London Philharmonic Orchestra 23 April 2016 Shakespeare Gala Concert programme

A festival of concerts, talks and exploratory events celebrating the musical legacy of the world’s greatest playwright

Concert programme 2015/16 London Season lpo.org.uk

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation Principal Guest Conductor ANDRÉS OROZCO-ESTRADA Leader pieter schoeman supported by Neil Westreich Composer in Residence magnus lindberg Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER AM

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Saturday 23 April 2016 | 7.30pm

Anniversary Gala Concert Vladimir Jurowski conductor Simon Callow director Chahine Yavroyan lighting designer Anna Chancellor actor Dominic West actor Kate Royal soprano Allison Bell soprano Gabriela Iştoc soprano Dame Felicity Palmer mezzo soprano Rachael Lloyd mezzo soprano Iestyn Davies countertenor Toby Spence tenor Ronald Samm tenor Alasdair Elliott tenor Simon Keenlyside baritone Andrew Shore baritone Lukas Jakobski bass London Philharmonic Orchestra The Glyndebourne Chorus Trinity Boys Choir

There will be a 20-minute interval. The concert will end around 10.15pm.

Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey OBE and members of the Shakespeare Syndicate (see page 2).

CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Contents 2 Welcome

Shakespeare Syndicate 3 Shakespeare400 4 About the Orchestra 5 Leader 6 On stage tonight 7 Vladimir Jurowski

Simon Callow 8–12 Tonight's soloists 13 The Glyndebourne Chorus

Trinity Boys Choir 14 Programme: Part 1 17 Programme: Part 2 20 Next concerts 21 LPO 2016/17 season 22 Sound Futures donors 23 Supporters 24 LPO administration

Welcome

Welcome to Southbank Centre We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you have any queries please ask any member of staff for assistance.

Thank you

Shakespeare Syndicate The London Philharmonic Orchestra is grateful for the generosity of the following individuals in supporting our 2016 Shakespeare Festival and the production of this concert as members of the Shakespeare Syndicate:

Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, YO! Sushi, wagamama, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Caffè Vergnano 1882, Skylon, Feng Sushi and Topolski, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall.

Garf & Gill Collins Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Victoria Robey OBE Virginia Slaymaker Mr Brian Smith Michael and Ruth West

If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, phone 020 7960 4250, or email customer@southbankcentre.co.uk

Shakespeare Appeal

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery are closed for essential refurbishment until 2018. During this period, our resident orchestras are performing in venues including St John's Smith Square. Find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk/sjss 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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In the 400th year since the death of our country’s greatest playwright, the London Philharmonic Orchestra invites audiences to join a community of 400 donors who will help bring our Shakespeare Festival to life, celebrating the legacy of Shakespeare in music.

The generosity of those who have supported our Shakespeare Appeal to date has helped us bring to life in South London schools and communities the music inspired by Shakespeare. February saw GCSE students performing their own Tempest-inspired compositions here on stage at Royal Festival Hall. A few weeks ago we worked with over 40 young people on a half-term course exploring ensemble skills in a piece of music inspired by both Shakespeare and Sibelius. Although tonight is the centrepiece of the Shakespeare season, there is still more educational activity to come. In June we will dedicate an entire musical family day to Shakespeare at Royal Festival Hall in partnership with Globe Education. Families of four can attend our concert for just £30 and we need your help to keep ticket prices at this level.

Please play your part today by giving online at lpo.org.uk/supportshakespeare or by phoning 020 7840 4225 to become one of our Shakespeare400.

lpo.org.uk/shakespeare

Concerts at Royal Festival Hall

In collaboration with some of London’s leading cultural, creative and educational institutions, the London Philharmonic Orchestra joins Shakespeare400 with a celebration of the Bard’s love of music, and his influence on it. Join the LPO at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall this year for a celebration of creativity and collaboration, and dive into a musical world born of the words of the legendary William Shakespeare.

Wednesday 3 February 2016 | 7.30pm Dvořák | Othello Wednesday 10 February 2016 | 7.30pm Sibelius | The Tempest

Friday 12 February 2016 | 7.30pm | JTI Friday Series Nicolai | The Merry Wives of Windsor Friday 26 February 2016 | 7.30pm | JTI Friday Series R Strauss | Macbeth Mendelssohn | A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Pre-concert talks

For four and a half centuries, the most admired playwright and poet in history has inspired music both intimate and grand, devastating and uplifting.

Shakespeare’s body of plays and poems has exercised more influence over composers and musicians than anything else in literature bar the Bible, and continues to inspire across the generations of today.

Special performances

Welcome to our Shakespeare400 series, part of a UKwide festival of concerts, talks and exploratory events celebrating the musical legacy of the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare.

Friday 15 April 2016 | 7.30pm | JTI Friday Series Prokofiev | Romeo and Juliet Saturday 23 April 2016 | 7.30pm Anniversary Gala Concert featuring very special guests Sunday 5 June 2016 | 12 noon FUNharmonics Family Concert | Bottom’s Dream Wednesday 3 February 2016 | 6.00pm Adapting Othello Wednesday 10 February 2016 | 6.00pm Late works of Shakespeare and others Friday 12 February 2016 | 6.00pm Shakespeare’s Windsor Friday 26 February 2016 | 6.00pm The Macbeths Friday 15 April 2016 | 6.00pm Think you know Romeo & Juliet?

Wednesday 27 January 2016 | 6.00pm Hamlet in Russia: Shostakovich’s Hamlet Wednesday 10 February 2016 | 5.00pm New Horizons: Inspired by Shakespeare Saturday 5 March 2016 | 6.00pm Foyle Future Firsts: Ophelia Dances Saturday 9 April 2016 | 6.00pm LPO Soundworks & Quicksilver: Inspired by Shakespeare Saturday 30 April 2016 | post-concert RCM Big Band: Such Sweet Thunder

London Philharmonic Orchestra

One of those unforgettable evenings where everything and everyone performed beautifully [with] an extraordinary performance by the London Philharmonic ... The ovation should have been standing.

Andrew Collins, The News, March 2015 Recognised today as one of the finest orchestras on the international stage, the London Philharmonic Orchestra balances a long and distinguished history with a reputation as one of the UK’s most forwardlooking ensembles. As well as its performances in the concert hall, the Orchestra also records film and video game soundtracks, releases CDs on its own record label, and reaches thousands of people every year through activities for families, schools and community groups.

The Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932. It has since been headed by many of the world’s greatest conductors including Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur.

Vladimir Jurowski is currently the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, appointed in 2007.

Andrés Orozco-Estrada took up the position of Principal Guest Conductor in September 2015. Magnus Lindberg is the Orchestra’s current Composer in Residence.

The Orchestra is resident at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, where it gives over 30 concerts each season. Throughout 2014/15 the Orchestra gave a series of concerts entitled Rachmaninoff: Inside Out, a festival exploring the composer’s major

4 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

orchestral masterpieces. 2015/16 is a strong season for singers, with performances by Toby Spence and Anne Sofie von Otter amongst others; Sibelius enjoys 150th anniversary celebrations; distinguished visiting conductors include Stanisław Skrowaczewski, JukkaPekka Saraste and Vasily Petrenko, with Robin Ticciati returning after his debut in 2015; and in 2016 the LPO joins many of London’s other leading cultural institutions in Shakespeare400, celebrating the Bard’s legacy 400 years since his death. The Orchestra continues its commitment to new music with premieres of commissions including Magnus Lindberg’s Second Violin Concerto and Alexander Raskatov’s Green Mass.

Outside London, the Orchestra has flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. Each summer the Orchestra takes up its annual residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in the Sussex countryside, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. 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 remains a large part of

Vesselin Gellev leader

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded the soundtracks to numerous blockbuster films, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lawrence of Arabia, East is East, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Thor: The Dark World. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label.

There are now over 90 releases available on CD and to download. Recent additions include Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3 and 10 Songs under Vladimir Jurowski, and a second volume of works by the Orchestra's former Composer in Residence, Julian Anderson.

In summer 2012 the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed as part of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames, and was also chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2013 it was the winner of the RPS Music Award for Ensemble.

© Benjamin Ealovega

the Orchestra’s life: highlights of the 2015/16 season include visits to Mexico City as part of the UK Mexico Year of Culture, Spain, Germany, the Canary Islands, Belgium, a return to the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Orchestra’s premiere at La Scala, Milan.

Bulgarian violinist Vesselin Gellev has been a featured soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra and Juilliard Orchestra, among others.

He won First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York as a member of the Antares Quartet, and has recorded several albums and toured worldwide as Concertmaster of Kristjan Järvi’s Grammynominated Absolute Ensemble.

Vesselin has performed as Guest Leader with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Vesselin studied at The Juilliard School, and joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as Sub-Leader in 2007.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians through an energetic programme of activities for young people.

Highlights include the BrightSparks schools’ concerts and FUNharmonics family concerts; the Young Composers Programme; and the Foyle Future Firsts orchestral training programme for outstanding young players. Its work at the forefront of digital engagement and social media has enabled the Orchestra to reach even more people worldwide: all its recordings are available to download from iTunes and, as well as a YouTube channel and regular podcast series, the Orchestra has a lively presence across social media. lpo.org.uk facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra twitter.com/LPOrchestra youtube.com/londonphilharmonic7 instagram.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra

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On stage tonight

First Violins Vesselin Gellev Leader Ilyoung Chae Chair supported by an anonymous donor

Ji-Hyun Lee Chair supported by Eric Tomsett

Katalin Varnagy Chair supported by Sonja Drexler

Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner Martin Höhmann Chair supported by The Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust

Geoffrey Lynn Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Robert Pool Sarah Streatfeild Yang Zhang Tina Gruenberg Rebecca Shorrock Georgina Leo Second Violins Andrew Storey Principal Lorenzo Gentili-Tedeschi Fiona Higham Nynke Hijlkema Joseph Maher Marie-Anne Mairesse Ashley Stevens Helena Nicholls Alison Strange Elizabeth Baldey John Dickinson Zhanna Proskurova Violas Benjamin Roskams Guest Principal Cyrille Mercier Co-Principal Robert Duncan

Gregory Aronovich Katharine Leek Susanne Martens Benedetto Pollani Emmanuella Reiter Laura Vallejo Naomi Holt Cellos Kristina Blaumane Principal Chair supported by Bianca & Stuart Roden

Pei-Jee Ng Co-Principal Francis Bucknall Laura Donoghue Santiago Carvalho† David Lale Gregory Walmsley Elisabeth Wiklander Chair supported by The Viney Family

Double Basses Kevin Rundell* Principal George Peniston Laurence Lovelle Lowri Morgan Kenneth Knussen Helen Rowlands Charlotte Kerbegian Flutes Sue Thomas* Principal Chair supported by Victoria Robey OBE

Jane Spiers Stewart McIlwham* Piccolos Stewart McIlwham* Principal Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra

Jane Spiers

Oboes Ian Hardwick* Principal Jennifer Brittlebank Sue Böhling* Cor Anglais Sue Böhling* Principal Chair supported by Dr Barry Grimaldi

Cornets Paul Beniston* David Hilton Trombones Mark Templeton* Principal Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

David Whitehouse

Clarinets Robert Hill* Principal Thomas Watmough Sub-Principal Paul Richards

Bass Trombone Lyndon Meredith Principal

Bass Clarinet Paul Richards Principal

Timpani Simon Carrington* Principal

Bassoons Gareth Newman Principal Emma Harding Gareth Humphreys Claire Webster

Percussion Andrew Barclay* Principal

Contrabassoon Claire Webster

Keith Millar

Horns David Pyatt* Principal

Harps Rachel Masters* Principal Lucy Haslar

Chair supported by Simon Robey

John Ryan* Principal Chair supported by Laurence Watt

Martin Hobbs Mark Vines Co-Principal Gareth Mollison Trumpets Paul Beniston* Principal Anne McAneney* Chair supported by Geoff & Meg Mann

Nicholas Betts Co-Principal

Tuba Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal

Chair supported by Andrew Davenport

Henry Baldwin Co-Principal Chair supported by Jon Claydon

Celeste/Harpsichord Catherine Edwards Organ James Sherlock Surtitles Paula Kennedy * Holds a professorial appointment in London † Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco

The London Philharmonic Orchestra also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert: David & Victoria Graham Fuller • Neil Westreich

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© Drew Kelley

Vladimir Jurowski

Simon Callow

Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor

director

One of today’s most sought-after conductors, acclaimed worldwide for his incisive musicianship and adventurous artistic commitment, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow and studied at the Music Academies of Dresden and Berlin.

In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night, and the same year saw his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with Nabucco.

Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, becoming Principal Conductor in 2007. He also holds the titles of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Artistic Director of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. He has previously held the positions of First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997–2001), Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2000–03), Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (2005–09), and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001–13).

He is a regular guest with many leading orchestras in Europe and North America, including the Berlin and New York Philharmonic orchestras; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; The Philadelphia Orchestra; The Cleveland Orchestra; the Boston, San Francisco and Chicago symphony orchestras; the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester.

Simon Callow is an actor, author and director. He studied at Queen’s University Belfast, and then trained as an actor at the Drama Centre in London. He joined the National Theatre in 1979, where he created the role of Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus.

His many one-man shows include The Mystery of Charles Dickens, Being Shakespeare, A Christmas Carol, Inside Wagner’s Head, Juvenalia and, most recently, The Man Jesus. He has appeared in many films including A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and Phantom of the Opera, and is currently playing The Duke of Sandringham in the television series Outlander. He directed Shirley Valentine in the West End and on Broadway; Single Spies at the National Theatre; and Carmen Jones at the Old Vic, as well as the film of The Ballad of the Sad Café.

Simon has written biographies of Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton and Charles Dickens, and three autobiographical books: Being An Actor, Love Is Where It Falls and My Life in Pieces. The third volume of his massive Orson Welles biography, One Man Band, has just been published; Inside Wagner’s Head, a short biography of Wagner, will appear this autumn. Music is Simon's great passion, and he has made many appearances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and London Mozart Players.

His opera engagements have included Rigoletto, Jenůfa, The Queen of Spades, Hansel and Gretel and Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Parsifal and Wozzeck at Welsh National Opera; War and Peace at the Opéra national de Paris; Eugene Onegin at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan; Ruslan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi Theatre; and numerous operas at Glyndebourne including Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Don Giovanni, The Cunning Little Vixen, Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which won the 2015 BBC Music Magazine Opera Award.

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Allison Bell

Gabriela Iştoc

soprano

soprano

soprano

Tasmanian-born Allison Bell is becoming one of the leading performers of her generation of 20th- and 21st-century music.

Performances with the LPO and Vladimir Jurowski have included Péter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne; Schnittke’s Three Scenes, Madrigals and Der gelbe Klang at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at Wigmore Hall; and Polly in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at Royal Festival Hall and in Paris. With the LPO under Michał Dworzyński she performed Górecki’s Third Symphony.

Gabriela Iştoc is one of Romania’s leading young sopranos. A graduate of the National Opera Studio in London and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, she studied with Dr Veronica Dunne. She was a Jerwood Young Artist in 2011 and was awarded the Robert and Margaret Lefever Study Award and the Wessex Glyndebourne Association Award.

© Mike Hoban

© Esther Haase

Kate Royal

Kate Royal won the 2004 Kathleen Ferrier Award, the 2004 John Christie Award and the 2007 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award.

Opera roles include Pamina (The Magic Flute) for Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera; Countess (The Marriage of Figaro) and Governess (The Turn of the Screw) for Glyndebourne on Tour; Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for the Teatro Real, Madrid and Glyndebourne; Poppea for English National Opera; Miranda (Adès’s The Tempest) for the Royal Opera; Micaela (Carmen) for Glyndebourne; Countess Almaviva for the Aixen-Provence Festival; Euridice for the Metropolitan Opera; and the Marschallin for Glyndebourne.

Concert engagements include the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Rattle), Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Ticciati), Rotterdam Philharmonic (Nézet-Séguin), Cleveland Orchestra (Franz Welser-Möst) and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Harding). Future highlights include recitals in New York, Pamina at the Paris Opera and Alcina in Basel.

She has recorded three solo discs for EMI Classics: Kate Royal with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Edward Gardner, Kate Royal: Midsummer Night, and a recital disc, A Lesson in Love, with Malcolm Martineau.

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Other recent performances include Le Feu/La Princesse/Le Rossignol in L’enfant et les sortilèges at the Bolshoi; works by Schoenberg and Brett Dean at the Royal Concertgebouw; Pierrot Lunaire at Moscow’s Mossovet Theatre; and Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre and Lutosławski’s Chantefleurs et chantefables with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Further recent highlights include Berg’s Lulu Suite at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil in Berlin with Jurowski; Tavener’s Flood of Beauty and Louis Andriessen’s Dances with Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican; works by Vivier and Donatoni with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group; and the world premiere of Brett Dean’s String Quartet No. 2.

Past engagements include Serpina in Pergolesi’s La serva padrona in Montalto; Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro for Opera Theatre Company; Eurydice in Julian Philips’s Followers and Ludovina in Philips’s The Yellow Sofa for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Lucy Brown in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Too Hot to Handel at the Royal Theatre, Windsor; the Foreign Princess in Rusalka for Lyric Opera; Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème for Opera North and Danish National Opera; and Adina in L’elisir d’amore for Opera North.

Further engagements include The one who loves and lets go with Opera North at this summer’s Latitude festival, and Antigone in Enescu’s Œdipe with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2017 Enescu Festival.

Dame Felicity Palmer

Rachael Lloyd

Iestyn Davies

mezzo soprano

countertenor

Dame Felicity Palmer has had a career spanning some four decades, firstly as a concert soprano and then as an operatic mezzo soprano. She is one of the most versatile artists performing today and appears regularly at the most prestigious opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, collaborating with conductors, directors and orchestras of the highest calibre.

Dame Felicity’s recent engagements include Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and EsaPekka Salonen; Clytemnestra in Elektra with Semyon Bychkov at the BBC Proms; a return to English National Opera for The Countess in The Queen of Spades; Mrs Sedley in Peter Grimes for English National Opera, Zurich Opera and with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano; Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Metropolitan Opera and the Bayerische Staatsoper; and Mrs Peachum in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski.

Future highlights include returns to English National Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

© Marco Borggreve

© Christian Steiner

© Christina Raphaelle Haldane

mezzo soprano

British mezzo soprano Rachael Lloyd continues to enjoy success in the UK and is also establishing herself as an artist in mainland Europe. Recent engagements include the title role in Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall for Raymond Gubbay; Pitti-Sing in The Mikado and Third Lady in The Magic Flute at English National Opera; Sister in Vasco Mendonça’s The House Taken Over at the Aix-en-Provence Festival; Aristea in L’Olimpiade for the Buxton Festival; Amastre in Serse for English Touring Opera; Maddalena in Rigoletto for Iford Arts; her German debut in the title role of Dido and Aeneas for TPT Theater Thüringen; Cornelia in Giulio Cesare in Egitto for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Meg Page in Falstaff for Glyndebourne on Tour; and Kate Pinkerton in Madam Butterfly at the Royal Opera House.

Future engagements include Alisa in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House, directed by Katie Mitchell and conducted by Daniel Oren.

Opera engagements include the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Glyndebourne Festival Opera; English National Opera; La Scala, Milan; the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Chicago Lyric Opera; and the Munich and Vienna festivals. Iestyn is a leading exponent of Handel (roles include Bertarido in Rodelinda, the title role in Rinaldo, Arsace in Partenope, Hamor in Jephtha and David in Saul) and contemporary operas, most notably the roles of Trinculo in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest and First Angel in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin.

In concert Iestyn has performed at La Scala, Milan; the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Tonhalle in Zurich; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris; Lincoln Centre in New York; and the BBC Proms. He has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall and regularly appears at Wigmore Hall, where he has curated his own Residency.

Recent highlights and future engagements include a theatre project entitled Farinelli and the King at The Globe and subsequently at the Duke of York’s Theatre with Mark Rylance; concerts with the New York Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras; a European tour of Handel’s Orlando with The English Concert; and a Japanese recital tour.

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 9

Alasdair Elliott

tenor

tenor

tenor

© Jack Liebeck

© Trevor Goldstein

Ronald Samm

© Mitch Jenkins

Toby Spence

An honours graduate and choral scholar from New College, Oxford, Toby Spence studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He won the Royal Philharmonic Society 2011 Singer of the Year award.

In concert, Toby has sung with The Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics under Sir Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, and at the Salzburg and Edinburgh festivals.

For the Royal Opera House, Toby has appeared in The Tempest, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola. For English National Opera, roles have included Tamino, Candide, Paris (La belle Hélène), Lensky and Faust. He has also sung with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Hamburgische Staatsoper, La Monnaie, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera.

Engagements this season included The Dream of Gerontius at the BBC Proms, Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Paris Opera, and concerts with the LSO and Michael Tilson Thomas.

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Ronald Samm was born in Port of Spain. He studied voice and piano with Noelle Barker and Ian Kennedy at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and won a scholarship from the Peter Moores/Lord Pitt Foundation to pursue postgraduate study with Nicholas Powell at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. After the RNCM Ronald worked with British Youth Opera, Travelling Opera, Broomhill Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and became a trainee at the National Opera Studio sponsored by the Sybill Tutton Awards and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

During 2015 Ronald returned to Kazan in Russia for performances of Porgy and Bess and sang in the English National Opera production of Between Worlds at London’s Barbican. In September 2015 he returned to Berwick Festival Opera to sing Sigmund in Jonathan Dove’s reduced version of Die Walküre.

Ronald Samm assumed the title role in Verdi’s Otello in 2010 with the Birmingham Opera Company, reprising the role for Norrlands Opera in Sweden in 2011 and for Opera North in 2013. He has performed in Porgy and Bess with Opéra de Lyon at the Edinburgh International Festival, and given concert performances of Porgy and Bess with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

One of Europe’s leading character tenors, Alasdair Elliott’s acclaimed portrayals include such roles as Mime for Scottish Opera’s production of the Ring Cycle; Pong and The Emperor (Turandot) for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the Teatro Real, Madrid, and the Reisopera in the Netherlands; Monostatos (The Magic Flute) for the Royal Opera, English National Opera and Glyndebourne Touring Opera; Red Whiskers (Billy Budd) and Gamekeeper (Rusalka) for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Spoletta (Tosca) for Seattle Opera; and Bardolpho and Caius (Falstaff) for the Royal Opera, Scottish Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Alasdair is also well-known for his interest in contemporary music. He performed as Festus in the world premiere of Peter-Jan Wagemans’s Legende, while his performances in Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber for The Netherlands Opera, Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot for English National Opera and Scottish Opera, and the world premiere of John Buller’s The Bacchae for English National Opera all earned him critical acclaim.

Future plans include The Marriage of Figaro, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, The Nose and Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera, and Die Meistersinger and Figaro at Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Andrew Shore

Lukas Jakobski

baritone

baritone

bass

Born in London, Simon Keenlyside’s roles include Prospero (Thomas Adès’s The Tempest); Mozart’s Count Almaviva, Don Giovanni and Papageno; Pelléas, Eugene Onegin, Wozzeck, Hamlet, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Posa, Giorgio Germont, Ford, Rossini’s Figaro, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Belcore and Oreste (Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride). Future operatic plans include the title role in Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera; Giorgio Germont in Munich; Count Almaviva in Milan; and returns to Vienna as Don Giovanni, Macbeth and Golaud.

Simon’s recordings include Britten’s War Requiem; Mendelssohn's Elijah; American musical theatre numbers; Schubert, Strauss and Brahms Lieder, and Fauré and English songs with Malcolm Martineau; and Schumann Lieder with Graham Johnson. His opera discs include La bohème, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Billy Budd and Macbeth.

Simon won the 2006 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera. In 2007 he won the ECHO Klassik Award for Male Singer of the Year, and in 2011 he was honoured with Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year Award. He was appointed CBE in 2003.

© Lukasz Harun

© Uwe Arens

© Robert Workman

Simon Keenlyside

Andrew Shore is acknowledged as one of the most outstanding singer/ actors currently working on the lyric stage. He has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; La Scala, Milan; Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona; and the opera houses of Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Montpellier, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hamburg, San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Engagements have included Britten’s Death in Venice, Martinů’s Julietta, Bartolo in The Barber of Seville, Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Frank in Die Fledermaus, Major General Stanley in Pirates of Penzance, Fra Melitone in La forza del destino and the title role in Rihm’s Jakob Lenz, all for English National Opera; Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in New York and Edinburgh; Bartolo in The Barber of Seville for Welsh National Opera; Die Fledermaus for Lyric Opera of Chicago; Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Boston; Alberich in the Ring Cycle for Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires; and Britten’s Noye’s Fludde in Aldeburgh.

Future engagements include PoohBah in The Mikado for Scottish Opera; A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Beijing and Bahrain with the Aix-en-Provence Festival; and L’elisir d’amore in Toronto.

Born in Poland, Lukas Jakobski was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 2009–11, where his roles included Pietro in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Tall Englishman in Prokofiev’s The Gambler and King in Verdi’s Aida. He has since appeared with Drottningholms Slottsteater, Opéra de Lyon, Dutch National Opera and Grange Park Opera. In concert he has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orkest in The Hague, Ulster Orchestra, Dunedin Consort, Irish Baroque Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland. Conductors he has worked with include Christian Curnyn, Valery Gergiev, Sir Colin Davis, Reinhard Goebel and Stephen Layton.

Future plans include his debut at the Theater an der Wien singing Hobson in Britten’s Peter Grimes; Pistola in Verdi’s Falstaff with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner, Mendelssohn’s Elijah at Blackburn Cathedral; Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse and Handel’s Messiah on tour with the Academy of Ancient Music and Richard Egarr; Comandante in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut for Netherlands Opera; and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Les Siècles and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in Nîmes.

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 11

Anna Chancellor

Dominic West

Chahine Yavroyan

actor

actor

lighting designer

British actress Anna Chancellor first came to public attention for her 1994 performance as ‘Duckface’ in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral opposite Hugh Grant. The following year she appeared as Caroline Bingley in the hugely successful BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and as Julia Piper in Kavanagh QC. In 2005 she joined the cast of the popular BBC Television drama series Spooks as Juliet Shaw. Other TV appearances include The Vice, Jupiter Moon, Karaoke, Cold Lazarus, The Dreamers and Tipping the Velvet, and a starring role in the satirical black comedy Suburban Shootout. In 2011 she took the role of Lix Storm in the thriller serial The Hour, for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2014 she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress for her work in Private Lives.

Her theatre appearances have included Regan in King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Arkadina in Jonathan Kent’s production of The Seagull at Chichester Festival Theatre, Lady Catherine in James MacDonald’s The Wolf from the Door at the Royal Court Theatre and Amanda in Jonathan Kent’s Private Lives at Chichester Festival Theatre and the Gielgud Theatre.

12 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Dominic West has successfully combined a career in both the UK and the US, with leading roles in international films, American television and on the London stage.

After graduating from Trinity College Dublin and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, he won the Ian Charleson award for Best Newcomer for his performance in Sir Peter Hall’s production of The Seagull. A successful film career soon followed, with leading roles in 28 Days opposite Sandra Bullock, Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts and The Forgotten with Julianne Moore. In 2000 he won the role of McNulty in HBO’s The Wire, which ran for five seasons.

On the stage in 2011 Dominic captivated audiences in the title role of Butley at the Duchess Theatre, as well as sharing the stage with his Wire co-star Clarke Peters in Othello at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

2012 saw Dominic reprise his role as Hector Madden in the second season of The Hour, and he starred in Jez Butterworth’s play The River at The Royal Court.

Dominic has recently completed filming Money Monster directed

by Jodie Foster, alongside George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Jack O’Connell. Earlier this year he finished his run in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Donmar Warehouse.

Chahine Yavroyan’s theatre work includes Monster Raving Loony (The Drum); Let The Right One In; Dunsinane US Tour 2015; Caledonia, Realism and The Wonderful World of Dissocia (NTS); Bright Phoenix (Liverpool Everyman); Dancing at Lughnasa and Punk Rock (The Lyric, Belfast); Juvenalia and Tuesdays at Tescos (Assembly Rooms); Tartuffe, Khandan and Anita And Me (Birmingham Rep); Hope, The Pass, Narrative, Get Santa, Wig Out! and Relocated (Royal Court); Hedda Gabler, King Lear, The House and Major Barbara (The Abbey, Dublin); A Soldier In Every Son, Measure for Measure, Marat/Sade, God in Ruins and Little Eagles (RSC); Farewell and Half a Glass of Water (Field Day, Derry); Uncle Vanya (Minerva, Chichester); The Lady From The Sea, The Comedy of Errors and Three Sisters (Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Vortex (The Gate, Dublin); Scorched (Old Vic Tunnels); Fuenteovejuna, Punishment Without Revenge and Dr. Faustus (Madrid); Orphans, Dallas Sweetman and Long Time Dead (Paines Plough); and Jane Eyre and Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Perth Theatre).

His music work includes collaborations with Jocelyn Pook, Orlando Gough and Diamanda Galás, as well as John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer with Scottish Opera and Plague Songs at the Barbican.

The Glyndebourne Chorus Trinity Boys Choir Jeremy Bines chorusmaster

David Swinson chorusmaster

Glyndebourne takes pride, and justifiably so, in the performances of the Glyndebourne Chorus, whose quality and commitment makes it one of the preeminent choruses in international opera. It is recruited annually and comprises a large number of talented and aspiring soloists, mainly drawn from the music colleges, and a core of highly motivated professional choristers.

Trinity Boys Choir recently celebrated its 50th anniversary since its first professional engagement in 1965. The boys frequently appear on such prestigious stages as Glyndebourne, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, English National Opera and at various opera houses abroad. The Choir is especially well known for its role in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which it has appeared in over 150 professional performances.

Recent operatic engagements include the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, English National Opera, the Aixen-Provence Festival and theatres in the USA, Belgium, Israel and Italy.

For many the Glyndebourne Chorus provides the muchneeded transition from opera course at a conservatoire to the professional world, with the opportunity to understudy roles in the Festival and on Tour, and in some cases leading to engagement in a principal role on tour and later in the Festival. There is an infinite amount to be learned from working in close proximity with the high-calibre artists and from exposure to some of the finest conductors, with one of the UK’s top symphony orchestras in the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the country’s premier period-instrument orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The list of Glyndebourne Chorus ‘alumni’ who have forged careers on the operatic stage is long and distinguished. It includes Thomas Allen, Janet Baker, Barry Banks, Susan Bullock, Sarah Connolly, John Daszak, Richard Van Allan, Ryland Davies, Gerald Finley, Susan Gritton, Alastair Miles, Diana Montague, Dennis O’Neill, Anne-Marie Owens, Peter Rose, Janice Watson and Louise Winter.

Sopranos Charlotte Beament Philippa Boyle Suzanne Fischer Julia Hamon Rhiannon Llewellyn Jacqueline Parker Shuna Scott Sendall Natalia Tanasii Rachel Taylor Pamela Wilcock

Tenors Daniel Farrimond James Geer Edward Hughes Oliver Johnston Niel Joubert Martins Smaukstelis Tom Smith Stephan Ulberini David Woodward Cliff Zammit Stevens

Mezzo sopranos Kezia Bienek Natalia Brzezinska Leslie Davis Grace Durham Jennifer Hughes Heather Lowe Angharad Lyddon Marvic Monreal Sarah Osborne Thomasin Trezise

Basses Ed Ballard Trevor Eliot Bowes Benjamin Cahn Euros Campbell Thomas Coltman Bartholomew Lawrence Jolyon Loy Henry Neill James Newby Aidan Smith

On the concert platform, the Choir is regularly invited to perform at the BBC Proms, and was honoured to perform in Her Majesty the Queen’s 80th Birthday Prom Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006. The boys have performed with all the major London orchestras, and with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir in Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK. Trinity Boys Choir has also been invited to perform in Vienna with the Vienna Boys Choir, as well as throughout Europe and Asia.

The Choir’s many recordings include John Rutter’s Bang, an opera written for the boys; Britten’s A Boy Was Born with the BBC Symphony Chorus; Walton’s Henry V with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers; and Orff’s Carmina Burana with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

TV appearances have included The Royal Variety Performance, the Pride of Britain Awards and Children in Need. The boys can also be heard on the soundtracks of the Disney blockbuster Maleficent, Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2.

Forthcoming engagements include tours to China, Germany, Bahrain and Italy.

Hugo BarryCasademunt Nicholas Challier Jamie Coskun Charles Davies William Davies Jérémie de Rijk Aman de Silva

Ben de Sousa Sebastian Exall Matthew Gillam Jake Griggs William Hardy Amiri Harewood Ben Hill Freddie Jemison

Joshua Kenney Tate Nicol Saul Packer Kishan Patel Lucas Pinto Krishan Shah James Skinner Alex Wong

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 13

Programme

Shakespeare in Music

S

hakespeare’s influence across all the arts is immense, but tonight’s Anniversary Gala Concert demonstrates the many ways he and his plays inspired composers: in music for the concert hall, in music for the theatre – as opera, ballet and incidental music – and, with William Walton’s atmospheric score for Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film of Henry V, in music composed for the cinema. Verdi’s final two operas, Otello and Falstaff, showcase the grandly tragic and the mischievously comic, while Britten, Mendelssohn and Adès capture the fantastical in their reactions to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.

T

here is something paradoxical, perhaps, in the drive composers have historically shown towards trying to capture Shakespeare in music. But those on the lookout for powerful subject material have always been strongly drawn to his works, particularly after they were rediscovered and elevated to classic status by the Romantics. The Romantic era brought with it greater and necessary musical freedom, too: the democratisation of opera led to the democratisation of its subject matter and the license to abandon the mythological and Classical plots favoured during the Baroque period; the rise of programme music increasingly furnished composers with the expressive vocabulary to explore what Shakespeare and his works meant to them.

And there were few composers to whom Shakespeare meant more than Giuseppe Verdi, who both opens and closes this evening’s concert. Although he composed only three operas based on the plays – Macbeth (1847, rev. 1865), Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893) – Verdi’s fascination was lifelong; he also harboured a desire to compose a fourth, King Lear, for several decades.

But posterity has the publisher Giulio Ricordi and the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito to thank for the fact that we even have Otello and Falstaff. It was they who forced the semi-retired Verdi to return to work; and the greatest tool in their persuasive armoury was Boito’s own libretto for Otello, a marvel of creative pragmatism and concision, which inspired in Verdi music that thrillingly mixed the traditional and the

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The star-crossed romance of Romeo and Juliet is reflected in extracts from Berlioz’s ambitious ‘symphonie dramatique’ and Prokofiev’s ballet, while Tchaikovsky (himself the composer of a famous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture) captures the brooding atmosphere of Elsinore in his rarely heard incidental music for Hamlet. Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, on the other hand, sets one of Shakespeare’s most evocative passages praising the power of music itself, in a work of gentle but soaring beauty, heard tonight in its intoxicating original version for 16 solo singers and orchestra.

almost shockingly new. Few operatic characters make an entrance to match the visceral thrill of Otello’s ‘Esultate’, for example, the Moor arriving triumphantly through the orchestral and choral storm. While Verdi’s ability to portray the insidious charm of ‘honest’ Iago, as well as the emptiness of his evil (articulated respectively in his manipulation of Roderigo ahead of the ‘Fuoco di gioia’ chorus, and then in the famous ‘Credo’) is astonishing.

So too is the way the composer conveys, at the other end of the spectrum, the heartbreaking innocence of Desdemona in the melancholic Willow Song that precedes her murder.

It was Hamlet that had in 1827 represented Héctor Berlioz’s first encounter with Shakespeare – as well as with the English actress Harriet Smithson, playing Ophelia, who became the object of an ardent obsession and inspiration for the Symphonie Fantastique (1830).

His 100-minute ‘symphonie dramatique’ Roméo et Juliette (1839) reflects some of the aesthetic challenges facing composers, namely the dilemma of whether to yoke music to the Bard’s words or attempt to capture a broader sense of poetic content. For Roméo et Juliette Berlioz plumped for an unprecedented mixture of both. The work’s extended love scene is wordless, for example, but the composer apparently couldn’t resist the fantastic imagery – much of which is maintained in Emile Deschamps’s shortened text, even if the sting in the tail of Shakespeare’s original is lost – of Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab.

In tonight’s programme we move from Queen Mab to Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (1935). Though a ballet score, it was in purely musical form that Prokofiev’s work first achieved fame; its planned first performance fell foul of developments in Soviet cultural policy when official approval of Shakespeare and Pushkin was withdrawn in 1935. Even when the work was finally performed in Russia in 1940, much of the music was met with confusion by the dancers, and it remains one of the few great ballet scores whose effect in the concert hall remains potent, such is the skill with which Prokofiev weaves the symphonic, choreographic and dramatic requirements of his music together.

Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff were undoubtedly the finest of the many operatic Shakespeare adaptations of the 19th century. Tchaikovsky, however, captured three of the plays in orchestral works: The Tempest as a Symphonic Fantasy; and Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet in two Fantasy-Overtures, the first of which, originally composed in 1869 but subject to many subsequent revisions, is among his best-known works. The Hamlet Fantasy-Overture (1888) is a rarer visitor to the concert hall, and like the two other Shakespeare works concentrates on character rather than plot: we sense the dark atmosphere of Elsinore and, in a plaintive, typically Tchaikovskian oboe melody, the figure of Ophelia. Even rarer is the incidental music Tchaikovsky eventually composed three years later for a performance of the

play in St Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre in February 1891. For this he produced a revised overture, essentially a telescoped version of his 1888 Fantasy-Overture, along with 16 short numbers, two of which constitute Ophelia’s gently obsessive Mad Scene, sung in French this evening as it was at that first performance.

For the final work of the first half we return to Shakespeare’s own words in Vaughan Williams’s remarkable Serenade to Music (1938), performed here in its original version for 16 soloists and orchestra.

The unusual configuration reflects the occasion of the original commission: a concert in the Royal Albert Hall marking Henry Wood’s half-century as an active conductor. Among the others taking part were Serge Rachmaninoff, who, having performed his Second Piano Concerto in the first half, reportedly listened to Vaughan Williams’s new piece with tears in his eyes in the second.

It’s not difficult to understand his reaction. The Serenade takes words from Act V of The Merchant of Venice which describe music’s power, and Vaughan Williams sets them in a manner that fully lives up to that description.

The character of the piece is further dictated by the fact that it was written for 16 great singers of the era, whose names are marked in the score and whose ‘parts’ are identified in the programme. Each singer has a solo passage, however brief, and the effect of the voices coming together at the work’s climactic moments is overwhelming.

Part 1 Giuseppe VERDI (1813–1901) Otello Act 1: Una vela; Esultate

Benjamin Cahn (Montano) Oliver Johnston (Cassio) Simon Keenlyside (Iago) Toby Spence (Roderigo) Ronald Samm (Otello) The Glyndebourne Chorus

WILLIAM Shakespeare (1564–1616) Othello Act 1 Scene 1: Wilt thou be fast to my hopes

Toby Spence (Roderigo) Simon Keenlyside (Iago) London Philharmonic Orchestra | 15

Programme continued

Giuseppe VERDI Otello Act 2: Credo in un Dio crudel

Simon Keenlyside (Iago)

WILLIAM Shakespeare Othello Act 4 Scene 3: Good faith, how foolish are our minds!

Kate Royal (Desdemona) Dame Felicity Palmer (Emilia)

Giuseppe VERDI Otello Act 4: Piangea cantando (Willow Song)

Kate Royal (Desdemona) Dame Felicity Palmer (Emilia)

HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803–69) Roméo et Juliette Partie I: Récitatif et Scherzetto: Mab

Toby Spence (tenor) The Glyndebourne Chorus

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Romeo and Juliet Dance of the Knights

WILLIAM Shakespeare Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1: To be, or not to be

Dominic West (Hamlet)

Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–93) Hamlet Overture WILLIAM Shakespeare Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1: Soft you now! The fair Ophelia!

Dominic West (Hamlet) Anna Chancellor (Ophelia)

Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY Hamlet Act 4 Scene 5: Votre amoureux, à quels gages

16 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Kate Royal (Ophelia)

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE The Merchant of Venice Act 5 Scene 1: Sweet soul, let’s in

Toby Spence (Lorenzo)

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872–1958) Serenade to Music (original version for 16 soloists) Text from The Merchant of Venice

Kate Royal (soprano) Allison Bell (soprano) Suzanne Fischer (soprano) Rhiannon Llewellyn (soprano) Iestyn Davies (mezzo soprano) Dame Felicity Palmer (mezzo soprano) Angharad Lyddon (mezzo soprano) Grace Durham (mezzo soprano) Ronald Samm (tenor) Toby Spence (tenor) Niel Joubert (tenor) Oliver Johnston (tenor) Simon Keenlyside (baritone) Ed Ballard (bass) Lukas Jakobski (bass) Benjamin Cahn (bass)

[Isobel Baillie] [Lilian Stiles-Allen] [Elsie Suddaby] [Eva Turner] [Mary Jarred] [Muriel Brunskill] [Margaret Balfour] [Astra Desmond] [Walter Widdop] [Heddle Nash] [Parry Jones] [Frank Titterton] [Roy Henderson] [Robert Easton] [Norman Allin] [Harold Williams]

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

T

hree more British composers are featured in the concert’s second half, which begins with two musical reactions to A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the opening of Benjamin Britten’s opera (1958, composed to a libretto adapted from the play by Britten and Peter Pears) is followed by three key extracts from Mendelssohn’s incidental music for the play (composed in 1842, 16 years after he had written his famous overture). The ubiquitous Wedding March is performed in full with its scuttling central fairy music section and preceded by a brief but enchanting melodrama.

Mendelssohn created the prototype for his own brand of ‘fairy music’ to conjure up the play’s atmosphere, but Britten’s opera immediately creates a sense of something more threatening and uncanny, in which unnerving orchestral glissandi are joined by unison, rhythmically unpredictable fairies that hint at

something darker. The vocal writing for Oberon and Tytania suggests that Britten’s forest is a less innocent place than Mendelssohn’s, while the very fact that Oberon was composed for a countertenor, Alfred Deller, at a time when the voice type was less common than today must have added to the effect.

Magic of a darker type is already at the heart of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Thomas Adès’s opera, composed to a libretto by Meredith Oakes and premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2004, captures this with unerring skill. This is demonstrated in the wonderfully ethereal writing for Ariel (a role composed, like Britten’s Tytania, for coloratura soprano) that concludes the extended extract in this evening’s programme, and which returns us to a mysterious poetic realm after the first brusque confrontation between Caliban and Prospero.

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 17

Programme continued

From opera we move, with Walton’s music for Henry V, to a 20th-century artform forever engaged with trying to capture Shakespeare’s genius: cinema. It’s difficult to underestimate the extent to which the 1944 film – starring and directed by Laurence Olivier – played a propaganda role: its opening scene depicted a proud historical London, its climax the Battle of Agincourt.

And, as Olivier saw it, Walton’s contribution played a pivotal role; the music still carries an impressive power, harnessing the composer’s skill for nostalgic historicism (listen for the use of harpsichord, for example) and the characteristic energy that Olivier himself described as ‘that exuberance, that spirit, that heart-quickening feeling’. We hear compelling glimpses of this in the extracts performed this evening, in a 'scenario' compiled from the film's score by Christopher Palmer in the 1990s.

To close, though, we return to Verdi and his final masterpiece, Falstaff, whose central character – in both senses – gained much of its richness from its amalgamating the different incarnations of the Fat Knight found in The Merry Wives of Windsor as well as in both parts of Henry V. At the close of Verdi’s opera the whole company’s deception of Falstaff is revealed and he calls them to order for the famous final fugue, ingenious and light-footed by turns: ‘Tutto nel mondo è burla’, they join to sing – ‘Everything in the world is a joke’.

Programme notes © Hugo Shirley

PART 2 BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913–76) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Act 1 Scene 1: Over Hill and Dale Oberon is passing fell and wrath

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–47) A Midsummer Night’s Dream No. 3: Song with Choir

WILLIAM Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 4 Scene 1: Come, sit thee down

18 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Allison Bell (Tytania) Iestyn Davies (Oberon) Ben Hill (Cobweb) Lucas Pinto (Peaseblossom) Charles Davies (Mustardseed) Jérémie de Rijk (Moth) Trinity Boys Choir Anna Chancellor (Titania) Kate Royal (soprano) Rachael Lloyd (mezzo soprano) Trinity Boys Choir The Glyndebourne Chorus

Anna Chancellor (Titania) Lucas Pinto (Peaseblossom) Ben Hill (Cobweb) Jérémie de Rijk (Moth) Charles Davies (Mustardseed) Ronald Samm (Bottom)

FELIX MENDELSSOHN A Midsummer Night’s Dream No. 8: Melodrama

William Hardy (Puck) Dominic West (Oberon) Anna Chancellor (Titania)

No. 9: Wedding March

THOMAS ADÈS (born 1971) The Tempest Act 1 Scenes 4 & 5

Toby Spence (Caliban) Simon Keenlyside (Prospero) Allison Bell (Ariel)

WILLIAM WALTON (1902–83) (arr. Palmer) Henry V – A Shakespeare Scenario Excerpts from: Prologue The Night-Watch Agincourt Epilogue

Anna Chancellor (Chorus) Dominic West (Henry V) The Glyndebourne Chorus Trinity Boys Choir

WILLIAM Shakespeare The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 5 Scene 5: The Windsor bell hath struck twelve

Andrew Shore (Falstaff) Gabriela Iştoc (Mistress Ford) Rachael Lloyd (Mistress Page)

Giuseppe VERDI Falstaff Act 3 Scene 2: Un Coro e Terminiam la scena

Gabriela Iştoc (Alice Ford) Allison Bell (Nanetta) Dame Felicity Palmer (Mistress Quickly) Rachael Lloyd (Meg Page) Toby Spence (Fenton) Ronald Samm (Dr Caius) Alasdair Elliott (Bardolf) Simon Keenlyside (Ford) Andrew Shore (Falstaff) Lukas Jakobski (Pistol) The Glyndebourne Chorus

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 19

Final concerts this season at Royal Festival Hall Saturday 30 April | 7.30pm

Sunday 5 June | 12.00 noon

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 R Strauss An Alpine Symphony

FUNHARMONICS FAMILY concert

Vladimir Jurowski conductor Alexey Zuev piano Free post-concert performance Level 2 Foyer Bar, Royal Festival Hall In a rousing finale to our Shakespeare celebrations, the Royal College of Music Big Band, directed by Mark Armstrong, performs Duke Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder, based on the work of William Shakespeare.

Lose yourself in the woods with the LPO and Globe Education in this special musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Expect enchantment and confusion, and a bit of silliness along the way, told through a magical mix of words and music.

Recommended for ages 6–11.

Children £5–£9 | Adults £10–£18

Tickets £9–£39 (premium seats £65) London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office: 020 7840 4242 Monday–Friday 10.00am–5.00pm lpo.org.uk Transaction fees: £1.75 online, £2.75 telephone.

20 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

MUSIC IS OUR WORLD. 2016/17 Concert Season at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Highlights include: — Belief and Beyond Belief, a — Sibelius expert Osmo Vänskä year-long festival with presents a Symphony Cycle Southbank Centre exploring pairing Sibelius’s symphonies with concertos by British what makes us human in the 21st century, offering the composers opportunity for personal exploration of belief through — Soloists including Anne-Sofie Mutter, Nicola Benedetti, meaning, science, death, Julian Bliss, Steven Isserlis, ideology and society. In Patricia Kopatchinskaja and partnership with Principal Hilary Hahn Conductor and Artistic Advisor Vladimir Jurowski Great choral works including Haydn’s The Creation, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (Choral)

Book now lpo.org.uk 020 7840 4242 Season discounts of up to 30% available

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 21

Sound Futures Donors We are grateful to the following donors for their generous contributions to our Sound Futures campaign. Thanks to their support, we successfully raised £1 million by 30 April 2015 which has now been matched pound for pound by Arts Council England through a Catalyst Endowment grant. This has enabled us to create a £2 million endowment fund supporting special artistic projects, creative programming and education work with key venue partners including our Southbank Centre home. Supporters listed below donated £500 or over. For a full list of those who have given to this campaign please visit lpo.org.uk/soundfutures.

Masur Circle Arts Council England Dunard Fund Victoria Robey OBE Emmanuel & Barrie Roman The Underwood Trust

The Rothschild Foundation Tom & Phillis Sharpe The Viney Family

Haitink Patrons Mark & Elizabeth Adams Dr Christopher Aldren Mrs Pauline Baumgartner Welser-Möst Circle Lady Jane Berrill William & Alex de Winton Mr Frederick Brittenden John Ireland Charitable Trust David & Yi Yao Buckley The Tsukanov Family Foundation Mr Clive Butler Neil Westreich Gill & Garf Collins Tennstedt Circle Mr John H Cook Valentina & Dmitry Aksenov Mr Alistair Corbett Richard Buxton Bruno de Kegel The Candide Trust Georgy Djaparidze Michael & Elena Kroupeev David Ellen Kirby Laing Foundation Christopher Fraser OBE & Lisa Fraser Mr & Mrs Makharinsky David & Victoria Graham Fuller Alexey & Anastasia Reznikovich Goldman Sachs International Simon Robey Mr Gavin Graham Bianca & Stuart Roden Moya Greene Simon & Vero Turner Mrs Dorothy Hambleton The late Mr K Twyman Tony & Susie Hayes Malcolm Herring Solti Patrons Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle Ageas Mrs Philip Kan John & Manon Antoniazzi Rehmet Kassim-Lakha de Morixe Gabor Beyer, through BTO Rose & Dudley Leigh Management Consulting AG Lady Roslyn Marion Lyons Jon Claydon Miss Jeanette Martin Mrs Mina Goodman & Miss Duncan Matthews QC Suzanne Goodman Diana & Allan Morgenthau Roddy & April Gow Charitable Trust The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Dr Karen Morton Charitable Trust Mr Roger Phillimore Mr James R.D. Korner Ruth Rattenbury Christoph Ladanyi & Dr Sophia The Reed Foundation Ladanyi-Czernin Robert Markwick & Kasia Robinski The Rind Foundation The Maurice Marks Charitable Trust Sir Bernard Rix David Ross & Line Forestier (Canada) Mr Paris Natar

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Carolina & Martin Schwab Dr Brian Smith Lady Valerie Solti Mr & Mrs G Stein Dr Peter Stephenson Miss Anne Stoddart TFS Loans Limited Lady Marina Vaizey Jenny Watson Guy & Utti Whittaker Pritchard Donors Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle Mrs Arlene Beare Mr Patrick & Mrs Joan Benner Mr Conrad Blakey Dr Anthony Buckland Paul Collins Alastair Crawford Mr Derek B. Gray Mr Roger Greenwood The HA.SH Foundation Darren & Jennifer Holmes Honeymead Arts Trust Mr Geoffrey Kirkham Drs Frank & Gek Lim Peter Mace Mr & Mrs David Malpas Dr David McGibney Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill Mr Christopher Queree The Rosalyn & Nicholas Springer Charitable Trust Timothy Walker AM Christopher Williams Peter Wilson Smith Mr Anthony Yolland and all other donors who wish to remain anonymous

We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following Thomas Beecham Group Patrons, Principal Benefactors and Benefactors: Thomas Beecham Group The Tsukanov Family Foundation Neil Westreich William and Alex de Winton Dr Barry Grimaldi Mrs Philip Kan* Simon Robey Victoria Robey OBE Bianca & Stuart Roden Laurence Watt Anonymous Jon Claydon Garf & Gill Collins* Andrew Davenport Mrs Sonja Drexler David & Victoria Graham Fuller The Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Geoff & Meg Mann Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp Julian & Gill Simmonds* Eric Tomsett The Viney Family John & Manon Antoniazzi Jane Attias David Goldstone CBE LLB FRICS John & Angela Kessler Guy & Utti Whittaker * BrightSparks Patrons: instead of supporting a chair in the Orchestra, these donors have chosen to support our series of schools’ concerts.

Principal Benefactors Mark & Elizabeth Adams David & Yi Yao Buckley Desmond & Ruth Cecil Mr John H Cook Mr Bruno de Kegel David Ellen Mr Daniel Goldstein Drs Frank & Gek Lim Peter MacDonald Eggers Dr Eva Lotta & Mr Thierry Sciard Mr & Mrs David Malpas Virginia Slaymaker Mr & Mrs G Stein Mr & Mrs John C Tucker Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Grenville & Krysia Williams Mr Anthony Yolland Benefactors Mr Geoffrey Bateman Mrs A Beare Ms Molly Borthwick David & Patricia Buck Mrs Alan Carrington Mr & Mrs Stewart Cohen Mr Alistair Corbett Mr Timothy Fancourt QC Mr Richard Fernyhough Mr Gavin Graham Roger Greenwood Wim and Jackie Hautekiet-Clare Tony & Susan Hayes Mr Daniel Heaf and Ms Amanda Hill Michael & Christine Henry Malcolm Herring J. Douglas Home

Ivan Hurry Mr Glenn Hurstfield Per Jonsson Mr Gerald Levin Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE JP RAF Paul & Brigitta Lock Mr Peter Mace Ms Ulrike Mansel Mr Robert Markwick and Ms Kasia Robinski Mr Brian Marsh Andrew T Mills Dr Karen Morton Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill Mr Roger Phillimore Mr James Pickford Andrew and Sarah Poppleton Mr Michael Posen Alexey & Anastasia Reznikovich Mr Konstantin Sorokin Martin and Cheryl Southgate Mr Peter Tausig Lady Marina Vaizey Simon and Charlotte Warshaw Howard & Sheelagh Watson Des & Maggie Whitelock Christopher Williams Bill Yoe and others who wish to remain anonymous Hon. Benefactor Elliott Bernerd Hon. Life Members Kenneth Goode Carol Colburn Grigor CBE Pehr G Gyllenhammar Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE

The generosity of our Sponsors, Corporate Members, supporters and donors is gratefully acknowledged: Corporate Members Silver: Accenture Berenberg Carter-Ruck French Chamber of Commerce We are AD Bronze: Appleyard & Trew LLP BTO Management Consulting AG Charles Russell Speechlys Lazard Russo-British Chamber of Commerce Willis Towers Watson Preferred Partners Corinthia Hotel London Heineken Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd Sipsmith Steinway Villa Maria In-kind Sponsor Google Inc

Trusts and Foundations Angus Allnatt Charitable Foundation Axis Foundation The Bernarr Rainbow Trust The Boltini Trust Borletti-Buitoni Trust The Candide Trust Cockayne – Grants for the Arts The Ernest Cook Trust The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust Dunard Fund The Equitable Charitable Trust The Foyle Foundation The Goldsmiths’ Company Lucille Graham Trust The Jeniffer and Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust Help Musicians UK Derek Hill Foundation The Idlewild Trust Kirby Laing Foundation The Leverhulme Trust The London Community Foundation London Stock Exchange Group Foundation Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust

Marsh Christian Trust Adam Mickiewicz Institute The Peter Minet Trust The Ann and Frederick O’Brien Charitable Trust Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs of the Embassy of Spain in London The Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust The Stanley Picker Trust The Radcliffe Trust Rivers Foundation The R K Charitable Trust RVW Trust Schroder Charity Trust Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation The David Solomons Charitable Trust Souter Charitable Trust The John Thaw Foundation The Tillett Trust UK Friends of the Felix-MendelssohnBartholdy-Foundation The Viney Family Garfield Weston Foundation The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust and all others who wish to remain anonymous

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 23

Administration Board of Directors Victoria Robey OBE Chairman Stewart McIlwham* President Gareth Newman* Vice-President Dr Manon Antoniazzi Roger Barron Richard Brass Desmond Cecil CMG Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Amanda Hill Dr Catherine C. Høgel Rachel Masters* George Peniston* Kevin Rundell* Natasha Tsukanova Mark Vines* Timothy Walker AM Laurence Watt Neil Westreich David Whitehouse* * Player-Director

Chief Executive

Education and Community

Digital Projects

Timothy Walker AM Chief Executive and Artistic Director

Isabella Kernot Education Director

Alison Atkinson Digital Projects Director

Talia Lash Education and Community Project Manager

Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant

Advisory Council Victoria Robey OBE Chairman Christopher Aldren Richard Brass David Buckley Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Andrew Davenport Jonathan Dawson William de Winton Cameron Doley Edward Dolman Christopher Fraser OBE Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Rehmet Kassim-Lakha Jamie Korner Clive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwham Sir Bernard Rix Baroness Shackleton Lord Sharman of Redlynch OBE Thomas Sharpe QC Julian Simmonds Barry Smith Martin Southgate Sir Philip Thomas Sir John Tooley Chris Viney Timothy Walker AM Elizabeth Winter

Roanna Gibson Concerts Director

American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Inc. Jenny Ireland Co-Chairman William A. Kerr Co-Chairman Xenia Hanusiak Alexandra Jupin Jill Fine Mainelli Kristina McPhee David Oxenstierna Natalie Pray Robert Watson Danny Lopez Hon. Chairman Noel Kilkenny Hon. Director Victoria Robey OBE Hon. Director Richard Gee, Esq Of Counsel Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP Stephanie Yoshida

Damian Davis Transport Manager

Amy Sugarman PA to the Chief Executive / Administrative Assistant Finance David Burke General Manager and Finance Director David Greenslade Finance and IT Manager

Lucy Sims Education and Community Project Manager

Public Relations Albion Media (Tel: 020 3077 4930)

Richard Mallett Education and Community Producer

Archives

Development

Gillian Pole Recordings Archive

Philip Stuart Discographer

Dayse Guilherme Finance Officer

Nick Jackman Development Director

Concert Management

Catherine Faulkner Development Events Manager

Charles Russell Speechlys Solicitors

Laura Luckhurst Corporate Relations Manager

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors

Anna Quillin Trusts and Foundations Manager

Dr Barry Grimaldi Honorary Doctor

Jenny Chadwick Tours Manager

Rebecca Fogg Development Co-ordinator

Mr Chris Aldren Honorary ENT Surgeon

Tamzin Aitken Glyndebourne and UK Engagements Manager

Helen Yang Development Assistant

Graham Wood Concerts and Recordings Manager

Alison Jones Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator

Kirstin Peltonen Development Associate Marketing

Jo Cotter Tours Co-ordinator

Kath Trout Marketing Director

Orchestra Personnel

Libby Northcote-Green Marketing Manager

Andrew Chenery Orchestra Personnel Manager Sarah Holmes Sarah Thomas Librarians Christopher Alderton Stage Manager

Madeleine Ridout Assistant Orchestra Personnel Manager

24 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Rachel Williams Publications Manager Samantha Cleverley Box Office Manager (Tel: 020 7840 4242) Anna O’Connor Marketing Co-ordinator Natasha Berg Marketing Intern

Professional Services

London Philharmonic Orchestra 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP Tel: 020 7840 4200 Box Office: 020 7840 4242 Email: admin@lpo.org.uk lpo.org.uk The London Philharmonic Orchestra Limited is a registered charity No. 238045.

Composer photographs courtesy of the Royal College of Music, London.

Cover design: Ross Shaw @ JMG Studio.

Printed by Cantate.