International Concert Series 2023-2024
SHOSTAKOVICH
WITH ROYAL HOLLOWAY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA EVENT PROGRAMME
DECEMBER 2, 2023 ROYALHOLLOWAY.AC.UK/MUSIC
Department of Music
School of Performing & Digital Arts
International Concert Series 2023-24
OUR 2023-24 SEASON We are pleased to welcome you to our 2023-24 International Concert Series at Royal Holloway. We, at the Department of Music, cannot wait to showcase the varied talent of our students and staff, but also bringing internationally renowned musicians to the College. For 2023-24, we are back and better than ever with more student and staff opportunities through the creation of 'The Platform', an open opportunity for the community at the Department of Music to share with you what makes us so special. Alongside our popular Midweek Music and Pocket Concert Series, we are excited to continue our special partnerships with the Young Classical Artists Trust and BBC New Generation Artists and continue our alumni recital series by bringing back the epoch ensemble. We are pleased to also bring a wealth of international artists to our series, including pianists Pina Napolitano, Mary Dullea, Sholto Kynoch, Alexander Soares, and Joseph Havlat, violinist Darragh Morgan, guitarist Laura Snowden, clarinettist Jonathan Leibovitz, 1|P a g e
sitarist James Pusey, mezzosoprano Helen Charlston, jazz group Solstice, and the London Mozart Players. 2023 also marks the final season for our quartet-in-residence, the Tippett Quartet, as we say farewell to this stellar group with their final concert at Royal Holloway. All in all, this season is representative of the world-class talent our community at the Department of Music has fostered as we showcase our students and the range of music performance we programme and encourage; from jazz to world music, orchestral performance to solo piano, as well as presenting performers from the international stage. We look forward to welcoming you to our series this year. Dr Nathan James Dearden Music Performance Manager & Curator of the International Concert Series
International Concert Series 2023-24
Shostakovich with Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra International Concert Series 2023-24 Saturday, 2 December 2023 Windsor Building Auditorium with
Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra Rebecca Miller Conductor
EVENT PROGRAMME Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901) Overture from La forza del destino Estimated finish time: 9.45pm There will be a 20-minute interval during this evening’s performance, with the opportunity to purchase refreshments. All donations go to the RHSO Tour Fund. Please no flash photography or visual/audio recording throughout the event. For news about our future events, please visit royalholloway.ac.uk/music/events
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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 1912)
Ballade in A minor for Orchestra, Op. 33 -INTERVALDmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10
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PROGRAMME NOTES Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901) Overture from La forza del destino Giuseppe Verdi’s creative life, so filled with successes – nearly 30 operas, many of which are still in the repertoire – was not free of angst. La forza del destino is a case in point. After the frustrations of launching his opera Un ballo in maschera in 1859, the composer, exhausted, turned his back on the productivity that had for years consumed him. But when a commission arrived from Russia for an opera for the Imperial Theatre at St. Petersburg, the composer, smelling the blood of the violent Forza story, signed a contract and set off on his task with characteristic zeal. The opera was presented in St. Petersburg in November of 1862, and while it was not an unqualified success, performances in the world’s musical capitals followed. Verdi, however, not entirely satisfied, burned oil many midnights in making revisions of the work. This accomplished, and with the Piave libretto altered by Ghislanzoni (later to collaborate with him on Aida), a new Forza had its first La Scala production in 1869. The intensity of Verdi’s melodramatics in La forza del destino is at least as apparent in the opera’s seething 3|P a g e
orchestral introduction as in the body of the work itself. The six opening brass exclamations create a heavy atmosphere of foreboding, and the agitated theme that follows fully enunciates the doom and gloom they portend. This motif, associated with the tragic destiny of the principals, dominates the Overture either as the main material or as a grim undercurrent to melodies related to the opera’s characters. This latter treatment, when the “destiny” motif casts its dark shadow on both the soaring and the gentle lyric themes is, if not subtle, still unfailingly effective and stimulating, so theatrical is Verdi even in his orchestral operatics. Programme note by Orrin Howard
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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 1912)
Ballade in A minor for Orchestra, Op. 33 The Ballade in A minor, Op. 33 is an early composition by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). Written only a year after completing his education at the Royal College of Music, this one-movement work full of ravishing melodies and lush string moments owes its existence to Coleridge-Taylor's mentor, Sir Edward Elgar. When Elgar was offered a commission by the 1898 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, Elgar responded, "I have received a request from the secretary to write a short orchestra thing for the evening concert. I am sorry I am too busy to do so. I wish, wish, wish you would ask Coleridge-Taylor to do it. He still wants recognition, and he is far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men. Please don't let your committee throw away the chance of doing a good act." Upon being offered the commission at Elgar's suggestion, Coleridge-Taylor wrote a work that develops his own voice while still retaining elements of his musical heroes such as Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Dvorák. Programme note by Nathan James Dearden
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10 I. II. III. IV.
Allegretto – Allegro non troppo Allegro – Meno mosso – Allegro – Meno mosso Lento – Largo – Largo (attacca) Allegro molto – Lento – Allegro molto – Meno mosso – Allegro molto – Molto meno mosso Adagio
“I grew up in a musical family,” Shostakovich wrote in 1956. “My mother, Sophia Vasilievna, studied at the Conservatory for some years and was a good pianist. My father, Dmitri Boleslavovich, was a great lover of music and sang well. There were many music-lovers among the friends and acquaintances of the family, all of whom took part in our musical evenings. I also remember the strains of music that came from the neighbouring apartment of an engineer who was an excellent cellist and passionately fond of chamber music. With a group of his friends he often played quartets and trios by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky. I used to go out into the hallway and sit there for hours, the better to hear the music. In our apartment, too, we held amateur musical evenings. All this impressed itself on my musical memory and played a certain part in my future work as a composer. “My mother wanted her children to have a good musical education. When my older sister, Marusia, was nine, my
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mother began giving her piano lessons. Three years later, when I reached the same age, my mother insisted that I take my place at the piano. Marusia became a professional musician and today teaches piano at the Leningrad Ballet School and also the obligatory piano class at the Leningrad Conservatory. My younger sister, Zoya, could not avoid her piano lessons, but did not follow a musical career, being trained instead as a veterinary surgeon.” An aunt remembered the young Shostakovich as “a very serious and sensitive child, often very meditative . . . and rather shy,” fond of fairy tales, forever composing or improvising at the piano, though inclined to be modest about his music, reading Gogol, practicing Liszt, but loving Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov most of all. The same aunt, Nadezhda Gaili-Shohat, told her nephew’s biographer V.I. Seroff that when she first heard the Symphony No. 1, she was astonished to recognize in it many fragments she had heard him play as a young boy, some of them associated with, among other matters, La Fontaine’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant and Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Little Mermaid.” It was clear that music was to be central in the boy’s life and that in spite of all financial hardships—and these were considerable in the Shostakovich family—his gift had to be protected and nurtured. Well prepared, first at home, then at Glyaser’s Music School, he was admitted to the Conservatory in Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then called) in 1919. 5|P a g e
His principal teacher in composition was Maximilian Steinberg, himself a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Liadov. Steinberg married RimskyKorsakov’s daughter Nadezhda, and it was as a wedding present for them that Stravinsky wrote his orchestral scherzo Fireworks. Steinberg’s own musical inclinations were academicconservative, but he was a good teacher, able to help his pupil become articulate in a language many of whose details can hardly have been to the older man’s taste. Moreover, when the plan for a Leningrad Philharmonic performance of the First Symphony seemed about to be shipwrecked because Shostakovich had no money to pay for the copying of orchestra parts, the conservatory undertook to foot the bill, something that would not have been done without Steinberg’s support. *** The opus number is a bit startling. Shostakovich came to think of only one of his pre-First Symphony works as worth publishing, the Three Fantastic Dances for Piano, Opus 5, but he did come to the challenge of writing his graduation symphony as a surprisingly experienced composer, even of orchestral works (two scherzos, a set of variations, and a group of fables for mezzo-soprano). In the symphony itself, the assurance with which Shostakovich both imagines and realizes a large-scale structure is as impressive as the vigour and freshness of gesture. One can hear what music he has been reading and listening to, and what has delighted him. He owes, for
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example, some of the details of his nose-thumbing, wrong-note humour to Prokofiev, he is fascinated by Mahler and his ways of twisting the tails of commonplaces, and more than once we see Stravinsky’s Petrushka raging in his cell or fixing us with his stare from the top of his master’s booth. The basic design, too, is that of the conventional four movements, though with the scherzo second and the slow movement third (in itself a very conventional unconventionality). Throughout, though, Shostakovich finds ways of playing within that form, producing events in unexpected order, interrupting, linking, reverting. The contour of the phrase played by the clarinet when the first movement has made the transition from provocatively discontinuous introduction into the “real” discourse, is in one way or another common ground for much of the entire symphony. Shostakovich’s orchestral imagination is highly developed, such points as the passages for divided solo strings in the first and last movements, the piano writing in the scherzo, and the timpani solo in the finale being the most immediately noticeable instances. The slow movement in particular is evidence that at eighteen and nineteen he had much to say, and much of astonishing depth, and every phrase is a wonderful signal of the arrival on the scene of a new, eloquent, personal, unmistakable voice. Programme note by Michael Steinberg
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PERFORMERS
Rebecca Miller Conductor California-born conductor Rebecca Miller has earned an international reputation for her compelling, insightful, and energetic presence on the podium and for her ability to communicate with audiences of all ages. Recent guest-conducting includes the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, DalaSinfoniettan, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, The Orchestra Now, The Bard Music Festival, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, London Mozart Players, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, 7|P a g e
Royal Northern Sinfonia, City of London Sinfonia, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, and at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. Following her debut with the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra in Sweden, she was immediately reinvited and appointed Chief Conductor, a post which she held from 2019-2023. In previous seasons, Rebecca has guest-conducted the Houston Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, Bakersfield Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, Chicago College of the Performing Arts, Huntsville
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Symphony, Williamsport Symphony, and Musiqa Houston, and with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Israel. Firstprize winner in the Eduardo Mata International Conducting Competition, she has conducted throughout Mexico, including repeated engagements with the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional and Orquesta Filarmonica del UNAM, and the state orchestras of Yucatan, Aguascalientes, and Sinaloa. In 2017, Rebecca was also featured in the Bruno Walter National Conductors Preview with the Nashville Symphony. Rebecca’s discography includes CDs with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (CPE Bach Symphonies / Signum Records, which made the final shortlist for a 2014 Gramophone Award), with the BBC Concert Orchestra (Henry Hadley Orchestral works / Dutton Epoch), with the BBC Scottish Symphony (piano concertos by Amy Beach, Dorothy Howell, Cecil Chaminade / Hyperion Records), and three CDs with the Royal Northern Sinfonia (Haydn Symphonies / Signum Records; George Frederick Bristow’s ‘Jullien Symphony’ / New World Records; Concertos by Aaron Jay Kernis / Signum Records). Rebecca is passionate about her work with young musicians – she has recently started regular partnerships with the National Children's Orchestra and the with the London Symphony Orchestra Discovery, and previously worked with the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland, NYO Wales, and NYOGB, with the Chicago College 8|P a g e
of the Performing Arts, and with the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela (Teresa Carreño), much to the acclaim of its late founder José Antonio Abreu. She was conductor at the Royal Academy of Music’s Junior Department for many years, where she formed the ground-breaking and unique JA Classical Orchestra, and works regularly with the Southbank Sinfonia in London, where she was Associate Conductor for three years. As Director of Orchestras at Royal Holloway University of London, she has been widely acclaimed for building the orchestral programme to new heights – starting an orchestral scholarship programme, initiating a side-by-side programme with the London Mozart Players, securing highprofile engagements (including ‘Magna Carta 800 at Runnymede’ a project with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Temple Church Choir, performed in the presence of HM Queen Elizabeth II and 4000 dignitaries and honoured guests), and establishing a new initiative called ‘Music +’, which aims to build bridges through music with interdepartmental projects and interdisciplinary research. Previously, Rebecca served as Resident Conductor of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and American Conducting Fellow of The Houston Symphony, and Assistant Conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. She holds a B.Mus. in Piano Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, an M.Mus in Orchestral Conducting from Northwestern
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University, and for two years was the Paul Woodhouse Junior Fellow in Orchestral Conducting at London’s Royal College of Music.
Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra Led by internationally acclaimed conductor Rebecca Miller, the Royal Holloway Symphony Orchestra meets weekly, giving three concerts per year in the Windsor Auditorium. The orchestra endeavours to create a lively, challenging, and social basis for orchestral life at Royal Holloway and comprises students from across the university. They also participate in side-by-side programmes with professional musicians, and through our unique partnership with the Chiltern Music Academy. For 2020-21, orchestras at Royal Holloway launched a new social action project called ReOrchestrating Society, where members of orchestras at Royal Holloway work together in small teams to develop a project based around orchestras that aims to benefit society. The orchestra has recently performed alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Magna Carta 800 celebration in Runnymede, in the presence of HM the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William Duke of Cambridge, and former Prime Minister David Cameron.
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Who’s who? Violin 1 Lydia Callomon* Lingling Bao-Smith Livia Domaingue* Caroline Soderlund Olivia Khouw Aideen Toal Ernest Lui Hannah Lam Ho Chai Kam Isabella Morgan Alannah Harbach Violin 2 Clarise Chong* Nicole Yuen Cylysce See Phedra Low Murtadha Alkhunaizi Amelia Tamblyn Evie Dyke Helen Stephen Alice Bennet Karina Piper Viola Bertram Nicholson* Harry Aldridge* Laura Field Pavit Dhadyalla William Moxham Violoncello Katie Mair* Oliver Grimes Rowan Watts Jasmine Akibo-Betts Claudia Buchanan Kian Jan-Dickens Jocelyn Hails Isabella Hughes Niamh Sherwood 10 | P a g e
Double bass Gregory McCrorie-Shand Joseph Straker ^ Flute Holly Payne* Gwendolyn Schneider Evelina Venslovaite Yee Ling Eunice Chan Klara Sweeney Oboe Sequoia Ralph Simon Dewhurst ^ Clarinet Ari De'Freitas* Isobel Reid Benjamin Hall Charlotte Vosper Margarida Raposeira William White Bassoon Anjeli Valydon* Luke Passmore* Niamh Taylor Horns Sebastian Rowe* Sophie Janes Henry Wright ^ Trumpet Daniel Clough* Laura Kee James McPherson Chak Lam So Lucy Wootton
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Trombone Guy Berry ^ Dominic Clarke ^ Bass trombone Tom Williams ^ Tuba Rory Arthur Adam Collins ^ Percussion Faye Jones* Will Bishop Joshua Li ^ Guest Player *Orchestral Scholar at Royal Holloway
THANK YOU A heartfelt thank you from the Department of Music to the following people for making this event happen and supporting the ongoing work of Orchestras at Royal Holloway: Monique Smithers Orchestra Manager Bella Morgan Assistant Orchestra Manager Holly Payne Communications Director Clarise Chong Orchestra & Production Assistant Gregory McCrorie-Shand Stage Manager Evie Dyke Assistant Stage Manager Ari De’Freitas Librarian Livia Domaingue Librarian
With thanks for our donors and sponsors of our Orchestral Scholarship programme: Jenny Jones David Beaver
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