56th SEASON

In accordance with the requirements of Westminster City Council persons shall not be permitted to sit or stand in any gangway. The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment is strictly forbidden without formal consent from St. John’s. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in St. John’s. Refreshments are permitted only in the Restaurant in the Crypt. During the interval and after the concert the Restaurant in the Crypt is open for licensed refreshments. Please ensure that all digital watch alarms, pagers and mobile phones are switched off.

Box office tel: 020 7222 1061. Website: www.sjss.org.uk. For details of future events at St. John’s please send £8.00 annual subscription to the box office.

St. John’s, Smith Square Charitable Trust, registered charity no: 1045390. Registered in England. Company no: 3028678. General Manager: Paul Davies.

Russell Keable conductorAlan Tuckwood leader

Peter Nagle Until I die there will be sounds (world première)

Sibelius Symphony No. 7

Interval – 20 minutes

Brahms Symphony No. 1

Monday 11 June 2012, 7.30pm St. John’s, Smith Square

Cover: view of Karlsruhe from above the palace

4

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME

PETER NAGLE b. 1970

Until I die there will be sounds

I can’t remember precisely when I encountered John Cage’s music and ideas, but it must have been at an early age, because he seems to have been a constant presence throughout my musical life. He’s most famous (or notorious) for 4’33”, which he wrote after the experience of entering an anechoic chamber, a space where supposedly no sound can enter. Hearing sounds anyway—those made by his own body—he realised that there was no such thing as “silence”; that “until I die, there will be sounds; and the sounds will continue after I die. One need not fear for the future of music.” (In fact he had had the idea of a “silent” piece much earlier, conceived as protest against muzak. But Cage understood the value of a tale that grows in the telling, and was happy to contribute to this tale’s growth himself.)

4’33” is a landmark in twentieth-century music of course, posing as it does some profound questions about the fundamental nature of music. It is also however perhaps unfortunately over-famous: its notoriety has overshadowed Cage the composer. His teacher Schoenberg famously described him as “not a composer, but an inventor—of genius,” and the wilful misunderstanding of this comment has provided plenty of fuel to those who would dismiss him (and if you’re one of those, I’m sorry but you’re just plain wrong, and missing out).

So while I’ve taken the title of this small tribute to Cage in his centenary year from his comments on that famous work, I’ve also drawn inspiration from the series of “number” pieces he composed at the end of his life. In these Cage prescribes certain tones or sounds to be played, but allows a degree of freedom as to when precisely these sounds might happen. Likewise, in this piece the players are given a sequence of chords that build up and then thin out again. Each player decides which of the notes available to play and when to play it within the time given for that particular set of tones.

There’s very little incident; I’ve restricted things to a low volume and a limited number of notes to encourage close listening, so that small details can assume a bigger significance. I try to remember the dictum of Cage’s pupil Morton Feldman: “Don’t push the sounds around.” The players are encouraged not to make things happen, but simply to let them happen. Above all, I try to remember Cage’s greatest lesson: that for music to happen, all we need do is listen.

Peter Nagle

5

Symphony No. 7

Adagio—poco affrettando—Vivacissimo— Adagi—Allegro molto moderato—Vivace— Presto—Adagio—Largamente—Affettuoso— Tempo I

Sibelius’s symphonies, which seem to flow so freely and spontaneously, were in fact the product of a compositional process riddled with doubt, rewrites and further rewrites. His Fifth Symphony went through numerous revisions and recompositions before it reached its final form in 1919. Writing to his friend Axel Carpelan in May 1918, Sibelius revealed that even as he struggled with the symphony, he already had plans for two more: “… the Vth Symphony in its new form almost completely recomposed. The first movement is totally new … The VIth Symphony is wild and impassioned in character … the end rising to a sombre roaring in the orchestra, in which the main theme is drowned. The VIIth Symphony. Joy of life and vitality, with appassionato passages. In three movements—the last an ‘Hellenic rondo’. All this with due reservation … it looks as if I was to come out with all these three symphonies at the same time … the plans may possibly be altered according to the development of the musical ideas. As usual, I am a slave to my themes and submit to their demands.”

Sibelius had begun to experiment with the idea of fusing different movements as early as his Second Symphony, which follows Beethoven’s Fifth in having its finale continue without a break from the preceding movement. His Third Symphony took this further by integrating the characteristics of two different types of symphonic movement to produce a scherzo that turns into a finale. The final version of the Fifth Symphony was even more radical: Sibelius spliced the original two opening movements into a single, highly original structure. So expertly is this achieved that it is impossible to say with any certainty where one ends and the other begins.

As he worked on his revision of the fifth, Sibelius began to doubt the wisdom of using the term “symphony” for what he was creating. He briefly considered dispensing with the concluding movements completely to leave a single movement “fantasia” (a term he had previously used in connection with his symphonies: his first concludes with a “Finale quasi una fantasia”). Meanwhile, he began sketching for two further symphonic “fantasias”. These would eventually become his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, completed in 1923 and 1924.

Three symphonies in five years hardly suggests a composer facing creative burnout, but Sibelius’s diary reveal a man consumed with worry and self-doubt. An entry in January 1924, during the

JEAN SIBELIUS 1865–1957

Jean Sibelius

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME

6

most intensive period of work on the Seventh, notes ‘I won’t get my pieces ready now. Hope that at least one of them will be finished. That is imperative. But I am on the wrong rails. Alcohol to calm my nerves and state of mind. How dreadful old age is for a composer! Things don’t go as quickly as they used to, and self-criticism grows to impossible proportions.’ Sibelius’s dependency on drink had been a perennial problem through his life, and one that his wife Aino bore with extraordinary patience. He fell into the habit of working through the night, and Aino would often come down in the morning to find him slumped asleep over a score, an empty whisky bottle on the table beside him. Even she had her limits, however. An incident in Gothenburg in 1923 in which Sibelius made a spectacle of himself by turning up to a conducting engagement clearly drunk was the last straw. She stopped speaking to him. One morning in 1924 she handed him a letter at the breakfast table. In it she wrote that she was not prepared to risk such public humiliation again; she would not accompany him to Stockholm for the première of the new symphony. She was as good as her word, and Sibelius travelled to Sweden alone.

Having begun his Fifth Symphony in four movements, considered one, and finally settled on three, Sibelius eventually produced a Seventh Symphony not in three movements, but one. While elements of the traditional four-movement form are implied, it is really impossible to describe its structure in any other terms than its own. It marks the ultimate development of Sibelius’s search for a style of writing in which everything is concentrated to its essence and all the ideas within a piece relate to and develop from each other. The form was in fact so radical that Sibelius had renewed doubts as to whether it actually was a symphony. The first performance in 1924 was given under the title of “Fantasia Sinfonica”. Only later did he gain the courage of his convictions and acknowledge it as his Seventh Symphony, under which title it was published in 1925.

The symphony is in terms of its duration short (especially in comparison to his contemporaries such as Mahler) but contains a lifetime of experience. From the simplest of germs—a flick on the timpani, an ascending scale in the cellos and bassses—Sibelius builds a complex and varied world. There is no bombast here; the overall mood is one of introspection, which occasionally turns outward, as in the noble trombone theme that recurs three times in the course of the symphony. It concludes not in triumph, but weary resignation. Sibelius seems reluctant to allow his final chord to reach its resolution, and and no sooner does it do so than it evaporates into silence.

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME

7

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME

Symphony No. 1

1. Un poco sostenuto—Allegro—Meno allegro2. Andante sostenuto3. Un poco allegretto e grazioso4. Adagio - più andante—Allegro non troppo, ma con brio—Più allegro

In 1853 Robert Schumann published an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the leading musical journal of the day, entitled “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”). “Sooner or later,” he declared, “someone would and must appear, fated to give us the ideal expression of the times, one who would not gain his mastery by gradual stages, but rather would spring fully armed like Minerva from the head of Kronos. And he has come; a young man over whose cradle Graces and Heroes have stood watch. His name is Johannes Brahms.” Brahms was, Schumann declared, destined to inherit the mantle of Beethoven.

Such extravagant praise from one of Germany’s leading composers certainly put the young Brahms’s name before a wide audience, but it also gave him a weight of expectation that he felt deeply ambivalent about. He already felt intimidated enough about Beethoven’s example without being publicly declared his successor: “You don’t know what it’s like to feel his footsteps behind you all the time,” he complained. Nevertheless, the gauntlet had been thrown down and he was expected to follow Beethoven and produce a symphony, a form that was considered the highest musical form. Schumann teased him, “If one only makes the beginning, then the end comes of itself,” and so Brahms duly began sketching ideas in 1854, but soon abandoned them. A year later he made a fresh attempt after hearing Schumann’s incidental music for Manfred; this time he got as far as planning a complete opening movement before he put the sketches away once more. These stops and starts may not have been entirely due to his sense of intimidation at following in the footsteps of Beethoven. In February 1854, Schumann, who had in the months preceding displayed increasing signs of mental instability, attempted suicide and was confined to an asylum. For the next two years until Schumann’s death, Brahms found himself in the role of chief intercessor between Schumann and his wife Clara. Brahms moved to Dusseldorf and lived above the Schumanns’ flat, more or less putting his entire career on hold to look after Clara. Exactly what went on between them is the subject of much speculation, but whether or not they were lovers it was a close and profoundly significant relationship for both of them.

After Schumann died in 1856, Brahms returned to orchestral composition with his First Piano Concerto (derived in part from the abandoned symphonic sketches of 1853) and two large-scale

JOHANNES BRAHMS 1854–1928

Johannes Brahms

8

serenades. Not until 1862 did he show Clara the first movement he had sketched in 1854. Even her enthusiasm was not enough to break his block, and the symphony remained incomplete for nearly fifteen years, despite regular enquiries from conductors.

What finally gave him the confidence to complete the First Symphony was the huge success in 1873 of his Variations on a Theme of Haydn, in which Brahms (a noted scholar as well as a composer whose influential work reviving the music of renaissance composers such as Palestrina marks him as one of the first musicologists) paid homage to the Father of the Symphony. In the comparatively short space of two years he completed the symphony in 1876.

Inevitably comparisons with Beethoven were made: the conductor and Brahms’s champion Hans von Bülow dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth.” Brahms had worked on the symphony right up until the first performance, but was still reluctant to let it go even after it proved a success. He destroyed the second movement and composed a replacement, which is what is heard today.

Clara commented that the symphony was not properly representative of Brahms’s character, and she has a point. For all his complaints about the comparisons to Beethoven, the first symphony is fairly clearly a self-conscious attempt to measure up. The opening of the symphony has a sense of inevitability about it that belies the fact that it was actually an afterthought, added right at the end of composition. The tightly argued music that follows is self consciously epic in tone, and reflects Brahms’s deepest interest in Beethoven’s example: the rigorous working of motifs so that everything in the symphony demonstrably relates to everything else. The themes throughout the symphony are related by common motifs, and these motifs have a common source in music Schumann had written representing Clara. This suggests that beneath the surface there is a deeply personal undercurrent.

The two middle movements perhaps bring the Brahms Clara knew more to the fore, tinged as they both are with a melancholic introspection. Following the brooding slow movement, Brahms allows himself to deviate from the Beethovenian mode in his third movement. Instead of a lively dance movement, here he offers a limpid intermezzo.

The finale begins with a clear echo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in a pensive mood, working its way through a number of possible ideas before a horn call ushers in daylight. This horn figure has personal associations: in a birthday greeting Brahms wrote to Clara in 1868, in which he noted down the tune with the comment, “Thus blew the Alpine horn to-day”. The main part of the movement then follows: a set of variations on a theme culminating in a suitably triumphal and boisterous conclusion. Brahms’s reaction to suggestions that the grand tune that forms the basis of the variations derived from the theme of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth was only slightly defensive: “Well, any ass can see that.”

© 2012 Peter Nagle

TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME

9

ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES

BIOGRAPHIES

Russell Keable conductor

Russell Keable has established a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting musicians. As a conductor he has been praised in the national and international press: “Keable and his orchestra did magnificently,” wrote the Guardian; “one of the most memorable evenings at the South Bank for many a month,” said the Musical Times.

He performs with orchestras and choirs throughout the British Isles, has conducted in Prague and Paris (concerts filmed by French and British television) and recently made his debut with the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra in Dubai.

As a champion of the music of Erich Korngold he has received particular praise: the British première of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt was hailed as a triumph, and research in Los Angeles led to a world première of music from Korngold’s film score for The Sea Hawk.

Keable was trained at Nottingham and London Universities; he studied conducting at London’s Royal College of Music with Norman Del Mar, and later with George Hurst. For 27 years he has been associated with Kensington Symphony Orchestra, one of the UK’s finest non-professional orchestras, with whom he has led first performances of works by many British composers (including Peter Maxwell Davies, John Woolrich, Robin Holloway, David Matthews, Joby Talbot and John McCabe). He has also made recordings of two symphonies by Robert Simpson, and a Beethoven CD was released in New York.

Russell Keable is recognized as a dynamic lecturer and workshop leader. He has the rare skill of being able to communicate vividly with audiences of any age (from school children to music students, adult groups and international business conferences). Over five years he developed a special relationship with the Schidlof Quartet, with whom he established an exciting and innovative education programme. He holds the post of Director of Conducting at the University of Surrey.

Keable is also in demand as a composer and arranger. He has written works for many British ensembles, and his opera Burning Waters, commissioned by the Buxton Festival as part of their millennium celebration, was premièred in July 2000. He has also composed music for the mime artist Didier Danthois to use working in prisons and special needs schools.

10

Phot

o ©

Sim

Can

etty

-Cla

rke

ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Kensington Symphony Orchestra

In its 56th year Kensington Symphony Orchestra enjoys an enviable reputation as one of the finest amateur orchestras in the UK. Its founding premise—to provide students and amateurs with an opportunity to perform concerts at the highest possible level—continues to be at the heart of its mission. It regularly attracts the best non-professional players from around London.

It seems extraordinary that KSO has had only two principal conductors—the founder, Leslie Head, and the current incumbent, Russell Keable. The dedication, enthusiasm and passion of these two musicians has indelibly shaped KSO’s image, giving it a distinctive repertoire which undoubtedly sets it apart from other groups. Its continued commitment to the performance of the most challenging works in the canon is allied to a hunger for new music, lost masterpieces, overlooked film scores and those quirky corners of the repertoire that few others dare touch.

Revivals and premières, in particular, have peppered the programming from the very beginning. In the early days there were world premières of works by Arnold Bax and Havergal Brian, and British premières of works by Nielsen, Schoenberg, Sibelius and Bruckner (the original version of the Ninth Symphony). When Russell Keable arrived in 1983, he promised to maintain the distinctive flavour of KSO. As well as the major works of Mahler, Strauss, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, Keable has aired a number of unusual works as well as delivering some significant musical landmarks—the London première of Dvořák’s opera Dimitrij and the British première of Korngold’s operatic masterpiece, Die tote Stadt (which the Evening Standard praised as “a feast of brilliant playing”). In January 2004, KSO, along with the London Oriana Choir, performed a revival of Walford Davies’s oratorio Everyman, which is now available on the Dutton label.

11

ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES

If you would like to receive news of our forthcoming concerts by email, please join our mailing list. Just send a message to jo.johnson@kso.org.uk and we’ll

do our best to keep you informed.

New music has continued to be the life-blood of KSO. An impressive roster of contemporary composers has been represented in KSO’s progressive programmes, including Judith Weir, Benedict Mason, John Woolrich, Joby Talbot and Peter Maxwell Davies. Two exciting collaborations with the BBC Concert Orchestra have been highlights: Bob Chilcott’s Tandem and the première of Errollyn Wallen’s lively romp around the subject of speed dating, Spirit Symphony, at the Royal Festival Hall, both of which were broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In December 2005, Spirit Symphony was awarded the Radio 3 Listeners’ Award at the British Composer Awards. Russell Keable has also written music for the orchestra, particularly for its education projects, which have seen members of the orchestra working with schools from the inner London area.

In 2006 KSO marked its 50th anniversary. The celebrations started with a ball at the Radisson Hotel, Portman Square in honour of the occasion, attended by many of those involved with the orchestra over the previous 50 years. The public celebration took the form of a concert at London’s Barbican in October. A packed house saw the orchestra perform an extended suite from Korngold’s score The Sea Hawk, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with established KSO collaborator Nikolai Demidenko, and Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky, with the London Oriana Choir.

KSO has an honourable pedigree in raising funds for charitable concerns. Its very first concert was given in aid of the Hungarian Relief Fund, and since then the orchestra has supported the Jacqueline du Pré Memorial Fund, the Royal Brompton Hospital Paediatric Unit, Trinity Hospice, Field Lane, Shape London and the IPOP music school. In recent years it has developed links with the Kampala Symphony Orchestra and Music School under its KSO2 programme, providing training, fundraising and instruments in partnership with charity Musequality.

The reputation of the orchestra is reflected in the quality of international artists who regularly appear with KSO. In recent seasons soloists have included Nikolai Demidenko, Leon McCawley, Jack Liebeck and Richard Watkins, and the orchestra has worked with guest conductors including Andrew Gourlay and Nicholas Collon. All have enjoyed the immediate, enthusiastic but thoroughly professional approach of these amateur musicians.

Without the support of its sponsors, its Friends scheme and especially its audiences, KSO could not continue to go from strength to strength and maintain its traditions of challenging programmes and exceptionally high standards of performance. Thank you for your support.

12

To support KSO you might consider joining our very popular Friends Scheme. There are three levels of membership and attendant benefits:

Friend

Unlimited concession rate tickets per concert; priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.

Premium friend

A free ticket for each concert, unlimited guest tickets at concessionary rates, priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.

Patron

Two free tickets for each concert, unlimited guest tickets at concessionary rates, priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.

All Friends and Patrons can be listed in concert programmes under either single or joint names.

We can also offer tailored Corporate Sponsorships for companies and groups. Please ask for details.

Cost of membership for the 56th Season was:

Friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £50 Premium friend. . . . . . . . . . £110 Patron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £200

To contribute to KSO by joining the Friends please contact David Baxendale on 020 8653 5091 or by email at friends@kso.org.uk.

Honorary Friends

Michael FlemingLeslie Head

Patrons

Gill CameronMalcolm and Christine DunmowGerald HjertDavid and Mary Ellen McEuenLinda and Jack PievskyNeil Ritson and familyKim Strauss-Polman

Premium friends

David BaxendaleBarbara BedfordFortuné and Nathalie BikoroJohn DaleJohn DoveyMaureen KeableNick MarchantDavid and Rachel MusgroveJoan and Sidney Smith

Friends

Anne BaxendaleRobert and Hilary BruceJan and Roy FieldonJoan HackettRobert and Gill Harding-PayneMichael and Caroline IllingworthHenry and Sarah Keighley-ElstubMrs Dorothy PatrickPeter and Marie RollasonRufus RottenbergSandy Shaw

FRIENDS OF KSO

YOUR SUPPORT

13

YOUR SUPPORT

OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT US

Sponsorship

One way in which you, our audience, can help us very effectively is through sponsorship. Anyone can be a sponsor, and any level of support—from corporate sponsorship of a whole concert to individual backing of a particular section or musician—is enormously valuable to us. We offer a variety of benefits to sponsors tailored especially to their needs, such as programme and website advertising, guest tickets, and assistance with entertaining.

For further details about sponsoring KSO, please speak to any member of the orchestra, email sponsorship@kso.org.uk or call James Wheeler on 07808 590176.

The KSO Endowment Trust

An Endowment Trust has been established by Kensington Symphony Orchestra in order to enhance the orchestra’s ability to achieve its charitable objectives in the long term.

The Trust will manage a capital fund derived from donations and legacies. Each year, the Trustees will make grants from its income to assist important KSO projects and activities, such as commissioning new music, which would be impossible to finance relying on concert funds alone.

Our aim is to raise at least £100,000 over the first ten years. We would be pleased to hear from individuals or organisations who would like to donate any sum, large or small, and would also be keen to talk to anyone who might consider recognising KSO’s work in their will.

For further information, please email trust@kso.org.uk or telephone Neil Ritson on 07887 987711.

Phot

o ©

Sim

Can

etty

-Cla

rke

The KSO Website

An easy way to make small contributions to KSO at no cost to yourself is via our newly revised website. A number of online retailers, including Amazon, Tesco Direct, Jessops and Dell, will pay a small percentage of the value of your purchase to KSO when you go via our website to make it. To learn more, please visit our website at:

www.kso.org.uk/shop

14

ORCHESTRA

TONIGHT’S PERFORMERS

First ViolinAlan TuckwoodTaro VisserSusan KnightHeather BinghamSarah Keighley-ElstubSarah HackettAdrian GordonLouise RingroseBronwen FisherHelen TurnellMatthew HickmanRufus RottenbergKathleen RuleHannah BrownJason WeirClaire Maugham

Second ViolinDavid PievskyDavid NagleJuliette BarkerAntonio de StefanoClaire DoveyJeremy BradshawJenny DavieFrançoise RobinsonLiz ErringtonJill IvesKatie DickerEmma NabavianHannah ThomasRichard SheahanDanielle DawsonJudith Ní Bhreasláin

ViolaBeccy SpencerGuy RaybouldSally RandallTom PhilpottPhil CooperZen EdwardsJane Spencer-DavisAlison NethsinghaToby DellerLiz LavercombeRobert Spencer Lucy Ellis

CelloJoseph SpoonerKim PolmanAnna HamiltonAlex BreedonRosie GoddardLois MattsonDavid BaxendaleAlex Dinwiddie

Double BassAndrew LangPhil ChandlerLauren Baker

FluteMike CopperwhiteClaire Pillmoor

OboeCharles BrenanChris Astles

ClarinetClaire BaughanChris Horril

BassoonNick RampleyRick Yoder

ContrabassoonRobin Thompson

Music DirectorRussell Keable

TrusteesChris AstlesDavid BaxendaleZen EdwardsHeather PawsonNick RampleyNeil RitsonRichard SheahanJames Wheeler

Event TeamChris AstlesZen EdwardsBeccy SpencerSabina Wagstyl

Marketing TeamJeremy BradshawGuy RaybouldJo JohnsonDavid MusgroveLouise Ringrose

Membership TeamPhil CambridgeJuliette BarkerDavid Baxendale

ProgrammesDavid Musgrove

French HornJon Boswell Jim MoffatEd CornHeather Pawson

TrumpetSteve WillcoxJohn HackettLeanne Thompson

TrombonePhil CambridgeKen McGregor

Bass TromboneDavid Musgrove

TimpaniJoe Kearney

Registered charity No. 1069620

Monday, 15 October 2012BERLIOZ Overture ‘Benvenuto Cellini’BERG Three Pieces for OrchestraSTRAVINSKY The Firebird (complete ballet)

Monday, 26 November 2012MAGNUS LINDBERG Gran DuoPROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2SCHUMANN Symphony No. 4

Monday, 21 January 2013(At Queen Elizabeth Hall)‘A Night at the Oscars’, to include:BERNSTEIN On the WaterfrontGERSHWIN Rhapsody in BlueSTEINER Gone with the WindJOHN WILLIAMS Star Wars

Saturday, 9 March 2013(With guest conductor Stuart Barr)Programme to be announced

Tuesday, 21 May 2013MAHLER Symphony No. 7

Monday, 24 June 2013BARTÓK Dance SuiteLUTOSŁAWSKI Mi-PartiDVORÁK Symphony No. 7

All concerts at 7.30pm, St. John’s, Smith Square unless otherwise stated