Schnittke programme - LPO

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 1

The London Philharmonic Orchestra presents

ALFRED SCHNITTKE VLADIMIR JUROWSKI FES TIVAL ARTIS TIC DIRECTOR

15 November to 28 November 2009 Southbank Centre and Royal College of Music

CONTENTS 2 3 4 6 9 10 12 15 18 19 24 27 30 36 37 38 39 40

Administration Vladimir Jurowski introduces the Schnittke Festival Programme of Events Alexander Ivashkin on Schnittke BBC / Southbank Centre 15 November – Royal College of Music 18 November – Royal Festival Hall 19 November – Royal College of Music 21 November – Deptford Town Hall / International Symposium 22 November – Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room / In the Labyrinth of Alfred Schnittke 25 November – Royal Festival Hall 28 November – Royal Festival Hall Performers’ biographies London Philharmonic Orchestra Foyle Future Firsts Royal College of Music Chamber and Symphony Orchestras London Philharmonic Orchestra Supporters Future Concerts

The London Philharmonic Orchestra would like to thank Alexander Ivashkin and the Alfred Schnittke Archive for their help in sourcing musical and photographic material.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke 1

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 3

Vladimir Jurowski introduces the Festival

Sheila Rock

For me Alfred Schnittke is one of the most interesting Russian composers of the late twentieth century. I have always thought that he occupied a very special place connecting the world of classical Europe – from Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, through to Mahler, Berg and Schoenberg – and the Russian tradition, starting with medieval and church music, through composers such as Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, to Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Vladimir Jurowski

Schnittke was half German by birth, spending his early years in Vienna as the child of an occupying force, and later, when living and composing in Russia, he struggled because of his non-Russian pedigree (his other half was Jewish). It was a schizophrenic context in which to live and I think this was not just the case for him, but for his whole generation, growing up behind the Iron Curtain. The irony is that this lack of personal freedom led to an explosion of creativity – not just in Soviet Russia but in the whole of Eastern Europe.

Schnittke’s music absorbed almost everything that the twentieth century had to offer. It became a melting pot of techniques and styles, though always retaining its own inimitable face. During this festival we present the many diverse sides of Schnittke’s music through both

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

his popular and lesser known operatic, orchestral, chamber and choral works. We are also going to explore his extensive contribution to animation, film and theatre and are privileged to be able to hear from music experts and specialists in parallel arts for a whole day of music and discussion entitled In the Labyrinth of Alfred Schnittke.

Learning about Schnittke and his time has a special meaning for me personally since it was also the time of my parents’ youth and my own childhood. So in a way I’m hoping to learn a lot about myself and my roots.

Re-visiting the more recent past sometimes presents more difficulties than distant eras because of the emotional attachment we all have to our own times.

But this can also blur our objective view of history, making it even more important that we undertake these journeys.

I invite you to embark on this journey with me.

Vladimir Jurowski Principal Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra

Jurowski Introduction

3

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 4

Programme of Events Sunday 15 November 2009 | 7.30pm Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music

Thursday 19 November 2009 | 7.30pm Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music

Sunday 22 November 2009 | 10am 10pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and foyers

SCHNITTKE Gogol Suite SCHNITTKE Monologue* PROKOFIEV Symphony 6 Vladimir Jurowski conductor Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter Alexander Zemtsov viola* Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra* Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra

SCHNITTKE Concerto for Choir BORTNYANSKY Sacred Concerto 15 RACHMANINOFF Ave Maria RACHMANINOFF Panteley the Healer CHESNOKOV The Angel Cried SCHNITTKE Three Sacred Hymns SHCHEDRIN Tsarskaya Kravchaya SHCHEDRIN Pugachev’s Execution Boris Tevlin conductor Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory

IN THE LABYRINTH OF ALFRED SCHNITTKE ENTRANCE TO ALL EVENTS £30 Vladimir Jurowski conductor Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter, Annabel Arden director, Allison Bell soprano, Kristina Blaumane cello, Vesselin Gellev violin, Alexander Ivashkin cello, Boris Petrushansky piano, Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin, Alexander Zemtsov viola, Soloists of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra An absorbing day of music and discussion celebrating the life and music of Alfred Schnittke with leading exponents of the composer’s work.

This concert is promoted by the Royal College of Music.

This concert is promoted by the Royal College of Music.

Tickets: £15 £10 £5 Tickets: £15 £10 £5

Saturday 21 November 2009 | 10.00am – 6.00pm | Deptford Town Hall

Richard Cannon

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM A presentation of recent research and scholarship on the music and ideas of Alfred Schnittke by leading musicologists, composers, philologists, film specialists, theologists, publishers and performers from around the world.

Vladimir Jurowski Wednesday 18 November 2009 7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall HAYDN Symphony 22 (The Philosopher) WAGNER Prelude and Good Friday Spell from ‘Parsifal’ SCHNITTKE Excerpts from the opera ‘The History of D. Johann Faustus’ (UK première) Semi-staged performance sung in German with English surtitles

Vladimir Jurowski conductor Stephen Richardson Dr Faustus Anna Larsson Mephistophila Andrew Watts Mephistophiles Markus Brutscher Narrator Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory London Philharmonic Orchestra Annabel Arden director

4

Tickets: £5 on the door. To reserve tickets in advance for payment on the door call 020 7919 7640 (Monday to Friday 9.30am - 5.30pm) or email music@gold.ac.uk Find out more at www.gold.ac.uk/crm/schnittke-archive Presented by the Centre for Russian Music / Alfred Schnittke Archive, Goldsmiths, University of London in association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Sikorski International Musikverlage, Hamburg (Germany) and The Alfred Schnittke International Society, Hamburg (Germany).

Presented in association with the Royal Musical Association.

10.00am - 12.00pm | Purcell Room A discussion of Schnittke’s music and writings chaired by Alexander Ivashkin followed by a performance of Schnittke’s Six Piano Preludes. Tickets: £5 1.00pm - 2.30pm | Purcell Room Director Andrei Khrzhanovsky, in conversation with Clare Kitson, will discuss his collaboration with Schnittke on seven films, including the long-banned The Glass Harmonica. Tickets: £5 3.00pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall SCHNITTKE Five Aphorisms; Three Madrigals; Peer Gynt Epilogue; Sonata 1 for violin and piano; Three Scenes; Music to an Imagined Play Tickets: £15 5.30pm | Purcell Room SCHNITTKE Concerto for Electric Instruments FREE BUT TICKETED 6.15pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall SCHNITTKE Monologue; Concerto for Piano and Strings; Concerto Grosso 1; The Yellow Sound Tickets: £15 9.15pm | Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer SCHNITTKE Piano Quintet FREE BUT TICKETED Supported by MAST

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55)

This performance will be followed by a Schnittke discussion forum in The Front Room with Vladimir Jurowski and today’s guests. Open to all.

FREE Pre-Concert Event 6.15pm - 6.45pm | Royal Festival Hall A performance of Schnittke’s String Quartet 3 by the Harpham Quartet.

In The Labyrinth of Alfred Schnittke is promoted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in association with Southbank Centre.

Programme of Events

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 5

Booking & Venue Details

Programme of Events Wednesday 25 November 2009 7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall

Saturday 28 November 2009 | 7.30pm Royal Festival Hall

WEBERN Passacaglia LINDBERG Chorale BERG Violin Concerto SCHNITTKE Symphony 3 Vladimir Jurowski conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin London Philharmonic Orchestra

SCHNITTKE Cello Concerto 2 HAYDN The Seven Last Words Vladimir Jurowski conductor Alexander Ivashkin cello Lisa Milne soprano Ruxandra Donose mezzo soprano Andrew Kennedy tenor Christopher Maltman baritone London Philharmonic Orchestra London Philharmonic Choir

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55) This concert is part of Leonidas Kavakos: An Artist in Focus at Southbank Centre. For details of all the events in this series, visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk/kavakos

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55) FREE Pre-Concert Event 6.00pm | Royal Festival Hall Vladimir Jurowski and Alexander Ivashkin discuss the life and music of Alfred Schnittke with his widow Irina Schnittke.

Saturday 28 November | 2.30pm Royal Festival Hall Film Screening of The Agony, Elem Klimov’s 1974 film, with score by Alfred Schnittke.

Tickets: £7

Leonidas Kavakos FREE Pre-Concert Event 6.00pm - 6.35pm | Royal Festival Hall BACH (ORCH. WEBERN) Ricercar SAFRONOV ein bach-stück / ein stück bach STRAVINSKY Tango SCHNITTKE Polyphonic Tango Vladimir Jurowski conductor Foyle Future Firsts The Foyle Foundation is the principal funder of the Foyle Future Firsts programme.

Barlines | FREE Post-concert event Clore Ballroom Floor, Level 2 Foyer, Royal Festival Hall An informal discussion with Vladimir Jurowski, this evening’s soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, and Marshall Marcus, Head of Music at Southbank Centre.

Tuesday 1 December 2009 7.30 pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

This concert is part of Leonidas Kavakos: An Artist in Focus at Southbank Centre.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

RELATED SCHNITTKE FILM EVENTS Thursday 26 November | 7.30pm Pushkin House Larisa (25 mins) The Ascent (109 mins) In Russian with English subtitles.

Pre-screening lecture (in English) at 6.30pm.

Tickets: £7 (£5 Concessions/Friends of Pushkin House) including refreshments

London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office (All concerts) 020 7840 4242 (no fee) Monday to Friday 10.00am – 5.00pm www.lpo.org.uk (no fee) Southbank Centre Ticket Office (All concerts) Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX Nearest Tube: Waterloo or Embankment 0844 847 9920 (£2.50 transaction fee) Daily 9.00am – 8.00pm www.southbankcentre.co.uk (£1.45 transaction fee) In person at Southbank Centre Ticket Office (no fee) Daily 10.00am – 8pm No booking fee for Southbank Centre Members Royal College of Music Ticket Office (15 November, 19 November, 6.15pm 22 November) Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BS Nearest Tube: South Kensington 020 7591 4314 (no fee) Monday to Friday 10.00am – 4.00pm www.boxoffice.rcm.ac.uk (no fee) Pushkin House Ticket Office (26 and 27 November) 5a Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA Nearest Tube: Holborn 020 7269 9770 (no fee) Monday to Friday 9.00am – 6.00pm Deptford Town Hall New Cross Road, Lewisham, London, SE14 6AF Nearest Tube: New Cross Gate

For more details of all these events, visit www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

Friday 27 November | 7.30pm Pushkin House The Commissar (104 mins) In Russian with English subtitles.

Pre-screening lecture (in English) at 6.30pm.

Tickets: £7 (£5 Concessions/Friends of Pushkin House) including refreshments

Leonidas Kavakos violin Antoine Tamestit viola Gautier Capuçon cello Nikolai Lugansky piano

Schnittke String Trio Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50

Tickets: £25 £20 £15 £12 £9 (Premium seats £30) from

Southbank Centre Ticket Office 0844 875 0073 www.southbankcentre.co.uk Daily, 9am-8pm. £2.50 telephone / £1.45 online booking fees; no fee for Southbank Centre members

Programme of Events

5

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 6

Schnittke is often described as the ‘man in between’, reports Alexander Ivashkin A Russian composer with a typically German name, Schnittke was born in Russia, without a drop of Russian blood, in the town of Engels, once the capital of a German republic in the Soviet Union.

He had a Jewish, German-speaking father and a German mother. In Russia he was labelled a Jew although he didn’t know any of the Jewish languages. In Germany and in the West he was a ‘Russian composer’. Schnittke was also a man ‘in between’ different historical and cultural traditions. ‘I am tied to Russia, having spent all my life here’, he said. ‘On the other hand, much of what I’ve written is somehow related to German music and to the logic that comes out of being German, although I did not particularly want this...’

Arguably the greatest Russian composer since Shostakovich, Schnittke extended the dimensions of Russian twentiethcentury music. His music does not focus on a single tradition but organically absorbs elements of many musical cultures, including both classical and popular traditions. While closely linked to both Mahler and Shostakovich, Schnittke intensifies all their contrasts, and drives this strong post-Romantic tradition to the very extreme polystylism of the late twentieth-century. In his music we find a mixture of old and new styles, of modern, postmodern, classical, baroque and popular music ideas. It reflects the very complex, peculiar and fragile mentality of the late twentieth century.

‘The title of our festival – Between Two Worlds’, says Vladimir Jurowski, ‘is related to Schnittke’s unusual cultural situation. He is a child of two worlds.

One of them is European classical music, the Viennese tradition starting from Haydn, and even earlier, through to Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg. On the other hand, Schnittke was an organic part of Russian culture, from the medieval painter Andrei Rublev to the poet and writer Boris Pasternak and the film 6

Between Two Worlds Introduction

director Andrei Tarkovsky. Schnittke is not just a composer, but also a unique cultural symbol. It is important to show him in the complex context of his time and of music history. This is why the programmes include works by composers important to him: Bach, Wagner, Mahler and Webern.’

Schnittke was one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth century. His music has been performed countless times all around the world and recorded on numerous compact discs released by different companies. His major compositions – nine symphonies, three operas, ballets, concertos, concerti grossi and sonatas for various instruments – have been heard on every continent. His works are considered an established part of the standard repertoire for opera companies, orchestras, chamber groups and soloists.

In the late 1960s – towards the end of a short period of thaw during Krushchev’s leadership – elements of collage in his music and its theatricality shocked many purists, and communist officials did not allow his works to be performed widely.

The response of the public, however, was enthusiastic: each new composition by Schnittke was eagerly awaited. By the 1970s-1980s Schnittke was enjoying immense popularity in Russia. ‘His music used to be our language, more perfect than the verbal one’, wrote one Russian critic. Concert promoters used to call the police to prevent overcrowding and chaos when his music was played in Moscow, Leningrad or Novosibirsk.

Performances of his music were important events for Soviet audiences: in it they found metaphysical ideas and spiritual values absent in everyday life during the endless years of terror, thaw, cold war and stagnation.

Schnittke wrote music for more than sixty films. The film industry was an ideal ‘laboratory’ for him. There he could try

out all his new ideas and techniques, without danger of being punished or censored. It also paid well: the Soviet film industry used to be a state funded business. Lenin labelled cinema the ‘most important art for Soviet people’.

Stalin’s greatest achievement in his cultural revolution in the 1930s was making classical and popular music equally important in Soviet ideology.

Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Beethoven were all used for Soviet propaganda at Communist party congresses or at extravagant official funerals.

Schnittke was one of the first composers to ‘recycle’ these over-used elements of communist propaganda in his serious compositions. Schnittke ‘quoted’ not from scores or books (like Luciano Berio or TS Eliot), but from Soviet rubbish bins, from Soviet Radio propaganda programmes, or from the official repertoire of Kremlin brass bands on Red Square in Moscow.

Later on, in the 1970s-1980s, Schnittke changed his attitude to direct quotation.

He was looking for a universal language that combined different stylistic elements, but not necessarily quotations. The hidden, extra-musical energy emerged in clashes of completely different styles, different languages, even different musics. In his own words: ‘I am just fixing what I hear. It’s not me, who writes my music, I am just a tool, a transmitter.’

Like Shostakovich or Mahler, Schnittke presented more than just musical ideas: there was always something symbolic in his musical language that led to the ‘genetic well’ of a memory of past generations. Obvious quotations and allusions disappeared as his approach to stylistic colouring changed. The various allusions became signifiers of different epochs that conducted a dialogue with one another like keys on the same keyboard. The role of integrated but simple, almost natural sound elements, grew as in Quasi una Sonata, Piano www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 7

Timeline 1934

1946

1948

1949 1953

1956 1961

1962

1965 1972 1977

1980 1981

1983

1985 1986

1989 1990

Alfred Schnittke Archive

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

1995 1998

Alfred Schnittke born in Engels on the River Volga in the Soviet Union, during the time of Stalin’s terror.

Schnittke begins his musical education in Vienna where his father, a journalist and translator, has been posted.

The family moves to Moscow where Schnittke studies the piano and receives a diploma in choral conducting.

He reads Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus for the first time.

Studies counterpoint and composition at the Moscow Conservatory. Attends the first performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony 10 which makes a strong impression on him. Stalin and Prokofiev both die.

Marries Galina Koltsina – a fellow student. Their marriage is to last three years.

Completes the postgraduate composition course and joins the Union of Composers. Marries the pianist, Irina Katayeva.

Schnittke is appointed instructor in instrumentation at the Moscow Conservatory, a post he holds until 1972. He supports himself chiefly as a composer of film music, scoring more than 60 films in the years up to 1984.

His son Andrei is born.

He completes his First Symphony.

He writes his Concerto Grosso 1, one of the first works to bring his name to prominence. The piece is popularised by Gidon Kremer, a tireless champion of his music. Schnittke makes his first trip to the West as a harpsichordist/pianist with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.

The Gogol Suite for symphony orchestra is given its first performance in London.

His Symphony 3 receives its first performance in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur.

Schnittke’s popularity in Russia reaches unprecedented heights. All his concerts sell out and the crowds are comparable to those at large scale pop concerts.

Schnittke suffers the first of a series of serious strokes.

His Viola Concerto receives its first performance by Yuri Bashmet and the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Lukas Vis. A special fellowship in Berlin enables Schnittke to live there for a year.

Schnittke completes his Cello Concerto 2 and the first performance is given by Mstislav Rostropovich in Evian with the Orchestra of the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, conducted by Theodor Guschlbauer. Schnittke moves to Hamburg where he teaches at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik. He also travels to London for a two week festival of his music.

His opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten is unveiled in Hamburg.

He dies in Hamburg after suffering another stroke. Thousands attend his funeral in Moscow.

Left: Schnittke in front of the Taganka Theatre Revealing Between Tchaikovsky Two Worlds Introduction Introduction

77

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 8

Quintet or The Yellow Sound. These symbols became insistent and were repeated from work to work, each time taking on a definite meaning.

The opening of his Third Symphony (1980) was described by the American musicologist Richard Taruskin as ‘Wagner’s Ring, cubed and cubed again’.

In the score one finds monograms of dozens of composers, from Bach to Kagel, and the character of the music changes to conform to the ‘quoted’ material, modulating from Classical through Romantic to more contemporary textures. Schnittke was not merely writing a ‘German’ symphony for a German orchestra (the Third Symphony was commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra) but, at the same time, was reflecting the history of the origins, development, triumph and ultimate bankruptcy of the idea of the Classical symphony as a model of a clear and rational perception of the world. It is no coincidence that after the catastrophic and brutal third movement there follows a slow, meditative, Mahlerian finale where the ‘eternal’ motif B-A-C-H reappears. The word Bach, which means ‘stream’, becomes a real ‘physical’ source for the final movement and the ultimate resolution that symbolically arises from JS Bach’s name.

Many of the ideas originated in Schnittke’s work as a film composer. The ‘B-A-C-H’ motif comes from his music for an animated film called The Glass Harmonica. The tango melody in the Rondo in Concerto Grosso No. 1 was first heard in the film The Agony. The quasibaroque tune at the opening of the same movement was originally a song (sung by the Russian actor-singer legend Vladimir Vysotsky) at the beginning of Schnittke’s score for the film How Tsar Peter got the Black Man Married. ‘One of my life’s goals’, says Schnittke about the Concerto Grosso No. 1, ‘is to overcome the gap between ‘E’ (Ernstmusik, serious music) and ‘U’ (Unterhaltung, music for

8

Between Two Worlds Introduction

Alfred Schnittke Archive

In the Second Symphony (1980) the music progresses in accordance with the sections of the mass and uses Gregorian chant tunes. In the Fourth Symphony (1984) the music follows the canons of the Passions of Jesus Christ. Its form is a cycle of variations on four different religious tunes: Protestant, Orthodox, Judaic and Catholic. The Fifth Symphony (1988) incorporates a concerto grosso at the beginning and later on elements of Mahler’s early unfinished sketch for a piano quartet.

Schnittke with his wife Irina in the 1980s

entertainment), even if I break my neck ...’ Schnittke achieved this goal in many of his compositions.

Between 1986 and 1994 Schnittke completed his major works for the stage: the ballet Peer Gynt (1986) and the operas Life with an Idiot (1991), Gesualdo (1994) and Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1994).

Presented in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Vienna, Turin, London, Moscow and other European cities, these works are very different from one another. Peer Gynt and Historia von D. Johann Fausten represent Schnittke’s style of the 1970s1980s, using a big orchestra, and large, well developed musical forms; while Life with an Idiot and Gesualdo are more like chamber operas, typical of Schnittke’s late laconic style of the 1990s, with shorter episodes, lots of recitatives and a smaller orchestra.

The late compositions of Alfred Schnittke are quite enigmatic. Their texture became very ascetic, and the number of notes was reduced. The latent tension is increased, however: the meaning of his last few compositions can be found between the notes rather than in the text itself.

In July 1994 Schnittke suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak for the last four years of his life. He was still writing music, using his left hand, and completed his Symphony No. 9, a new Viola Concerto and the Variations for String Quartet before he died in Hamburg on 3 August 1998. Passionately interested in

the discoveries made by the composers Josef Matthias Hauer, Luigi Nono, Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov, Schnittke was searching for a new musical language – one that was not necessarily related to stylistic diversity, but rather to the ‘even tension’ (Schnittke’s own expression) of the tonal fabric itself.

Ascetic, but enormously energetic and highly expressive, Schnittke’s last works show the direction in which he was heading in his last years, purifying his music and opening it up to new dimensions.

‘By taking an artist away from his contemporaries’, wrote Schnittke in his diaries, ‘death simultaneously raises him to the level of eternal spiritual existence where, although time and development are no more, there remains still the absolutely inexhaustible immortal life of works of art. What is individual about the works changes from what divides into what unites; differences become kinships, and a link is established between phenomena of different times and places.’ Alfred Schnittke: Between Two Worlds, dedicated to the composer’s 75th Anniversary, is designed to confirm the composer’s idea. In the words of its Artistic Director, Vladimir Jurowski: ‘This festival will help you understand Schnittke’s music as an important part of European tradition and as a fact of history that stimulates the development of European culture, and therefore, of Russian music as well.’

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 9

Thursday 3 December 2009 at 6.30pm Reform Club, 104 Pall Mall, London SW1 In support of HealthProm

BACH Gamba Sonata in G major BWV 1027 SHOSTAKOVICH Moderato (1934) PROKOFIEV Adagio from the ballet ‘Cinderella' (1944) SCHNITTKE Cello Sonata No 1 (1978) ROSTROPOVICH Humoresque, Op. 5 (1949) Alexander Ivashkin cello Irina Schnittke piano

A tribute concert to Mstislav Rostropovich, Schnittke’s friend, dedicatee and first performer of many of his compositions: operas, symphonies, concertos and cello pieces. The programme includes Schnittke’s dark and eloquent Cello Sonata No. 1, the most performed and most recorded work by the composer.

Donations of £80 per person (or £140 for two) should be made by sending a cheque payable to ‘HealthProm’ to Paul Austin, Assistant Secretary, The Reform Club, 104 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5EW. Please mark the envelope ‘HealthProm Recital’. Enquiries should be directed to Yuliya Tkacheva at HealthProm (yuliya.tkacheva@healthprom.org).

Orchestral concerts are a vital part of BBC Radio 3’s output and I’m delighted that the station will continue its long association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra by bringing performances from this season to the widest possible audience, including those listening at home, on air and online.

Roger Wright Controller, BBC Radio 3

The concert on 18 November will be broadcast in Performance on 3 on 24 November at 7pm, and is available online for 7 days after the broadcast at bbc.co.uk/radio3

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.

Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include: MDC music and movies, Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, wagamama, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Caffé Vergnano 1882, Skylon and Feng Sushi, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery.

PHOTOGRAPHY is not allowed in the auditorium.

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.

If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit please contact our Head of Customer Relations at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, or phone 020 7960 4250 or email customer@southbankcentre.co.uk We look forward to seeing you again soon.

A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment: LATECOMERS will only be admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

BBC / Southbank Centre

9

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 10

Sunday 15 November 2009

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Gogol Suite Overture | Chichikov’s Childhood | The Portrait | The Overcoat | Ferdinand VIII | The Civil Servants | The Ball | The Testament/Ukranian Folk Song

7.30pm | Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music Vladimir Jurowski conductor Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter Alexander Zemtsov viola* Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra* Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra SCHNITTKE Gogol Suite

The Gogol Suite shows off Alfred Schnittke’s scintillating, if not always highly subtle, sense of musical wit. With the possible exception of the last movement, which hints at something darker, there’s barely a moment of real seriousness in its entire thirty-five minutes.

(35’)

Excerpts from Gogol’s writing will be read during the performance.

SCHNITTKE Monologue* PROKOFIEV Symphony 6

The Suite was actually compiled by the conductor and early champion of Schnittke’s work – Gennady Rozhdestvensky – from music the composer had written in 1976. After establishing himself in film and television, as well as with his extraordinary and, by Soviet standards, rather subversive First Symphony, Schnittke was invited by the Taganka Theatre in Moscow to contribute music for a stage production based on various works by the great nineteenth century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Most of Gogol’s work is highly satirical – relentlessly pillorying the social and political landscape of the times in which he lived. The parallel with Schnittke’s own highly developed sense of the cultural tease, and his barely concealed impatience with ‘conformist’ musical culture is as plain as the nose on your face (and Gogol’s nose, of course, took on a life of its own abandoning its owner in a break for freedom!).

(17’) (43’)

Tickets: £15 £10 £5

Biographies Vladimir Jurowski page 30 Sir Timothy Ackroyd page 30 Alexander Zemtsov page 35 Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra page 38 Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra page 38 The timings shown above are not precise and are only given as a guide.

Alfred Schnittke Archive

This concert is promoted by the Royal College of Music.

Schnittke with Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Yuri Bashmet in Moscow in 1987. Yuri Bashmet gave the first performances of Schnittke’s Monologue and Viola Concerto.

10

15 November Concert

The Overture is more of an anti-overture than a genuine curtain raiser, perversely concluding with one of the most famous openings in music. (See if you can spot it!) The second movement draws on Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. This icon amongst Russian novels turned on feudalism – the ownership of serfs, and their designation for tax purposes as ‘souls’ either alive or dead. Chichikov, the ‘hero’ of Gogol’s novel, wants to buy these ‘dead souls’ from landowners. He intends to take out a loan secured on the dead and to grow rich – the kind of sub ‘sub-prime’ investment familiar to us today! Schnittke deftly translates the anachronism of feudalism and the monstrousness of Chichikov’s intentions into a parade of musical styles encompassing Haydn and the beat generation.

Elsewhere you can catch Mozart’s overture to The Marriage of Figaro pummelled into a (deliberately) less than convincing fugue (The Civil Servants). www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

While The Ball, again drawing on Dead Souls, gives us perhaps the most dyspeptic and liverish combination of instruments you might ever want to dance to – starting with contra bassoon, prepared piano and cymbals and moving onto the flexatone (you’ll know it when you hear it) and a whistling conductor (he can join in if he wants!).

Only at the end does the music become anything like serious with a Ukrainian folk song that is progressively overwhelmed by the rest of the orchestra. At the end of his life Gogol threw the final part of Dead Souls (which although partially published had remained unfinished) onto the fire, destroying it for ever. (A painting by Repin imagines the moment.) There’s a sense in which the ultimate existential uselessness of artistic activity is summoned up here – perhaps rather more than a mirror of the composer’s own self doubts.

William Mival (Head of Composition, RCM) © September 2009

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Monologue for viola and strings The relentless stylistic promiscuity of much of Schnittke’s music can be directly linked to his experience of a ‘rebuilt’ post-war Europe. A church in Warsaw reassembled from a host of ‘found’ materials prompted in him the recognition that coherence could be about intention and use rather than design, freeing him to engage in a direct collision of musical styles – a dissonance of structures and meanings rather than mere harmony.

In Monologue and elsewhere in Schnittke’s later music this ‘style of many styles’ acquires a uniquely bleak character that makes the multiple and usually momentary and deformed references to Mahler, Shostakovich and Berg sound like light relief. Written in 1989 to a commission from Yuri Bashmet this seventeen minute single movement is a highly compressed virtuoso concerto that makes the solo viola scream in pain before it dies away into a typically Schnittke-esque, almost forcibly sedated, stasis.

It’s difficult not to see here, Amfortas-like, the tortured struggle of the individual with the bleeding wound – though in Schnittke’s case that wound was unseen – a haemorrhage into the brain that occasioned a series of increasingly debilitating strokes that were to first

6/11/09

13:12

Page 11

silence his composing before killing him on 3 August 1998.

William Mival (Head of Composition, RCM) © September 2009

INTERVAL 20 minutes

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) Symphony 6 in E flat minor, Op. 111

impaired. Not surprisingly, the overall mood and orchestration of the Sixth Symphony is darker than that of its predecessor. The menacing opening E flat minor bars of the first movement introduce a brooding quality which overrides the potential jauntiness of a sweeping 6/8 melody that receives extensive development throughout the movement. Sustained bursts of lyricism and musical energy are halted abruptly by changes of tempo and texture and despite the seamless linkage of the individual sections, the overall impression is of fragmentation which an eerie coda does little to dispel.

Allegro moderato | Largo | Vivace When Sergei Prokofiev put down his baton and turned to receive the rapturous applause of the audience at the end of the first performance of his Fifth Symphony in Moscow on 13 January 1945, he could not have imagined how much his status as a composer and a citizen would have altered by the time his Sixth received its first performances: in Leningrad on 11 October 1947 and in Moscow two months later.

Fresh from the glowing reception of his Fifth Symphony, for which he was to be awarded a first-class Stalin Prize in January 1946, Prokofiev had started work on a new symphony. But from 1946 onwards he and many of his fellow composers became the focus of increasing opposition from Andrey Zhdanov, the Governor of Leningrad put in charge of Soviet cultural policy by Stalin. The thrust of Zhdanov’s attacks on Russian musicians was aimed primarily at the ‘big four’ composers – Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Myaskovsky – and culminated in an infamous decree in February 1948 where, in a diatribe against contemporary music in general, Zhdanov especially cited symphonic music:

The Largo is the longest and most sustained of the three movements yet the tension remains palpable. The fullyscored opening section is characterised by chromatic dissonances and suspensions, and relief is only secured when the key settles on E major and a haunting string melody, reminiscent of the alto solo in the choral cantata Alexander Nevsky, gives the promise of a brighter future. But the relief does not last long and the final third of the movement sees a return to dissonance and fragmentation.

Light at last appears in the lively Vivace theme that dominates the final movement. The theme moves through the instrumental sections and, despite tempo changes and unexpected mood swings, the symphony seems to be heading for an affirmative conclusion.

But then the tempo unexpectedly broadens and all the instruments combine to produce what Prokofiev’s biographer Daniel Jaffé has described as ‘a final howl of anguish’.

Richard Steele (Director of Artistic Policy, RCM) © September 2009

‘Particularly bad are the conditions in symphonic and operatic productions, with reference to composers who adhere to the formalistic anti-national movement. This movement had found its fullest expression in the works of composers … in whose music formalistic distortions and antidemocratic tendencies which are alien to the Soviet people and its artistic tastes are represented with particular obviousness.’

There is strong evidence that the constant strain and psychological uncertainty took a serious toll on Prokofiev’s health although his creative energy appears not to have been directly

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke 15 November Concert

11

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 12

Wednesday 18 November 2009 6.15pm - 6.45pm | Royal Festival Hall FREE Pre-Concert Event A performance of Schnittke’s String Quartet 3 by the Harpham Quartet.

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall Vladimir Jurowski conductor Stephen Richardson Dr Faustus Anna Larsson Mephistophila Andrew Watts Mephistophiles Markus Brutscher Narrator Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory London Philharmonic Orchestra Annabel Arden director Henrietta Bredin production co-ordinator Ian Scott lighting designer Sian Harris costumes and make up Ian Rutherford stage assistant Meredith Oakes surtitles Damien Kennedy surtitles operator Catherine Edwards repetiteur Susan Jeffreys, Philip Hood tango consultants National Theatre Prop Store props

HAYDN Symphony 22 (The Philosopher) (16’) WAGNER Prelude and Good Friday Spell from ‘Parsifal’ (26’) SCHNITTKE Excerpts from the opera ‘The History of D. Johann Faustus’ (UK première) (65’) Semi-staged performance sung in German with English surtitles

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55) This concert is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast on 24 November.

Biographies Harpham Quartet page 32 Vladimir Jurowski page 30 Stephen Richardson page 34 Anna Larsson page 33 Andrew Watts page 35 Markus Brutscher page 31 Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory page 31 London Philharmonic Orchestra page 36 Annabel Arden page 30

6.15pm-6.45pm | Royal Festival Hall FREE Pre-Concert Event ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) String Quartet 3 Andante | Agitato | Pesante The String Quartet 3 (1983) is based on two quotations and two monograms stated explicitly at the very beginning: Stabat Mater by Orlando di Lasso; a theme from Beethoven’s last string quartet; the monogram D-S(E flat)-C-H, based on the name of Dmitri Shostakovich; and the monogram D-G-A-B, derived from Ludwig van Beethoven’s name (LuDwiG vAn Beethoven).

The String Quartet 3 is one of the best examples of Schnittke’s mature polystylistic palette.The three movements follow each other with no break. They form three sections of a dynamic cycle: a short but important introduction; an extraordinarily active, perpetuum mobilelike scherzo (the second movement) gradually collapsing at the end; and the slow last movement, a long coda, typical of Schnittke. In the Quartet there are none of the startling polystylistic effects found in Schnittke’s earlier compositions.

Instead the composer offers a succession of various historic ‘phases’: from early Renaissance polyphony (first movement), through early romantic ‘action’ to the finale in the style of Shostakovich’s string quartets, where all the themes and stylistic components of the previous movements reappear in a different context. The second movement, based mainly on Beethoven’s name tune, reminds one of the finale of the Pathétique sonata, based on the same monogram.

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall A language found in Mozart’s letters: Schnittke’s old German roots.

Schnittke’s mother tongue was ‘Volga German’. This was the old German language brought to Russia in the eighteenth century by the first migrants (Schnittke’s forebears) invited to Russia

by Catherine the Great, herself a German. For years Schnittke was unable to find many of the words he knew in any dictionary, but he later came across them in Mozart’s letters. Schnittke often felt almost like a contemporary of Haydn and Mozart. Quotations and allusions from Haydn, Mozart and Wagner can be heard so frequently in Schnittke’s music.

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

This concert is promoted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

12

18 November Concert

Furthermore the works by Haydn and Wagner included in tonight’s programme www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

shed additional light on the theme of Faust, so important for Schnittke. Faust was a philosopher and a magician.

Haydn’s symphony depicts a philosopher, Wagner’s music is about the magic of the Good Friday Spell.

Both Haydn and Wagner represent a mighty branch of the German tradition in the history of music, from early classicism to late romanticism. The broad stylistic range of this period is easily detectable in Schnittke’s music.

The struggle between good and evil in Wagner’s Parsifal (with the music representing Amfortas’s suffering and redemption) is almost directly parallel to the Faust theme. Just like Parsifal fighting against Klingsor, Schnittke’s heroes (Faust, Peer Gynt) were struggling against evil. In Schnittke’s own words: ‘The Devil is everywhere, and you can't defend yourself against him just by taking yourself off into something pure; you'll find him there, too. The essential thing is not to try to escape into some kind of purified space, but to live with the Devil and engage in a constant struggle against him.’

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) Symphony 22 in E flat (The Philosopher) Adagio | Presto | Menuetto | Finale: Presto Haydn’s Symphony 22 was written in 1764, the year the German migrants, Schnittke’s forefathers, arrived in Russia.

The title ‘Philosopher’ comes from the very unusual first movement of the symphony, with its ostinato walking bass, seemingly depicting a philosopher immersed in meditation while the time passes him by. The clock effect in the first movement can perhaps be related to the clock in the last act of Schnittke’s opera which strikes midnight just before Faust’s death.

6/11/09

13:12

Page 13

RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883) Prelude and Good Friday Spell from ‘Parsifal’ Parsifal (1882) was Wagner’s last opera, premièred in his Bayreuth theatre just a few months before his death in Venice. It is directly related to his earlier opera Lohengrin, both based on a romantic interpretation of medieval Christian legends related to the Holy Grail. Parsifal is, however, much more of a religious drama than the earlier opera. The ‘grail scenes’ in the first and third acts remind one of the ritual of communion. The mystical atmosphere of the Prelude becomes one of the most important symbols for the whole opera. One of the main leitmotifs in Parsifal (which the Prelude starts with) is a unison melody on Christ’s words ‘Hehmet hin meinen Leib’ (‘Take, eat; this is my body’) which Wagner later transfers into a tune very similar to a traditional Latin liturgical chant. The second theme in the Prelude is also related to the traditions of sacred music. It is in fact the so-called ‘Dresden Amen’, heard in chords played by trumpets and trombones. This liturgical motif had already been quoted by Mendelssohn in his Reformation Symphony, and was used as part of church services from the eighteenth century onwards. The third tune, played by horns and trumpets, also reminds one of a chant and symbolises the power of Christianity.

The Good Friday Spell (Karfreitagszauber), part of Act III of Parsifal, is one of Wagner’s great masterpieces: a rare piece of purely orchestral music of unique and

incomparable beauty. It is heard in the opera just before Parsifal enters the Grail Castle at the end of his long travels. He suddenly realises that it is Good Friday.

Although all the main leitmotifs of the opera are here heard again, they are in a completely different context. The music is different from that of the Prelude; it does not sound like a liturgy, and all the religious elements acquire a sensual, almost erotic character. The Good Friday Spell music sounds much closer to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde than to any liturgical chant.

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

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Excerpts from the opera ‘The History of D. Johann Faustus’ Soon after the beginning of the war against Hitler the German language was banned by law in the Soviet Union, and it became dangerous to speak it in the street. So Schnittke read German at home: Heine’s poetry, German tales by Wilhelm Hauff and later the first part of Goethe's Faust. By the late 1940s he had read Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus in German for the first time in his life. This book had a great impact on Schnittke’s life as a composer. He read it at least five times. After Doktor Faustus he read everything he could about Faust, including Dr Faustus’s own writings. In 1959 he planned to write an opera based on the Apocalypse, similar to the

Schnittke in Hamburg in the late 1980s

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

Alfred Schnittke Archive

The Philosopher is one of the most original of Haydn’s symphonies. Three of the four movements are written in sonata form (perhaps symbolising the syllogism pattern of German philosophy) while the third movement is a typical minuet. Of all Haydn’s symphonies, with their various types of structure, The Philosopher is based on the oldest model of a Sonata da chiesa, with a slow first movement. So Haydn is here as much a revolutionary as he is retrospective, just like Schnittke in the majority of his works. Schnittke ‘recycled’ Haydn’s coda adagio from his Farewell Symphony in his Symphony 1, which finishes with the last bars of Haydn’s music, played by two violins.

18 November Concert

13

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 14

Helga Kneidl

Gynt (1989) which is a choreographic parallel to his Faust opera) the hero, Faust, travels with Mephistophiles to hell, to the stars, to paradise, meets with drunken peasants and students, watches an appearance of beautiful Helen of Troy and is present at the bacchanalia on All Souls’ Night. But the central episodes of this long act, which covers the twenty four years of his pact with the Devil, are his three Lamentations, when Faust becomes himself again, confesses his sins and foresees his death. In contrast to the music of Act One, in Act Two Schnittke introduces optional electronic sounds. At the Hamburg première this electronic element was presented by the composer’s son, Andrei Schnittke.

A scene from Schnittke’s The History of D. Johann Faustus at the Hamburg State Opera composition Lamentations of Doctor Faustus, in Thomas Mann’s novel by its composer-hero, Adrian Leverkuhn. Later, in the 1970s, the idea of the opera came from Yuri Lyubimov, the director of the Moscow Taganka Theatre. He suggested that Schnittke should write an opera based on the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Schnittke abandoned both these projects, but for many years the Faust theme remained close to his heart and became more and more important for him.

Twenty-five years later, in 1983, it emerged as his Faust Cantata (‘Seid nüchtern und wachet’ – ‘Be sober and attentive’) which, in turn, became part of his opera about Faust, composed in 1994.

Schnittke decided not to use Goethe’s Faust but rather to base his work on an old book of folk tales about Faust, published in Frankfurt in 1587 by the editor and bookseller Johann Spies – Das Volksbuch vom Doctor Faust. Schnittke commented: ‘Everything that happens was three hundred years before Goethe’s time ... the old German book is very simple, and different from Goethe’s Faust; in it Faust is a sinner, but there is still hope for him; and although he dies, he is not punished unconditionally at the end ... What is important in Faust is the way his character has been loaded by the future. Faust is like a mirror reflecting the changes in human beings in recent centuries.’

In Schnittke's eventual opera for Hamburg, Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1994), his Faust Cantata would form the last, third act. Listening to Schnittke’s Faust one might recall JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion or Heinrich Schütz’s St Luke Passion. The ten movements follow 14

18 November Concert

each other without any break, but with impassioned recitatives from the narrator in between, similar to the Evangelist’s comments in the Passions. As Schnittke sees it, it is a ‘negative Passion’ because it tells the story of someone who is almost the ‘Anti-Christ’ or at the very least a wicked, evil Christian.

However his opera does not use the same type of narrative as a Bach Passion: there is no clear distinction between ‘action’ (the narrator’s recitatives) and ‘reflection’ (the arias and choruses). Everything is mixed up, not quite in order, and reflects, above all, the ambivalence of the hero. The narration is interrupted by a two-voiced Devil’s monologue. The Devil, Mephisto, has two faces: that of a hypocritically sweet and servile seducer (sung by a baroque-style counter tenor) and that of a cruel chastiser (a low and vulgar female voice).

There is one episode in Act III when both Mephistos sing together: Mephisto No. 1 is trying to ‘console’ Faust, while Mephisto No. 2 is ready to kill Faust, mocking all the consoling phrases through the microphone.

The most dramatic part of the opera is its third act, and in particular, the scene of Dr Faust’s death. It is a tango, where the mocking Mephisto sings ‘couplets’, walking through the audience with a microphone. The music for the episode of Faust's death was first written in the directly dissonant style, full of glissandos and dynamic contrasts. But Schnittke very soon realised that this would not make the powerful impact he wanted; it needed to be ‘sharpened’. So he decided to lower the level of the stylistic profile in this scene, and to use the tango, a stereotype of death, for this purpose.

Schnittke’s opera was given its première by the Hamburg State Opera on 22 June 1995 reduced by one third, drastically changed and reshaped. At that time Schnittke himself was in a Moscow hospital, so he was unable to intervene.

Tonight’s performance, only the second after the Hamburg première, presents the whole of Act One (omitting one short incidental music scene), the most important music from Act Two, and the complete Act Three.

Alexander Ivashkin © 2009

In the first act Schnittke wished to represent German music from about four hundred years ago. He even added some optional historical instruments to the orchestra. ‘I am surprised’, he once said, ‘how easily I feel this style, as if I were really living at that time. Maybe that’s because my forefathers were still in Germany five hundred years ago. Or maybe it is so easy because the Evil One is reaching me – because I am writing about Him and Faust.’

In the second act of the opera (just as in the second act of Schnittke’s ballet Peer www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Thursday 19 November 2009 7.30pm | Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music Boris Tevlin conductor Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory SCHNITTKE Concerto for Choir (41’) BORTNYANSKY Sacred Concerto 15 (8’) RACHMANINOFF Ave Maria (4’) RACHMANINOFF Panteley the Healer (5’) CHESNOKOV The Angel Cried (3’) SCHNITTKE Three Sacred Hymns (7’) SHCHEDRIN Tsarskaya Kravchaya (6’) SHCHEDRIN Pugachev’s Execution (12’) Tickets: £15 £10 £5

Biographies Boris Tevlin page 35 Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory page 31 The timings shown above are not precise and are only given as a guide.

This concert is promoted by the Royal College of Music with assistance from Southbank Centre.

Page 15

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Choir Concerto O Lord of all that is These songs, where every verse is filled with grief To him who grasps the meaning of these mournful words Complete this work which I began in hope Though he is generally considered one of the most important Russian composers of the 20th century, Alfred Schnittke was born of German-speaking parents in the town of Engels, on the Volga River, in an enclave that had been settled by Germans since the time of Catherine the Great. They even had their own republic within the USSR, abolished by Stalin in 1941. Schnittke’s father was Jewish, his mother Roman Catholic, while many other Volga Germans were Lutheran Christians. Thus Schnittke – influenced

by Jewish, German and Russian cultures – grew up as something of a mystic. He was baptised as a Catholic in the 1980s.

According to his biographer Alexander Ivashkin, he believed a composer ‘should be a medium or a sensor remembering what he hears from somewhere else and whose mind acts as a translator only.

Music comes from some sort of divine rather than human area’.

From early in his career Schnittke was interested in writing religious music, even though that was officially proscribed by the Soviet state. In 1972 he composed an entire Latin Requiem under the guise of it being used as incidental music in a production of Schiller’s Don Carlos. He also wrote a setting of St Francis of Assisi’s ‘Hymn to the Sun’ and a set of Orthodox Penitential Psalms as well as other works of which the most important is undoubtedly the Concerto for Mixed Chorus completed in 1985. The third movement was written first, and was premièred on its own in Istanbul in 1984 by the USSR State Chamber Choir conducted by Valery Polyansky.

Polyansky, who already admired Schnittke’s Requiem, encouraged him to complete the Concerto and directed the first performance of the entire work in Moscow in 1986 in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

In the Concerto Schnittke evokes, but extends, the Russian Orthodox tradition of the sacred choral concerto as exemplified by the works of Bortnyansky.

His work is much larger than Bortnyansky’s however, being arranged in four movements of symphonic scope for a 16-part choir, treated to some extent like an orchestra. The prominent low bass lines, the antiphonal treatment of the choir, the harmony in parallel thirds

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

19 November Concert

15

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

and the narrow-range, repetitive melodies are all features redolent of older Orthodox Church music. In contrast to Schnittke’s earlier works that featured collage-like contrasts of styles and idioms, the language of the Concerto is powerfully unified, glowingly monumental. It is one of the composer’s most moving works.

The text, however, is not a liturgical one but is excerpted from a Russian version

by Naum Grebnev of the Book of Lamentations by the Armenian poet and mystical philosopher Saint Gregory of Narek (951-1003). In the four movements the choir first sings the praises of God; then the poet himself appears as a commentator in the second movement, explaining that he has written his songs for all men and women, the sinners as much as the righteous. The third movement is a prayer for those who read or hear the verses; and the epilogue-like fourth movement asks God to ‘complete’ the poet’s work by giving his verses the ability to ‘cure the wounds of body and soul’.

INTERVAL 20 minutes

DMITRI STEPANOVICH BORTNYANSKY (1752-1825) Choral Concerto 15 ‘Priidite, vospoim lyudiye’ (Come, let us sing, o ye People) Ye people, let us come and sing of Christ’s resurrection – He that was crucified, buried – And resurrected

6/11/09

13:12

Bortnyansky was born in Glukhov in the Ukraine and studied in Moscow and St Petersburg with Baldassare Galuppi (perhaps most famous for Robert Browning’s poem A Toccata of Galuppi’s).

The Empress Catherine the Great gave him a grant to follow Galuppi when he returned to Italy, and Bortnyansky continued his studies in Bologna, Rome and Naples, becoming one of the besttrained and most cosmopolitan Russian musicians of the period: he even had operas produced at Venice and Modena.

He returned to Russia in 1779 and in 1796 became director of the Imperial Chapel choir. Bortnyansky is known as the quintessential St Petersburg classicist.

He was fluent in at least five languages, including Ukrainian. Apart from operas in Italian and in French, and some chamber music, his output was predominantly of sacred choral music in Latin, Italian, French, German, Russian and Old Church Slavonic, including some 45 choral concertos. Bortnyansky’s liturgical works for the Orthodox Church – which were edited in 1882 by Tchaikovsky – show his creative fusion of Western and Eastern styles of church music, and introduced the elaborate polyphony he had studied in Italy. Some of his concertos are for two choirs in antiphony, reflecting the influence of the Venetian masters Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli.

Bortnyansky’s music shows influences from Ukrainian as well as Russian folkmusic, and this is implicit in some of the writing of the Choral Concerto 15, ‘Come, let us sing’. The text, dealing with Christ’s death and resurrection, is one often sung at Vespers in the Orthodox Church. Bortnyansky treats it in an extended multi-movement form, using

Alfred Schnittke Archive

Schnittke at his desk in the 1970s

16

Page 16

contrasts of tempo and key to mirror the emotional expression of the words. His resourceful employment of solo voices, contrasted with the choir, links this kind of vocal concerto to the tradition of the Baroque instrumental Concerto Grosso.

SERGEI VASSILIEVICH RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943) Ave Maria, Op. 37 No. 6 Panteley the Healer Though best-known for his symphonies, concertos and piano works, Rachmaninoff composed a fair number of works for unaccompanied chorus, including two large-scale sacred masterpieces, the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (1910) and the All-Night Vigil (1915), also known as the Vespers. The so-called Ave Maria (‘Bogoroditse Devo’ – actually the opening line of the Russian means ‘Rejoice, O virgin Mother of God’) is the sixth movement of this great work.

It is a tender, devotional song of praise in which Rachmaninoff skilfully decorates a simple chant, the music flowing as if in one long seamless melody.

Panteley the Healer (Panteley-tselitel) sets a poem by the poet and dramatist Alexei Tolstoy, and is perhaps a less wholly characteristic work, but demonstrates a rich harmonic language that is perhaps not surprising in a work written at the same period as Rachmaninoff ’s popular Second Piano Concerto.

PAVEL GRIGORIEVICH CHESNOKOV (1877-1944) The Angel Cried Chesnokov, born in Vladimir, studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov. At an early age he was recognised as an outstanding choral conductor and choirmaster. By the time of the 1917 revolution he had composed over 400 sacred choral works, but the Soviet state forbade the production of religious art. Chesnokov therefore switched to writing secular choral compositions. He conducted the Moscow Academy Choir and the Bolshoi Theatre Choir, and taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where he established a choral conducting course. He stopped writing music altogether in 1933 following the deliberate demolition by the state of the Cathedral where he had been choirmaster.

Although apparently forgotten for decades after his death, since the breakup of the USSR Chesnokov’s sacred choral works, such as The Angel Cried, have experienced a revival in popularity.

19 November Concert

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Three Sacred Songs O Holy Virgin, rejoice O Lord, Jesus Christ Our Father in Heaven Schnittke is said to have composed these three choruses, in the general style of Russian Orthodox church music, during a single night, though the year is given as 1983 or 1984 in different sources. They are much simpler in style than the Choral Concerto, but are also dedicated to Valery Polyansky.

RODION SHCHEDRIN (born 1932) Tsarskaya Kravchaya Pugachev’s Execution, Op. 61 Rodion Shchedrin was born in Moscow: his father was a violinist and composer who taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where Shchedrin studied from 1950 to 1955 and where he himself taught from 1965 to 1969. He succeeded Shostakovich as the chairman of the Russian Union of Composers and has developed a reputation as a politically independent, cosmopolitan creative artist. Since the break-up of the USSR he has divided his time between Moscow and Munich. Shchedrin has worked in most media and his output includes operas (notably Lolita after the novel by Vladimir Nabokov and Dead Souls after Gogol), ballets (notably Anna Karenina after Tolstoy), symphonies, concertos, piano and chamber works. Shchedrin is married to Maya Plisetskaya, a famous prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, and has written many works for her, including the brilliant Carmen Suite, probably his most famous work although it is founded on the music of Bizet.

6/11/09

13:12

Page 17

with Russian musical traditions from before the Soviet period, and this is especially true of his choral music, which includes the large-scale cycle The Sealed Angel (1988) setting Russian Orthodox texts. On 2 October 2008 his Golden Wedding Anniversary to Maya Plisetskaya was celebrated in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, on which occasion a new set of Two Russian Choruses was premièred. Tsarskaya Kravchaya is the first of these, and is adapted from Shchedrin’s choral opera The Life and Sufferings of Boyarina Morozova and Her Sister Princess Urusova, composed in 2006, which concerns the religious conflicts and schism in the Russian Orthodox Church that began in the 17th century with the rise of the Old Believers. In this opera, which uses only a few instruments, the choir functions as both narrator and orchestra.

The dramatic choral poem Pugachev’s Execution sets a text by Alexander Pushkin from his narrative The History of Pugachev about the serious peasant and Old Believer rebellion against the government of Catherine the Great led by the Cossack Emelyan Pugachev in 1774-75. Shchedrin’s work was premièred in Tallinn, Estonia in 1983.

Above, members of the Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory

Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory Sopranos Bibigul Alibekova, Maria Chernetsova, Evgenia Eltysheva, Liudmila Eryutkina, Elena Kalchenko, Yulia Kletnova, Anastasia Mezhina, Maria Minaeva, Irina Mikhaylova, Margarita Pozhinaylo, Elena Romanova, Anna Shaverdyan, Ekaterina Siromakha, Olga Vlasova Altos Elmira Akchurina, Elena Bevz, Maria Chelmakina, Tatiana Korobkova, Evgeniya Krivitskaya, Ekaterina Levshenkova, Kristina Mal’tseva, Olga Minaeva, Alena Parfenova, Natalia Romanova, Svetlana Solovyeva, Natalia Telkova, Ekaterina Tolstoguzova Tenors Dmitry Antonov, Pavel Chernov, Yaroslav Gloushakov, Vasily Frolov, Denis Khanzhov, Sergey Sidorenko, Alexey Vereshchagin, Evgeny Volkov, Alexey Vyaznikov, Taras Yasenkov, Alexander Zyuzlikov

Malcolm MacDonald © 2009 Basses Miroslav Georgievskiy, Denis Dronov, Alexander Dolgopolov, Andrey Kaplanov, El’dar Musin, Denis Osmanov, Andrey Pavlenko, Armen Pogosyan, Alexander Solovyev, Aliaksandr Stvol, Ivan Uryupin, Vladimir Vishnevskiy, Dmitry Volkov, Mikhail Zaraev

In much of his more recent work Shchedrin is concerned to re-connect www.lpo.org.uk/schnittkewww.l po.org.uk/schnittke

19 November Concert

17

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 18

Saturday 21 November 2009 10.00am – 6.00pm Deptford Town Hall, New Cross Road, London SE14 6AF INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM A presentation of recent research and scholarship on the music and ideas of Alfred Schnittke by leading musicologists, composers, philologists, film specialists, theologists, publishers and performers from around the world.

Find out more at www.gold.ac.uk/crm/schnittke-archive Tickets: £5 on the door. To reserve tickets in advance for payment on the door call 020 7919 7640 (Monday to Friday 9.30am - 5.30pm) or email music@gold.ac.uk

Presented by the Centre for Russian Music / Alfred Schnittke Archive, Goldsmiths, University of London in association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Sikorski International Musikverlage, Hamburg (Germany) and The Alfred Schnittke International Society, Hamburg (Germany).

10am Session 1: Schnittke, Film Industry and Pop Music

11am Session 2: Schnittke, Religion and Myth

1pm Concert: Unknown Schnittke Great Hall, Goldsmiths (22 Lewisham Way, main entrance, ground floor) Songs for soprano and piano: The Beggar, Twilights, Birch-tree (1954-55) – world première Three Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva (1965) Mutter (1993) – UK première Magdalina, on Boris Pasternak's poem from Doctor Zhivago (1977) – first UK public performance Margarita Elia soprano Andri Hadjiandreou piano Improvisation (1993) for solo cello Yuuki Boutery-Ishido cello (The Purcell School of Music) Concerto for Electric Instruments (1960) – world première Mariano Nuñez West sound engineer and producer Lydia Kavina theremin Drosostalitsa Moraiti shumophone Andri Hadjiandreou crystadin Rebecca Wiles camerton piano Emma Firth, Hannah Cott, Valentina Pravodelova, Magdalena Kryzanowska ekvodins Alexander Ivashkin conductor In association with Stanley Glasser Electronic Music Studio, Goldsmiths, University of London

2pm Session 3: Schnittke and Postmodernism

4.20pm Session 4: Schnittke and the twentieth-century composers

5pm Session 5: Performance of Schnittke’s music

The International Symposium is presented in association with the Royal Musical Association.

18

21 November Symposium

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 19

Sunday 22 November 2009 Supported by MAST

IN THE LABYRINTH OF ALFRED SCHNITTKE Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Foyers FULL DAY 10am to 10pm | ENTRANCE TO ALL EVENTS £30 Vladimir Jurowski conductor Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter Annabel Arden director Allison Bell soprano Kristina Blaumane cello Vesselin Gellev violin Alexander Ivashkin cello Boris Petrushansky piano Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin Alexander Zemtsov viola Soloists of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra An absorbing day of music and discussion celebrating the life and music of Alfred Schnittke with leading exponents of the composer’s work.

10am-12pm | Purcell Room Schnittke Today Presented in association with the Royal Musical Association.

Introduction by Alexander Ivashkin of Goldsmiths, University of London and the Alfred Schnittke Archive, London.

Followed by round table discussion with: Holger Lampson of The Alfred Schnittke Academy and the Alfred Schnittke International Society, Hamburg (Germany).

Hans-Ulrich Duffek, Director of Hans Sikorski Publishers.

Alla Bogdanova, Director of the Schnittke-Centre, Moscow.

Also presentation of Alfred Schnittke’s new Collected Works Critical Edition (published by Compozitor, St Petersburg, Russia) and new CD Schnittke Discoveries (Toccata Classics, London).

1.00pm - 2.30pm | Purcell Room | Tickets: £5 Director Andrei Khrzhanovsky, in conversation with Clare Kitson, will discuss his collaboration with Schnittke on seven films, including the long-banned The Glass Harmonica.

Two papers will be presented: 10.40am How German is Schnittke’s Third Symphony? given by Gavin Dixon of The Alfred Schnittke Archive, Goldsmiths, University of London.

11.00am A Geneology of Polystylism: Alfred Schnittke and the Late Soviet Culture of Collage given by Peter J. Schmelz of Washington University in St Louis, USA.

3.00pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall | Tickets: £15 SCHNITTKE Five Aphorisms (15’); Three Madrigals (5’); Peer Gynt Epilogue (26’); Sonata 1 for violin and piano (20’); Three Scenes (17’); Music to an Imagined Play (8’)

11.25am Performance: New Discoveries at the Schnittke Archive SCHNITTKE Six Piano Preludes – world première

5.30pm | Purcell Room | FREE BUT TICKETED SCHNITTKE Concerto for Electric Instruments (15’)

Drosostalitsa Moraiti (piano) from the Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths, University of London.

10.00am - 12.00pm | Purcell Room | Tickets: £5 A discussion of Schnittke’s music and writings chaired by Alexander Ivashkin followed by a performance of Schnittke’s Six Piano Preludes.

6.15pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall | Tickets: £15 SCHNITTKE Monologue (18’); Concerto for Piano and Strings (23’); Concerto Grosso 1 (31’); The Yellow Sound (40’) 9.15pm | Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer | FREE BUT TICKETED SCHNITTKE Piano Quintet (26’) This performance will be followed by a Schnittke discussion forum in The Front Room with Vladimir Jurowski and today’s guests. Open to all.

Biographies Vladimir Jurowski page 30 Sir Timothy Ackroyd page 30 Annabel Arden page 30 Allison Bell page 31 Kristina Blaumane page 31 Vesselin Gellev page 32 Alexander Ivashkin page 32 Boris Petrushansky page 34 Dmitry Sitkovetsky page 35 Alexander Zemtsov page 35 London Philharmonic Orchestra page 36 Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra page 38 The timings of the works shown above are not precise and are only given as a guide.

In The Labyrinth of Alfred Schnittke is promoted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in association with Southbank Centre. www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

The Piano Preludes were written during the composer’s conservatory years from 1953-54. Before then Schnittke had studied the piano at the Moscow Music College from 1949-1953. His favourite composers were Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. Quite an advanced player, Schnittke learned and played some of Chopin’s Etudes. He also performed Rachmaninoff ’s Second Piano Concerto and Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

At that time the first LPs became available in Russia and he was able to listen to recordings of Wagner’s operas and Scriabin’s orchestral music. The piano style in the Preludes is sometimes very orchestral, reflecting Schnittke’s interest in the music of these composers.

One of the Preludes almost quotes Chopin’s E minor Prelude, another reminds one of Liszt’s Funérailles. The last Prelude is a well developed fugue.

The music of the Preludes bears some similarity to that of Nikolai Myaskovsky.

22 November Events

19

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

Myaskovsky had been the teacher of Evgeny Golubev, Schnittke’s composition professor at the Moscow Conservatoire.

The great skill shown in the melodic writing recalls Myaskovsky’s well balanced style. The elegant profile of the tunes is related to the noble, elegant and imaginatively expressive profile of Schnittke’s own melodic style in his later compositions of the 1970s and 1980s.

1.00-2.30pm|Purcell Room An illustrated talk by the influential and revolutionary figure of Russian animation, Andrei Khrzhanovsky.

In conversation with Clare Kitson, the director will discuss his collaboration with Schnittke on seven films, including the long-banned The Glass Harmonica, in which Schnittke’s music resonated particularly closely with his own ideas.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky was a leading light in the bold new trend in Soviet animation that began in the late 1960s. The Thaw was over and Socialist Realism was back.

But in Moscow’s animation studio the KGB plants were not as vigilant as in the feature and documentary studios. After all, cartoons are for children, aren’t they?

Khrzhanovsky’s first film was a surefooted satire on Soviet bureaucracy. His second, The Glass Harmonica (1968) was a parable set in a fairytale land where art is banned and the ban is policed by bowlerhatted hard men. The fairytale land fooled no one, and this was the USSR’s only animation summarily refused by the censors and never seen till perestroika.

Many of Khrzhanovsky’s later films are based on literature, with Pushkin the focus of several works. But Khrzhanovsky’s Pushkin, casting an ironic eye on the society of his day and complaining bitterly about the censorship of his work, must have struck a special chord with Brezhnev-era audiences.

Khrzhanovsky’s horizon is not bounded by animation alone and he consistently seeks out the most avant-garde designers and composers as collaborators.

Schnittke’s first animation score was for The Glass Harmonica. The film featured a compendium of art masterpieces through the ages and Schnittke’s early polystylism fitted admirably. The music for this film would later form the basis of his Second Violin Concerto. Of the composer’s subsequent six animation scores, five would be for Khrzhanovsky. The Pushkin Trilogy – its score combining lyricism, satire and an authentic folk idiom – earned the director-composer team the prestigious State Prize.

Clare Kitson © 2009

20

22 November Events

6/11/09

13:12

Page 20

3pm |Queen Elizabeth Hall SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Five Aphorisms Boris Petrushansky piano Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter

The Five Aphorisms (1990) for piano solo are preludes, each with a different mood.

Originally they were performed with poems by Joseph Brodsky read between each of them. The first performance, by Alexander Slobodyanik, took place in New York’s Carnegie Hall, on 21 October 1990. Schnittke liked Brodsky’s poems, and knew the poet personally. The choice of the poems is free. Today’s performance presents those read at the première in 1990.

Three Madrigals Vladimir Jurowski conductor Allison Bell soprano Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin Alexander Zemtsov viola London Philharmonic Orchestra

Sur une étoile | Entfernung | Reflection A rare example of Schnittke’s pure lyrical style, Three Madrigals (1981) is a threelanguage cycle of miniature poems by the Austrian-German poet Francisco Tanzer (1921-2003). His poems (and some of his letters) were also set to music by Sofia Gubaidulina. The work is dedicated to Gubaidulina’s 50th birthday and to Tanzer’s 60th anniversary. The Three Madrigals represent, in Schnittke’s own words, ‘three different “incarnations” of the same intimacy of a man and a woman, sent in exile away from the Earth, to the stars.’ In the first madrigal (in French) the music has the flavour of a French chanson; in the second (in German) of a Viennese Lied in the style of Alban Berg. Here Schnittke once again quotes the B(B flat)-A-C-H(B natural) monogram. The third and final madrigal (in English), in the all-embracing key of C major, has some affinities with an AfroAmerican spiritual.

Peer Gynt Epilogue Alexander Ivashkin cello Boris Petrushansky piano

The Epilogue is Schnittke’s own transcription (dating from 1992) for cello, piano and chorus (on tape) of the final scene of his ballet Peer Gynt (1986), after Ibsen. The dedicatee, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Irina Schnittke premièred the work on 25 May 1993. In the ballet the Epilogue sheds new light on all the events of Peer Gynt’s past life, which he now remembers. The prerecorded choir’s continuous ‘eternal’ D major creates a surreal, mystical background for all the main musical themes of the ballet, which are

juxtaposed and overlapped here in a most unexpected way, appearing in a completely new perspective. The Epilogue concludes with an ascent to infinite heights, the ‘steps’ of the ascent – an overtone row – dissolving gradually into the final shining D major chord.

For Schnittke, ‘Peer Gynt is a strange character, having no key, perhaps even stranger than Faust.’ Like Doctor Faustus, Peer Gynt travels, encounters evil spirits, and finally returns home and repents. In the Epilogue – a very long duet between Peer Gynt and Solveig – reality disappears, and space widens. Schnittke is trying to find, as he says, ‘the fourth dimension which “shimmers” in our real life but which is not yet given to us in full.’

INTERVAL –20 minutes Sonata 1 for violin and piano Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin Boris Petrushansky piano

Andante | Allegretto | Largo | Allegretto scherzando Alfred Schnittke’s Violin Sonata 1 was composed in 1963 and was given its Western première in June 1965. The violinist Mark Lubotsky played the Sonata with the pianist Vsevolod Petrushansky (father of Boris Petrushansky who performs the Sonata today) at a music festival in Finland. In 1968 the composer made a version of the Sonata for violin and chamber orchestra.

Schnittke wrote about the Sonata: ‘This work was my first encounter with dodecaphonic technique, although with a varying tone row (the first movement is built on diminished and augmented triads, the second on minor triads, the third on major triads, and the fourth combines them all). This is a tonal journey on atonal roads, thematically still rather traditional (and including pseudoquotations from folk music and from the Second Piano Trio of Dmitri Shostakovich).’ The tone row structure, based on triads, is reminiscent of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, while the rhythmical structure, as Schnittke himself noted, is more indebted to Stravinsky, ‘especially the “limping” patterns in the second movement, and the frequent returns to the same vertical formation. In my early conservatoire years I was fascinated with Stravinsky's rhythmic structures… and used many asymmetrical, stumbling ostinati similar to his style.’

The allusions to folk music that Schnittke mentions include a clear reference to the Russian folk song Barynya ty moya (Oh, my lady) in the coda of the third movement, as well as references in the

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

finale to the tune and rhythm of the Mexican folk song, La Cucaracha (The Cockroach), which was popular in Russia following the 1957 International Youth Festival held in Moscow.

The ‘pseudo-quotation’ from Shostakovich's Piano Trio mentioned by Schnittke can be found in the passacaglia opening of the third movement, which bears similarities to the passacaglia (also in the third movement) of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio 2, Op. 67. However, unlike Shostakovich, Schnittke bases his passacaglia on a combination of major triads and the JS Bach monogram: B(B flat)-A-C-H(B natural). The monogram is transposed up a major second and appears as: C-B-D-C sharp. This is the very first appearance of the BACH monogram in Schnittke’s music. It would later become a central element of his musical language, appearing in many other works, including both the Second and Third Violin Sonatas.

Three Scenes Vladimir Jurowski conductor Allison Bell soprano London Philharmonic Orchestra

Schnittke often called his Three Scenes for soprano and ensemble (1980) ‘a short sketch for opera’. This is a work lasting only seventeen minutes; it represents an unusual combination of theatrical performance, in the form of ‘absurd’ drama, with music using an innovative sound palette. The performance looks almost like an Orthodox church funeral service, with a vibraphone in the centre, coffin-like, which four musicians play with double bass bows; the sounds are mystical and ghostly. Basic but evocative sound symbols are exploited: chorale, funeral march, polka, and song (the melody of which was borrowed from Schnittke’s music for the film The Feast during the Plague, (after Pushkin). The first scene represents a play between the visible and the invisible, and includes the symbolic sound of clocks apparently going backwards, first striking twelve midnight, then eleven and finally striking one, animating a strange figure, a singer who performs to the accompaniment of an old fashioned coffee grinder. Then the second scene begins. At its climax four players, like guards at the ‘coffin’, dance to vulgar, coarse music played offstage by a violin and double bass. Finally a conductor playing a big drum comes on stage, giving a signal to form a ‘funeral procession’ around the vibraphone. In the third scene all the participants leave the stage. The Three Scenes was staged by Yuri Lyubimov.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 21

Music to an Imagined Play Vladimir Jurowski conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra

Winter Road | Zapev | March Music to an Imagined Play was written for Yuri Lyubimov’s production of The Possessed (after Dostoevsky) in 1981. The novel (forbidden in the Soviet Union until the 1970s) is about the triumph of evil forces over early communist ideology in nineteenth-century Russia. The play was banned in Soviet Russia and was only seen in London – hence the title of the music. Schnittke himself said that this music was written for the ‘remainder’ or ‘survivors’ of the orchestra: indeed the combination of instruments seems very strange, almost random.

The first movement, Winter Road, is inspired by the epigraph of the novel, taken from Pushkin’s poem: one can see the devils in the swirling mist of a winter road. The second movement, Zapev (introduction to a song), for solo flute only, is based on the bitter and melancholic intonations of Russian folk tunes. The third, March, is an illustration of the triumphant march of ‘communists’ in the final episode of The Possessed.

5.30pm | Purcell Room SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Concerto for Electric Instruments – Alexander Ivashkin conductor Mariano Nuñez West sound engineer and producer Lydia Kavina theremin Drosostalitsa Moraiti shumophone Andri Hadjiandreou crystadin Rebecca Wiles camerton piano Emma Firth, Hannah Cott, Magdalini Nikolaidou, Magdalena Kryzanowska ekvodins

Allegro moderato | Allegretto | Andante Schnittke used ‘electro-musical’ instruments with their typically artificial, exotic and alien sounds in his early orchestral piece Poem about Space, inspired by Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight in 1961. Electric musical instruments were quite popular in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s (and up to the early 1980s), both for classical and pop music.

In 1960 Schnittke wrote his Concerto for Electric Instruments for the Orchestra of Electric Instruments led by Vyacheslav Meshcherin (1923-1995). The score, only recently discovered in Schnittke’s family archive, includes the electric (or camerton) piano, the crystadin, the termenvox or theremin, and the shumophone (noise-maker). The termenvox was invented in the1920s by the Soviet engineer Lev Theremin (1896-

1993) and was used by Charles Ives in the score of his Fourth Symphony in 1929, when Theremin lived and worked in the USA. Two solo instruments, the camerton piano and the crystadin, are accompanied by the theremin, shumophone and four ekvodins. This latter instrument, still available and in working condition at the Theremin Centre in Moscow, was a sort of electric organ with some of the features of a string instrument, such as a fingerboard, and with the possibility of playing vibrato. The ekvodin, one of the very first analogue synthesizers, was invented in 1937. In his concerto Schnittke uses four ekvodins like a string quartet. The next Russian synthesiser, ANS ( named after the composer Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin), was invented in 1938 and used

by Schnittke for his only electro-acoustic piece, Stream (1969), which you can hear on a loop in the foyer today.

It was not practicable to bring the original electric instruments from Moscow (in any case, many of them are not in working condition). For this performance we shall imitate the original timbres on synthesizers and keyboards, following the invaluable advice of Andrei Smirnov, Head of the Theremin Centre in Moscow. The theremin part will be played by Lev Theremin’s grand niece, Lydia Kavina.

6.15pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Monologue Alexander Zemtsov viola Vladimir Jurowski conductor Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra

Monologue for viola and string orchestra, composed for Yuri Bashmet in 1989, is a one-movement composition with a short slow introduction. It is a work typical of Schnittke’s late period, when the composer’s style had changed dramatically after his first stroke. His compositions became much more dissonant and linear, all quotations and classical or romantic allusions disappeared.

The dynamic profile of Schnittke’s works after 1986 is often extreme. The tunes are ascetic, and the texture is bare. But the level of expression increases, and still relates to late romantic or expressionist style. One American critic compared Schnittke’s late compositions with Mahler’s music where ‘most of its musical flesh is torn away, leaving a gruesome skeleton dangling forlornly in a black space.’

As in many of Schnittke’s concertos, the soloist in Monologue confronts the orchestra in a fight with many of its own 22 November Events

21

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

‘shadows’. The music itself is very changeable, and is sometimes transformed into a gesture. Thus in one of the climaxes the soloist abandons the music, playing a few bars of random and alarm-like glissandi. This reminds one of the ‘cadenza visuale’ in the climax of Schnittke’s Fourth Violin Concerto, with the soloist making spasmodic and silent motions against the orchestral background. Schnittke’s gravestone at Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery has an engraving on it: a long pause with a fermata sign above it and with the dynamic mark fortissimo. This is a vivid symbol relating to his style, particularly in his late years, and it is also an almost exact replica of the ‘silence’ bar in the score of Monologue, after the climax and before the soloist starts his final monologue.

Concerto for Piano and Strings Boris Petrushansky piano Vladimir Jurowski conductor Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra

In the 1960s Schnittke was interested in absorbing new types of technique, in finding new sound perspectives. By contrast, the 1970s were a time for retrospective analysis of stylistically different idioms and of trying to find new meanings for the old roots. Finally, in the late 1970s-80s, Schnittke begins to expand the space of his music. He writes symphonies, concertos, concerti grossi, cantatas – substantial works in which he seeks to find his relationship with time and define his own dramatic ideas.

The Concerto for Piano and Strings was written in 1979, in a very short period of time. This one-movement composition is based on the principles of the sonata form, cyclic form, and variations. The original subtitle of the Concerto was Variations not on the theme. This means that all the variations are based on certain elements of the theme, while the complete theme is heard only at the end of the composition. The beginning of the development section sounds like a Scherzo. The soloist’s cadenza is the equivalent of a slow movement.

Unlike Schnittke’s Requiem, written about the same time, the Concerto for Piano and Strings is built on strong contrasts. The traditional, almost romantic accompaniment in the left hand of the solo piano part is opposed to a ‘znamenny chant’ (old Russian Church chorale) in the right hand. The symbolic simplicity of the chords in the piano part contrast with the extremely chromatic, sometimes quarter-tone lines of the strings. Waltz, chorale, quasi-jazz improvisation, bell-like piano sonorities –

22

22 November Events

6/11/09

13:12

Page 22

all these stylistically different images are clearly present in the music of the Concerto. Surprisingly enough, the initial motif of the Concerto, a minor third, is quite similar to the sound of the doorbell at Schnittke’s apartment in Moscow, where he lived in the 1970s-80s.

beginning of Schnittke’s score for the film How Tsar Peter got the Black Man Married.

‘One of my life's goals’, Schnittke said of the Concerto Grosso 1, ‘is to eliminate the gap between E (Ernstmusik, serious music) and U (Unterhaltung, music for entertainment), even if I break my neck.’

Concerto Grosso 1

INTERVAL – 20 minutes

Hun-Ouk Park, Agata Darashkaite violins Kumi Matsuo piano Vladimir Jurowski conductor Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra

Preludio | Toccata | Recitativo | Cadenza | Rondo | Postludio Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso for two violins, prepared piano and strings (1977), is the first of his six compositions under the same title, written between 1977 and 1993. Schnittke built his Concerti Grossi on the baroque idea of an intensive dialogue between an orchestra and a group of soloists. The Concerto Grosso 1 was written for Gidon Kremer, Tatyana Grindenko and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under Saulyus Sondeckis. Schnittke himself played the piano/harpsichord part during his first trip to the West in 1977. It was performed and recorded then, together with Pärt’s Tabula Rasa.

The Concerto Grosso 1 is one of Schnittke’s best known polystylistic compositions. Within the neo-classical frame one can find the transformation of a cheerful chorus sung by Soviet schoolchildren (the very beginning of the concerto and the climax of the Rondo), a nostalgic atonal serenade (in the middle of the Toccata), quasi-Corelli allusions, and, finally, a ‘favourite tango of my grandmother, which my great grandmother played on the harpsichord’ (Schnittke’s own words).

In the Concerto Grosso, as in so many of his compositions, Schnittke uses fragments taken from his incidental film music. ‘I gained a great deal from the cinema’, he said, ‘I cannot remember how many marches for brass band, how many banal waltz tunes, how much chase music, shooting music, landscape music I wrote… But I could transfer one or other of the themes into another composition, and by contrast with the other material in that composition, it acquires a new role.’

The tango melody in the Rondo in the Concerto Grosso 1 was first heard in the film The Agony. The final bars of the cadenza were taken from a cartoon Butterfly, shown earlier today. The quasibaroque tune at the opening of the same movement was originally a song (performed by the Russian actor-singer legend Vladimir Vysotsky) at the

The Yellow Sound Allison Bell soprano Vladimir Jurowski conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Annabel Arden director Ian Scott lighting designer Matthew Morley chorus master

Introduction Lento | Scene 1 Tempo rubato | Scene 2 Agitato | Scene 3 | Scene 4 Lento molto | Scene 5 | Scene 6 Maestoso The problems of the inter-relationships of sound, colour, shape and movement interested the Russian artist Vassili Kandinsky (1866-1944) throughout his life. In his youth, Kandinsky dreamed of becoming a musician. Later he took a lively interest in the colour-music experiments of Scriabin, and became friends with Schoenberg.

In 1928, Kandinsky created a synthesis of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with his own stage design. Kandinsky's very first abstract compositions, which appeared in 1910, testify to the astonishing musicality of the artist’s concepts. In the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Horseman) of 1912, he published the text of his theatrical composition, The Yellow Sound, which he regarded as an original libretto for a multimedia presentation, whose purpose was to unite three components: music, pictorial movement and choreographic movement.

In contrast to the colour-music ideas of Scriabin and the early eurhythmic experiments of that era, Kandinsky sought to achieve a contrapuntal relationship of the language of various arts, thus anticipating the multimedia artistic experiments of the past decade.

The music for The Yellow Sound was written by Kandinsky’s colleague, Thomas de Hartman. The première of the work did not take place until 1982 in New York under the leadership of the composer and conductor Gunther Schuller.

The libretto of The Yellow Sound is not a scenario in the usual sense of the word, but rather a ‘canvas’ of relationships between movement, sound and light, all interwoven into a unified whole. It is true that there are ‘characters’, although they are five rather abstract yellow giants, ‘unformed beings’, a child, the sound of a

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 23

Kristina Blaumane cello

Moderato | Tempo di valse | Andante | Lento | Moderato pastorale

Alfred Schnittke Archive

In the late 1970s Schnittke’s music sounded quite different from the serial extremism of the 1960s and the ‘theatrical extra-musicality’ of his first polystylistic compositions. He had found a new language, combining structural ideas and extra-musical elements, while still remaining natural and homogeneous.

Obvious quotations disappear. The various allusions become signifiers of different epochs, conducting a dialogue with one another like the keys on a single keyboard.

A performance of The Yellow Sound

bell, a yellow flower. The concept of the entire synthesis is defined by the theory of light, developed by the artist in his treatise On the Spiritual in Art, encompassing a broad range of problems, both aesthetic and philosophical. Each colour, according to Kandinsky, is a certain spiritual substance, corresponding to a particular external sphere of being.

The colour white is birth, black is death, the other colours represent pairs of life contrasts between these poles, the most important contrast being that between yellow (earth) and blue (heaven). Each colour has its own inherent warmth, mobility, and potential for development The colour yellow has the greatest potential, which is directed ‘outward’, namely the energy of a superabundance of vital and corporeal powers. Kandinsky wrote of the colour yellow: ‘it leaps across boundaries, disseminating its force into the environment similar to the qualities of any physical power, which unconsciously throws itself upon an object and aimlessly spreads itself in all directions.’ In The Yellow Sound, Kandinsky embodied his conception of the fundamental tragedy of any onesided dynamic process, symbolically comparing it to ‘a snake biting its own tail’.

In his theatre composition, The Yellow Sound (1974), in six scenes with an introduction, Schnittke follows Kandinsky’s libretto fairly accurately: the correspondence of the appearance of yellow colour to the tones of the ‘B’ and the ‘A’ agonizingly repeated by various instruments (violin, clarinet, piccolo, trumpet); the general character of the drama, where the ‘yellow’ is sharply separated from everything else. Just as www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

for Kandinsky the triangle and the square were ‘spiritual creations with their own internal resonance’, so for Schnittke the interval and the chord became signs of a special universal sonic reality.

Schnittke’s The Yellow Sound (music only) was first performed in 1975 at the Festival in Sainte Baume, France. The first staged performance took place in Moscow on 6 January 1984, in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

Chorus Text Introduction: Stone-hard dreams ... And speaking rocks ...

Clods of earth pregnant with puzzling questions ...

The heaven turns ... The stones melt ...

Growing up more invisible ... rampart ...

Tears of laughter ... Praying and cursing ...

Murky light on the ... sunniest ... day (quickly and suddenly cut off).

Brilliant shadows in the darkest night!!

Scene 2: The flowers cover all, cover all, cover all.

Close your eyes! Close your eyes!

We look. We look.

Cover conception with innocence.

Open your eyes! Open your eyes!

Gone. Gone.

9.15pm | Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer

Whereas Shostakovich gave unique expression to the thoughts and feelings of those generations of Russian people whose fate it was to live under the yoke of totalitarian power, Schnittke is often called the ‘man in between’. A very strong pulse of latent energy is tangible in both men’s music. Also common to both is a characteristic pessimism. Many of their works have the effect of ‘dying’, dissolving out of the world, fading into the distance of time.

This is typical of Schnittke’s Piano Quintet. It is not surprising that its orchestral version, composed in 1978, should be called In Memoriam. Schnittke had spent four years writing the Quintet and dedicated it to his mother's memory.

Deeply melancholic in mood and refined in musical texture, it is not based on any ‘common sense idea’. The music generally sounds quite traditional, but it is impossible to say which tradition comes to mind. The only ‘borrowed’ material is the monogram B(B flat)-A-C-H (B natural). But this ‘name’, referring to JS Bach, is barely recognisable at the beginning of the second movement, the ‘waltz’ with its bitter and sentimental music. The last movement is a sort of passacaglia or ostinato. A light pastorale melody in the piano part is repeated again and again. Regardless of other events it is unchangeable, like the rays of the sun. Again, the idea is from the baroque, but it dissolves into a romantic pastorale ‘drone’ image, disappearing towards the end and dying out entirely: the pianist stops pressing the keyboard but continues to play, silently. A post avant-garde presentation of the romantic interpretation of a baroque idea.

Alexander Ivashkin © 2009

SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Piano Quintet Boris Petrushansky piano Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin Vesselin Gellev violin Alexander Zemtsov viola

A discussion with Vladimir Jurowski and today’s guests will follow in the Front Room.

22 November Events

23

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 24

6.00pm-6.35pm | Royal Festival Hall FREE Pre-Concert Event

Wednesday 25 November 2009 6.00pm - 6.35pm | Royal Festival Hall FREE Pre-Concert Event Vladimir Jurowski conductor Foyle Future Firsts BACH (ORCH. WEBERN) Ricercar (8’) SAFRONOV ein bach-stück / ein stück bach STRAVINSKY Tango (3’) SCHNITTKE Polyphonic Tango (7’)

(8’)

The Foyle Foundation is the principal funder of the Foyle Future Firsts programme.

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall Vladimir Jurowski conductor Leonidas Kavakos violin London Philharmonic Orchestra WEBERN Passacaglia (11’) LINDBERG Chorale (8’) BERG Violin Concerto (22’) SCHNITTKE Symphony 3

(60’)

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55)

Post-concert |Clore Ballroom Floor, Level 2, Royal Festival Hall Barlines | FREE Post-concert Event An informal discussion with Vladimir Jurowski and the evening’s soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, and Marshall Marcus, Head of Music at Southbank Centre..

Biographies Vladimir Jurowski page 30 Foyle Future Firsts page 37 Leonidas Kavakos page 33 London Phiharmonic Orchestra page 36 The timings shown above are not precise and are only given as a guide.

This concert is promoted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (16851750) arranged by Anton Webern (1883-1945) Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci from the Musical Offering Bach’s Musical Offering of 1747 is a collection of canons and fugues, and a trio sonata, based on a theme that the Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great had given the composer as a basis for improvisation when Bach visited his court. Its crowning glory is a Ricercar, or fugue in the old severe style, in six parts.

In 1934/35, Anton Webern arranged this for small orchestra or chamber ensemble.

Instead of straightforwardly clothing Bach’s contrapuntal lines in instrumental colours, he broke them up among different instruments, to ‘reveal the interrelationship of motifs’, thus creating an analysis of the piece in sound.

ANTON SAFRONOV (born 1972) ein bach-stück / ein stück bach Anton Safronov was born in Moscow, studied with Edison Denisov, Walter Zimmermann and Wolfgang Rihm, and now divides his time between Russia and Germany. He wrote a bach piece / a piece of bach, for seven players, during a residency at the Accademia Villa Massimo in Rome in 2007, and revised it the following year. Its starting-point is Bach’s set of ten canons on the first eight bass notes of his own Goldberg Variations.

These canons, initially simple but later more complex, emerge from and recede into a continuum more freely derived from the same theme – as if striving, in the words of the composer’s subtitle, ‘to outlast the darkness’.

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) arranged by Victor Babin (1908-1972) Tango The tango has appealed to many classical composers – including Stravinsky, who wrote this short, affectionately idiomatic Tango as a piano piece in 1940, and arranged it for chamber orchestra in 1953. This evening it is played in a version for two pianos by Victor Babin, Moscow-born and half of the popular husband-and-wife two-piano team of Vronsky and Babin.

Anthony Burton © 2009 ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Polyphonic Tango Schnittke’s Polyphonic Tango for 14 players combines Bach’s contrapuntal textures with the rhythms and harmonies of Argentinian tango. It was composed for the inaugural concert of the Bolshoi Soloists in Moscow in 1979, as the finale

24

25 November Events

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

of a collective Pas de Quatre to which Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Edison Denisov and Arvo Pärt also contributed.

According to the cellist and Schnittke expert Alexander Ivashkin, who took part in the première, all four movements were satirical barbs directed at the Bolshoi Ballet conductor Al’gis Zhuraitis, who had written an article in Pravda attacking a new version by Schnittke and Rozhdestvensky of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. Schnittke rings out letters from Zhuraitis’s first name on bells: A–G–S(E flat), quotes a soldiers’ song popular with KGB ensembles, and ends with a less subtle gesture.

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall ‘A Volga German with a Viennese accent’ Alfred Schnittke, a Russian composer with a typically German name, was born in Russia, without a drop of Russian blood, in the town of Engels. Named after a father of communist theory Friedrich Engels, the town was once the capital of the Volga German Republic in the Soviet Union. Schnittke had a Jewish (but German-speaking) father and a German mother. ‘I am tied to Russia, having spent all my life here’, he once said, ‘on the other hand, much of what I've written is somehow related to German music and to the logic which comes from being German, although I did not particularly want this…’

Schnittke spoke German with a Viennese accent. His family moved to Vienna in 1946, where his father worked for a Soviet newspaper. His first music lessons were on the accordion. They began just a few months after Webern had been shot dead in Vienna by an American soldier.

Two years in Vienna determined

Alfred Schnittke Archive

Alfred Schnittke as a boy

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 25

Schnittke’s future tastes in music. The Viennese idioms of Haydn, Schubert, Wagner and Bruckner were to become an essential part of his musical language.

Later Schnittke was greatly influenced by the composers of the so-called Second Viennese School, particularly Berg and Webern. Schnittke took some lessons with Philip Hershkovich, Webern’s pupil.

Hershkovich, who lived in Moscow, was a highly original thinker. He made a profound impact on several generations of Russian composers. Webern’s orchestration of Bach’s Ricercar had considerable importance for Schnittke.

His early Music for Chamber Orchestra (1964), with its special ‘tempo line’, was greatly influenced by Webern’s Passacaglia, Op. 1, which has so many changes of tempo.

ANTON WEBERN (1883-1945) Passacaglia The Passacaglia, one of Webern’s very few orchestral works, was written when the composer was still Schoenberg’s student. It is a post-Romantic work, with many parallels with and allusions to the music of Mahler and even Brahms. The main theme (played at the beginning by cellos pizzicati) reminds one of the finale of Beethoven’s Eroica. It is structured as 32 variations on a theme, with exposition, development and recapitulation sections.

Every significant change occurs after a group of four variations. But the frequent and varied tempo changes make this structure blurred and hidden. Just like many works by Schnittke in the 1960s, it contains elements of tonal music (it is written in the clear key of D minor – like JS Bach’s Chaconne), having a tone row of 8 notes, built around a lament-like motif, which sounds almost like Tchaikovsky.

The orchestra in the Passacaglia is large, but Webern often uses solo timbres, and also plays with various tone colours by rapidly changing from one instrument to another. This would later become a typical feature of Webern’s instrumental style called – Klangfarbmelodie, (tone colour melody). Schnittke wrote of Webern’s palette: ‘The uninterrupted timbral modulations do not create a kaleidoscope of timbres, but combine into a dynamically stable system which preserves its integrity.’ Today Webern’s Passacaglia sounds surprisingly like a polystylistic post-modern piece. Schnittke detected in it some ‘shadows of operetta’ (Webern worked as a conductor at the Vienna Operetta Theatre), as well as its use of ‘alien material’, the long established technique of polyphony.

Significantly, Webern’s doctoral dissertation was on Heinrich Isaac’s sixteenth-century motets.

MAGNUS LINDBERG (born 1958) Chorale The Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg belongs to the same generation as his outstanding compatriots, Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Like Alfred Schnittke, Lindberg started his musical studies on the accordion, which his father gave him as a present at the age of six.

His style has changed over the years, from the avant-garde to the much more traditional, eclectic and melodic elements in his later compositions. His most recent large-scale work for choir and orchestra is Graffiti (2008-09) and is written in Latin taken from an old text of Roman graffiti.

In September 2009 he started his twoyear appointment as Composer-inResidence with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the première of his new orchestral work EXPO, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and its new Artistic Director, Alan Gilbert. The UK première is scheduled for 3 February 2010 at the Barbican.

Lindberg’s Chorale was written in 2001-02 and is based on Bach’s Chorale ‘Es ist genug’, just like Berg’s Violin Concerto.

The polystylistic content of Lindberg’s Chorale is very similar to that of Schnittke’s Symphony 3. This work, written 21 years after Schnittke‘s symphony, shows the very clear influence of the latter’s polystylistic ideas.

ALBAN BERG (1885-1935) Violin Concerto Andante – Allegretto | Allegro – Adagio The correspondence between Berg and Webern (published and edited by Schnittke in Russia in 1975 and translated into Russian by his brother Victor) reveals many similarities in their work.

Both wrote only a very limited number of compositions. Both explored new dimensions and achieved a completely new understanding of time and its meaning in music. Both tried to find an appropriate blend of a highly emotional style with a rational serial technique.

Both implemented a certain symbolism (Schnittke’s words) in their music. Berg’s late compositions also reveal new possibilities for the coexistence of tonality and serial technique.

Berg’s Violin Concerto (his very last work) was completed in 1935. In order to complete it he had to interrupt his work on his second opera, Lulu, which was left unfinished. The Violin Concerto was finished unusually quickly. This was partly because Berg heard about the death of Manon Gropius, the eighteen25 November Events

25

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 26

Alfred Schnittke Archive

reveals some important Russian traditions in his music. Symphony 9 shows the new direction in which the composer was heading in his last years, purifying his music and opening it up to new dimensions.

Schnittke with Kurt Masur and the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig after the first performance of his Symphony 3 year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius. The two-movement Concerto is thus a requiem ‘to the memory of an Angel’ (Berg’s own dedication). Berg was unaware of the fact that he was also writing his own requiem. He died of blood poisoning on 23 December 1935.

The two-movement structure of the Concerto has in fact four sections (slowfast-fast-slow); each of the two movements is divided into two contrasting parts. The first fast section reminds one of a typical scherzo. Berg used a Carinthian folk tune. The second fast episode has some elements of a cadenza in it. Typically for Berg, the Concerto is based on a tone row that allows tonal development for the music.

The last four notes of the 12-tone row are the same as the first four notes in JS Bach’s chorale ‘Es ist genug’ from Cantata BWV60. Berg quotes this in his concerto. In addition, the ninth and the twelfth notes in the row, B (H) and F, are the monogram of Hanna Fuchs, then Franz Werfel’s wife, and Berg’s secret mistress.

The music of the Concerto often sounds like typical tonal music, with simple triads complemented by mildly dissonant melodies in the upper register. Bach’s chorale and romantic idioms are combined with a strict serial technique and secret monograms. And one can easily find all these features in Schnittke’s compositions, particularly in his Symphony 3.

26

25 November Events

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

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Symphony 3 Moderato | Allegro | Allegro pesante | Adagio Rarely do we find in the work of a single composer such diversity in the treatment of symphonic ideas as there are in Alfred Schnittke's ten symphonies. The fact that he was one of the very few composers writing large-scale symphonies at the end of the twentieth century confirms that he still belonged to the long established classical and romantic symphonic tradition that came to him through Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. In fact, Schnittke may be called the last of this line; with him the tradition of the great European dramatic symphony seems to be coming to an end. He kept the symphonic tradition alive and one may certainly detect in his work the influence of German culture, German forms and German logic, but at the same time he virtually destroyed the symphonic tradition by revealing its erosion and his own scepticism about structural safeguards and the symphonic framework.

Schnittke’s Symphony 3 is the largest and most monumental in his symphonic oeuvre: it lasts more than an hour. It was commissioned by Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in what was then the German Democratic Republic. Its Leipzig première on 5 November 1981, was a real triumph. Unlike the Symphony 1, the music contains only stylistic allusions, no direct quotations.

The opening, with as many as sixty-six lines in the orchestral score, was described by Richard Taruskin as ‘Wagner's Ring, cubed and cubed again.’

Each instrument has its own line here, contributing to the process of ‘building a symphony’. The main tune, which sounds like a motif from Wagner or Bruckner, is built on a simple overtone row. In the score one finds the monograms of dozens of German composers, from Bach and Mozart to Weill and BA Zimmermann.

The character of the music changes, modulating from classical through romantic to more contemporary textures.

Schnittke was not merely writing a ‘German’ symphony for a German orchestra, but was at the same time reflecting on the history of the origins, development, triumph and ultimate bankruptcy of the idea of the classical symphony as a model for a clear and rational perception of the world. In the first movement he added the word ‘Deutschland’ to the names of the German composers. In the third movement he introduced the word ‘das Böse’ (the Evil) – an eight-note tone row (D, A, E-flat, A-flat, B-flat, E, E-flat, E); the same monogram appears again in his opera The History of Dr Johann Faustus.

This becomes the base of various stylistic variations: from medieval polyphony to foxtrot. It is no coincidence that after the catastrophic and brutal third movement there follows a slow meditative Mahlerian finale in which the monogram B-A-C-H reappears, seeming to lead the music on to a new path. The word ‘Bach’ (a stream) becomes the real source of the final movement and its ultimate resolution, symbolically derived from JS Bach's name.

Alexander Ivashkin © 2009

The First, Third, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, full of stylistic clashes, are concerned with historical and cultural entities, whilst the Second, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth represent religious symbolism and faith. Schnittke’s early Symphony 0

Leonidas Kavakos will play Schnittke’s String Trio as part of a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 1 December 2009. For full details, see page 5. www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 27

Saturday 28 November 2009

2.30pm | Royal Festival Hall FILM SCREENING: The Agony A film by Elem Klimov (1974)

2.30pm | Royal Festival Hall Film Screening A screening of The Agony, Elem Klimov’s 1974 film, with score

by Alfred Schnittke.

Tickets: £7

Perhaps the secret of Schnittke’s successes with his incidental music is that it never merely runs parallel to what is happening on screen. He always offers a kind of counterpoint, a different current running underneath the main visible stream. There is very often a polyphonic or even polystylistic contrast between what is seen and what is heard. Schnittke avoids simple illustration; instead he turns his music into an explanation of what happens in the subconscious. His music always relates to something hidden, not obvious, even when it is related to what is shown on the screen.

The contradiction between what is seen and what is unseen is very clear in his incidental music and this is precisely what gives special depth to all his ‘serious’ music. The energy created by clashes between the obvious and the ‘hidden’ prompts us to search for the latter, and our search continues deeper into the meaning of each chord, each intonation.

6.00pm | Royal Festival Hall FREE Pre-Concert Event Vladimir Jurowski and Alexander Ivashkin discuss the life and music of Alfred Schnittke with his widow Irina Schnittke.

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall Vladimir Jurowski conductor Alexander Ivashkin cello Lisa Milne soprano Ruxandra Donose mezzo soprano Andrew Kennedy tenor Christopher Maltman baritone London Philharmonic Orchestra London Philharmonic Choir SCHNITTKE Cello Concerto 2 (45’) HAYDN The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross

(52’)

Tickets: £38 £32 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 (Premium seats £55)

Biographies Vladimir Jurowski page 30 Alexander Ivashkin page 32 Lisa Milne page 34 Ruxandra Donose page 32 Andrew Kennedy page 33 Christopher Maltman page 34 London Philharmonic Orchestra page 36 London Philharmonic Choir page 33

Sometimes, a whole film is represented by a certain musical form. For example, the film The Adventures of a Dentist (1965), also directed by Elem Klimov, comprised different movements similar to the contrasting sections of a baroque suite, each written for a different combination of instruments, representing the hero at different ages. The film score would later be transformed into the Suite in the Old Style (1972).

Much of Schnittke’s incidental music explores new types of technique. In many cases his film music became a laboratory for the composer. He used random, serial and sonoristic elements in his very first scores of the early 1960s, written for thrillers. At that time he was unable to introduce such elements into his serious music. Had he done so, officials of the Ministry of Culture or of the Composers’ Union would have immediately condemned him for ‘formalism’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’.

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

This concert is promoted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Agony is about the last years of the Russian Empire before the 1917 revolution and about Grigory Rasputin, the wandering Siberian monk whose immense influence on the Russian royal family led the country into the slaughter of the war and the disastrous 1917 revolution. The film was officially banned in the Soviet Union until 1981.

The whole score of The Agony is a gradually developing sonic concept. It is composed as a set of variations on a final

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

28 November Events

27

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 28

theme. The music, quiet and domestic at the beginning, becomes more and more ominous towards the end of the film. In fact, there are ‘two musics’ fighting against each other: the first is rather simple background music and its material is less significant, mainly illustrative; the second, emerging more and more towards the end, is extremely expressive, direct and dramatic.

This ‘second’ music in The Agony was used by the composer later in 1990, for his Cello Concerto 2, which is performed tonight.

Both compositions in tonight’s programme were written by strong believers. In 1806, at the end of his life, Haydn said, ‘I prayed to God not like a miserable sinner in despair but calmly, slowly. In this I felt that an infinite God would surely have mercy on his finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust.

These thoughts cheered me up.’ Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross (Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze) is one of the strongest and most striking works inspired by the mysticism of Good Friday and Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.

Schnittke, who decided to be baptised as a Roman Catholic at the age of fortyeight, usually made his regular confession to a Russian Orthodox Priest. He once said: ‘I need to start from the assumption that the world of spirit is ordered, structured by its very nature, that everything which causes disharmony in the world, all that is monstrous, inexplicable and dreadful, is also part of this order. By complementary interaction the negative elements cancel each other, and as a result something harmonious and beautiful is born.’ Schnittke’s Second Cello Concerto was written after the composer had three times been pronounced clinically dead and brought back to life after spending time in the next world. The Concerto, especially its intense and densely dramatic final passacaglia is based on his film music for The Agony, a story of the last days of the Russian empire, which includes shocking documentary images of executions, war, despair and cruelty.

The religious connotations of both works perhaps explain their very unusual composition. Both of them clearly deviate from the standard forms. Haydn’s oratorio consists of eight consecutive slow and long movements, and a final fast and short one, the dramatic Il terremoto (earthquake). Schnittke’s 28

28 November Events

Alfred Schnittke Archive

7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall A Christian composing: faith and death

Schnittke with Mstislav Rostropovich for whom he wrote the Cello Concerto 2 Concerto finishes with a very long slow passacaglia, while the previous four movements range from the very short but highly expressive opening to the lengthy ‘torment’ of the second and fourth movements and the mystical and ghostly landscape of the slow third movement.

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Cello Concerto 2 Moderato – Allegro | Lento – Allegretto – Grave The Second Cello Concerto (1990) is one of Schnittke’s most complex compositions. Its musical palette is far from simple, and the cello part is fiendishly difficult. Written for Mstislav Rostropovich, the cello part is truly revolutionary, exploring the very extremes of the instrument. The Concerto is in five movements, a typical ‘pattern’ for Schnittke’s compositions dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a short, slow introduction, a long fast movement, a more lyrical and mystical slow movement, a shorter and faster fourth movement (faster than the second one) and then a coda-like long finale.

As is the case with most of Schnittke’s concertos, this is in fact a symphonyconcerto, with the orchestra playing a very important role. The soloist is competing not only with the huge orchestra as a whole, but is also fighting against different orchestral groups and soloists in the orchestra.

In the first movement the soloist’s passionate and bitter opening is

immediately suppressed and covered by harsh and cruel orchestral chords.

The second movement introduces a long and difficult conflict, a kind of ‘hellish’ perpetuum mobile in a vicious circle, in which the soloist is driven through different phases and changes as if through different ages. The first subject is extremely active and turbulent, the second more contemplative, with the almost hidden element of a strange Viennese waltz à la Alban Berg. The recapitulation brings us back to the disquieting mood of the first subject, but an orchestral tutti enhances this turbulence almost to the point of genuine disaster. Soon we also hear the tune from the very beginning of the Concerto, but it is hardly recognisable, as it appears in an active, malicious marching motion, remote from its passionate and personal character at the beginning of the first movement. The second movement, rather than being finished, suddenly breaks off, abruptly disappearing like a haunting hallucination.

The very slow third movement creates a special ‘unreal’ mystical mood, full of ephemeral illusions and ghostly timbres.

The symbolic idea of a hero and his ‘shadow’ is typical of Schnittke from his Second Violin Concerto onwards, where the dualism of solo violin and its ‘shadow’ (a solo double bass) represents the opposition of God and the Devil. In the Second Cello Concerto the instrumental ‘dualism’ (solo cello – double bass; solo cello – vibraphone; solo cello – bells) brings us to a point where nothing is straightforward and everything is doubtful and has two meanings. www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

The fourth movement is a new and final outburst of activity, of confrontation between a hero (the soloist) and a mob (the orchestra). Again, two typical elements are juxtaposed here with almost cinematographic clarity: a mazurka-like aggressive tread and an unreal misty waltz. Finally everything is wiped out by the hurricane of the last tutti. The cello cadenza bring us to the final movement, a slow, long and dark passacaglia, onethird the length of the entire concerto.

The main tune of the passacaglia is taken from Schnittke’s own film music written for The Agony (1974). This film, about the last days of the Russian Empire before the 1917 revolution, was officially banned in the Soviet Union until 1981, when it was shown for the first time with great success. However, in the Cello Concerto, Schnittke creates a completely new score, absolutely innovative in its density and expression. Particularly impressive is the last section, where the soloist, playing fortissimo in a very high register, is completely inaudible and practically ‘killed’ by the massive, brutal orchestra.

Schnittke’s Second Cello Concerto was premièred on 27 May 1990 in Evian, France, with Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist and the Curtis Institute Symphony Orchestra conducted by Theodor Guschlbauer.

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

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross Introduzione. Maestoso e Adagio No. 1: Vater, vergib ihnen, Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun. Largo.

No. 2: Fürwahr, ich sag’ es dir: Heute wirst du bei mir im Paradiese sein. Grave e Cantabile No. 3: Frau, hier siehe deinen Sohn, Und du, siehe deine Mutter! Grave No. 4: Mein Gott! Warum hast du mich verlassen? Largo Introduzione. Largo e Cantabile No. 5: Jesus rufet: Ach, mich dürstet!

Adagio No. 6: Es ist vollbracht. Lento No. 7: Vater, in deine Hände empfehle ich meinen Geist. Largo attacca Il terremoto. Er ist nicht mehr. Presto e con tutta la forza It is often forgotten that Haydn was an opera, mass and oratorio composer. He wrote so many symphonies and chamber compositions that his vocal music output www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 29

has somehow been overshadowed by them. But his vocal compositions form almost half his total oeuvre. His vocal style often reflected the discoveries he made in his instrumental works, just as in the music of JS Bach. Haydn’s major and most popular oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, were written in the last years of his life, when in 1795 he returned to Vienna as a hero, after his triumphant successes in London.

The music of Haydn’s oratorio The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross (Hob.XX:2), the shortest of the four he composed, was in fact written much earlier, as an instrumental composition.

In 1785, while still in Eszterháza, Haydn received a rather unusual commission: he was asked to write orchestral interludes (or Easter meditations) for a Good Friday church service at the Cádiz Cathedral in Spain. In this first original version Haydn called the work 7 sonate, con un’ introduzione, ed al fine un terremoto (Seven Sonatas, with an Introduction, and at the end an Earthquake). Later, in 1787, Haydn arranged the work for string quartet (the version most often played now).

On his way to London in January 1794 Haydn made a stop in Passau, a small town near Linz, where his Seven Last Words was performed in a choral version, with the arrangement (and added choral parts) made by a local composer and music director Joseph Friebert, who also provided the text based on the final utterances of Christ on the Cross drawn from the four Gospels. After hearing this performance Haydn told his pupil Neukomm that ‘I think, I myself could have written the vocal parts better’.

Immediately on his arrival in Vienna in the autumn of 1795, Haydn started reworking Friebert’s arrangement. Haydn revised the orchestration and made numerous changes to the choral parts.

Baron von Swieten, an influential figure in Vienna, the imperial librarian and censor, amended the text and helped to arrange the première at Schwarzenberg, in March 1796.

No. 5 of the oratorio). This is one of Haydn’s most amazing and revolutionary compositions. Written for woodwind and brass instruments only, and including the extremely low and ‘hollow’ tone of the contra bassoon (the instrument is used only in the introduction), this slow and ‘alien’ music sounds almost like a genuine introduction to the next world.

The oratorio finishes with its only fast movement, Il terremoto, which abruptly breaks into the rather mystical ending of the previous movement, with a very low bass solo on the words ‘Meinen Geist’ (My Soul). Here Haydn changes the music and the orchestration dramatically, adding kettledrums and two trumpets (for the first time in the oratorio) and asking for extremes in the tempo and in the articulation: ‘Presto e con tutta la forza’.

Somewhat symbolically, Haydn’s last public appearance as a conductor was at the Vienna performance of his oratorio Seven Last Words on 26 December 1803.

After this he retired almost completely from social life and concert engagements.

Alexander Ivashkin © 2009

Schnittke’s grave

In this new choral version Haydn added seven short unaccompanied choral-like episodes (corresponding to the text of the seven last words of Jesus) between the movements. These episodes, written in a rather old fashioned style, with no meter, remind one of an old church chant preceding the liturgy. Perhaps, this was a reflection of the original project for Cádiz Cathedral where Haydn’s music was used as part of a church service.

Alfred Schnittke Archive

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

Haydn also wrote a new introduction to the second half of the piece (preceding 28 November Events

29

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 30

Roman Goncharov

Performer Biographies

Vladimir Jurowski conductor and festival artistic director

Born in Moscow, the son of conductor Mikhail Jurowski, Vladimir Jurowski completed the first part of his musical studies at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory.

In 1990 he relocated with his family to Germany where he continued his studies at the High Schools of Music in Dresden and Berlin. In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival, where he conducted RimskyKorsakov’s May Night. The same year saw his brilliant debut at Covent Garden in Nabucco. In 1996 he joined the ensemble of Komische Oper Berlin, becoming First Kapellmeister in 1997 and continuing to work at the Komische Oper on a permanent basis until 2001.

Since 1997 Vladimir Jurowski has been a guest at some of the world’s leading musical institutions including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro La Fenice Venice, Opéra Bastille Paris, Maggio Musicale Festival Florence, Edinburgh Festival, Semperoper Dresden and Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

In 1999 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York with Rigoletto.

In January 2001 Vladimir Jurowski took up the position of Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and in 2003 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming the Orchestra’s Principal

30

Performer Biographies

Conductor in 2007. He also holds the title of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and from 2005 to 2009 served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra.

Vladimir Jurowski has made highly successful debuts with a number of the world’s leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestras. His operatic work has included performances of Jenufa, The Queen of Spades and Hänsel und Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, Parsifal and Wozzeck at Welsh National Opera, War and Peace at the Opéra National de Paris, Eugene Onegin at La Scala Milan, and Die Zauberflöte, La Cenerentola, Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde and Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne.

Jurowski’s discography includes Giya Kancheli’s Exile, Meyerbeer’s L’Etoile du Nord, and live recordings of works

by Rachmaninoff, Turnage, Britten, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s own label. Glyndebourne have released DVDs of his performances of Gianni Schicchi, La Cenerentola, Die Fledermaus and Rachmaninoff’s The Miserly Knight.

Sir Timothy Ackroyd reciter

Annabel Arden director

Sir Timothy Ackroyd began his stage career in 1976 with a nomination as ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ in the West End Theatre Awards for his performance as Clytaemnestra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. His most recent performance was playing William Hogarth in The Compassionate Satirist, written by him in collaboration with Brian Sewell. Between times, he served as a National Theatre player and appeared in weekly repertory in Southwold, Chichester, Harrogate, Farnham, Newbury, Glasgow and Leatherhead.

Annabel Arden’s distinguished career encompasses opera, theatre and broadcasting as well as acting and devising new work. On leaving Cambridge University she cofounded the Theatre de Complicité. As an actress, deviser and director she has been associated with many of its most celebrated and award-winning productions.

His London debut was in Brian Forbes’s Macbeth at the Old Vic and his West End debut was starring opposite Peter O’Toole and Joyce Carey as Ricky Ticky Tavy in Shaw’s Man and Superman.

Other appearances in the West End have included roles in No Sex Please, We’re British!, Pygmalion with John Thaw, The Rivals and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell in which he played opposite Peter O’Toole and Tom Conti. Timothy returns to the stage in 2010 for It’s a Dog’s Life written by Dame Beryl Bainbridge. He has directed three plays in London: Iphigenia at Aulis, Red Lanterns by Alecos Galanos and, joining forces with Tracy Emin, Cocteau’s Les Parents terribles. Timothy is Chairman of the Ackroyd Trust that supports drama students entering their final year of training.

Theatre productions have included The Art of War for Sydney Theatre Company in 2007, Interruptions for the University of California in 2001; The Duchess of Malfi and Climbing Kilimanjaro for the Royal National Theatre Studio, and India Song and The Women of Troy (at the RNT) both co-directed with Annie Casteldine. Her opera work has included The Magic Flute, The Return of Ulysses, La traviata and The Cunning Little Vixen for Opera North; The Rake’s Progress for English National Opera; Beethoven’s Leonore for a European tour; Faust in Lucerne; Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg in Florence and Turin; Aperghis’s Little Red Riding Hood at the Almeida Theatre; Gianni Schicchi and The Miserly Knight at Glyndebourne and L’elisir d’amore for Glyndebourne on Tour, Glyndebourne Festival and Houston in 2009. She will direct a new production for Welsh National Opera in 2012.

Other projects have included a dance project with Candoco and BBC radio plays.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 31

Timothy Quay

Robert Recker

Performer Biographies

Allison Bell soprano

Kristina Blaumane cello

Markus Brutscher tenor

Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory

Tasmanian born soprano Allison Bell studied history and music at the University of Sydney and then continued her studies in London. At the Fransisco Vinas Singing Competition at the Liceu in Barcelona, she won the Young Singer’s Prize awarded by Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Her operatic roles have included Morgana in Alcina, Serpietta in La finta giardiniera, The Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, Adele in Die Fledermaus, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Olympia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Juliette in Gonoud’s Roméo et Juliette and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos. Her concert repertoire includes the Bach Passions, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Orff ’s Carmina Burana, Mahler’s Symphony 4, Brahms’ Requiem and Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem as well as songs by Debussy, Satie, Ravel, Britten, Barber and Strauss.

Kristina Blaumane was born in Riga into a family of musicians. After graduating from the Latvian Academy of Music, she moved to England to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

She has won many prestigious competitions and awards including Latvian Philharmonic Young Musician of the Year.

She has twice become a laureate of the Great Music Award, the highest prize given by the Latvian State in the field of music.

Markus Brutscher was born in Landsberg in Bavaria and was brought up in Augsburg. He sang with the boys’ choirs at Augsburg and Regensburg Cathedrals and later studied in Berlin, London and Maastricht. He has performed at all the major music capitals of Europe, America and Asia with leading orchestras and conductors, and at international festivals throughout the world. He manages to combine all types of music from early baroque to contemporary music, and is developing his operatic career more and more.

Founded by Boris Tevlin in 1995, the Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory already has a number of international awards to its credit including First Prizes at the Brahms International Choral Competition in 1999 and at the first World Choral Olympics at Linz in Austria in 2000. The Choir has sung at festivals in Moscow, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, the USA, Germany and Japan and, in Poland, it gave performances of music by Penderecki and Sir John Tavener in the presence of the composers.

His first operatic experience was as a boy soprano in Hänsel und Gretel and, since then, he has sung in many productions including the role of Adrasto in Traettas’s Antigone in Bruges, Antwerp, Salamanca and Brussels; Alessandro in Mozart’s Il re pastore in Antwerp and Brussels; Eisenstein in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Stadttheater Giessen; Wanda in Janácˇek’s Katya Kabanova at the Stadttheater Bielefeld; Monostatos in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the RuhrTriennale, the Teatro Real Madrid, in Stuttgart and on tour in Japan; Max in Der Freischütz at the Opernarena Reinsberg in Austria; and Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos in Bilbao. He has made more than 40 recordings with Sony Classics, EMI, Capriccio, Thorofon and others.

Specialising in contemporary choral music and first performances of new works, the Choir has performed works by Edison Denisov, Artur Lurye, Nikolai Sidelnikov, Igor Stravinsky, Alfred Schnittke, Arnold Schoenberg, Valeriy Arzumanov, Sophia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Roman Ledenyov, Rodion Shchedrin, Andrei Eshpai, Knut Nystedt, Jozef Swider, Romuald Tvardovsky, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and others.

She has extensive experience performing twentieth century music, which has included the UK première of Kutavicius’s The Last Pagan Rites at the Glamorgan Festival and the world première of Richard Ayres’ The Cricket Recovers for the Almeida Opera and Aldeburgh Festival. Recent debuts have included the roles of Lakmé for Opera Holland Park, Pretty Polly in Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy for The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Sierva Maria in Peter Eötvös’ Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

She has given recitals and performed with orchestras throughout Europe, such as the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Kremerata Baltica. She has also been a guest at major international festivals such as Lockenhaus, Gstaad, Salzburg, Verbier, Basel, Jerusalem, Utrecht, Spitalfields, Cheltenham and Aldeburgh as well as the Homecoming and Crescendo Festivals in Moscow. As a chamber musician she has played with artists including Isaac Stern, Gidon Kremer, Yo Yo Ma, Yuri Bashmet, Leif Ove Andsnes, Janine Jansen, Julian Rachlin, Bruno Giuranna, Misha Maisky, Nikolaj Znaider, Tatyana Grindenko, Oleg Maisenberg and others.

Last season Kristina released her debut recital CD with Russian pianist Jacob Katsnelson comprising works

by Barber, Grieg and Martinu.

She became Principal Cellist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008.

Recordings by the Choir include programmes of 20th century choral music, a cappella works by Schnittke, and music by Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Shchedrin and several American composers.

A recording of the world première of Rodion Shchedrin’s Boyarina Morozova was awarded an ECHO Klassik Prize in 2008.

Performer Biographies

31

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 32

Fran Collin

Stuart Murtland

Performer Biographies

Ruxandra Donose mezzo soprano

Vesselin Gellev violin

Harpham Quartet

Alexander Ivashkin cello

Among the most renowned singers of her generation, Romanian born Ruxandra Donose has captured critical and popular acclaim in leading opera houses and concert halls around the world. Performances have taken her to the Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Metropolitan Opera New York as well as to San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Tokyo. Recent roles have included Concepcion in L’Heure Espagnole at Covent Garden, Angelina in La Cenerentola at the Glyndebourne Festival, Charlotte in Werther at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and Elena in La donna del lago at the Deutsche Opera, Berlin.

Bulgarian-born violinist Vesselin Gellev has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the USA. Since his concerto debut aged nine, he has been a featured soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, New Juilliard Ensemble and Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He has been Guest Leader of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and was appointed Sub-Leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007.

Last year, the Harpham Quartet was selected as Park Lane Group Young Artists and performed at the opening night of the 2008 New Year Series at the Purcell Room.

They have also appeared at the Wigmore Hall, Fairfield Hall, Conway Hall, Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow, and Cadogan Hall. Festival appearances have taken them to Harrogate, Mostly Mozart at the Barbican, King’s Lynn, Chichester and Honiton.

As a soloist Alexander Ivashkin has performed in more than 40 countries and has appeared at major venues with leading orchestras such as the St Petersburg Philharmonic, Russian State Symphony and Netherlands Philharmonic as well as the Australian ABC orchestras and the Hamburger Sinfoniker. Along with Mstislav Rostropovich and Natalia Gutman he is one of the cellists for whom Alfred Schnittke composed, and he has made award winning recordings of the complete cello works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Schnittke, Kancheli, Roslavets and Tcherepnin. A Professor of Music and Head of Performance Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, Ivashkin is also Artistic Director of the Adam International Cello Festival and Competition, The VTB Capital International Cello Competition and of annual festivals in London.

Ruxandra Donose is continually in demand for concerts with leading orchestras around the world.

Her repertoire includes the role of Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust, Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Mahler’s Symphony 2, Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Mozart’s Mass in C. Her recordings include Schubert’s Ständchen, Dvorˇák’s Stabat Mater, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Beethoven’s Symphony 9 and the role of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro. Future engagements include Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier in Berlin, Idomeneo in Turin and Carmen in Cincinnati.

32

Performer Biographies

As concertmaster of Kristjan Jarvi’s Absolute Ensemble, a Grammy-nominated, genreblending ‘classical band’ dedicated to breaking down musical barriers and categorisation, Vesselin Gellev has recorded several CDs and toured the world. In 2002, he won First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild competition in New York, as a member of the piano-clarinet quartet Antares. After moving to the UK, his continuing dedication to the chamber music repertoire led to regular appearances at London’s Wigmore Hall, as part of the Orchestra’s Chamber Contrasts series. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and has served on the violin and chamber music faculties of Cornell University in the USA.

Their performances of 20th and 21st century works have included chamber music by Mark-Anthony Turnage for the 2008 BBC Proms Composer Portraits series which was broadcast by BBC Radio 3; the UK première of Sir John Tavener’s Towards Silence in collaboration with the Medici Quartet; and Peter Maxwell Davies’ Fourth String Quartet at the Purcell Room.

They have also taken part in the Malcolm Arnold Festival and the Royal College of Music Transcendent Festival: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann, for which their performance of the composer’s string quartet Grido, received critical acclaim. The Harpham Quartet trained at the RCM where they were awarded the Helen Just and Susan Connell Prize for Chamber Music.

They have performed in masterclasses with Gábor Takács-Nagy and members of the Arditti, Keller, Vermeer, Chilingirian, Endellion and Maggini Quartets.

Highlights of his recent concerts have included the world première of Brahms’ Cello Concerto in Hamburg, performances of both Shostakovich Cello Concertos in the USA, Gubaidulina’s Cello Concertos in London, Holland and Italy, Schumann’s Concerto in Holland and Russia, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, a Canadian tour and a new version of Penderecki’s Largo under the baton of the composer.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 33

Thron Ullberg

Performer Biographies

Leonidas Kavakos violin

Andrew Kennedy tenor

Anna Larsson alto

London Philharmonic Choir

Leonidas Kavakos has established himself as a violinist and artist of rare quality. He won the Sibelius Competition in 1985 and the Paganini Competition in 1988 and, following these successes, was invited to play with orchestras across Europe, North America and the Far East. He also regularly visits the major international festivals for orchestral concerts, chamber music and recitals. He works with leading conductors and his many distinguished chamber music partners include Natalia Gutman, Emanuel Ax, Hélène Grimaud, Nicholas Angelich, and Elisabeth Leonskaya. He is invited widely as an artist in residence and will have a wide exposure as such in coming seasons at the Wigmore Hall as well as with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Tonhalle, Zurich. He is currently Artist in Focus at London’s Southbank Centre.

Andrew Kennedy studied at King's College, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Music in London. He was a member of the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he performed many solo principal roles, and has won numerous prizes and awards including the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Recital Prize. His operatic roles include Tamino in The Magic Flute for English National Opera; Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream for Covent Garden; Jaquino in Fidelio for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Tom Rakewell in The Rake's Progress for Opéra de Lyon and La Scala Milan; and Vere in Billy Budd for Houston Grand Opera.

Anna Larsson studied singing in Stockholm and made her international debut in Mahler’s Symphony 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Claudio Abbado in 1997 and her opera debut as Erda in Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim. She has since become the world’s foremost exponent of Erda which she has sung in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Salzburg, Aix-enProvence and Stockholm. Her other roles include Waltraute, Orphée, Fricka and Dalilah which she has sung at the Bavarian State Opera as well as at the Salzburg Festival and in Florence, Copenhagen and Valencia. In concert, her extensive repertoire ranges from Handel’s Messiah through to Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Mahler’s song cycles, Verdi’s Requiem and contemporary music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for her recording of Strauss’s Daphne conducted by Semyon Bychkov.

Founded in 1947, the London Philharmonic Choir is widely regarded as one of Britain’s finest choirs and consistently meets with great critical acclaim. It has been involved in over 80 recordings and has performed under leading international conductors throughout its history. The Choir enjoys a close relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, joining it regularly for performances in the UK and abroad. It also works with many other leading orchestras and has enjoyed sharing the stage with Daleks, dinosaurs and various other creatures in last year’s Doctor Who and this year’s Evolution! Proms.

The Choir often travels overseas and in the last few years has sung in Budapest, Rome, Lucerne, Cologne, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Perth, Australia. Last season’s highlights included performances of Beethoven’s Symphony 9 and Missa solemnis, Dvo˘rák’s Requiem, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Holst’s The Planets and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder.

It looks forward to further collaborations with Vladimir Jurowski and Yannick NézetSéguin later this season.

Kavakos has a distinguished catalogue of recordings. With the Camerata Salzburg, he has recorded Mozart’s five Violin Concertos and, more recently, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto coupled with the Mendelssohn Piano Trios with Enrico Pace and Patrick Demenga. This recording was recently named ECHO Klassik Best Concerto Recording of a 19th Century Work and, in 1991, he won a Gramophone Award for the first recording ever of the original version of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

In concert he has sung Mozart’s Requiem for the LSO, Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality for the BBCSO, Bach’s St Matthew Passion for the Netherlands Philharmonic, Britten’s Nocturne for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Elgar’s Spirit of England at the 2007 Last Night of the BBC Proms. He gives numerous recitals in Europe and the UK and his discography includes four solo song albums. He will record his first orchestral album of Gluck, Berlioz and Mozart arias later this year. Future opera engagements include Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni for Opéra National de Lyon and Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw for Houston Grand Opera.

This season she sings Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with Gustavo Dudamel and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with Antonio Pappano. Next year her engagements include Das Lied von der Erde with Antonio Pappano in Rome, Orphée in Gluck’s Orphée at the Stockholm Royal Opera, Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody with Vladimir Jurowski at the Royal Festival Hall, and Erda in Das Rheingold at La Scala Milan.

In 2007, the Choir celebrated its 60th anniversary and published a book – Hallelujah: An Informal History of the London Philharmonic Choir.

For more information about the Choir, including details about how to join, please visit www.lpc.org.uk.

Performer Biographies

33

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 34

Clive Barda

Levon Biss

34

Celine Barsley

Performer Biographies

Christopher Maltman baritone

Lisa Milne soprano

Boris Petrushansky piano

Stephen Richardson bass

Winner of the Lieder Prize at the 1997 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, Christopher Maltman read biochemistry at Warwick University and studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music. He recently made an acclaimed debut at the Salzburg Festival in the title role of Don Giovanni. He is a regular guest at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival and Bavarian State Opera. Operatic roles include Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia and the title role in Billy Budd, which he has sung at Welsh National Opera as well as in Turin, Seattle and Munich. In the USA he has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, as Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos and Silvio in I pagliacci.

Lisa Milne studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro.

At the Glyndebourne Festival she has sung the title roles in Rodelinda and Theodora, as well as Pamina, Marzelline in Fidelio and Micäela in Carmen.

Other roles have included Ännchen in Der Freischütz and Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress for English National Opera; Servilia in La clemenza di Tito and Sian in the world première of James MacMillan’s The Sacrifice for Welsh National Opera; the title role in Semele and Adina in L’elisir d’amore for Scottish Opera; Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel for Stuttgart Opera, and Atalanta in Serse at the Göttingen Handel Festival.

A specialist in contemporary repertoire‚ British bass Stephen Richardson has given the premières of a number of important works including Thomas Adès’ The Tempest at Covent Garden‚ Tan Dun’s Orchestral Theatre II‚ Re‚ and Tea at Suntory Hall‚ Tokyo‚ Barry’s The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit and The Intelligence Park‚ Tavener’s Eis Thanaton‚ Resurrection‚ The Apocalypse and Fall and Resurrection with the City of London Sinfonia at St Paul’s Cathedral; and the British première of Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale with English National Opera.

He has sung with major orchestras all over the world and, as a recitalist, has appeared in Vienna, Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York, and at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and Cheltenham Festivals. This season at the Wigmore Hall he will perform and record the three great Schubert cycles with Graham Johnson. His recordings include Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Liederkreis with Graham Johnson and a disc of English songs with Roger Vignoles. On film, he appeared in John Adams’s award-winning The Death of Klinghoffer.

In concert, she has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Levine, Berlin Philharmonic and Rattle, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Harding; and CBSO and Oramo. She is also a frequent guest at the Edinburgh Festival and the BBC Proms.

A renowned recitalist, she has appeared at the Aix-enProvence and City of London Festivals; the Usher Hall in Edinburgh; the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and the Wigmore Hall. Her many recordings include Idomeneo, Serse, The Turn of the Screw, Mahler’s Symphony 2 and songs by John Ireland and Roger Quilter.

Born in 1949 in Moscow, Boris Petrushansky studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and Lev Naumov. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1975, having already distinguished himself at major international competitions, such as Leeds in 1969, Munich in 1971 and Terni in 1975, where he won first prize. Performances since then have taken him to Italy, Finland, Sweden, the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the USA, Hungary, Japan, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia where he has played with the leading orchestras and conductors. As a chamber musician he can number among his partners Leonid Kogan, Igor Oistrakh, Mischa Maisky, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Valery Afanassiev and the Borodin Quartet. His recordings include the complete piano works of Shostakovich.

Performer Biographies

Boris Petrushansky has been a member of the jury of many international piano competitions and, in addition to his concert life, he is active in the teaching field. From 1975 to 1979 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory and now regularly gives masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Dublin, Purcell School near London, Van Cliburn Institute and the Summer Academy of Verbier in Switzerland. He is now resident in Italy and since 1990 has taught at the Piano Academy in Imola.

Born in Liverpool, Stephen Richardson read music at Manchester University before training at the Royal Northern College of Music. Since graduating his roles have included the title role in Falstaff and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte at Opera Australia, Kaspar in Der Freischütz at the Opera de Rennes‚ Monterone in Rigoletto and Hobson in Peter Grimes for Opera North‚ Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro for Grange Park Opera and, in concert, Adès Powder her Face with the London Symphony Orchestra. As a concert artist Stephen Richardson has sung in Messiah at Carnegie Hall‚ Oedipus Rex in the BBC’s Stravinsky Festival and Nixon in China with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Recordings include Where The Wild Things Are‚ the title role in Goehr’s Death of Moses, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Albert Herring.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 35

J Henry Fair

Alex Wagner

Performer Biographies

Dmitry Sitkovetsky violin

Boris Tevlin conductor

Andrew Watts counter tenor

Alexander Zemtsov viola

Dmitry Sitkovetsky performs with the very best orchestras in Europe, Japan and the USA and is a regular guest at the Salzburg, Lucerne, Edinburgh, Verbier, Ravinia and ‘Mostly Mozart’ Festivals. He has also been a very successful festival director over many years at the Korsholm Music Festival in Finland, as well as at Umea in Sweden, Seattle in the USA and Baku in Azerbaijan.

Boris Tevlin, one of Russia’s most distinguished choral conductors, was born in Saratov, and completed his musical training at the Moscow Conservatory in 1957, specialising as a choral conductor and organist. He went on to obtain a postgraduate degree in 1962.

From 1953 to 1993 Boris Tevlin’s work as a professional conductor was linked with the Moscow Youth and Student Choir, leading the Choir to victory at a number of international competitions.

Since 1959, he has also been a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory, where he holds a professorship and heads the faculty of choral conducting.

Andrew Watts was born in Middlesex and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He has sung with the Royal Opera Covent Garden, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Operas, and the Aldeburgh and Almeida Festivals, and foreign engagements have taken him to Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Lisbon, Vienna, Australia, Canada and Mexico. His roles include Arsamenes in Xerxes, Athamas in Semele, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Omar in John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer and Prince Go-Go in Le Grand Macabre. He has taken part in many world premières including Birtwistle’s The Last Supper, Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland and Michael Finnissey’s Thérèse Raquin.

Alexander Zemtsov was born in Ufa, USSR, and studied with Elena Ozol in Moscow.

After further studies in Maastricht with Michael Kugel and in Berlin with Tabea Zimmermann, he was awarded a number of prizes, including first prize at the International Youth Competition Classical Legacy in Moscow in 1995, at the Elise Meyer Competition in Hamburg in 1997 and at the 8th Brahms Competition in Austria in 2001.

Since 1990, he has developed a flourishing conducting career. In 1990 he founded the New European Strings Chamber Orchestra and together they perform at international festivals and in venues throughout Europe and the USA. He has transcribed many works for them notably Bach’s Goldberg Variations as well as works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Schnittke. Between 1996 and 2001 he was Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, which he toured in Europe and the Far East, and is a Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in Moscow. He has an extensive discography including all the major violin concertos, chamber music works as well as recordings as a conductor.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky was born in Baku in Azerbaijan, but grew up in Moscow where he studied at the Moscow Conservatory and, after his emigration in 1977, at the Juilliard School in New York.

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

From 1979 to 1991 Boris Tevlin headed the Students Choir of the Moscow Conservatory and, under his direction, the Conservatory choral faculty began extensive concert work both in the USSR and abroad as well as making a large number of recordings. In 1987 he founded the Mixed Choir of Russian Conductors and Choir Masters and in 1994 he became leader of the RussianAmerican Choir. In 1995 he founded the Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory.

Professor Tevlin has held masterclasses in Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Israel, Italy, China, the USA, France and Yugoslavia and regularly serves on the jury of international choral competitions.

Concert engagements have taken him to the Salzburg, Lucerne and Edinburgh Festivals as well as to Vienna, New York, Budapest, Seville, Cologne, Brussels, France, Australia and Italy. His repertoire includes Jeptha, Solomon, Messiah, St John Passion, The Indian Queen, Bach’s Magnificat, Charpentier’s Te Deum and Birtwistle’s Orpheus Elegies.

He features on recordings of Boyce’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day and was heard in Sally Potter’s film Orlando. He broadcasts regularly and television appearances include a cameo as Kathleen Ferrier in William and Mary.

Alexander has worked with several European orchestras and in 2003 was appointed Principal Viola of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a member of the new string ensemble, The Hermitage Trio, with Boris Garlitsky and Leonid Gorokhov. As a soloist he has played with the Belgian Radio Orchestra, Konzertverein Orchester, Vienna, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in venues including the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire Hall in Moscow, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. He has recorded for Naxos and Chandos and, on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s own CD label, is the soloist in Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola along with violinist, Pieter Schoeman.

Alexander Zemtsov is professor of viola at the Guildhall School of Music.

Performer Biographies

35

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 36

Richard Cannon

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Seventy-seven years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra, it is recognised today as one of the finest orchestras on the international stage. Following Beecham’s influential founding tenure the Orchestra’s Principal Conductorship has been passed from one illustrious musician to another, amongst them Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. This impressive tradition continued in September 2007 when Vladimir Jurowski became the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor, and in a further exciting move, the Orchestra appointed Yannick NézetSéguin its new Principal Guest Conductor from September 2008. Mark-Anthony Turnage has been the Orchestra’s Composer in Residence since 2005.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been performing at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since it opened in 1951, becoming Resident Orchestra in 1992. It plays there around 40 times each season with many of the world’s most sought after conductors and soloists.

Imaginative programming and a commitment to new music are at the heart of the Orchestra’s activity, with regular commissions and world première performances. The Orchestra also has flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. It is unique in combining these concert activities with performances each summer at Glyndebourne Festival Opera where it has been the Resident Symphony Orchestra since 1964.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra performs to enthusiastic audiences all round the world. In 1956 it became the first British orchestra to appear in Soviet Russia and in 1973 made the first ever visit to China by a Western orchestra.

36

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Touring continues to form a significant part of the Orchestra’s schedule, with regular appearances in North America, Europe and the Far East. Tours in 2009/10 include visits to Germany, Australia, France, China, the Canaries and the USA.

Pieter Schoeman Leader

Having long been embraced by the recording, broadcasting and film industries, the London Philharmonic Orchestra broadcasts regularly on domestic and international television and radio. It also works extensively with the Hollywood and UK film industries, recording soundtracks for blockbuster motion pictures including the Oscarwinning score for The Lord of the Rings.

Born in South Africa, he made his solo debut with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra at the age of ten. He studied with Jack de Wet in South Africa, winning numerous competitions, including the 1984 World Youth Concerto Competition in America. In 1987 he was offered the Heifetz Chair of Music scholarship to study with Edouard Schmieder in Los Angeles and in 1991 his talent was spotted

by Pinchas Zukerman who recommended that he move to New York to study with Sylvia Rosenberg. In 1994 he became her teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The Orchestra also enjoys strong relationships with the major record labels and in 2005 began reaching out to new global audiences through the release of live, studio and archive recordings on its own CD label. Recent additions to the catalogue have included acclaimed releases of early Britten works conducted

by Vladimir Jurowski and Mahler’s Symphony 6 under the baton of Klaus Tennstedt. The Orchestra’s own-label releases are available to download by work or individual track from its website: www.lpo.org.uk/shop.

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

There are many ways to stay in touch with the Orchestra’s activities: visit www.lpo.org.uk, subscribe to our podcast series and join us on Facebook.

In 2002, Pieter Schoeman joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as Co-Leader. In 2008 he was appointed Leader.

Pieter Schoeman has performed as a soloist and recitalist throughout the world in such famous halls as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Moscow's Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. As a chamber musician he regularly performs at London's prestigious Wigmore Hall. As a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he has performed Arvo Pärt's Double Concerto and Benjamin Britten's Double Concerto, which was recorded for the Orchestra’s own record label.

Pieter Schoeman has recorded numerous violin solos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos, Opera Rara, Naxos, the BBC and for American film and television. He led the Orchestra in its soundtrack recordings for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He teaches at Trinity College of Music. www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 37

Foyle Future Firsts

London Philharmonic Orchestra Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski Principal Guest Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leader Pieter Schoeman Composer in Residence Mark-Anthony Turnage Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director Timothy Walker AM†

FIRST VIOLINS Pieter Schoeman* Leader Vesselin Gellev Sub-Leader Tina Gruenberg Katalin Varnagy Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner Martin Höhmann Chair supported by Richard Karl Goeltz

Geoffrey Lynn Robert Pool Florence Schoeman Sarah Streatfeild Yang Zhang

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

Susanne Beer Co-Principal Francis Bucknall Laura Donoghue Santiago Sabino Carvalho+ Gregory Walmsley Jonathan Ayling Sue Sutherley Susanna Riddell DOUBLE BASSES Kevin Rundell* Principal Laurence Lovelle George Peniston Richard Lewis FLUTES Jaime Martin Principal Susan Thomas* Stewart McIlwham* PICCOLO Stewart McIlwham* Principal OBOES Ian Hardwick Principal Angela Tennick Sue Bohling COR ANGLAIS Sue Bohling Principal Chair supported by Julian and Gill Simmonds

Chair supported by Richard and Victoria Sharp

CLARINETS Robert Hill* Principal Nicholas Carpenter Paul Richards

Jeongmin Kim Joseph Maher Kate Birchall

E FLAT CLARINET Nicholas Carpenter Principal

SECOND VIOLINS Clare Duckworth Co-Principal

Chair supported by David and Victoria Graham Fuller

Nancy Elan Fiona Higham Nynke Hijlkema Marie-Anne Mairesse Ashley Stevens Andrew Thurgood VIOLAS Alexander Zemtsov* Principal Robert Duncan Anthony Byrne Chair supported by John and Angela Kessler

Katharine Leek Susanne Martens Benedetto Pollani Emmanuella Reiter Laura Vallejo

BASS CLARINET Paul Richards Principal BASSOONS John Price Principal Gareth Newman* Simon Estell CONTRA BASSOON Simon Estell Principal HORNS Richard Bissill* Principal John Ryan Principal Martin Hobbs Gareth Mollison TRUMPETS Paul Beniston* Principal Anne McAneney* Chair supported by Geoff and Meg Mann

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke

Nicholas Betts* Co-Principal Daniel Newell TROMBONES Mark Templeton* Principal David Whitehouse BASS TROMBONE Lyndon Meredith Principal TUBA Lee Tsarmaklis Principal TIMPANI Simon Carrington* Principal PERCUSSION Rachel Gledhill Principal Andrew Barclay* Co-Principal Keith Millar HARP Rachel Masters* Principal *Holds a professorial appointment in London +Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco † Supported by Macquarie Group

ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR Ralf Sochaczewsky LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP Tel: 020 7840 4200 Fax: 020 7840 4201 Box Office: 020 7840 4242

The London Philharmonic Orchestra Limited is a registered charity No. 238045.

www.lpo.org.uk Visit the website for full details of London Philharmonic Orchestra activities.

A complete list of the London Philharmonic Orchestra for each concert can be obtained from the programme sellers or the London Philharmonic Orchestra Information Desk on Level 2.

Foyle Future Firsts is the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s training programme for young musicians about to embark on a professional music career.

The programme selects the very best young orchestral musicians from around the UK, giving them the opportunity to work closely with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and a range of international conductors and soloists for a full year.

The Foyle Future Firsts benefit from individual lessons and mentoring from Orchestra principals; training on audition technique; and opportunities to join the Orchestra in rehearsal, take part in education work and perform together at Southbank Centre. Their Queen Elizabeth Hall concert this season takes place on 14 May 2010 at 7.30pm in a programme conducted by Clement Power including works by Ravel, Stravinsky, Strauss and four new pieces by young composers mentored by Mark-Anthony Turnage as part of our annual Young Composers Project.

The 2009/10 Foyle Future Firsts are: Artem Kotov violin Lisa Obert violin Jennifer Edwards viola Andrei Simion cello Damián Rubido González bass Laura Pou flute Will Oinn oboe James Burke clarinet Joanna Stark bassoon Tiffany Stirling horn Lucy Leleu trumpet Andy White trombone Carl Woodcroft tuba Sarah Cresswell percussion Stephanie Beck harp Michele Gamba piano The Orchestra is grateful to The Foyle Foundation, principal funder of this scheme, and to the following organisations for their additional support: Coutts Charitable Trust, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The Eranda Foundation, The Fenton Arts Trust and Musicians Benevolent Fund.

London Philharmonic Orchestra

37

48782 LPO Schnittke.qxp:48782 LPO Schnittke

6/11/09

13:12

Page 38

Royal College of Music Chamber and Symphony Orchestras The Royal College of Music’s Symphony and Chamber Orchestras play regularly with conductors and musicians of international stature performing a wide range of repertoire.

Ariana Kashefi Genevieve Brothwood Hannah Masson-Smyth

Over the past few years the RCM has forged close relationships with conductors and musicians such as Bernard Haitink (December 2006, Bruckner 7), Vladimir Ashkenazy (May 2008, Liszt Mephisto Waltz, R Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra), Sir Roger Norrington (October 2008, Brahms 2), Gordan Nikolitch (January 2009, Beethoven 2) and most recently Esa-Pekka Salonen (June 2009, Mahler 9).

Their willingness to return is evidence of the consistently high standard of playing the RCM orchestral musicians achieve.

Chamber Orchestra Tutor Mark Messenger

Future projects include a performance of Mendelssohn 3 by the RCM Chamber Orchestra with Gordan Nikolitch (January 2010) and a visit by Vladimir Ashkenazy to conduct the Symphony Orchestra (October 2010).

Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra FIRST VIOLINS Ben Baker Leader Aisha Syed Eunsley Park Lifei Huang Henry Tong Ricky Gore SECOND VIOLINS Sakura Tanaka Principal Magdelena Loth-Hill Elin White Alix Lagasse Louisa Tatlow Michael Foyle VIOLAS Jessica Tickle Principal Rebecca Dyson Samuel Espinosa Mark Gibbs Kesari Pundarika CELLOS George Ross Principal 38

DOUBLE BASSES Adam Churchyard Principal James Kenny

Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra FIRST VIOLINS Erzsebet Racz Leader Katerina Mitchell* Stepan Lavrov Agata Policinska Malocco Aiko Kojima Erin James Radu Bitica Ine Pollenus Marie Salvat Felicity Matthews Meghan Todt Anca Campanie Holly McLatchie Jayne Christopher Zhanna Tonaganyan Jiafeng Chen Anastasia Ivashchenko SECOND VIOLINS Adelia Myslov Principal Anna Blackmur Kaya Kuwabara Marc Bender Galya Bisengalieva Jacob Reinacaro Carla Santos Yoon Jin Lee Joakim Johanneson Matt Bain Douglas Harrison Tzu-Fan Tang Ksenia Berezina Michelle Lee Javier Garcia Aranda Saki Maeno Ayumi Oshima VIOLAS Sophie Stanley Principal Bryony Mycroft Ilona Bondar Zoe Matthews Jennifer Coombes Daisy Spiers Rachel Stacy Miku Pancoast Hungyu Chen Lucia Ortizsauco Natalie Hirst Jorien Veenhoven

Royal College of Music Chamber and Symphony Orchestras

CELLOS Johanna Renaud Principal Naomi Watts Christopher Graves Jane Lindsay Jun Sasaki Julia van Beuningen Alice Picaud Mikhail Shumov Frederique Legrand Lucie Robinet DOUBLE BASSES Damian Rubido Gonzalez Principal Margarida Castro Elizabeth Faulkner David McIlfatrik Katie Long Richard Forster Edmund Hartzell Laurence Ungless David Johnson FLUTES Schnittke Nicola Crowe (Picc) Principal Marta Santamaria Llavell Prokofiev Guro Petterson Principal Rachel Harston Marta Santamaria Llavell (Picc) OBOES Schnittke Lucinda Dalton (Cor Anglais) Principal Prokofiev Jennifer Brittlebank Principal Lucinda Dalton Will Oinn (Cor Anglais) CLARINETS Schnittke Victor de la Rosa Lorente (Eb) Principal Molly Walker (Bass) Prokofiev Victor de la Rosa Lorente Principal Eva Polgar Kymia Kermani (Eb) Adam Slater (Bass) BASSOONS Schnittke Lawrence O’Donnell* (Contra) Principal Prokofiev Lawrence O’Donnell* Principal Miriam Panter Chloe Vanns (Contra) HORNS Samuel Pearce* Principal

Magdalena Was Daniel Doyle Kate Hainsworth Young Kim TRUMPETS Christian Barraclough Principal Toby Street Charlotte Blake Charlotte Buchannan TROMBONES Rupert Whitehead Principal Adam Taylor Ross Brennan TUBA Christopher Barrett Principal TIMPANI Owain Williams Principal PERCUSSION Oliver Lowe Principal Joe Richards Jason Chowdhury Rebecca McChrystal Gerard Rundell HARP José Antonio Domené Principal ELECTRIC GUITAR Thomas Ellis (Schnittke) BASS GUITAR Laurence Ungless (Schnittke) PIANO AND CELESTE Chris Guild ORGAN John Ward HARPSICHORD Sophia Russell CELESTE Evan Streater Symphony Orchestra Tutors Sarah Quinn violins Caroline Harrison violas Jennie Brown cellos Tom Martin double basses Daniel Bhattacharya tutti strings Jaime Martin woodwind Eric Crees woodwind and brass Sam Walton percussion Andrew Gourlay tutti

*Recipient of a Leverhulme Orchestral Mentorship Award

www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke