Beethoven's Sixth – Season 2122 – Programme Note

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BEETHOVEN'S SIXTH 28 – 29 Apr 2022

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Season 2021/22

BEETHOVEN'S SIXTH

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Thursday 28 April, 7.30pm Usher Hall, Edinburgh Friday 29 April, 7.30pm City Halls, Glasgow Mozart Symphony No 32 Chopin Piano Concerto No 2 Interval of 20 minutes

Beethoven Symphony No 6 ‘Pastoral’ Joana Carneiro Conductor Benjamin Grosvenor Piano Joana Carneiro

Benjamin Grosvenor

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YOUR ORCHESTRA First Violin Stephanie Gonley Ruth Crouch Alexandra Lomeiko Fiona Alexander Emily Ward Gillian Risi Olly Morris Kirsty Main Second Violin Gordon Bragg Wen Wang Cheryl Crockett Stewart Webster Niamh Lyons Rachel Smith Gongbo Jiang Catherine James Viola Simone van der Giessen Katie Heller Steve King Rebecca Wexler Edward Keenan Heather Hawken

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W H AT YO U ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony No 32 (1779) Allegro spiritoso Andante Tempo primo

Chopin (1810-1849) Piano Concerto No 2 (1829) Maestoso Larghetto Allegro vivace

Beethoven (1770-1827) Symphony No 6 ‘Pastoral’ (1808) The awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country (Allegro ma non troppo) Scene by the brook (Andante molto mosso) Merry gathering of country folk (Allegro) Thunder, Storm (Allegro) Shepherd's song. Happy and thankful feelings after the storm (Allegretto)

––––– Three composers out to think afresh and challenge the conventions of established musical forms populate tonight’s programme.

In the case of Mozart’s Symphony No 32, however, that description probably doesn’t go far enough. It’s fairly likely that the composer never intended the piece as a symphony at all: it’s a short work in a single span of music, incorporating elements of opening movement, slow movement and finale, and almost certainly composed as an overture for another composer’s opera or operetta.

Mozart wrote it in April 1779, towards the end of the time he spent working for the demanding, difficult and frustratingly restrictive Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo in his birth city of Salzburg.

Mozart had quit Colloredo’s employ once already, the year earlier, and set off on a European tour in search of greater recognition and reward – a tragic trip in which his mother died, forcing him back to Salzburg, and back onto Colloredo’s payroll in a job his father Leopold had arranged for him. The Symphony was one of the first works he wrote on his return, though he left Salzburg for good two years later.

So the Symphony No 32 doesn’t have the happiest of background circumstances, though it’s a bright, festive, energetic work all the same. And its unusual form marries perfectly with what would have been expected from an overture to a theatrical work, leading some to speculate it might have been intended for Mozart’s operas Thamos, King of Egypt or Zaide, even if the dates of the works don’t match.

Indeed, the bright summons to attention at the Symphony’s very opening wouldn’t have been out of place in the opera house, and neither would the bustling, goodhumoured melody that follows, later ushering in a gentler, more playful second main theme.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Indeed, the bright summons to attention at the Symphony’s very opening wouldn’t have been out of place in the opera house,

Concerto No 2, it was as a poetic, introspective, fragile and deeply lyrical work – and, most importantly, one that

and neither would the bustling, goodhumoured melody that follows, later ushering in a gentler, more playful second main theme. Once Mozart has turned both themes over in his stormy central development section, he unexpectedly veers away into entirely new material, effectively his ‘slow movement’, in which woodwind and horns play a central role.

The bustling material from his opening ‘movement’ makes a surprise return, however, for a miniature finale that ties up the beginning’s loose ends – though Mozart teasingly saves the return of his bustling original tune right until the very end.

would demonstrate his own remarkable pianistic talents to a wide audience.

If Frédéric Chopin was rethinking the

He was barely out of his teens when he wrote the piece – strictly speaking his first rather than his second Concerto, its numbering down to publishing rather than composition order. He’d just returned to Warsaw from an unexpectedly successful (and, it turned out, life-changing) performing debut in Vienna, where his two solo concerts drew adulation from the city’s influential critics. An international career was clearly on the cards, far sooner than the young man had anticipated, and he needed something substantial to show off his skills across European stages. His performing success

piano concerto afresh in his Piano

in Vienna, of course, also provided him

Frédéric François Chopin

If Frédéric Chopin was rethinking the piano concerto afresh in his Piano Concerto No 2, it was as a poetic, introspective, fragile and deeply lyrical work – and, most importantly, one that would demonstrate his own remarkable pianistic talents to a wide audience.

with new confidence to give full rein in his own music to gleaming piano sonorities and tender expressiveness, which

if not a way of reviving piano music completely, at least some of what has so long been vainly sought, that is to say an

characterise the Concerto far more than empty pianistic pyrotechnics or shallow display.

abundance of original ideas of which the type is nowhere to be discovered.’

Chopin finished the Concerto in 1829, and premiered it himself in Warsaw the following year, where it was an instant success: a further performance was hastily arranged for five days later. The Concerto would later become his musical calling card in Paris, where his delicate musicianship was hailed as heralding a new age for the piano. Influential Parisian critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote gushingly of the Concerto’s Parisian premiere, as part of Chopin’s debut concert on 26 February 1832: ‘Here is a young man who, giving way to his natural

It’s perhaps better not to dwell on Chopin’s orchestral writing in the Concerto: it’s not that it’s bad, as such, rather merely functional, and it’s clear his interest was first and foremost in the Concerto’s solo piano part. And it’s no surprise that he would concentrate almost entirely on music for piano alone after his two concertos. What he achieves with that piano part, however, is nothing short of miraculous, in dazzling, crystalline writing shot through with sincere emotion that quickly dispels any notion that the music is simply calculated to show off its soloist's skills (though, of course, it does

leanings and taking no model, has found,

that very effectively too).

No, what’s fresher and more unusual about Beethoven’s 'Pastoral' Symphony is that it examines humankind’s relationship with nature, and more specifically Beethoven’s own, rather than simply painting a pretty picture.

Ludwig van Beethoven

The first movement opens with a surging, striding, deeply Romantic melody of great passion, before a more reflective theme

Larghetto] of my Concerto.’ Predictably, he remained in a state of lovesick torment rather than revealing his feelings, though

in the woodwind takes over. The piano embellishes both when it enters later, and Chopin is at pains to showcase all the sonic possibilities of his instrument, from its legato singing phrases to cascading liquid decorations.

it drew from him one of his tenderest, most overtly lovely creations. Liszt described it as ‘of a perfection almost ideal, its expression now radiant with light, now full of tender pathos’.

In his slow second movement, Chopin admitted he was inspired by his infatuation with the young soprano Konstancja Gladkowska, who’d been a classmate at the Warsaw Conservatoire, writing to a friend: ‘I have – perhaps to my own misfortune – already found my ideal, whom I worship faithfully and sincerely.

Six months have elapsed, and I haven’t yet exchanged a syllable with her of whom I dream every night – she who was in my mind when I composed the Adagio [in fact

In his final movement, Chopin contrasts a Polish mazurka dance with a more rustic theme, which the strings accompany by playing with the wood of their bows.

A horn signal indicates the start of a dashing, quicksilver coda, in which the pianist can show off any skills of technical athleticism as yet undemonstrated to the audience.

In his 'Pastoral' Symphony, No 6, we might imagine that Beethoven was breaking new symphonic ground in his detailed

depictions of nature, his vivid musical portrait of the countryside. And yes, there’s a bit of that in the piece. But in

the dark days of Covid lockdown still fresh in our memories, taking consolation and nourishment from nature is surely

fact, surprisingly little: a babbling brook, a few bird calls, some jolly dancing peasants and a tumultuous storm. Nor was a symphony aiming to evoke nature a particularly new idea: Justin Heinrich Knecht had pulled off something similar 25 years before Beethoven in his Portrait musical de la nature, and set something of a trend in the process.

something many of us can understand.

No, what’s fresher and more unusual about Beethoven’s 'Pastoral' Symphony is that it examines humankind’s relationship with nature, and more specifically Beethoven’s own, rather than simply painting a pretty picture. The composer said as much when he described it as "more an expression of feeling than tone painting". He’s known to have loved being in the countryside, taking long walks on the outskirts of Vienna, and spending almost every summer far from the city.

He wrote to his friend (and possible dedicatee of ‘Für Elise’) Therese Malfatti: ‘How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, over grass and rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do.’

It’s probably not too far-fetched to suggest that immersing himself in nature provided a sense of solace and consolation from Beethoven’s loneliness and his increasing deafness, with the inevitable sense of despair it provoked.

Indeed, he’s known to have begun work on the 'Pastoral' Symphony in 1802, the same year that he planned to reveal his contemplation of suicide to his brothers in the unsent letter that’s become known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. With

The journey the Symphony charts is very much an internal, even heroic, one, through danger and trauma to spiritual gratitude and fulfilment. With its joyfully uncomplicated opening material – a bagpipe-like drone in the cellos and basses, with a simple, rustic melody in the violins – there’s no doubt as to the mood and location of Beethoven’s first movement, which he titles ‘The awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country’. Nonetheless, just as he does in the famous opening of his Fifth Symphony (which he was working on concurrently), Beethoven derives the rest of the opening movement almost entirely from these basic opening ideas, even if it’s with very different results.

His second movement, ‘Scene by the Brook’, contains the Symphony’s clearest evocations of nature’s own sounds: the stream ripples through the entire movement in the strings’ incessant rhythms, and Beethoven quotes birdsongs in the violins and flutes, and most clearly near the end of the movement, where he labels his avian visitors as a nightingale (flute), quail (oboe) and cuckoo (clarinets).

His lively third movement, ‘Merry gathering of country folk’, marks the beginning of a continuous flow of music that will take the Symphony through to its conclusion. Beethoven presents a vibrant Austrian peasant dance in a witty evocation of a country band, whose players miss their cue by a single beat and come in on the ‘wrong’ note –

With the dark days of Covid lockdown still fresh in our memories, taking consolation and nourishment from nature is surely something many of us can understand.

The journey the Symphony charts is very much an internal, even heroic, one, through danger and trauma to spiritual gratitude and fulfilment.

though the composer’s writing is warmly affectionate rather than mocking. Indeed, he even half-jokingly suggested he might

he titles ‘Shepherd’s song. Happy and thankful feelings after the storm’. After a brief moment of two keys happening

join them in their supposedly simple life, giving up music entirely should the deterioration in his hearing prevent him from continuing.

simultaneously as his opening clarinet hands over its tune to a horn (an effect that 20th-century composers would take up far more extensively), Beethoven spins his quiet, unassuming opening violin melody to ever greater visionary splendour as the movement progresses.

His shrill piccolo is left behind, but he retains his two trombones, no doubt feeling their ecclesiastical connotations appropriate for this hymn of thanks. But this is no Christian act of worship from Beethoven the (probable) atheist: having endured the violence of the storm, he expresses his gratitude instead to the natural world itself, in all its dangerous variety.

Beethoven’s peasant idyll is interrupted, however, by the first, distant rumblings of a fast-approaching storm, which erupts across the orchestra in all manner of unconventional sonic effects, from scrubbing string tremolos and surging timpani rolls, to snarling trombones and a shrill wind whistling from the piccolo.

The storm passes, however, and Beethoven allows us a glimpse into the profound calm and consolation he gains from nature in his restrained, luminous, deeply spiritual finale, which

© David Kettle

Conductor JOANA CARNEIRO

––––– Acclaimed Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro is Principal Conductor of the Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa at Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon, and Artistic Director of the Estágio Gulbenkian para Orquestra, a post she has held since 2013. From 2009 to 2018 she was Music Director of Berkeley Symphony, succeeding Kent Nagano as only the third music director in the 40-year history of the orchestra. She was also official guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra from 2006 to 2018.

Recent and future guest conducting highlights including engagements with the BBC Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (whom she conducted at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in December 2017), Swedish Radio Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the BBC Philharmonic. Last season she conducted Bernstein’s It’s a Wonderful Town with the Royal Danish National Opera and a new production of Carmen at the Royal Stockholm Opera.

She continues to be sought after for contemporary programmes and in recent years she made her debut at the English National Opera conducting the world stage premiere of John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary. In 2016 she conducted a production of La Passion de Simone at the Ojai Festival which was highly acclaimed, and a production of Van der Aa’s Book of Disquiet with the London Sinfonietta. Joana also works regularly with singer/song-writer Rufus Wainwright.

Piano BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

––––– British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is internationally recognised for his electrifying performances, distinctive sound and insightful interpretations. His virtuosic command over the most arduous technical complexities underpins the remarkable depth and understanding of his music -making. Described as “one in a million...several million” by The Independent.

A pianist of widespread international acclaim, in the 21/22 Season he is Artist in Residence at the prestigious Wigmore Hall in London with three varying projects. The previous season he was Artist-in-Residence at both Radio France and with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His “astounding technical gifts, the freshness of his imagination, his intense concentration, the absence of any kind of show, and the unmistakable sense of poetic immersion directed solely at the realisation of music” have been lauded by Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Recent and forthcoming concerto highlights of the 21/22 season include engagements with the Chicago, Baltimore and Pittsburg Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Orchestra, Scottish Chamber, Hamburg Staatsorchester and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Benjamin works with such esteemed conductors as Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Mark Elder, Kent Nagano, Alan Gilbert, Manfred Honeck, Vladimir Jurowski, François-Xavier Roth and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Benjamin first came to prominence as the outstanding winner of the Keyboard Final of the 2004 BBC Young Musician Competition, and he was invited to perform with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the First Night of the 2011 BBC Proms. The youngest of five brothers, Benjamin began playing the piano aged six. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Daniel-Ben Pienaar, where he graduated in 2012 with the ‘Queen’s Commendation for Excellence’ and in 2016 was awarded a Fellowship from the institution.

Benjamin is an Ambassador of Music Masters, a charity dedicated to making music education accessible to all children regardless of their background, championing diversity and inclusion.

For full biography please visit sco.org.uk

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