JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC

Saturday 4 March, 7.30pm

Arnold Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (28 mins)

Interval: 20 mins

Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 5 (68 mins)

BBC PhilharmonicRafael Payare conductor

ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN YOUR MUSICAL JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY?

Share your experience using the hashtag #MyJTM All i

llust

ratio

ns: B

en W

right

/Nuc

co B

rain

Our Journey Through Music scheme at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall is an affordable and enjoyable introduction to the world of concert-going and classical music. For young people and children from the age of 8, our special scheme is aimed at making our concerts easily accessible for families and anybody who wants to discover orchestral music or to explore it further.

Ready to begin?Join us on this musical journey and discover the unforgettable world of classical music. Three performances will feature a pre-concert session suitable for all ages – but every concert in the 2016/17 season is available at a special family-ticket price. Plus – choose your seat anywhere in the house for the same price:• £7 for children aged 16 and under• £12 for accompanying adults• £35 family ticket, for 4 people (maximum of 2 adults)These prices include a £2 booking fee so you know there’s no extra costs when you book – just be sure to book in advance as these are not available on the day.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ORCHESTRA

All i

llust

ratio

ns: B

en W

right

/Nuc

co B

rain

WHAT IS AN ORCHESTRA?An orchestra is a group of instrumental players who perform together, usually led by a conductor.

The modern symphony orchestra usually has somewhere between 60 and 90 players: around 30 violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, eight double basses; two or three each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, a tuba, a harp and an assortment of percussion instruments. You can find out more about the instruments, and where they sit, on the next two pages after this.

THE CONDUCTORThe person in charge is usually the conductor, who stands at the front and directs the orchestra from a podium, keeping time either by waving a short stick, called a baton, or sometimes just with his or her hands. One of the earliest conductors, the Italian-born Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87), kept his orchestra together by banging a big stick on the floor, but one day he accidentally stabbed his foot and soon afterwards died of gangrene. It’s not as dangerous these days!

Part of the conductor’s job is to show the beat (or pulse) of the music so that all the musicians play together in time. He or she also signals when individual musicians or groups have to start or stop playing. All the time conductors are listening to the overall sound-balance, and altering it, to make sure that the important instruments don’t get drowned out by less important ones. Otherwise, like lots of people talking loudly at the same time, the result would be chaos!

But there’s more to it than this. The conductor can also help to reveal the changing moods of the music. If they can create a strong musical image for the listener, the effect can make us feel all sorts of emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, pride and everything in between. The music might energise you, or it might make you feel you’ve fallen into a dream.

11

THE ORCHESTRA ON STAGEMost orchestras have a similar seating plan, with the strings at the front, the woodwind behind them and the brass and percussion further back still.

WOODWINDThe woodwind section sits behind the strings, often in two rows. There are four different instruments, usually in pairs, but in bigger orchestras there can be up to three or four players of each instrument. The metal flutes produce a high, bright, silvery sound. The piccolo is like a small flute and plays very high up. Oboes are black wooden instruments with a detachable reed, which gives them a distinctive sharp-edged sound. Before a concert starts, the whole orchestra tunes up to the note ‘A’ sounded by the Principal Oboe. A bigger, lower version of the oboe is the cor anglais, or ‘English horn’. Clarinets have a more hollow, woody sound. The lowest-sounding member of its family is the bass clarinet. The lowest woodwind instrument is the bassoon, which is long and heavy and has to be supported by a sling round the player’s neck. The contra-bassoon is so long that it’s bent double. Occasionally a piece will need extra instruments, such as the saxophone, which is more usually found in a jazz band.

BRASSLike the strings and woodwind, the brass family has four groups. There are French horns (usually four), instruments once associated with hunting, while the trumpets came from military bands, and often have fanfare-like parts. Trombones are played with a movable slide but, in spite of their size, they can play amazingly fast notes; and finally the enormous tuba makes the deepest notes of all.

PERCUSSIONThe percussion section sits at the back of the orchestra and centres around the timpani, or kettledrums – between two and four copper drums. They have pedals, which alter their pitch (or notes). The bass drum is hit with just one stick; while the metal cymbals are clashed together, often when the music gets very loud. The side-drum is a small military drum that can play very quietly or very loudly indeed. Sometimes composers ask for a variety of other percussion instruments, such as the xylophone, the marimba or even whistles, whips and sirens.

STRINGSString players sit at the front in a semi-circle, usually with the violins on the left and the cellos on the right. Each of the string sections (and also the woodwind, brass and percussion sections) has a principal, who leads the section. The strings divide into four sections: violins, violas, cellos and double basses. The violins are subdivided into first violins and second violins, with the Firsts generally having a slightly more difficult and brilliant part. Violas are bigger than violins, with a deeper, mellower sound. The cellos have a rounded, bass sound. The huge double basses (which are played standing up, or perched on a high stool) add depth to the string sound. The harp is played with fingers instead of a bow, and it has a series of complicated pedals that change its pitch (or notes).

STRINGSDOUBLE BASSES

PERCUSSION

WO

ODW

IND

BRASS

HA

RPS

FLUTES OBOES CLARINETS BASSOONS

FRENCH HORNS TRUMPETS TROMBONES TUBAS

VIO

LIN

S

VIOLINS VIOLAS CELLOS

CYM

BALS

TIM

PANI

F

IRST

S

ECOND

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Vienna 1900: City of Music

Both the pieces we’re going to hear tonight were composed in the city of Vienna, around the year 1900. Vienna is the capital of Austria, but back then, it was much more than that. It was ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph – by now an old man, with a bushy white moustache and sideburns – whose lands included not just modern Austria, but also modern Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and parts of Italy, Romania, Poland and Ukraine. People from all these lands came to Vienna to mingle, trade, dance waltzes, or simply to chat and eat cake in the famous coffee houses. It was an amazing place to make music – and Vienna’s musicians were famous around the world.

And it wasn’t just musicians either. Visual artists such as Gustav Klimt were inventing wonderful new ways of looking at the world, and scientists such as Sigmund Freud were discovering new ways to find out the secrets of the human mind. So while it could be a very formal and old-fashioned city (the Emperor lived in a huge palace and always wore uniform), it was also full of new ideas – some of them beautiful, some of them terrifying. Our composers today, Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler were friends in Vienna. They both wrote music that is sometimes beautiful, and sometimes terrifying – and which tries to share with us exactly how they felt, living in that amazing city at a time of incredible change.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)Verklärte Nacht (1899, orchestrated 1917)

So let’s start with the name. Austrians speak German, and in German the title of this piece means ‘Transfigured Night’. Transfigured? It means a moment when something suddenly, amazingly, becomes wonderful – even magical. Schoenberg got the name from a poem by a friend of his, Richard Dehmel, and it tells a story. A man and a woman are walking through a dark forest at night. They’re in love – but terrible fears are worrying them. They talk to each other, and realise that their love will make everything right. The moon comes out and suddenly the night seems wonderful.

Schoenberg loved the poem, so in 1899 he turned it into music, using just six string players. He later arranged it for string orchestra, which is how we hear it this evening. The piece is partly a musical picture, telling the story of the poem, and partly a description of how the words made him feel. To us, it sounds gorgeous, but many people in Vienna back then thought that it sounded simply too strange and too passionate. One listener said it sounded like someone had taken the sheet music when the ink was still wet and smudged it!

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

What to listen for• Darkness: the music sounds sad, and the lowest-sounding

instruments of the orchestra – the cellos and basses – play a tune that sounds as if it’s walking slowly forwards. Schoenberg only uses the string instruments of the orchestra in this piece, so it sounds lush and soft. The violins and violas gradually join in as they walk through the forest, getting more and more passionate, until:

• Love: as the music gets louder, suddenly it changes – and sounds warm and happy.

• Conversation: the two people talk about their hopes and fears. In music? Well yes – the low-sounding instruments (cellos and basses) are the voice of the man, and the high-sounding violins (sometimes playing ‘solo’ – alone) represent the voice of the woman. There are no words, but the music still tells a story. Listen for when they walk on a bit, and how the music grows sad and quiet again.

• Happiness: another mood change, with the cellos and then violins really seeming to sing out.

• Transfigured Night: ‘How brightly the universe is shimmering!’ says the poem. The violins play very quiet, very fast, very bright-sounding music – it sounds as if it’s glinting, like the stars.

• Happy Ever After? There are some passionate sounds – but the piece ends with the starlight music.

What else could I listen to?Schoenberg wrote lots of amazing music, but nothing exactly like Verklärte Nacht! If you’d like more – lots more – try his huge choral piece, Gurrelieder.

Interval: 20 minutes (time for an ice-cream!)

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)Symphony No. 5 (1901–2)

1 Funeral March – 2 Stormy, with great forcefulness3 Scherzo (Not too fast)4 Adagietto (Very slow) – 5 Rondo-Finale (Lively)

In 1902, Gustav Mahler was one of the most important musicians in Vienna – in fact, in the whole world. He was a famous conductor, and he was a very intelligent, hardworking man, in charge of the Emperor’s opera house. He had a beautiful and talented young wife called Alma and they were practically a celebrity couple! Mahler hardly had any time to compose his own music, so each summer he’d go on holiday to the lakes and mountains of the Austrian Alps, and compose there – in a little hut in the garden. He wrote long pieces, full of emotion, and many people thought he’d gone a bit over the top. But Vienna’s young musicians – figures such as Arnold Schoenberg – thought he was a genius.

This is the fifth of Mahler’s nine huge symphonies. ‘Symphony’ literally means ‘sounding together’. But in classical music, it has come to mean the longest and most ambitious type of piece that you can write for an orchestra, often made up of several different pieces called ‘movements’ which all go together to tell up one big musical story. So what’s the story here? Mahler wrote it while on holiday in 1901 and 1902 – in between swimming and hiking in the mountains. He’d just married Alma, so he was very happy.

But Mahler’s music is never just about any one mood. Even though he was rich and famous, he’d had a difficult childhood. His family was poor, his beloved brother had died young and one of his best friends had suffered from mental illness. When his music is happy it’s incredibly happy. But when it’s angry or sad, it can get really dark. This symphony is all of those things, and everything in between – after all, Mahler said that ‘a symphony is like the world – it must contain everything’. He writes for a really big orchestra: you’ll see lots of woodwind, brass and percussion, plus harp and string instruments, on the stage. Mahler uses all of them to tell his tale. So hold tight: this is going to be quite an adventure!

What to listen for1 Funeral March • One player starts the symphony all alone – the trumpet.

It sounds lonely, and a little stern, as if it’s calling us to attention. And then with a huge, shuddering crash, the orchestra begins the gloomiest possible type of music – a funeral march. It’s slow, steady and very sad, but keep listening: Mahler’s feelings keep breaking through (and they’re not calm). It gets quiet, the trumpet sounds again, and then the orchestra bursts into …

2 Stormy, with great forcefulness • The string instruments thunder and rush, the brass

instruments shout and snap, and the woodwind sound scared – a bit like birds calling during a thunderstorm in the mountains. Is this a real thunderstorm, or one in Mahler’s head? In music, it can be both.

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

3 Scherzo (Not too fast) • Suddenly, everything feels better. ‘Scherzo’ is Italian for

‘joke’ – and most symphonies have one movement that’s a bit more light-hearted. Mahler gives a starring role to the horns, but also listen to how the triangle makes the music seem to tingle and sparkle. The music is in the rhythm of a waltz – everyone’s favourite dance in Vienna – so if you feel like swaying along, go right ahead!

4 Adagietto (Very slow) • And now everything’s quiet and still – and the string

instruments and harp play a long, lovely tune. Some people think it’s very sad, while others think it’s love music (as in Verklärte Nacht), written specially for Mahler’s new wife! You decide – it could be either, or both. It gets really quiet, and goes into …

5 Rondo-Finale (Lively)• Everything’s calm – and then a horn, a bassoon and

an oboe all take turns to try out a silly little tune. The orchestra gives a quiet shove, and we’re off on the final stage of the journey. A ‘rondo’ is a piece in which the same tune keeps coming round, again and again, but Mahler isn’t just going in circles – there are hints of the Adagietto movement (but played a bit faster now). And listen to how the music picks up energy (like when you’re cycling downhill). The trumpets at the very end sound thrilling, like a celebration. We’ve come a long way from that sad, lonely trumpeter at the beginning – nearly 70 minutes ago!

What else could I listen to?There are eight other Mahler symphonies to explore (nine if you count the unfinished 10th), all filled with huge emotions and wonderful, wonderful tunes. Maybe start with No. 1 and carry on from there. After all, Schoenberg and his friends believed that Mahler would always belong to young people!

Notes © Richard Bratby

bbc.co.uk/journeythroughmusic

JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC PRE-CONCERT SESSION

#MyJTM

We have a special pre-concert introduction at this upcoming concert. Join us a bit earlier on the concert night to discover more about the orchestra and the music being performed.

Friday 26 May 2017Concert Fantastique

Music by Arvo Pärt, Berlioz & DutilleuxPre-concert session, 6.30pm