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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

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Henry E Rensburg Series (for subscriptions)

The Birds Thursday 5 October 2017 7.30pm sponsored by Weightmans

Classic FM 25th Birthday Commissions To celebrate Classic FM’s 25th Birthday, the UK’s largest classical music radio station has teamed up with the Royal Philharmonic Society to commission seven new works by composers who are no older than the station itself. Seven young composers, all born on or after 7 September 1992, were chosen from over 300 entries by a panel of judges including royal composer Paul Mealor and Classic FM’s composer in residence Debbie Wiseman. Each work will be premiered by Classic FM’s partner orchestras, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and broadcast to its 5.6 million listeners across the UK. Classic FM and the Royal Philharmonic Society gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Boltini Trust. Two other Classic FM commissions are performed by Liverpool Philharmonic: Thursday 7 September, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall Dani Howard Argentum Wednesday 11 October, St George’s Hall Concert Room Alexia Sloane Elegy For Aylan

JACK PEPPER (b.1999) Signal world premiere of orchestral version Jack enjoys composing classical pieces and popular songs. His own fanfare was used to call audience members to their seats throughout the Royal Opera House’s 2016-17 season, having recorded his work with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Sir Antonio Pappano, a process which was filmed by BBC News. His next fanfare, written for Classic FM and the Royal Philharmonic Society, was premiered at the Barbican in July 2017. Elsewhere, Jack was commissioned to write a piece for the Canadian jazz band SymphRONica, who have performed his work in Toronto, Trafalgar Square (for the Canada 150 celebrations) and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. As a pianist and singer, Jack has performed solos in internationally renowned venues such as Wembley Arena, G Live, Dorking Halls, Fairfield Halls, Warwick University’s Arts Centre and the JFC Jazz Club in St Petersburg. As a

passionate writer, Jack has written blogs for Gramophone and the Royal Philharmonic Society, and has been featured on Classic FM, BBC Surrey and Radio Jackie discussing his music. The composer writes: Commissioned to mark the 25th Birthday of Classic FM, and in association with the Royal Philharmonic Society, Signal is a celebration of music. Nowhere is this energy clearer than in the central section, which becomes a potpourri of famous works, including Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – his Ninth Symphony was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society – and Bach’s C minor Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Added to this are the Classic FM theme and ‘Happy Birthday to You’! Composing this fanfare was a privilege; I am hugely grateful to Classic FM, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for this fantastic opportunity, as the experience of a professional commission is invaluable to someone who is determined to pursue a career in music. I hope that you enjoy the fanfare, and join me in wishing Classic FM a happy birthday. Here’s to another 25 years!

ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897-1957) The Sea Hawk: Theme Born in Brno in the modern-day Czech Republic, Korngold achieved early fame at the age of 11 when his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) became a sensation in Vienna. His opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City, 1920) was the subject of feverish excitement, and made his name worldwide. He became professor at the Vienna State Academy in 1927, but, as a Jew, he was forced to emigrate in 1938 at the Nazi annexation of Austria. He found refuge in the USA, and remained there for the rest of his life. His compositional style, with its lush harmonies and sweeping Romantic tunes, was eminently suited to use in film; before arriving in the USA he had already made a great impression on Hollywood with his scores for films including Captain Blood (1935), Anthony Adverse (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). His next project, The Sea Hawk (1940), has been hailed as the best Hollywood swashbuckler of all time. Set on the eve of the Spanish Armada, it concerns the piratical and romantic adventures of Geoffrey Thorpe, an English privateer, played with insouciant aplomb by Errol Flynn. The main theme frames a soaring, surging melody in the strings with a brass-laden fanfare bristling with the supreme confidence of the film’s hero. Ian Stephens © 2017

FREDERICK DELIUS (1862-1934) Two Pieces for Small Orchestra On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring Summer Night on the River With its stuccoed houses and lazily flowing river, Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau, is in many ways a very ordinary French country town. But it had a magical effect on more than one Englishman. Robert Louis Stevenson lingered there in the 1870s, and he seemed to sense something in the air: “It lies out of the forest, a cluster of houses with an old bridge and a castle in ruin, and a quaint old church. On the opposite bank there is a reach of English-looking plain, set thickly with willows and poplars. And between the two lies the river, clear and deep, and full of reeds and floating lilies…[it] wanders hither and thither among the islets and is smothered and broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy”. Frederick Delius moved to Grez with his new wife Jelka in 1897, and over the long years of his voluntary exile, this Bradford-born son of German parents gradually became – in Michael Kennedy’s words – English music’s supreme “poet of regret for the vanished hour and hedonistic delight”. Kennedy must surely have been thinking of the Two Pieces for Small Orchestra that Delius composed in response to a request from his friend Percy Grainger for “some piece for not too big Orchestra ... and not too wildly difficult”. “English orchestras will devour them” he added (in fact, they were premiered by Arthur Nikisch in Leipzig in October 1913). In homage to their friendship, Delius based the first piece, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, on the old Norwegian folksong In Ola Valley, in Ola Lake – a favourite of their mutual friend Edvard Grieg. Actually the second of the two pieces to be completed, in 1912, it’s a dream of a spring remembered, rather than anticipated; no cuckoo ever sounded quite so wistfully poetic. And when he sought inspiration for its companion

piece Summer Night on the River, completed a year earlier in 1911, Delius had simply to gaze down his riverside garden at Grez. Swaying woodwinds become the flowing river, and Delius delicately colours in the trailing weeds and play of moonlight. The night is warm and still; melancholy hangs in the dusk like a gentle haze. “It was not until years after I had settled at Grez that I really found myself,” he recalled. “Contemplation, like composition, cannot be taught”.

Richard Bratby © 2017

OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879-1936) The Birds Prelude: allegro moderato / moderately fast The Dove: andante espressivo / at walking pace, with expression The Hen: allegro vivace / fast and lively The Nightingale: andante mosso / at walking pace, with movement The Cuckoo: allegro – allegro moderato / fast – moderately fast

Respighi was not one of the most radical composers of his day. He never advanced beyond early Stravinsky and Richard Strauss in harmonic terms and wrote nothing more progressive in that sense than his three popular and brilliantly evocative orchestral works inspired, respectively, by the fountains, pines, and festivals of Rome. He was, on the other hand, a pioneer in enriching the music of the present by reviving aspects of the baroque and classical past. He was well ahead of Stravinsky in this respect, even if neo-classicism was never for him the major stylistic issue it was for his Russian contemporary. He could take it – as he regularly did between the Concerto all’antica in 1908 and the Concerto à cinque in 1933 – or he could leave it, as he usually did when writing his major orchestral works and operas.

The suite for small orchestra, The Birds, was written in 1927 at the same time as he was working on the last of the Roman tone poems. Stravinsky, who was involved in serious classical work on Apollo at about the same time and in no mood to produce another Firebird, would have found that division of interest difficult to understand. Even so, The Birds is one of the most delightful and most stylish examples of a modern composer’s reworking of baroque material. Based on 17th- and 18th-century harpsichord pieces inspired by birdsong, it presents four light-hearted ornithological studies within the sturdy framework of a Bourrée by the Italian baroque composer Bernardo Pasquini (1627-1710).

First movement The shape of the suite as a whole is anticipated in the Prelude, where Pasquini’s Bourrée is interrupted first by a hen on violins and oboe, then in quick succession by a cuckoo on flute and bassoon, a nightingale on flute, and a dove on two clarinets. The cuckoo calls return in a little Allegretto dance episode interpolated before the recall of the Bourrée.

Second movement The Dove, based on a piece written by Jacques de Gallot in Paris in about 1670, is a particularly subtle example of Respighi’s mastery of orchestration: nothing sensational to begin with, just a melodic line perfectly placed on the oboe and accompanied by F sharp minor harmonies on the harp, a modest counterpoint on the flute, and scarcely perceptible hints of birdsong high on muted violins. The middle section introduces the characteristic murmuring of doves on violins and violas and a reprise of the first section recalls the melody in different instrumental colours against the still murmuring background. In the magical final bars the dove takes to the air in weightless figurations on flute and harp.

Third movement The Hen, based on a famous piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1768), is a strident contrast, the scoring remarkable this time for its brilliant wit, particularly in the use of bassoons and muted trumpets.

Fourth movement The Nightingale opens with an affectionate parody of Wagner’s ‘Forest Murmurs’, which actually persists through the whole movement. Against that background the flute introduces a melody (derived from an anonymous 17th-century English harpsichord work) which is offset by delicately drawn counterpoints on other woodwind instruments and twittering bird song on the piccolo. At the end the nightingale flies away on violin harmonics and a rising scale on the celesta.

Fifth movement The Cuckoo flies in on the same instruments. Based on a Toccata by Pasquini, it incorporates a short chorale-like middle section before returning to the outdoors and by stealthy degrees – on celesta and pianissimo woodwind – to a recall of the opening Bourrée. Gerald Larner © 2017

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) The Firebird fairy-tale ballet in two scenes Introduction Scene One The Enchanted Garden of Kashchei – Appearance of the Firebird, pursued by Prince Ivan – Dance of the Firebird – Capture of the Firebird by Prince Ivan – Supplication of the Firebird – Appearance of the Thirteen Enchanted Princesses – The Princesses’ Game with the Golden Apples (Scherzo) – Sudden Appearance of Prince Ivan – Khorovod (Round Dance) of the Princesses – Daybreak – Prince Ivan Penetrates Kashchei’s Palace – Magic Carillon – Appearance of Kashchei’s Monster Guardians, and Capture of Prince Ivan – Arrival of Kashchei the Immortal – Kashchei’s Dialogue with Prince Ivan – Intercession of the Princesses – Appearance of the Firebird – Dance of Kashchei’s Retinue under the Firebird’s Spell – Infernal Dance of All Kashchei’s Subjects – Lullaby (Firebird) – Kashchei’s Awakening – Kashchei’s Death – Profound Darkness Scene Two Disappearance of Kashchei’s Palace and Magical Creations – Return to Life of the Petrified Knights – General Rejoicing Stravinsky was not the first composer the Ballets Russes had in mind for The Firebird ballet. Enquiries were made with at least two of the other four Russians under consideration but the company finally decided in favour of a 27-year-old former pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of Ballets Russes and the dynamic driving force behind the company, might have preferred Stravinsky’s teacher for a project based on Russian folk tales – which, as his operas confirm, was a speciality of his. But, Rimsky having recently died, Diaghilev exercised his talent for taking the inspired risk. Stravinsky had done no more for the company at this stage than orchestrate a few Chopin waltzes for Les Sylphides but he was known to be thoroughly competent and it was not unreasonable to hope that he would draw on his knowledge of his late teacher’s work in similar circumstances – as, indeed, he did. Stravinsky did more than that. Although his Firebird score does occasionally echo Rimsky, along with other Russian composers (surprisingly including Scriabin), it is even more brilliantly done than Diaghilev and his choreographer Mikhail Fokine could have hoped. It is an unfailingly professional and highly colourful score which was perhaps the main factor in the resounding success of The Firebird when it was first performed in the Ballets Russes Paris season in 1910. With a characteristic combination of good luck and artistic perception Diaghilev had approached Stravinsky at a stage in his development when he was still a Russian nationalist in idiom and not yet the modernist he was progressively to become in his next two Ballets Russes scores for Paris, Petrushka in 1911 and, with notoriously explosive effect, The Rite of Spring in 1913. Although it is not uncommon to hear the complete Firebird score in orchestral concerts, as on this occasion, it has to be said in fairness to the composer that it was not written for the concert hall: it adheres in detail to Fokine’s highly eventful scenario and accommodates his choreographic requirements not only with set dance numbers but also with mimed episodes that tend to be more interesting for a ballet audience than a concert audience. Stravinsky’s concert suites, which largely omit the mime, have always been far more frequently performed for that reason. The second and third suites (1919 and 1945 respectively) are also more economical to perform in that they are scored for a smaller ensemble than the, in the composer’s words, “wastefully large” orchestra of the present 1910 version of the score (quadruple woodwind, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, three harps, an extensive percussion section, strings to match). Whatever the version, the score offers a fundamental harmonic distinction between the natural and good and the supernatural and evil in much the same way as in Rimsky-Korsakov’s last and at that time unperformed opera The Golden Cockerel. The music associated with the human characters (Prince Ivan and the 13 enchanted princesses) and, finally, the Firebird herself, is characterised by folk song and diatonic harmonies based on the major and minor scales or natural modes. The supernatural (the immortal ogre Kashchei and his guardian monsters) is

represented by the augmented fourth or tritone, which occurs in neither the major nor minor scale, and by artificial scales such as those made up of whole tones or alternating tones and semitones – which were features of the harmonic vocabulary of the more progressive Russian composers at the time and excitingly exotic for the Parisian public. The Firebird herself intercedes between the two, supernatural in origin but good in effect. It is impossible in this context to describe the many episodes, some of them very short, listed above. But with an outline of the story in mind and some guidance on the major musical events it should be possible to experience the extraordinary genius of the young composer for orchestral colouring, characterisation, atmosphere and for integrating an enormous variety of rhythmic interest in a sustained structure beginning in eerie near-silence and ending in a celebratory climax. The whole work – the Introduction and the two Scenes, each of the latter made up of several narrative episodes of varying length – is played without a break. The story The ballet is set in Kashchei’s palace, which is a dangerous place for mere mortals – like the 13 princesses who have succumbed to the immortal ogre’s spell or, worse still, the knights he has literally petrified by turning them to stone. In the first scene Prince Ivan enters Kashchei’s garden in pursuit of the Firebird (a magic creature unknown to ornithologists). He captures the Firebird but in response to her entreaties releases her. She allows him to take one of her feathers with the promise that it will save him whenever he is in danger. Falling in love with one of the princesses, he is determined to rescue her and her companions, only to fall into the hands of Kashchei’s guardian monsters. But before he can be petrified like the others he remembers the feather he had taken from the Firebird. As good as her word, she comes to rescue him, bewitching the monsters into an ever wilder dance and then sending them to sleep with a lullaby. She reveals to Ivan the secret of Kashchei’s immortality: he keeps his soul in a magic egg stored in a casket. Ivan smashes the egg, Kashchei immediately dies and the petrified knights are restored to life. Ivan and his chosen princess are betrothed in a scene of general rejoicing. The music Richard Strauss is reported to have told Stravinsky that he was wrong to begin The Firebird so quietly when he should have started with a bang to secure the audience’s attention. But nothing could be more effective in securing attention than the ominous Introduction for muted pianissimo lower strings introducing the eerie harmonies which would later be associated with the supernatural element of the story. The same atmosphere persists as Ivan enters the enchanted garden in pursuit of the Firebird until Ivan announces himself in human terms with what Fokine described as a “beautiful Russian melody” on a solo oboe. The Scriabinesque fluttering, flickering ‘Dance of the Firebird’ is as iridescent in orchestral colouring as the plumage of the bird itself, her supplication to be set free chromatically expressive on oboe and cor anglais. The first appearance of the princesses is made by way of a number of graceful woodwind solos. Their ‘Game with the Golden Apples’ turns out to be a nimble, well developed scherzo. Their ‘Khorovod’ is a rondo based on a lovely folk melody also introduced by a solo oboe and going on to hint at Ivan’s dawning love for the most beautiful of them. After ‘Daybreak’, when Ivan enters the palace Kashchei’s monsters are awakened by the ‘Magic Carillon’ sounding in whole tones. This marks the start of the increasingly picturesque progress – including the capture of Ivan, the intercession of the Princesses on his behalf, and the arrival of the Firebird to save him – leading to the most dramatic passage in the ballet: the ‘Infernal Dance’ of Kashchei’s subjects is marked by its heavily percussive, furiously syncopated rhythms on brass and woodwind and its weirdly distorted fanfares tossed around the orchestra at increasing speed. Contrasting with it is the ‘Lullaby’ introduced by one of the most beautifully written of all bassoon solos presented in the folk harmonies the Firebird has now earned the right to be identified with. Immediately after the ‘Death of Kashchei’, vividly depicted in arpeggios on sul ponticello strings and woodwind, the scene is plunged into darkness in a sustained pianissimo on multi-divided strings. Light breaks in at the beginning of the much shorter Scene Two with the breathtaking entry of a solo horn introducing the great melody, the Russian folk song ‘By the Gate’, which is to nourish Stravinsky’s rhythmic and harmonic imagination as it grows into the triple forte of the triumphant massively climactic closing bars. Gerald Larner © 2017