London Philharmonic Orchestra 1 May 2020 programme notes & texts

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI Principal Conductor Designate EDWARD GARDNER supported by Mrs Christina Lang Assael Principal Guest Conductor Designate KARINA CANELLAKIS Leader PIETER SCHOEMAN supported by Neil Westreich Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER CBE AM Chief Executive Designate DAVID BURKE

Programme notes & texts Friday 1 May 2020 | 7.30pm

Bach (arr. Respighi) 3 Chorales Bach (arr. Stokowski) Toccata and Fugue in D minor Busoni Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39

Programme notes

Speedread ‘The art of transcription has made it possible for the piano to take possession of the entire literature of music’, claimed Ferruccio Busoni in 1913. Though Busoni held that ‘Bach is the foundation of piano playing’, we will not hear any of Busoni’s famed Bach transcriptions this evening. Rather, through a programmatic sleight of hand, we encounter Bach’s music through larger orchestral canvases via Ottorino Respighi and Leopold Stokowski’s colourful rethinking of some of the German master’s most famous pages.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Busoni’s rarely performed Piano Concerto dominates proceedings. Variously called ‘barren in invention’ and ‘monstrously overwritten’, it was conceived on a scale like no other work in the concerto repertoire, as a vehicle for Busoni’s prodigious gifts as a pianist and conductor. Cast in five movements, the pianist has to unite a superlative technical armoury with uncommon interpretive virtuosity and dispatch it by harnessing reserves of stamina to valiantly take on a vast orchestra and in the final movement, an off-stage male chorus. In essence, it’s a unique choral symphony with a demanding prolonged piano obbligato.

3 Chorales, arr. Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) 1 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland 2 Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn 3 Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme

1685–1750

The prolific Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was particularly drawn to Johann Sebastian Bach.

His orchestration of three organ chorales for mixed woodwinds, brass and strings dates from 1930.

The first chorale, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, Saviour of the Gentiles), and the third, Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, the voice is calling to us), had been known as piano recital items as Busoni had also written transcriptions of them.

In Respighi’s imagination though, there are contrasts to be enjoyed.

The first chorale features the orchestra’s massed strings playing with the greatest restraint; Berlioz considered this ‘one of the most beautiful sounds in all music’.

The second chorale, Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn (My soul doth magnify the Lord), is an orchestration of barely a minute’s duration. The trumpet plays the melody, with the playing instruction ‘con voce tremolante e comica’ – with a tremulous and comic voice. Heard against the accompanying bassoon, the effect can be unsettling. In the third chorale, Respighi calls to mind the effect of an organ’s pedal stops with his use of double bassoon alongside the lower strings.

The horns take the melody, which is countered by the upper strings to sensuous effect.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Toccata and Fugue in D minor, arr. Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977)

1685–1750

Walt Disney was never the archetypal classical music promoter, but when the animated film Fantasia was released in 1940, he arguably became a hugely successful one. French composer Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice provided the film’s overall concept, but Stokowski was the film’s main protagonist; his famously magician-like conductor’s presence was embodied by Mickey Mouse. The film is remembered by many for Stokowski’s colourful orchestration of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which Stokowski himself insisted open the film due to its dramatic nature.

Although he found fame in America, Stokowski’s formative musical experiences were as an organist in London. Stokowski made the first of his seven recordings of this orchestration of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor in 1927 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, capturing the lush orchestral sound for which he was renowned. Purists often think the orchestration scandalous, as it takes significant liberties with tempi and dynamics, but there is no denying the music’s emotional impact. No wonder that this virtuosic orchestral showpiece remains a favourite choice of many conductors.

Ferruccio Busoni

Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39

1866–1924

1 2 3 4 5

Prologo e Introito: Allegro, dolce e solenne – Pezzo giocoso – Pezzo serioso – All’Italiana: Tarantella: Vivace; In un tempo – Cantico: Largamente (with male chorus)

The text and translation of the fifth movement are overleaf.

Anyone with the forenames Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto carries a certain weight of expectation before them. Busoni delivered on this, as the greatest piano virtuoso of his age, perhaps of all time. However, composition was his true vocation.

Several works perpetually languish on the repertoire’s edge, being fervently promoted by supporters of Busoni’s cause and intermittently performed. The Piano Concerto summates Busoni’s earliest compositional period and is suffused by a Romantic fervour. Written

for piano and a huge orchestra, it is in five movements (seven were planned); the third comprises four linked parts and the fifth includes a setting from Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger’s Aladdin for male chorus.

The Concerto was premiered by Busoni, the Berlin Philharmonic and renowned Wagnerian conductor Karl Muck in 1904. The public was startled by its ugliness; the press verdict was damning, calling it ‘barren in invention’ and ‘a scandalous outgrowth of modernism’.

Programme notes continued

Pianist and Busoni disciple Egon Petri, who performed the work’s UK premiere under the composer’s baton (Newcastle, 1909), wrote that Busoni intended to realise a ‘sound which would be capable of reproducing every dark and mystic emotion of the human heart’. Pianist Alfred Brendel has labelled it ‘monstrously over-written’, but composer Ronald Stevenson reminds us that Busoni called it his ‘Italian symphony’ and opines that, ‘It was not conceived as an extrovert work, but as a symphonic oeuvre with a large scale piano obbligato. Effusion is germane to the music.’

A soloist is required who risks being overlooked, yet possesses an almost superhuman technique, mixing bravura with intimately textured passagework, and the endurance (or, should that be the resilience) to straddle the Concerto’s architecture. The score’s cover depicts three buildings, Graeco-Roman, Egyptian and Babylonian styled architecture, separated to the left by a flower and a bird, then a volcano and trees to the right. Busoni said the juxtaposition of architecture and landscape, the rational and the intuitive, represented the Concerto’s structure.

The first movement opens with the Prologo. The foundation of much that follows, this is a hymn-like theme for strings, preceding a cadence combining a descending melody and punchy brass fanfares.

Via a crescendo, the theme is played by the full orchestra, as it subsides and grows to a further climax.

The Introito heralds the pianist’s entry: a variation upon the theme interspersed by the orchestra. The theme is varied by woodwinds and horns, elaborately ornamented by the soloist. The fanfare motif is restated, alternating with the soloist’s virtuosic passagework.

After a pause, a rhapsodic variation on the theme appears between soloist and woodwinds, with the strings introducing some uncertainty. Eventually, the soloist draws a trenchant response from the brass, ultimately the soloist replies calmly as the movement ends.

The second movement, Pezzo giocoso, begins with bustling keyboard runs countered by strings and woodwind leads to a raucous brass incursion. The soloist leads an elaboration of this, continuing with ironic humour until it subsides into a purposeful pizzicato string figuration. A new thoughtful theme circles the orchestra, before the soloist re-enters with

anticipation and a matter-of-fact woodwind and string response. Eventually the raucous idea returns, before the soloist audaciously restates the main theme above the strings and timpani. The pensive theme appears again, ominously assigned to the keyboard’s lower reaches in a coda for soloist and percussion.

The third movement, Pezzo serioso, initially presents a sombre string and woodwind theme. The strings subside and the soloist enters to usher in hushed thoughts from trumpets and woodwind. The soloist develops several new ideas and calm prevails in the strings before the mood changes again. The strings present an intensive rhythm, the basis for the soloist’s heroic theme which moves to the lower strings then woodwinds. The music surges forward as tensions increase, multifarious keyboard textures accompany the woodwinds in their elaboration of the heroic theme.

Yet the pianist presses on; aspects of the initial theme are heard excitedly throughout the orchestra.

Following a climax, the soloist displays eloquence in its recollection of the defiant theme on brass and woodwind, before the initial music returns on woodwinds and strings. The pianist presents a barcarolle theme that unfolds intensely before subsiding into the introduction’s return, the movement eventually ends ambivalently.

The fourth movement, All’Italiana, commences restlessly in the strings as the soloist launches a tarantella-rhythmed main theme. Building through animated exchanges between pianist and woodwind, a vigorous climax in the brass and percussion dominates. Though this is ended swiftly, the soloist and orchestra recall several of the Concerto’s earlier motifs. However, the tarantella rhythm is not finished yet. In a boisterous new episode, there ensues a hectic march and thence returns to the movement’s opening thoughts. The orchestra is pushed into harshly restating the main theme, before making way via pounding timpani, for a nonchalant woodwind theme. Only then, do the strings proceed to an animated climax.

Subsequently, the soloist’s lengthy cadenza culminates in a full orchestral fanfare, appended by three questioning pizzicato chords.

The final movement, Cantico, begins uncertainly with aspects of earlier themes played by woodwind and brass against strings and piano arabesques. After some

Busoni Piano Concerto text

reinforcement of these ideas over calming strings, the offstage male voices enter. They solemnly sing in rhythmic unison, a variant on the hymn-like theme that began the Concerto an hour earlier. At length, calm is maintained until the tempo quickens and tensions increase. The pianist acts as accompanist until the chorus reignites the third movement’s heroic theme, it subsides again when faced with orchestral opposition.

Everything steadily moves towards a climax that ends in a triumphal restatement of the first movement’s fanfare theme. Any signs of optimism are ended by recollections of the third movement. The chorus’s final entry allows both soloist and orchestra to confidently represent the first movement’s closing thoughts.

Programme notes © Evan Dickerson

5 Cantico: Largamente Die Felsensäulen fangen an tief und leise zu ertönen:

Deep and quiet, the pillars of rock begin to sound:

Hebt zu der ewigen Kraft eure Herzen; Fühlet euch Allah nah', schaut seine Tat! Wechseln im Erdenlicht Freuden und Schmerzen; Ruhig hier stehen die Pfeiler der Welt.

Tausend und Tausend und abermals tausende Jahre so ruhig wie jetzt in der Kraft, Blitzen gediegen mit Glanz und mit Festigkeit, Die Unverwüstlichkeit stellen sie dar.

Lift up your hearts to the power eternal, Feel Allah's presence, behold all his works!

Joy and pain interweave in the light of the world; The world's pillars stand peacefully here.

Thousands and thousands and once again thousands Of years – serene in their power as now – Flash by purely with glory and strength, They display the indestructible.

Herzen erglüheten, Herzen erkalteten, Spielend umwechselten Leben und Tod. Aber in ruhigen Harren sie dehnten sich Herrlich, kräftiglich, früh so wie spät.

Hebt zu der ewigen Kraft eure Herzen Fühlet euch Allah nah', schaut seine Tat! Vollends belebet ist jetzo die tote Welt.

Preisend die Göttlichkeit, schweigt das Gedicht!

Hearts glowed, hearts became colder.

Playfully interchanged life and death.

But in a peaceful awaiting they stretch out, Gorgeous, powerfully, early and late.

Lift up your hearts to the power eternal, Feel Allah’s presence, behold all his works!

Thus the dead world comes completely to life.

Praising divinity, the poem falls quiet!

Adam G. Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) From ‘Aladdin oder die Wunderlampe: Dramatisches Gedicht in zwei Spielen.’