing lines – its relatively modest voice requiring considerable restraint in the use of Turnage’s usual large orchestra.

The work is in two movements, each in two sections with a coda. The first movement begins with a declamatory Cadenza, at first skeletally accompanied and eventually for the viola alone. This leads into a Scherzino, or ‘little scherzo’, with a main section of dancing rhythms and incisive orchestral interjections, a calmer trio section beginning with expressive viola phrases against a slow-moving melody,

and a shortened and varied version of the main section. In the coda, the viola leads a transition to a full-blooded orchestral passage based on the melodies of the trio section and an athletic figure borrowed from the Cadenza.

The viola re-enters with a calm, simple melody, while two solo violins quietly repeat the athletic figure, before the movement winds down to stasis and silence. The first part of the second movement is called ‘Interrupted Song’: the viola leads the song, beginning high in its compass over a hypnotically lapping background and gradually becoming more animated; the interruptions take the form of stabbing orchestral chords and wailing viola phrases. The first two interruptions are short, but the third is longer and more intense, and seems to stop the viola in its tracks, leaving the orchestra to take over the song. The second section is a Chaconne, on a repeating ground bass of two rising phrases, introduced by pizzicato double basses, reinforced by other bass instruments, and later varied amidst fluctuations of tempo. Over and around this figure, there are echoes of the song and, increasingly, of the dancing rhythms of the first movement. At the climax, raucous descending figures in the orchestra alternate with rough viola interjections. A slow coda, over long-held bass notes, revisits earlier ideas, including the

opening gesture of the whole work on three muted solo violins, as this movement, like the first, dies away to silence.

Texan Tenebrae was written in 2009, and first performed in January 2010 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski in the Auditorio de Tenerife, as part of the Canary Islands Festival – which had commissioned it jointly with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The piece is related to Turnage’s opera Anna Nicole, premièred at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in February 2011. A collaboration with the writer Richard Thomas, it is based on the life of the American model, actress and celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, who died in 2007 of an apparent drug overdose, following a protracted lawsuit over her second husband’s estate, a dispute over who had fathered her newly born daughter, and the death of her 20-year-old son. Texan Tenebrae is not an excerpt from the score of the opera, but an independent fantasy for large orchestra taking a scene from the opera as its starting point. The title refers to Anna Nicole’s home state and to the Latin word for darkness or death, the name given to a series of Holy Week services of penitence and lamentation.

At the start, sonorous chords with tolling

bells establish an atmosphere of mourning, and they are soon joined by a melody derived

by Turnage from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (‘Songs on the Death of Children’). A series of keening melodies follows, alternating at fluctuating tempi over changing backgrounds, before a broad sustained melody emerges on violins and trumpets. After a tumultuous climax, the initial chords return, heralding the reappearance of the Mahler theme in the depths of the orchestra and a stark ending.

Lullaby for Hans, first performed by the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Pascal Rophé in Rome in June 2006, was an 80th birthday present to the German-born, Italian-based composer Hans Werner Henze, a mentor and friend throughout Turnage’s career. The work is an expansion for string orchestra of a short piano piece. Two slow episodes of drifting harmonies and scraps of melody alternate with two faster passages marked by sharply accented chords; a sustained melodic line continues from the climax of the second faster section into the calm coda.

The clarinet concerto Riffs and Refrains was composed in 2002/03 in response to a commission from the Hallé Concerts Society,

and first performed by the Hallé under Mark Elder in Manchester in March 2005. The solo part was conceived for Michael Collins, whom Turnage has known since they were fellow students at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. He says that the part exploits Collins’s ‘virtuosity and versatility, displaying wide leaps and swiftly changing registers in the first movement and an increasingly passionate lyricism in the slower second’.

The title refers to two kinds of repetition that feature in the score, the repeated phrases of jazz ‘riffs’ and the recurring melodies of classical ‘refrains’.

endings’, for which the conductor is asked not to beat time through the silences. The second movement, ‘Arioso’, begins ‘Slow, expressive and singing’, with a long melodic line for the soloist, shadowed by other instruments in the orchestra (including Turnage’s favourite, the soprano saxophone). The central section begins ‘Lighter (with a gentle lilt)’, over an accompanying rocking figure, and arrives at a ‘Forceful’ tutti passage, with a broad melody amidst surging figuration. From here the tempo slows to a ‘Very still’ coda, with the strings sustaining long-held notes below the soloist’s increasingly fragmentary interjections.

The first movement, ‘Refrains’, begins with the tempo marking ‘Light and skittish’ and explosively fragmented textures. A contrasting faster episode is ‘Insistent and rhythmic’, with syncopated repetitions of a single note on marimba and other instruments, and it has a still faster central passage with rising phrases in 6/8 metre beneath a smooth clarinet melody. A slower interlude, ‘Expressive and sustained’, brings curling clarinet phrases over long orchestral lines; but the explosive character of the opening keeps threatening to break through. Eventually it does so, beginning a varied reprise of the opening panels of the movement. There is a teasing series of ‘false

The violin concerto Mambo, Blues and Tarantella was written in 2007 in response to a joint commission from the London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Michael Marks Charitable Trust), the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The solo part, physically as well as technically demanding, was designed for the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, whose playing Turnage greatly admires: ‘Even before I had a commission’, he has said in an interview, ‘I thought, if I’m going to write a violin concerto, then it’s going to be for him.’

Tetzlaff gave the world première performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra

under Vladimir Jurowski in September 2008. Again, the soloist is supported by a large orchestra, including a well-stocked percussion department. But for the sake of balance the orchestra is sparingly deployed, and it is frequently reduced to lower-register instruments only to leave the soloist in a clear acoustic space.

The title sums up the three movements of the concerto (though for a while Turnage contemplated reversing their order). The first movement was suggested by the mambo, a dance of Cuban origin in strongly syncopated rhythms. Its opening section maintains a constant speed, with successive markings of ‘Loud and declamatory’, ‘Punchy and explosive’ and ‘Obsessive and driven’. A more varied middle section begins with a relaxed ‘Bluesy’ episode but later works up a new head of steam. The restoration of the initial tempo soon brings the work’s first extended orchestral tutti, before the soloist resumes his hectic activity. The central movement is a ‘Blues’, in which the soloist spins out a long, lyrical line against a constantly changing orchestral backdrop, before emerging into a cadenza. The trombones, percussion and upper strings rest in the first part of this movement, but return after the cadenza for a closing

section anticipating and leading into the finale.

This was suggested by the tarantella, a lively dance of southern Italian origin said originally to have been danced as a cure for a spiderbite. It is mostly in the whirling compound rhythms associated with the dance, with each beat divided into triplets – though these are frequently overlaid or replaced by contradictory subdivisions, including groups of seven. There is a contrasting faster episode, with the beat divided into two, disrupted by forceful offbeat accents; and after a short reprise of the opening section, this faster pulse is restored for the thrilling coda.

Anthony Burton © 2012

VLADIMIR JUROWSKI conductor

MARKUS STENZ conductor

Moscow-born, and educated in Berlin and Dresden, Vladimir Jurowski became Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2007. He also holds the positions of Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Artistic Director of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra. From 2005–09 he also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra.

Markus Stenz is General Music Director of the City of Cologne and Principal Conductor of the city’s Gürzenich Orchestra. He is also Principal Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé. Previous positions include Artistic Director of the Montepulciano Festival (1989–95); Principal Conductor of the London Sinfonietta (1994–98); and Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (1998–2004).

Vladimir Jurowski is a regular guest with many of the world’s other leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Philadelphia, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony and Mahler Chamber orchestras; Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich; Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig; and Staatskapelle Dresden. On the operatic stage he has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Metropolitan Opera, New York; Opéra national de Paris; Teatro alla Scala, Milan; Bolshoi Theatre; and Dresden Semperoper.

Markus Stenz has appeared at many of the world’s major opera houses and international festivals including La Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels, English National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Edinburgh International Festival and Salzburg Festival.

Highlights of previous seasons have included the Cologne Opera’s visits to Shanghai and Beijing; performances in Cologne of the Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger, Parsifal, Wozzeck and Tosca; Jenůfa at Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Katya Kabanová at Chicago Lyric Opera; and concerts with the Chicago, Boston, Bavarian Radio and Vienna symphony orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

MARIN ALSOP conductor

LAWRENCE POWER viola

Marin Alsop has been Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2007, and Principal Conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra since 2012. She is also Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Alsop regularly conducts the world’s great orchestras including the Cleveland, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Philadelphia orchestras in the USA, and in Europe the Czech Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic orchestras.

She performs most seasons with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, and is Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre.

Lawrence Power is one of today’s foremost violists and in 2011 was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award. He is regularly invited to perform with the world’s greatest orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Melbourne Symphony and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras.

The recipient of numerous awards, Marin Alsop is the only conductor to have received a MacArthur Fellowship, the award given by the MacArthur Foundation for exceptional creative work. Alsop has also been awarded Honorary Membership (Hon RAM) of the Royal Academy of Music, London. Born in New York City, Marin Alsop attended Yale University and The Juilliard School. She won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein.

Recent engagements have included Berlioz’s Harold in Italy with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder; Rózsa’s Viola Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; and Penderecki’s Viola Concerto in a series of concerts with Camerata Salzburg conducted by the composer. He also appears regularly at the BBC Proms, and in the 2011/12 season became Artist in Residence with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.

He is a passionate advocate of contemporary music and has had many commissions written for him by such composers as MarkAnthony Turnage, Julian Anderson and James MacMillan.

Lawrence Power is International Professor of Viola at the Zurich Hochschule der Kunst, and founder and Artistic Director of the West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival. Lawrence Power appears courtesy of Hyperion Records.

MICHAEL COLLINS clarinet

CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF violin

One of the leading clarinettists of his generation, Michael Collins is a sought-after soloist with orchestras worldwide and enjoys close alliances with conductors including Charles Dutoit, Carlo Maria Giulini, Neeme Järvi, Tadaaki Otaka, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Leonard Slatkin.

Equally at home in both classical and romantic repertoire and 20th-century works, Hamburgborn violinist Christian Tetzlaff sets standards with his interpretations of the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berg, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Ligeti, as well as his performances of Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas.

In 2006 Collins received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year Award in recognition of the pivotal role he has played in expanding the repertoire of his instrument; commissioning works by today’s most highly regarded composers, he has given premières of works by John Adams, Elliott Carter, Brett Dean and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Also in great demand as a chamber musician, Michael Collins performs with artists such as the Belcea and Takács quartets, Martha Argerich, Stephen Hough, Lars Vogt, Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis. In recent seasons he has won increasing regard as a conductor and in September 2010 assumed the post of Principal Conductor of the City of London Sinfonia.

Michael Collins is an exclusive artist of Chandos Records and appears with their kind permission. His recordings for the label include concerto discs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Philharmonic, and recital discs with Piers Lane and Michael McHale.

He is a frequent soloist with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras; the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra: and the Orchestre de Paris. He is currently Artist in Residence at Carnegie Hall in New York; London’s Wigmore Hall; the Zurich Tonhalle; and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

Christian Tetzlaff’s many recordings include the concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Joachim, Lalo, Szymanowski, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and all of Sibelius’s works for violin and orchestra. He has also recorded chamber works by Bartók, Brahms, Schoenberg, Schumann and Sibelius with partners including Tanja Tetzlaff, Leif Ove Andsnes and Lars Vogt. His recordings have received numerous awards including Diapasons d’Or, the Edison Award, the Midem Classical Award, the ECHO Award and nominations for Grammy Awards.

London Philharmonic orchestra

May each year. In summer, the Orchestra moves to Sussex where it has been Resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera for over 40 years.

The Orchestra also performs at venues around the UK and has made numerous tours to America, Europe and Japan, and visited India, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Australia, Oman, South Africa and Abu Dhabi.

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 regularly ever since, and in 2005 established its own record label.

These recordings are taken mainly from live concerts given by conductors including LPO Principal Conductors from Beecham and Boult, through Haitink, Solti and Tennstedt, to Masur and Jurowski. lpo.org.uk

© Patrick Harrison

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is known as one of the world’s great orchestras with a reputation secured by its performances in the concert hall and opera house, its many award-winning recordings, its trail-blazing international tours and its pioneering education work. Distinguished conductors who have held positions with the Orchestra since its foundation in 1932 by Sir Thomas Beecham include Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Pritchard, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt, Franz Welser-Möst and Kurt Masur. Vladimir Jurowski was appointed the Orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor in March 2003 and became Principal Conductor in September 2007. The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been Resident Symphony Orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since 1992 and there it presents its main series of concerts between September and

Also available on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s label

‘The LPO speak Turnage’s language brilliantly.’

Geoff Brown, The Times, 8 February 2008

Scherzoid; Evening Songs; When I Woke; Yet Another Set To £9.99 | LPO-0007

Twice Through the Heart; The Torn Fields; Hidden Love Song £9.99 | LPO-0031 Marin Alsop conducts: James MacMillan The Confession of Isobel Gowdie Thomas Adès Chamber Symphony Jennifer Higdon Percussion Concerto ‘These live LPO recordings are the best possible advert for new classical music … Thanks to Alsop’s flair the MacMillan has unrivalled intensity, the Adès goes with a swing and Higdon’s flimsy concerto sounds like a joyride.’

Financial Times, 1 November 2008

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Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960)

23:55

On Opened Ground: concerto for viola and orchestra (première recording) Commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra

Markus Stenz conductor | Lawrence Power viola 01 10:07 02 13:48

Cadenza and Scherzino Interrupted Song and Chaconne

03 7:38 Texan Tenebrae (UK première performance/première recording) Commissioned by the Festival de Música de Canarias, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Marin Alsop conductor 04 5:41 Lullaby for Hans, for string orchestra (UK première performance/première recording) Commissioned by the Goethe-Institut of Rome, the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung of Munich

and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia of Rome on the occasion of Hans Werner Henze’s 80th birthday Vladimir Jurowski conductor 16:39 Riffs and Refrains: concerto for clarinet and orchestra (London première performance/première recording) Commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society

Marin Alsop conductor | Michael Collins clarinet 05 7:07 Refrains 06 9:32 Arioso 18:33 Mambo, Blues and Tarantella: concerto for violin and orchestra

(world première performance/première recording) ommissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with support from the Michael Marks C Charitable Trust, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski conductor | Christian Tetzlaff violin 07 6:39 Mambo 08 7:39 Blues 09 4:15 Tarantella

LPO – 0066