LPO programme: 6 Mar 2024 - Dance Re-imagined

2023/24 concert season at the Southbank Centre

Free concert programme

Principal Conductor Edward Gardner supported by Aud Jebsen Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KG Artistic Director Elena Dubinets Chief Executive David Burke Leader Pieter Schoeman supported by Neil Westreich

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Wednesday 6 March 2024 | 7.30pm

Dance Re-imagined Tania León Raíces (Origins)* (world premiere) (14’) Ravel La valse (13’) Interval (20’) Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie)† (40’) Edward Gardner conductor

Generously supported by Aud Jebsen

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography Ben Cullen Williams sculpture design, film creation & AI development Company Wayne McGregor original dance Robert Murray tenor Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir) Musical Director: Bart Van Reyn

*Co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge. †An original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor.

Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge.

Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide.

Concert presented by the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Contents 2

Welcome LPO news 3 On stage tonight 4 The Music in You: 2–16 March 2024 6 London Philharmonic Orchestra 7 Leader: Pieter Schoeman 8 Edward Gardner 9 About the artists 12 Programme notes 19 Recommended recordings 21 Sound Futures donors 22 Thank you 24 LPO administration

Free pre-concert event 6.15–6.45pm Royal Festival Hall LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets discusses the evening’s programme with Composer-inResidence Tania León.

All welcome – free to attend, no ticket required.

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Welcome

LPO news LPO Fellow Conductors 2024/25

Welcome to the Southbank Centre

We’re thrilled to announce our new LPO Fellow Conductors for the 2024/25 season: Matthew Lynch and Juya Shin, who will join the LPO family from September 2024. Guided by Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, they will become fully immersed in the life of the LPO over the next season. We can’t wait to work with them!

We’re the largest arts centre in the UK and one of the nation’s top visitor attractions, showcasing the world’s most exciting artists at our venues in the heart of London. We’re here to present great cultural experiences that bring people together, and open up the arts to everyone.

The Southbank Centre is made up of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Hayward Gallery, National Poetry Library and Arts Council Collection. We’re one of London’s favourite meeting spots, with lots of free events and places to relax, eat and shop next to the Thames.

We hope you enjoy your visit. If you need any information or help, please ask a member of staff.

You can also write to us at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, or email hello@southbankcentre.co.uk

Launched last year, our flagship LPO Conducting Fellowship programme seeks to support the development of world-class conductors of the future.

Each season the programme offers an intensive opportunity to work closely with the Orchestra to two outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession.

Subscribers to our email updates are the first to hear about new events, offers and competitions.

Just head to our website to sign up.

Drinks

The LPO Conducting Fellowship is generously supported by Patricia Haitink with additional support from Gini and Richard Gabbertas.

You are welcome to bring drinks from the venue’s bars and cafés into the Royal Festival Hall to enjoy during tonight’s concert. Please be considerate to fellow audience members by keeping noise during the concert to a minimum, and please take your glasses with you for recycling afterwards.

Thank you.

LPO on Sky Arts Back in August, the TV channel Sky Arts filmed a four-part documentary, Backstage with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, spending time behind the scenes with our musicians and following their journey with conductor Edward Gardner as they prepared for this season’s opening concert of Mahler’s Second Symphony, which took place at the Royal Festival Hall on 23 September 2023.

Enjoyed tonight’s concert?

Help us to share the wonder of the LPO by making a donation today. Use the QR code to donate via the LPO website, or visit lpo.org.uk/donate. Thank you.

The first episode will be broadcast on Sky Arts next Wednesday, 13 March at 9pm, and subsequent episodes will air on the next three Wednesdays at 9pm.

Sky Arts is free to watch on Freeview channel 36 and Freesat channel 147. If you have a Sky subscription or a Now TV entertainment pass, you can also watch on demand.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

On stage tonight First Violins

Pieter Schoeman* Leader

Chair supported by Neil Westreich

Alice Ivy-Pemberton Co-Leader

Kate Oswin

Chair supported by Eric Tomsett

Lasma Taimina

Chair supported by Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave

Minn Majoe Thomas Eisner

Chair supported by Ryze Power

Martin Höhmann Katalin Varnagy

Chair supported by Sonja Drexler

Cassandra Hamilton Amanda Smith Eleanor Bartlett Alice Apreda Howell Jamie Hutchinson Gabriela Opacka Nilufar Alimaksumova Alice Hall

Second Violins

Tania Mazzetti Principal Emma Oldfield Co-Principal Claudia Tarrant-Matthews Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra

Helena Smart Nancy Elan Fiona Higham

Chair supported by David & Yi Buckley

Nynke Hijlkema Ashley Stevens Sioni Williams José Nuno Cabrita Matias Marie-Anne Mairesse Kate Birchall Erzsébet Rácz Paula Clifton-Everest

Violas

James Heron

Guest Principal

Martin Wray Benedetto Pollani Laura Vallejo Lucia Ortiz Sauco

Michelle Bruil Raquel López Bolívar Kate De Campos Daniel Cornford Toby Warr Anita Kurowska Julia Doukakis

Clarinets

Cellos

E-flat Clarinet

Benjamin Mellefont* Principal

Chair supported by Sir Nigel Boardman and Prof. Lynda Gratton

Thomas Watmough Paul Richards*

Waynne Kwon Principal David Lale Francis Bucknall Tom Roff Helen Thomas George Hoult Auriol Evans Hee Yeon Cho Iain Ward Jane Lindsay

Thomas Watmough

Double Basses

Ruby Collins

Principal

Chair supported by Roger Greenwood

Bass Clarinet

Paul Richards* Principal

Bassoons

Jonathan Davies* Principal Chair supported by Sir Simon Robey

Kevin Rundell* Principal Sebastian Pennar

Contrabassoon

Co-Principal

Simon Estell* Principal

George Peniston Laura Murphy Lowri Estell Elen Roberts Charlotte Kerbegian Colin Paris

Horns

John Ryan* Principal Martin Hobbs Stephen Nicholls Gareth Mollison Duncan Fuller

Flutes

Juliette Bausor Principal Alberta Brown Stewart McIlwham*

Trumpets

Paul Beniston* Principal Tom Nielsen Co-Principal Anne McAneney*

Piccolo

Stewart McIlwham*

Trombones

Principal

Mark Templeton* Principal Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

Oboes

David Whitehouse

Ian Hardwick* Principal Alice Munday Sue Böhling*

Bass Trombone

Lyndon Meredith Principal

Cor Anglais

Sue Böhling* Principal

Tuba

Chair supported by Dr Barry Grimaldi

Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal

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Timpani

Simon Carrington* Principal Chair supported by Victoria Robey CBE

Percussion

Andrew Barclay* Principal

Chair supported by Gill & Garf Collins

Karen Hutt

Chair supported by Mr B C Fairhall

Emmanuel Joste Feargus Brennan Richard Horne Oliver Butterworth

Harps

Sue Blair Guest Principal Tomos Xerri

Piano/Celeste Iain Clarke

Assistant Conductor Charlotte Politi

*Professor at a London conservatoire

The LPO also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert: Bianca & Stuart Roden Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined Welcome to tonight’s concert, part of our festival ‘The Music in You’. Reflecting our adventurous spirit, throughout March the festival will embrace all kinds of expression – from dance, to music theatre and even audience participation.

Tonight’s concert opens with a brand new work by Composerin-Residence Tania León, followed by a deliciously dark waltz by Ravel. After the interval Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams join forces with the LPO for a reinvention of Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie, using digitally-enhanced choreographic storytelling to open a portal to a new expressive world. We hope you enjoy it!

Genius. Creator. Mastermind. When an artist makes something incredible, it’s tempting to describe them with words like these – as though creativity is some sort of superpower, and famous artists are somehow more than human. But everyone can be creative, and we all have the potential to demonstrate and develop our creativity.

Music comes from gifted composers and talented performers, but it’s nothing without receptive listeners.

concert is Raíces (‘Origins’): the first new commission written specially for the LPO by Composer-in-Residence Tania León, who will also join Elena Dubinets for a free pre-concert talk before the evening’s performance.

On Tuesday 12 March we break out of the concert hall for ‘An Imagination Shared’: an immersive performance at St John’s Church Waterloo. In this 6.30pm ‘rush-hour’ concert led by LPO Fellow Conductors Charlotte Politi and Luis Castillo-Briceño, British-Chinese composer Alex Ho invites us to Breathe and Draw, before American composer Ryan Carter creates a concerto in which the audience becomes the soloist.

‘If you think about it, each of us is a creative personality’, says LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets. ‘Every human being has the need to express themselves creatively, and everyone has a gift and the power to do so. It’s just that we sometimes apply our creativity differently.’

So this month, the LPO aims to liberate and celebrate the music in you. The goal is to demonstrate that each one of us – a professional composer, an orchestral musician, an audience member – can have a chance to express ourselves through music.

Wednesday 13 March sees more new music, this time at Battersea Arts Centre – the first UK performance of Luís Tinoco’s new accordion concerto, written for and performed by accordion sensation João Barradas, which, paired with Kurt Weill’s satirical, theatrical Seven Deadly Sins (starring Danielle de Niese), demonstrate that artistry is no respecter of rigid musical genres.

At the Royal Festival Hall we’ll be performing music from across four centuries and many different countries that demonstrates the infinite possibilities of creativity unchained. Haydn’s oratorio The Creation – which opened the festival on Saturday 2 March – seems like an obvious choice, but in fact this gloriously optimistic work was composed to cross linguistic and cultural barriers, conveying a message that even the humblest living creature shares in a universal creative spirit.

In the festival’s closing concert, ‘The Gift of Youth’ on Saturday 16 March, Mozart’s C minor Mass – composed by one of music’s most famous former child prodigies – reminds us that creativity knows no boundaries of age, or social convention. It’s programmed alongside the world premiere of a violin concerto, titled Aloud, by another talented young composer – Daniel Kidane – performed by Julia Fischer.

On Sunday 3 March, young concertgoers became performers and co-creators in Clarice Assad’s É Gol!, as part of a football-themed FUNharmonics family concert. And tonight’s performance sees us throwing ourselves open to other artforms, in a daring multimedia collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor. His digitally enhanced choreographic storytelling will open a portal to a new expressive world, reimagining Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie through the use of human and digital intelligence, taking the form of a kinetic, sculptural video installation. Opening this

But The Music in You doesn’t stop there – ‘We must inspire, challenge, provoke and transform by celebrating communal creativity and removing barriers to participation’, says Elena. ‘That’s why we are talking about music in us, in all of us’. Join us and listen to that inner music this season – you might be excited at what you hear.

Browse and book now at lpo.org.uk/themusicinyou

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THE MUSIC IN YOU 2–16 MARCH 2024 lpo.org.uk/themusicinyou Haydn’s Creation

Dance Re-imagined

Seven Deadly Sins

Haydn The Creation

Tania León Raíces (Origins) (world premiere)* Ravel La valse Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie)**

Luís Tinoco Accordion Concerto (UK premiere) Weill The Seven Deadly Sins

Saturday 2 March | 7.30pm Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Sung in English

Edward Gardner conductor Louise Alder soprano Allan Clayton tenor Michael Mofidian bass-baritone London Philharmonic Choir Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE.

FUNharmonics Family Concert: Goal!

Sunday 3 March | 12 noon Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Charlotte Politi conductor Clarice Assad presenter Join the LPO for the European premiere of É Gol! by Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad, imagining a day in the life of legendary Brazilian footballer Marta Vieira da Silva as she gets ready for the big game.

Created for orchestra and audience, this piece offers the whole family a chance to perform with the LPO throughout, using your voices, breath and body percussion.

So grab your favourite football shirt and join us for this fun, participatory concert, culminating in a football match soundtrack finale!

Join in the free pre-concert foyer activities from 10am–12 noon (concert ticket-holders only).

Wednesday 6 March | 7.30pm Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Edward Gardner conductor Robert Murray tenor Flemish Radio Choir * Co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge. ** An original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor.

Wednesday 13 March 6.30pm & 8.15pm Battersea Arts Centre

Edward Gardner conductor João Barradas accordion Danielle de Niese Anna Ross Ramgobin Brother Callum Thorpe Mother Adam Gilbert Father Amar Muchhala Brother Dominic Dromgoole director * These performances are funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY.

Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge.

The Gift of Youth Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE.

6.15–6.45pm | Free pre-concert event Royal Festival Hall LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets discusses the evening’s programme with Tania León.

An Imagination Shared Tuesday 12 March | 6.30pm St John’s Church Waterloo

Alex Ho Breathe and Draw (for sinfonietta, two conductors and audience participation) Ryan Carter Concerto Molto Grosso (for audience and orchestra) (UK premiere) Ligeti Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes Charlotte Politi conductor* Luis Castillo-Briceño conductor* *Inaugural participants in the LPO Conducting Fellowship programme. This programme is generously supported by Patricia Haitink with additional support from Gini and Richard Gabbertas.

Saturday 16 March | 7.30pm Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall Mozart Overture, The Magic Flute Daniel Kidane Aloud, for violin and orchestra (world premiere)* Mozart Mass in C minor Edward Gardner conductor Julia Fischer violin Hera Hyesang Park soprano Elizabeth Watts soprano Pavel Kolgatin tenor Ashley Riches bass-baritone London Philharmonic Choir * Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Concert generously supported by Aline Foriel-Destezet.

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

© Mark Allan

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Our conductors

Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. With every performance we aim to bring wonder to the modern world and cement our position as a leading orchestra for the 21st century.

Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur.

In 2021 Edward Gardner became our 13th Principal Conductor, taking the Orchestra into its tenth decade.

Vladimir Jurowski became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his impact as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor and Tania León our Composer-in-Residence.

Our home is here at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour throughout the UK and internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. Each summer we’re resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, combining the magic of opera with Glyndebourne’s glorious setting in the Sussex countryside.

Soundtrack to key moments Everyone will have heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whether it’s playing the world’s National Anthems at every medal ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, our iconic recording with Pavarotti that made Nessun Dorma a global football anthem, or closing the flotilla at The Queen’s Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. And you’ll almost certainly have heard us on the soundtracks for major films including The Lord of the Rings.

Sharing the wonder You’ll find us online, on streaming platforms, on social media and through our broadcast partnership with Marquee TV. During the pandemic period we launched ‘LPOnline’: over 100 videos of performances, insights and introductions to playlists, which led to us being named runner-up in the Digital Classical Music Awards 2020.

During 2023/24 we’re once again be working with Marquee TV to broadcast selected live concerts, so you can share or relive the wonder from your own living room.

We also release live, studio and archive recordings on our own label, and are one of the world’s moststreamed orchestras, with over 15 million plays of our content each month.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Pieter Schoeman Leader

There’s nothing we love more than seeing the joy of children and families enjoying their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about equipping schools and teachers through schools’ concerts, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

Our LPO Junior Artists programme is leading the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers. We also recently launched the LPO Conducting Fellowship, supporting the development of outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession.

© Benjamin Ealovega

Next generations

Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002. He is also a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance.

Looking forward

Pieter has performed worldwide as a soloist and recitalist in such famous halls as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Moscow’s Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. As a chamber musician he regularly appears at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. His chamber music partners have included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Veronika Eberle, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Boris Garlitsky, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Martin Helmchen and Julia Fischer.

The centrepiece of our 2023/24 season is our spring 2024 festival The Music in You. Reflecting our adventurous spirit, the festival embraces all kinds of expression – dance, music theatre, and audience participation. We’ll collaborate with artists from across the creative spectrum, and give premieres by composers including Tania León, Julian Joseph, Daniel Kidane, Victoria Vita Polevá, Luís Tinoco and John Williams.

Rising stars making their debuts with us in 2023/24 include conductors Tianyi Lu, Oksana Lyniv, Jonathon Heyward and Natalia Ponomarchuk, accordionist João Barradas and organist Anna Lapwood. We also present the long-awaited conclusion of Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s Wagner Ring Cycle, Götterdämmerung, and, as well as our titled conductors Edward Gardner and Karina Canellakis, we welcome back classical stars including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Robin Ticciati, Christian Tetzlaff and Danielle de Niese.

Pieter has performed numerous times as a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Highlights have included an appearance as both conductor and soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, the Brahms Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and the Britten Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the LPO Label to great critical acclaim.

Pieter has appeared as Guest Leader with the BBC, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon and Baltimore symphony orchestras; the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

lpo.org.uk

Pieter’s chair in the LPO is generously supported by Neil Westreich.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Edward Gardner Principal Conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra

© Photographer London

In demand as a guest conductor, recent seasons have seen Edward make debuts with the Cleveland Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, Bavarian Radio Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony and Vienna Symphony orchestras; while returns have included engagements with the Chicago Symphony, Montreal Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. He also continued his longstanding collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where he was Principal Guest Conductor from 2010–16, and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whom he has conducted at both the First and Last Nights of the BBC Proms.

Music Director of English National Opera for eight years (2007–15), Edward has also built a strong relationship with New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where he has conducted productions of The Damnation of Faust, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier and Werther.

In London he made his Royal Opera House debut in 2019 in a new production of Káťa Kabanová, followed by Werther a season later. Elsewhere, he has conducted at the Bavarian State Opera, La Scala, Chicago Lyric Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Opéra National de Paris, and this season he will conduct a double-bill of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Poulenc's La voix humaine at Teatro di San Carlo.

Edward Gardner has been Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since September 2021.

He is also Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic, a position he will relinquish at the end of the 2023/24 season. From August 2024 he will undertake the Music Directorship of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, having been their Artistic Advisor since February 2022.

This season Edward conducts the LPO in ten concerts at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. In October 2023 he toured with the Orchestra to South Korea and Taiwan, and this season will also take them to major European cities including Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Bruges. As part of the LPO's cross-arts festival ‘The Music in You’ in March 2024, Edward will conduct concerts including Haydn’s The Creation; a reinvention of Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor; Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins; and Mozart’s Mass in C minor.

Other highlights with the Orchestra this season include Holst’s The Planets and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

A passionate supporter of young talent, Edward founded the Hallé Youth Orchestra in 2002 and regularly conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

He has a close relationship with The Juilliard School of Music and with the Royal Academy of Music, which appointed him its inaugural Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Chair in 2014.

Born in Gloucester in 1974, Edward was educated at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. He went on to become Assistant Conductor of the Hallé and Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera.

His many accolades include being named Royal Philharmonic Society Award Conductor of the Year (2008), an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera (2009), and an OBE for Services to Music in The Queen’s Birthday Honours (2012).

Edward opened the Bergen Philharmonic season in September with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. He completes his tenure as Chief Conductor at the closing of next summer's Bergen International Festival, conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. The orchestra will be joined by several choirs, including the Edvard Grieg Kor, of which Edward is the Principal Conductor.

As Artistic Advisor of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, this season Edward will conduct a triple-bill of Schumann’s Frauen-Liebe und Leben, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy. Future plans with the company include a Wagner Ring Cycle commencing in spring 2026.

Edward Gardner’s position at the LPO is generously supported by Aud Jebsen.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography

Brothers). McGregor choreographed the highly anticipated ABBA Voyage concert which premiered in London in May 2022.

McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

© Pål Hansen

In 2011 Wayne McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance, and in 2021 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne.

Born in 1970, Wayne McGregor CBE is a multiaward-winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potentials, his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines and technological interventions.

The startling and multi-dimensional works resulting from these interactions have ensured McGregor’s position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for over 30 years.

He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, encompassing creative collaborations in dance, film, music, visual art, fashion, technology and science; a touring company of dancers: Company Wayne McGregor; and learning and research programmes.

Wayne McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, and Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale. He is regularly commissioned by, and has works in the repertoires of, the most important dance companies around the world including Paris Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and Australian Ballet.

He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court, Donmar), opera (La Scala/Royal Opera, ENO), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them 1 ,2, 3, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots), and music videos (Radiohead, The Chemical

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Company Wayne McGregor

Ben Cullen Williams sculpture design, film creation & AI development

original dance

Multi-award-winning choreographer and director Wayne McGregor CBE founded his own company in 1993 as a creative engine for his pioneering projects and his life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. Company Wayne McGregor remains the crucible of his creative energy, where his most experimental work is realised.

Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London. With over 30 works created by McGregor, the company has toured to more than 50 countries, visiting some of the world’s most prestigious theatres, as well as creating site-specific performances at the Venice Biennale Danza, Frieze London, Roundhouse, Barbican Curve and Secret Cinema, and performing at the Brits, New York and London Fashion Weeks, and the BBC Proms.

Ben Cullen Williams is a London-based artist whose practice consists of sculptures, installations, photography and video. In his work, Williams explores humankind’s relationship to the world in a rapidly changing environment; he focuses on the intersection between space, technology and landscape. Having initially studied architecture prior to studying sculpture, his practice is underpinned by a longstanding investigation into how we live, and how those environments shape us.

Company Wayne McGregor sits within Studio Wayne McGregor, the organisation that supports the breadth of McGregor’s artistic collaborations in dance, visual arts, film, theatre, opera, fashion and music video; a portfolio of international commissions; highly specialised creative learning programmes for individuals and communities; artist development initiatives; and collaborative research projects across the interface of the arts with science, technology and academic research.

His work has been shown internationally in a range of spaces, galleries and environments, as well as collaborating with a range of different disciplines and fields. He has collaborated with Wayne McGregor, Marina Abramović, Gaika, Polar Explorer Robert Swan, and Google Arts & Culture and MIT. His projects have won and been listed for a number of awards including a D&AD Yellow Pencil, a RIBA Award and an Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2021 he represented Antarctica at the London Design Biennale.

Wayne McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, where his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language.

He is Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale, Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, and a member of the King’s College London Circle of Cultural Fellows.

Ben Cullen Williams lectures internationally and has written for a number of publications. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Art. He is currently an associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts, London.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir)

Robert Murray tenor

Musical Director: Bart Van Reyn The Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir) was founded in 1937 by the Belgian public broadcaster of the day. Today, the choir is renowned for vocal music in Flanders and Europe, and is counted among the top ensembles both at home and abroad. This is their first collaboration with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

© Gerard Collet

The young Belgian conductor Bart Van Reyn is Musical Director of the Radiokoor. A shared passion for Baroque and contemporary repertoire, the belief that the voice is the ultimate interpreter of our emotions, and the commitment to make our vocal heritage accessible to singers and audiences alike are what binds the ensemble together.

Based in Studio 1 in Flagey (Brussels), the 32 singers of the Vlaams Radiokoor are working on a musical project built on three major pillars. First and foremost, the Vocal Fabric productions – the laboratory of the Radiokoor.

Vocal Fabric organises concerts that test the boundaries of vocal music and are challenging, quirky and non-conformist. With great hospitality and an intense experience as the golden thread, they bring together the people on stage and those in the hall: vocal harmony is proof that people are more magnificent together than alone.

Robert Murray has performed principal roles with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Hamburg State Opera; English, Welsh and Bergen national operas; Norwegian Opera; Beijing Music Festival; Venice Biennale; and the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals.

In September 2022 he sang Klaus the Fool in Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the LPO under Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall. He also sang the role of Mark in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage under Gardner in September 2021, which was later released on the LPO Label, winning a Gramophone Award.

Robert also appears regularly in concert with the London Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Philharmonia and Mahler Chamber orchestras; the Handel & Haydn Society; and the Boston Philharmonic and Seattle Symphony orchestras, with conductors such as Harry Christophers, Paul McCreesh and Sir Simon Rattle. Concert performances this season include the title role in La damnation de Faust with the RTVE Symphony Orchestra Madrid, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, and Tippett’s New Year with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins.

In addition, the choir works regularly with renowned instrumental ensembles from Belgium and abroad, such as the Brussels Philharmonic, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Il Gardellino, I SOLISTI, Les Siècles, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In this way, the Radiokoor has gradually built up its presence on various international stages.

Lastly, the Vlaams Radiokoor is and remains a living portal for repertoire, knowledge, experience and voices.

It makes our vocal heritage accessible to singers and the audience, while also investing in the creation of new vocal works. The choir thus shares its programme, technique and expertise with music lovers, amateurs and professionals.

Recent highlights include debut appearances with the Teatro alla Scala Milan (Thomas Adès’s The Tempest), Theater an der Wien (Belshazzar) and Bavarian State Opera (Peter Grimes); role debuts as Florestan in Fidelio (Irish National Opera) and the title role in Mitridate (Garsington Opera); and return appearances with ENO (Gloriana) and The Royal Opera (Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground).

The Vlaams Radiokoor retains its unique status as a radio choir: a great many concert productions are recorded, and hence the choir has built up a unique collection of live recordings. The collection is constantly supplemented with a selection of studio recordings, thus preserving its vocal heritage for the future.

Robert Murray graduated from the University of Newcastle and the Royal College of Music, and was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House.

The Vlaams Radiokoor is an institution of the Flemish Community.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Programme notes Tania León

LPO Composer-in-Residence | born 1943

Raíces (Origins) (world premiere)

The title of this work is a Spanish word that means ‘roots’, or ‘origins’. I prefer ‘origins’, because it’s more general. It’s also a word I’ve used before as a title, in my Origines for brass and percussion, which I wrote in 2012.

In the case of this new piece, the origins are partly mine and therefore very mixed, for, like many people in Cuba, where I come from, I have quite a lot in my heritage: Spanish, Cuban, Chinese and French. Like a jambalaya.

That’s why I’m not threatened by any culture; in fact, I’m very curious, and I want to learn. Living now in the United States, there’s a lot I have absorbed, to the point that when I go back to Cuba they think I’m from Arizona!

the transition at the end, where the piano and percussion continue but in the strings, especially the basses, you immediately recognise a Cuban style of syncopation. And then it totally disappears and goes into the second section.

This is really for the woodwinds, under the heading ‘Enchanted’ ... It’s like a forest. And then the brass come in, like the wind, that pushes things. I didn’t use the trumpets so much here, because I was reserving them for the finale. It’s like a walk through a forest. It always impressed me tremendously, something I heard as a child, that Beethoven used to walk through the forest to gain inspiration. Whenever I have the opportunity, I do that. Also, I owed a lot to Hans Werner Henze, and when we first met, and were discussing how we composed, we did so as we walked through a forest. He invited me to come and see him in Castel Gandolfo. He sent me a fax, and I thought it was a prank until I telephoned him.

We spoke in Spanish, and he asked me to be on the jury at his Munich Biennale in 1992. From then on he became like a father to me in Europe.

Every time I read a book by Gabriel García Márquez it’s like going back home to my childhood. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood and there was always a tapestry of sound in the background; somebody always had a radio on. Also, in Cuba, and indeed all over Latin America, we have a very strong dance element in our culture, and that’s how I grew up: dancing – Cuban, Spanish, even Scottish dancing. You’ll certainly hear dancing in this piece. And then there’s a touch of Latin America in the orchestra, including an instrument that I’m using for the first time, which is a chime made from animal nails. It’s found in various areas of Peru and Colombia.

The last part of the piece is very upbeat. It’s a conversation between Latin American influences and jazz influences. It’s a way of questioning everything that I have become. And it’s a way of leaving the stage.

The piece is in three main sections, but first of all there’s a short introduction, which I’ve marked ‘Calm’. It’s scored for the strings, playing harmonics, and it has an internal character. It’s a state I try to find in myself: contemplative. Even when the music is much more active, this contemplation is going on behind the scenes. Towards the end of the second section it comes right forward.

Tania León From a conversation with Paul Griffiths, February 2024

Raíces was co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge.

Following tonight’s world premiere, the LPO and Edward Gardner will give the work’s second performance, at the Concertgebouw Brugge on 9 March.

When the introduction has come to a stop there’s a pause and then the big first section comes in, with the marking ‘Jovial’. It’s a dance-inspired movement that explodes. This is where I really went ethnic, especially in

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Tania León LPO Composer-in-Residence

In September 2023 Tania León became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence for two seasons. As well as presenting exciting new commissions and performances of her earlier works, during her time with us Tania will continue her lifelong advocacy for the music of living composers as mentor to our LPO Young Composers.

In December 2022 Tania León received a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor, awarded annually to figures in the performing arts for their contributions to American culture. In addition, she won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Stride (given its UK premiere by the LPO on 31 March 2023), and she was recently announced as winner of the 2023 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition and received SGAE’s XIX Premio de la Música Iberoamericana Tomás Luis de Victoria 2023.

© Gail Hadani

Having studied piano in her native Cuba since the age of four and earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music (plus a certification in accounting), Tania left Cuba for the United States in 1967. She settled in New York City, where she received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees again, this time from New York University, and in 1969 staked her place in New York’s cultural scene as a founding member and music director of Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem. Five years later she instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert series. She was New Music Advisor at the New York Philharmonic from 1993–97, and from 1994–2001 she served as Latin American music advisor for the American Composers Orchestra. She is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, dedicated to empowering living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.

Tania León conducts

LPO Debut Sounds 2024: Sound in Motion Thursday 27 June 2024 | 8pm Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall Five world premieres by members of the LPO’s Young Composers programme, performed by an ensemble of LPO musicians and Foyle Future Firsts, with live choreography by Trinity Laban postgraduates. The performance will be artistically directed and conducted by Composer-inResidence and Composer Mentor Tania León.

On 25 October 2023 the LPO and Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis gave the UK premiere of Tania León’s orchestral work Horizons at the Royal Festival Hall. Last month her work Ácana featured in a pre-concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall by an ensemble of LPO members, Foyle Future Firsts and students from the Royal Academy of Music, under Edward Gardner.

Tickets will go on sale later in the spring: find out more at lpo.org.uk/youngcomposers The LPO Young Composers programme 2023/24 is being delivered in collaboration with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. The programme is generously supported by Allianz Musical Insurance, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Vaughan Williams Foundation and The Marchus Trust.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Programme notes Maurice Ravel 1875–1937

La valse 1919/20

Ravel composed La valse in 1919 and 1920 to be danced

by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company, and was greatly disheartened by the impresario’s rejection of it as unsuitable for the stage. It was first performed as a concert piece, and was never staged as a ballet in Ravel’s lifetime. But when he published it, he retained its subtitle of ‘choreographic poem’; and he printed as an introduction to the score his scenario for the opening minutes of the work: ‘Swirling clouds allow glimpses, through occasional rifts, of waltzing couples. The clouds gradually disperse, revealing a whirling mass of people in an immense ballroom. The stage lightens progressively ... An Imperial Court, around 1855.’

inexorability of the main sequence of waltzes; and it reaches a culmination in the ‘over-the-top’ mechanistic frenzy of the closing pages.

Programme note © Anthony Burton

It is clear from this that Ravel’s intention was to reproduce, in his own musical language and in brilliant orchestral colours, the Viennese waltzes of the Strauss family, which he greatly admired. The work even has the formal outline of a Strauss waltz, with an introduction, a series of dances, and a coda. But inevitably, looking back at the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian empire from just after the end of a ruinous European war, the piece could hardly be a simple celebration. Ravel himself said to a friend that he had intended it ‘as a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic and fateful whirl’ (un tournoiement fantastique et fatal).

And there is indeed something decidedly dark, and ultimately even savage, in La valse. It manifests itself in the mysterious introduction, with its shadowy string tremolos and sinister bassoons, and its uneasy superimposition of 2/2 time on the basic mouvement de Valse viennoise; it is heightened by the nightmarish

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

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Programme notes Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie) Edward Gardner conductor Generously supported by Aud Jebsen

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography Ben Cullen Williams sculpture design, film creation & AI development Company Wayne McGregor original dance (Rebecca Bassett-Graham, Jordan James Bridge & Jasiah Marshall) Karol Szymanowski music Robert Murray tenor Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir) London Philharmonic Orchestra Sculpture Technical design Rob Ashworth Fabrication Fabrication Facility Structural engineer CCS-Consulting Motor design Wahlberg Motion Design

Film Additional AI generation Creative Technologist: Bryce Cronkite-Ratcliff Drone footage Camera Operator: Oliver Wheeldon Live action dance DOP: Ricky Patel Focus Puller: Anıl Duru Gaffer: Arthur Miller CGI and MOCAP Animator: Yibing He

Szymanowski: Harnasie Karol Szymanowski: Harnasie, Ballet-pantomime Op. 55 (1923/1931) Libretto by Jerzy Rytard & Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz © by Max Eschig (Universal Music Publishing Group, Classics & Screen) By arrangement with G. Ricordi & Co. (London) Ltd. Surtitles created and operated by Andrew Kingsmill English translation of Harnasie: Jagna Wright, courtesy Chandos Records*

World premiere 26 February 2024: Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner (conductor), NOSPR, Katowice, Poland Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams’s A Body for Harnasie is an original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge. *Despite every effort, we have proved unable to reach the estate of the translator, and should be grateful to hear from any individuals able to put us in contact with them so we may agree reasonable terms for the right to reproduce their text.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Wayne McGregor on A Body for Harnasie

‘This scenario is a very general outline, within which the director and ballet-master may change many details and enrich the content with new episodes and ideas. In repudiating a too rigorous use of folk customs and dances, the author wishes to avoid confining the director’s imagination in this respect, for he knows well that neither the composer nor the author of the scenario can foresee all the possibilities that may arise in the imagination of a talented director. This is especially true of such a ballet as Harnasie, which does not claim any preconceived ideas but is an unassuming picture drawn from the life of country-folk; facts do not play an essential role in it and should rather be adjusted to the possibilities offered by the stage than vice versa: the staging should not be subordinated to facts rigorously imposed by the author.’

– Karol Szymanowski

In approaching the choreographic potential for Harnasie we have explored several creative avenues which parse the score into atoms of physical experience, emotion and process. Explicitly, we are experimenting with the very fundamentals of dance: Body–Time–Space, to re-articulate them in a fresh re-combinatory form. Live dance, new photographic and film material of the Tatra mountains, and an emergent AI trained on hours of mountain footage, mixed with motion data from the newly created dances, innovative our visual language and develop unique movement themes which are assembled into original multi-narratives for the work. The music is played live – A Body For Harnasie responds in colour, light, motion, image, and fluid sculpture.

Szymanowski was a composer and an artist who understood and valued transformations. Indeed, instead of writing a libretto for Harnasie that was fixed in aspic, Szymanowski wanted new interpretations of the work to be in constant evolution, morphed and moulded in the times that they were newly conceived.

Szymanowski knew for his art to live for future generations, one had to be open to new forms of expression and collaboration – forms not yet invented when his musical work originated. Liveness is a present tense form.

New forms of ‘dance’ are core to this work, but the process of making the live dance for film and motion capture is in some ways the most conventional.

Every element of the work has originated from this analogue live dance – a trio for two males and a female mirroring, or at least referencing, the original cast of Szymanowski protagonists. The studio process is a combination of body-to-body transmission, teaching dance phrases, working with the dancers as architectural entities to think with and a series of improvisatory tasks where the dancers have the freedom to generate language within outlined constraints. This dance language is then edited, refined, and composed in an order that corresponds with specific sections of the score. This danced trio is filmed, multi-cam and in progressive close-ups, and the motion data is also captured. During this process dancers are also filmed performing their parts individually, and instructed with new dance vocabulary in the moment. By the end of filming, we have a bank of movement material, a fully composed trio, and a series of physical fragments – all the movement data for each of these choreographic objects is motion captured.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

articulating the motion of the kinetic sculpture adds the final motion element to the work to realise A Body for Harnasie.

When training the AI on the live dance fragments and coherent phrases, new original dance moves and kinetic phrases are produced – the AI and the human in the mutual mix of creative action. Motion data from the dance is grafted onto the still drone images of the mountains, prompting a kind of weird motion.

The drone footage of the mountains is injected into the dance and perturbs its flow to make unusual patterns, and the ‘values’ of the motion capture data are transplanted onto spatial images to create unexpected variations. The ‘danced vocabulary’ is also re-formed as a result and provides cues for the next phrase of movement to be produced.

There is no doubt that Harnasie was influenced in part

by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Harnasie shares many similarities to that iconic score, not least in the propulsive rhythms, the folkloric attitudes and the incredible orchestral range. It was also written and conceived as a ballet score – dance-ready and in the spirit of the great Diaghilev collaborations meant to be a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. A Body For Harnasie attempts to re-frame this epic musical work for our times, to create a choreographic instrument that invites a new kind of sculptural dance between artist and orchestra, motion and AI – all in constant transformation. We hope Szymanowski would have been thrilled and somewhat surprised. Diaghilev too!

The traditional conventions of what is dance and what is space collapses as a new continuum of time emerges. Dance, landscape and AI blend seamlessly – a choreographic blur. The final phase of the project takes the various kinetic language streams and works them into (and in between) the score – this compositional task is directed by analysis of the score and informs the unconventional playback of themes and images onto the kinetic sculpture. Testing and

Images courtesy Studio Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams

Wayne McGregor, 2024

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Karol Szymanowski 1882–1937

Harnasie 1923–31

Synopsis The ballet's story is very simple: preparing for her wedding, not very happy in love, a highland girl falls in love with a Harnaś – a highland robber, who reciprocates her love. However, she decides to do her duty and go on with the marriage, having given her word. The colourful, ritual wedding celebration is interrupted by the sudden raid of a group of highland robbers who abduct the bride.

Tableau I: Na hali (In the Mountain Pasture) 1. Redyk (Wiosenne wyjście stąd na halę) (Spring departure for the mountain pastures) 2. Zaloty (Courtship) 3. Marsz zbójnicki (Robbers’ March) 4. Harnaś i dziewczyna (Harnaś and the Girl) 5. Taniec zbójnicki. Finał (Robbers’ Dance. Finale)

Tableau II: W karczmie (In the Inn) 6a. Wesele (Wedding) 6b. Cepiny (Capping the Bride) 6c. Pieśń siuhajów (Song of the Siuhaje) 7. Taniec góralski (Góral Dance) 8. Napad harnasiów. Taniec. Porwanie młodej (Raid of the Harnasie. Dance. Abduction of the Bride) 9. Epilogue It fell largely to Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) to articulate what Polish music might be after 1918.

Certainly, he had his critics, who were reactionary in their tastes. Szymanowski was no revolutionary – indeed, his artistic interests too were on the conservative side, but he had views on how Poland might regain a place in the wider discourse of European music by asserting its musical independence.

The First World War devastated much of Europe, tearing apart its social and political fabric. In the case of Poland, the changes were particularly dramatic because it regained its independence in 1918 after over a century of occupation and subjugation by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The country’s borders were redrawn, and it had to reconcile three different currencies and education systems and many other fundamental aspects of its divided self. Small wonder, then, that the early years of the Polish nation state were turbulent (three uprisings in Silesia, war with the new Soviet Union to the east). While dealing with the very real problems of daily existence, Polish creative artists also tried to work out their own role in shaping the new Poland.

In the early 1920s, Szymanowski wrote a number of articles in which he distanced himself, and Poland, from the Austro-German cultural hegemony to which he had subscribed as a young composer. Instead, he held up Chopin as a model of musical independence, partly, but by no means wholly, because of the ethnicity of

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Karol Szymanowski, 1936, France

his predecessor’s output. Without totally abandoning certain aspects of the music of his first period, and still maintaining the non-Germanic sensuality which had characterised his music since 1911 (melding Arabic and Greek culture with musical impulses from France), Szymanowski began to explore his native heritage more assiduously.

Photo by Boris Lipnitzki, courtesy of NOSPR, Katowice

In 1921 he composed a short cycle of songs, Słopiewnie (‘Wordsongs’), which introduced new scalic elements and showed an affinity with folk-related works by Stravinsky, such as Les Noces (premiered in 1923).

In 1925, Szymanowski responded to one of Chopin’s favourite genres with his Twenty Mazurkas for piano.

This was followed in 1927 by the Second String Quartet, which was imbued with folk idioms from the Polish Tatra mountains.

Harnasie, the most colourful work from this final period of Szymanowski’s output, takes its name from the legendary robbers of the Tatra mountains. He worked on it for eight years (1923–31) and its two main tableaux were given concert performances in Poland in 1929 and 1931 respectively, while the stage premiere did not take place until 1935, in Prague.

During its composition, Szymanowski immersed himself in the life and culture of the Podhale region of the Tatra mountains. He lived in the villa ‘Atma’, in the main town of the region, Zakopane, and was invigorated by the sheer exuberance of the local góral (highlander) musical tradition. As a result, Harnasie has a rawness and energy that go beyond those of the other folkrelated works of his third period.

Recommended recordings of tonight’s works

by Laurie Watt Ravel: La valse Les Siècles | François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi)

Many people were involved in encouraging Szymanowski to compose a góral ‘frolic’ in music.

These initially included the folk fiddler Bartek Obrochta (1850–1926) and a cousin of Szymanowski, and the writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980; he had been involved in the libretto for the opera Król Roger), but the two most closely involved in the early stages were the poet Jerzy Rytard (1899–1970) and his wife, Helena Roj (1899–1955; Szymanowski was best man at their folk-infused wedding in 1923). Roj, who came from near Zakopane, sang highlander songs for Szymanowski and Rytard drafted the first scenario, since lost. Although the composer did proffer his ideas on the details of the final scenario, he did not wish to confine the imagination of future directors and left Harnasie open to new interpretations, as in tonight’s performance.

Szymanowski: Harnasie (original ballet) BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Edward Gardner (Chandos)

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Programme note © Adrian Thomas

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Adam Mickiewicz Institute is a national cultural institution, whose goal is to build a lasting interest in Polish culture around the world. The institute works with foreign partners and initiates international cultural dialogue in line with the goals and aims of Polish foreign policy. The institute has put on cultural projects in 70 countries on 6 continents, including Great Britain, France, Israel, Germany, Turkey, USA, Canada, Australia, Morocco, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, as well as in China, Japan and Korea. The highest quality of the Institute’s projects is confirmed by awards at international exhibitions and festivals. In 2023, the Polish Pavilion “Poetics of Necessity” organised by AMI received a medal at the London Design Biennale.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

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 CBE Emmanuel & Barrie Roman The Underwood Trust

Welser-Möst Circle William & Alex de Winton John Ireland Charitable Trust The Tsukanov Family Foundation Neil Westreich

Tennstedt Circle Valentina & Dmitry Aksenov Richard Buxton The Candide Trust Michael & Elena Kroupeev Kirby Laing Foundation Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Alexey & Anastasia Reznikovich Sir Simon Robey Bianca & Stuart Roden Simon & Vero Turner The late Mr K Twyman

Solti Patrons Ageas John & Manon Antoniazzi Gabor Beyer, through BTO Management Consulting AG Jon Claydon Mrs Mina Goodman & Miss Suzanne Goodman Roddy & April Gow The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust Mr James R.D. Korner Christoph Ladanyi & Dr Sophia Ladanyi-Czernin Robert Markwick & Kasia Robinski The Maurice Marks Charitable Trust

Mr Paris Natar The Rothschild Foundation Tom & Phillis Sharpe The Viney Family

Haitink Patrons Mark & Elizabeth Adams Dr Christopher Aldren Mrs Pauline Baumgartner Lady Jane Berrill Mr Frederick Brittenden David & Yi Yao Buckley Mr Clive Butler Gill & Garf Collins Mr John H Cook Mr Alistair Corbett Bruno De Kegel Georgy Djaparidze David Ellen Christopher Fraser OBE David & Victoria Graham Fuller Goldman Sachs International Mr Gavin Graham Moya Greene Mrs Dorothy Hambleton Tony & Susie Hayes Malcolm Herring Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle Mrs Philip Kan Rehmet Kassim-Lakha de Morixe Rose & Dudley Leigh Lady Roslyn Marion Lyons Miss Jeanette Martin Duncan Matthews KC Diana & Allan Morgenthau Charitable Trust Dr Karen Morton Mr Roger Phillimore Ruth Rattenbury The Reed Foundation The Rind Foundation Sir Bernard Rix David Ross & Line Forestier (Canada)

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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 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 Querée The Rosalyn & Nicholas Springer Charitable Trust Timothy Walker CBE AM Christopher Williams Peter Wilson Smith Mr Anthony Yolland and all other donors who wish to remain anonymous

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Thank you We are extremely grateful to all donors who have given generously to the LPO over the past year.

Your generosity helps maintain the breadth and depth of the LPO’s activities, as well as supporting the Orchestra both on and off the concert platform.

Artistic Director’s Circle

The American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Anonymous donors Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet Aud Jebsen In memory of Mrs Rita Reay Sir Simon & Lady Robey CBE

Orchestra Circle

William & Alex de Winton Edward Gardner & Sara Övinge Patricia Haitink Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle Mr & Mrs Philip Kan Neil Westreich

Principal Associates

An anonymous donor Richard Buxton Gill & Garf Collins In memory of Brenda Lyndoe Casbon In memory of Ann Marguerite Collins Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave George Ramishvili The Tsukanov Family Mr Florian Wunderlich

Associates

Mrs Irina Andreeva In memory of Len & Edna Beech Steven M. Berzin Sir Nigel Boardman & Prof. Lynda Gratton The Candide Trust John & Sam Dawson HSH Dr Donatus, Prince of Hohenzollern Stuart & Bianca Roden In memory of Hazel Amy Smith

Gold Patrons

David & Yi Buckley In memory of Allner Mavis Channing Sonja Drexler Peter & Fiona Espenhahn Mr B C Fairhall Hamish & Sophie Forsyth Virginia Gabbertas MBE Jenny & Duncan Goldie-Scot Mr Roger Greenwood

Rose & Dudley Leigh Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE JP RAF Drs Frank & Gek Lim Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Mr Gordon McNair Andrew T Mills Denis & Yulia Nagy Andrew Neill Jamie Njoku-Goodwin Peter & Lucy Noble Oliver & Josie Ogg Mr Stephen Olton Simon & Lucy Owen-Johnstone Andrew & Cindy Peck Mr Roger Phillimore Mr Michael Posen Saskia Roberts John Romeo Priscylla Shaw Mr & Mrs John C Tucker Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Karina Varivoda Grenville & Krysia Williams Joanna Williams

Malcolm Herring Julian & Gill Simmonds Eric Tomsett The Viney Family Guy & Utti Whittaker

Silver Patrons

Dame Colette Bowe David Burke & Valerie Graham Clive & Helena Butler Cameron & Kathryn Doley Ulrike & Benno Engelmann Dmitry & Ekaterina Gursky The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust John & Angela Kessler Mrs Elena & Mr Oleg Kolobova Mrs Elizabeth Meshkvicheva Mikhail Noskov & Vasilina Bindley Tom & Phillis Sharpe Mr Joe Topley & Ms Tracey Countryman Andrew & Rosemary Tusa Jenny Watson CBE Laurence Watt

Principal Supporters

Bronze Patrons

Anonymous donors Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle Mr John D Barnard Roger & Clare Barron Dr Anthony Buckland Dr Simona Cicero & Mr Mario Altieri Mr Alistair Corbett Guy Davies David Devons Igor & Lyuba Galkin Prof. Erol & Mrs Deniz Gelenbe In memory of Enid Gofton Alexander Greaves Prof. Emeritus John Gruzelier Michael & Christine Henry Mrs Maureen Hooft-Graafland Per Jonsson Mr Ian Kapur Ms Elena Lojevsky Dr Peter Mace Pippa Mistry-Norman Miss Rebecca Murray Mrs Terry Neale John Nickson & Simon Rew Mr James Pickford Filippo Poli Mr Robert Ross Martin & Cheryl Southgate Mr & Mrs G Stein

Anonymous donors Chris Aldren Michael Allen Mrs A Beare Mr Anthony Blaiklock Lorna & Christopher Bown Mr Bernard Bradbury Simon Burke & Rupert King Desmond & Ruth Cecil Mr John H Cook Deborah Dolce Ms Elena Dubinets David Ellen Cristina & Malcolm Fallen Christopher Fraser OBE Mr Daniel Goldstein David & Jane Gosman Mr Gavin Graham Lord & Lady Hall Mrs Dorothy Hambleton Iain & Alicia Hasnip Eugene & Allison Hayes J Douglas Home Molly Jackson Mrs Farrah Jamal Mr & Mrs Jan Mr & Mrs Ralph Kanza Mr Peter King Jamie & Julia Korner

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Mr Rodney Whittaker Christopher Williams

Supporters

Anonymous donors Mr Francesco Andronio Julian & Annette Armstrong Mr Philip Bathard-Smith Emily Benn Mr Julien Chilcott-Monk Alison Clarke & Leo Pilkington Mr Peter Coe Mr Joshua Coger Miss Tessa Cowie Caroline Cox-Johnson Mr Simon Edelsten Will Gold Mr Stephen Goldring Mr & Mrs Graham & Jean Pugh In memory of Derek Gray Mr Geordie Greig Mr Peter Imhof The Jackman Family Mr David MacFarlane Paul & Suzanne McKeown Nick Merrifield Simon & Fiona Mortimore Dame Jane Newell DBE Mr David Peters Nicky Small Mr Brian Smith Mr Michael Timinis Mr & Mrs Anthony Trahar Tony & Hilary Vines Dr June Wakefield Mr John Weekes Mr Roger Woodhouse Mr C D Yates

Hon. Benefactor Elliott Bernerd

Hon. Life Members Alfonso Aijón Kenneth Goode Carol Colburn Grigor CBE Pehr G Gyllenhammar Robert Hill Keith Millar Victoria Robey CBE Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE Timothy Walker CBE AM Laurence Watt

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

Thank you

Thomas Beecham Group Members

Trusts and Foundations

German-British Chamber of Industry & Commerce Lazard Natixis Corporate Investment Banking Walpole

ABO Trust The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust BlueSpark Foundation The Boltini Trust Borrows Charitable Trust Cockayne – Grants for the Arts The London Community Foundation Dunard Fund Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Foyle Foundation Garrick Charitable Trust The Golsoncott Foundation Idlewild Trust Institute Adam Mickiewicz John Coates Charitable Trust John Horniman’s Children’s Trust John Thaw Foundation Kirby Laing Foundation The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music The Lennox Hannay Charitable Trust Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust Lucille Graham Trust The Marchus Trust PRS Foundation The R K Charitable Trust The Radcliffe Trust Rivers Foundation Rothschild Foundation Scops Arts Trust TIOC Foundation The Thriplow Charitable Trust Vaughan Williams Foundation The Victoria Wood Foundation The Viney Family

Preferred Partners

and all others who wish to remain anonymous.

David & Yi Buckley Gill & Garf Collins William & Alex de Winton Sonja Drexler Mr B C Fairhall The Friends of the LPO Roger Greenwood Dr Barry Grimaldi Mr & Mrs Philip Kan John & Angela Kessler Sir Simon Robey Victoria Robey CBE Bianca & Stuart Roden Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp Julian & Gill Simmonds Eric Tomsett Neil Westreich Guy & Utti Whittaker

Corporate Donor Barclays

LPO Corporate Circle Principal

Bloomberg Carter-Ruck Solicitors French Chamber of Commerce Ryze Power

Tutti

Board of the American Friends of the LPO We are grateful to the Board of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who assist with fundraising for our activities in the United States of America: Simon Freakley Chairman Kara Boyle Jon Carter Jay Goffman Alexandra Jupin Natalie Pray MBE Damien Vanderwilt Marc Wassermann Elizabeth Winter Catherine Høgel Hon. Director Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP

LPO International Board of Governors Natasha Tsukanova Co-Chair Martin Höhmann Co-Chair Mrs Irina Andreeva Steven M. Berzin Shashank Bhagat HSH Dr Donatus, Prince of Hohenzollern Aline Foriel-Destezet Irina Gofman Olivia Ma George Ramishvili Sophie Schÿler-Thierry Florian Wunderlich

Jeroboams Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd Neal’s Yard OneWelbeck Sipsmith Steinway

In-kind Sponsor Google Inc

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London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024 • Dance Re-imagined

London Philharmonic Orchestra Administration Board of Directors Dr Catherine C. Høgel Chair Nigel Boardman Vice-Chair Martin Höhmann* President Mark Vines* Vice-President Emily Benn Kate Birchall* David Burke Michelle Crowe Hernandez Deborah Dolce Elena Dubinets Tanya Joseph Hugh Kluger* Katherine Leek* Minn Majoe* Tania Mazzetti* Jamie Njoku-Goodwin Neil Westreich Simon Freakley (Ex officio – Chairman of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) *Player-Director

Advisory Council

Roger Barron Chairman Christopher Aldren Richard Brass Helen Brocklebank YolanDa Brown OBE David Buckley Simon Burke Simon Callow CBE Desmond Cecil CMG Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Andrew Davenport Guillaume Descottes Cameron Doley Lena Fankhauser Christopher Fraser OBE Jenny Goldie-Scot Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Marianna Hay MBE Nicholas Hely-Hutchinson DL Amanda Hill Dr Catherine C. Høgel Martin Höhmann Rehmet Kassim-Lakha Jamie Korner Geoff Mann Andrew Neill Nadya Powell Sir Bernard Rix Victoria Robey CBE Baroness Shackleton Thomas Sharpe KC Julian Simmonds Barry Smith Martin Southgate

Chris Viney Laurence Watt Elizabeth Winter

Finance

General Administration

Dayse Guilherme Finance Manager

Frances Slack Finance Director

Elena Dubinets Artistic Director

Jean-Paul Ramotar Finance and IT Officer

David Burke Chief Executive Chantelle Vircavs PA to the Executive and Employee Relations Manager

Education and Community Talia Lash Education and Community Director

Concert Management

Lowri Davies Eleanor Jones Education and Community Project Managers

Roanna Gibson Concerts and Planning Director Graham Wood Concerts and Recordings Manager

Hannah Smith Education and Community Co-ordinator

Maddy Clarke Tours Manager

Claudia Clarkson Regional Partnerships Manager

Madeleine Ridout Glyndebourne and Projects Manager

Rachel Williams Publications Manager Gavin Miller Sales and Ticketing Manager Ruth Haines Press and PR Manager Hayley Kim Residencies and Projects Marketing Manager Greg Felton Digital Creative Alicia Hartley Digital and Marketing Co-ordinator Isobel Jones Marketing Assistant

Archives Philip Stuart Discographer Gillian Pole Recordings Archive

Professional Services

Alison Jones Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator

Development

Charles Russell Speechlys Solicitors

Robert Winup Concerts and Tours Assistant

Laura Willis Development Director

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors

Rosie Morden Individual Giving Manager

Dr Barry Grimaldi Honorary Doctor

Siân Jenkins Corporate Relations Manager

Mr Chris Aldren Honorary ENT Surgeon

Anna Quillin Trusts and Foundations Manager

Mr Simon Owen-Johnstone Hon. Orthopaedic Surgeon

Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant Andrew Chenery Orchestra Personnel Manager Sarah Thomas Martin Sargeson Librarians

Katurah Morrish Development Events Manager

Laura Kitson Stage and Operations Manager

Eleanor Conroy Al Levin Development Co-ordinators

Stephen O’Flaherty Deputy Operations Manager

Nick Jackman Campaigns and Projects Director

Benjamin Wakley Assistant Stage Manager Felix Lo Orchestra and Auditions Manager

Kirstin Peltonen Development Associate

Marketing Kath Trout Marketing and Communications Director Sophie Harvey Marketing Manager

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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 Music in You design & 2023/24 season identity JMG Studio Printer John Good Ltd