London Philharmonic Orchestra concert programme 21 Jan 2015

I N S I D E O U T

lpo.org.uk/rachmaninoffConcert programme

Winner of the RPS Music Award for Ensemble

Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI*Leader PIEtER SchOEMAn†Composer in Residence MAgnUS LInDbERgPatron hRh thE DUKE OF KEnt Kg

Chief Executive and Artistic Director tIMOthY WALKER AM

contents

2 Welcome LPO 2014/15 season3 On stage tonight 4 About the Orchestra5 Leader: Pieter Schoeman 6 Vladimir Jurowski7 Artist biographies 13 Programme notes18 Supporters19 Sound Futures donors20 LPO administration

The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide.

* supported by the Tsukanov Family Foundation † supported by Neil Westreich

CONCERT PRESENTED BY THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Southbank centre’s Royal Festival hallWednesday 21 January 2015 | 7.30pm

Wagner Das Rheingold (excerpts; semi-staged) (45’)

Interval

Rachmaninoff The Miserly Knight (semi-staged) (63’)

Vladimir Jurowski conductornatalya Romaniw Woglinde Rowan hellier Wellgunde harriet Williams Flosshilde Sergei Leiferkus Alberich/Baron Maxim Mikhailov Wotan/Servant Vsevolod grivnov Loge/Albert Peter bronder Moneylender Albert Shagidullin Duke Annabel Arden director Lucy carter lighting designer Joanna Parker design consultant Olivia Dermot Walsh production stage manager

In co-operation with the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation

Free pre-concert event 6.15–6.45pm | Royal Festival hall

Director Annabel Arden and conductor Vladimir Jurowski discuss this semi-staging of The Miserly Knight.

2 | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Welcome

Welcome to Southbank centre

We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you have any queries please ask any member of staff for assistance.

Eating, drinking and shopping? Southbank Centre shops and restaurants include Foyles, EAT, Giraffe, Strada, YO! Sushi, wagamama, Le Pain Quotidien, Las Iguanas, ping pong, Canteen, Caffè Vergnano 1882, Skylon, Concrete, Feng Sushi and Topolski, as well as cafes, restaurants and shops inside Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery.

If you wish to get in touch with us following your visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, phone 020 7960 4250, or email [email protected]

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment:

PhOtOgRAPhY is not allowed in the auditorium.

LAtEcOMERS will only be admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance.

REcORDIng is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of Southbank Centre. Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended.

MObILES, PAgERS AnD WAtchES should be switched off before the performance begins.

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10008-CLASS LPO Concert Programme 73x69mm.pdf 1 14/11/2014 10:50

London Philharmonic Orchestra 2014/15 season

Welcome to tonight’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, part of our season-long festival Rachmaninoff: Inside Out. Whether you’re a regular concert-goer, new to the Orchestra or just visiting London, we hope you enjoy your evening with us. Browse the full season online at lpo.org.uk/performances or call 020 7840 4242 to request a copy of our 2014/15 brochure.

Other highlights of the season include:

• Appearances by today’s most sought-after artists including Maria João Pires, Christoph Eschenbach, Osmo Vänskä, Lars Vogt, Barbara Hannigan, Vasily Petrenko, Marin Alsop, Katia and Marielle Labèque and Robin Ticciati.

• Premieres of works by Magnus Lindberg, Harrison Birtwistle, Julian Anderson, a children’s work, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by Colin Matthews, and a new piece for four horns by Titanic composer James Horner.

• Choral highlights with the London Philharmonic Choir include Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, Verdi’s Requiem, Rachmaninoff’s Spring and The Bells, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass.

mailto:[email protected]

London Philharmonic Orchestra | 3

On stage tonight

chair Supporters

The London Philharmonic Orchestra also acknowledges the following chair supporter whose player is not present at this concert: Sonja Drexler

First ViolinsPieter Schoeman* Leader

Chair supported by Neil Westreich

Vesselin Gellev Sub-LeaderIlyoung Chae

Chair supported by an anonymous donor

Ji-Hyun Lee Chair supported by Eric Tomsett

Catherine CraigThomas EisnerMartin HöhmannGeoffrey Lynn

Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Robert PoolSarah StreatfeildRebecca ShorrockAlina PetrenkoGalina TanneyIshani BhoolaCaroline FrenkelNilufar Alimaksumova

Second ViolinsVictoria Sayles

Guest PrincipalJeongmin KimKate Birchall

Chair supported by David & Victoria Graham Fuller

Nancy ElanLorenzo Gentili-TedeschiFiona HighamNynke HijlkemaJoseph MaherMarie-Anne MairesseAshley StevensSioni WilliamsHarry KerrDean WilliamsonMila MustakovaSheila LawJohn Dickinson

ViolasPrzemysław Pujanek

Guest PrincipalCyrille MercierRobert Duncan

Gregory AronovichSusanne MartensBenedetto PollaniEmmanuella ReiterNaomi HoltDaniel CornfordSarah MalcolmRebecca CarringtonMartin Fenn

cellosKristina Blaumane PrincipalPei-Jee NgFrancis BucknallLaura DonoghueSantiago Carvalho†David LaleGregory WalmsleyElisabeth Wiklander Susanna RiddellTom RoffHelen RathboneSibylle Hentschel

Double bassesKevin Rundell* PrincipalTim Gibbs Co-PrincipalLaurence LovelleGeorge PenistonRichard LewisThomas WalleySebastian PennarJeremy Watt

FlutesKatie Bedford Guest PrincipalSue Thomas*

Chair supported by Victoria Robey OBE

Joanna MarshStewart McIlwham*

PiccoloStewart McIlwham*

Principal

OboesIan Hardwick* PrincipalAlice MundayRachel Harwood-White

cor AnglaisSue Böhling* Principal

clarinetsRobert Hill* PrincipalThomas WatmoughEmily Meredith

bass clarinetPaul Richards Principal

bassoonsRebecca Mertens

Guest PrincipalGareth Newman Simon Estell

hornsDavid Pyatt* Principal

Chair supported by Simon Robey

John Ryan* PrincipalMartin HobbsMark Vines Co-PrincipalGareth MollisonStephen Nicholls Meilyr HughesDuncan FullerTimothy Ball

trumpetsPaul Beniston* PrincipalAnne McAneney*

Chair supported by Geoff & Meg Mann

Nicholas Betts Co-Principal Daniel Newell

bass trumpetDavid Whitehouse

trombonesMark Templeton* Principal

Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

David WhitehouseMatthew Lewis

bass trombonesLyndon Meredith PrincipalDaniel West

contrabass tromboneLyndon Meredith

tubaLee Tsarmaklis* Principal

Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra

timpaniSimon Carrington* PrincipalKeith Millar

PercussionAndrew Barclay* Principal

Chair supported by Andrew Davenport

Keith MillarJames Bower

Offstage AnvilsNigel BatesMichael DoranJeremy CornesSarah MasonRichard HornePeter FryIgnacio MolinsBen Hoffnung

harpsRachel Masters* PrincipalLucy HaslarRuth Faber Angela MooreEmma RamsdaleTamara Young

Assistant conductor Jeremy Bines

Repetiteur Luba Orfenova

Surtitle operator Andrew Kingsmill

* Holds a professorial appointment in London

† Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of Rio Branco

The London Philharmonic Orchestra would like to thank Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera House for their assistance with this evening’s production.


London Philharmonic Orchestra

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the world’s finest orchestras, balancing a long and distinguished history with its present-day position as one of the most dynamic and forward-looking ensembles in the UK. As well as its performances in the concert hall, the Orchestra also records film and video game soundtracks, releases CDs on its own record label, and reaches thousands of people every year through activities for families, schools and community groups.

The Orchestra was founded by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1932. It has since been headed by many of the world’s greatest conductors including Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. Vladimir Jurowski is currently the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, appointed in 2007. From September 2015 Andrés Orozco-Estrada will take up the position of Principal Guest Conductor. Magnus Lindberg is the Orchestra’s current Composer in Residence.

The Orchestra is based at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, where it has performed since the Hall’s opening in 1951 and been Resident Orchestra since 1992. It gives around 30 concerts there each season with many of the world’s top conductors and

soloists. Throughout 2013 the Orchestra collaborated with Southbank Centre on the year-long The Rest Is Noise festival, charting the influential works of the 20th century. 2014/15 highlights include a season-long festival, Rachmaninoff: Inside Out, exploring the composer’s major orchestral masterpieces; premieres of works by Harrison Birtwistle, Julian Anderson, Colin Matthews, James Horner and the Orchestra’s new Composer in Residence, Magnus Lindberg; and appearances by many of today’s most sought-after artists including Maria João Pires, Christoph Eschenbach, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Osmo Vänskä, Lars Vogt, Barbara Hannigan, Vasily Petrenko, Marin Alsop, Katia and Marielle Labèque and Robin Ticciati.

Outside London, the Orchestra has flourishing residencies in Brighton and Eastbourne, and performs regularly around the UK. Each summer it takes up its annual residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in the Sussex countryside, where it has been Resident Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years. The Orchestra also tours internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. In 1956 it became the first British orchestra to appear in Soviet Russia and in 1973 made the first ever visit to China by a Western orchestra.

Full marks to the London Philharmonic for continuing to offer the most adventurous concerts in London.The Financial Times, 14 April 2014


Touring remains a large part of the Orchestra’s life: highlights of the 2014/15 season include appearances across Europe (including Iceland) and tours to the USA (West and East Coasts), Canada and China.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded the soundtracks to numerous blockbuster films, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lawrence of Arabia, East is East, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Thor: The Dark World. It also broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and in 2005 established its own record label. There are now over 80 releases available on CD and to download. Recent additions include organ works by Poulenc and Saint-Saëns with Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Strauss’s Don Juan and Ein Heldenleben with Bernard Haitink; Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 6 & 14 and Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy with Vladimir Jurowski; and Orff’s Carmina Burana with Hans Graf. In summer 2012 the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed as part of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames, and was also chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2013 it was the winner of the RPS Music Award for Ensemble.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians through an energetic programme of activities for young people. Highlights include the BrightSparks schools’ concerts and FUNharmonics family concerts; the Young Composers Programme; and the Foyle Future Firsts orchestral training programme for outstanding young players. Its work at the forefront of digital engagement and social media has enabled the Orchestra to reach even more people worldwide: all its recordings are available to download from iTunes and, as well as a YouTube channel and regular podcast series, the Orchestra has a lively presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Find out more and get involved!

lpo.org.uk

facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra

twitter.com/LPOrchestra

youtube.com/londonphilharmonic7

Pieter Schoemanleader

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Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the LPO in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002.

Born in South Africa, he made his solo debut aged 10 with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra.

He studied with Jack de Wet in South Africa, winning numerous competitions including the 1984 World Youth Concerto Competition in the US. In 1987 he was offered the Heifetz Chair of Music scholarship to study with Eduard Schmieder in Los Angeles and in 1991 his talent was spotted by Pinchas Zukerman, who recommended that he move to New York to study with Sylvia Rosenberg. In 1994 he became her teaching assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Pieter has performed worldwide as a soloist and recitalist in such famous halls as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Moscow’s Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. As a chamber musician he regularly performs at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall.

As a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Pieter has performed Arvo Pärt’s Double Concerto with Boris Garlitsky, Brahms’s Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, and Britten’s Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the Orchestra’s own record label to great critical acclaim. He has recorded numerous violin solos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos, Opera Rara, Naxos, X5, the BBC and for American film and television, and led the Orchestra in its soundtrack recordings for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In 1995 Pieter became Co-Leader of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice. Since then he has appeared frequently as Guest Leader with the Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon, Baltimore and BBC symphony orchestras, and the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras. He is a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Pieter’s chair in the London Philharmonic Orchestra is supported by Neil Westreich.


Vladimir JurowskiPrincipal Conductor and Artistic Advisor

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One of today’s most sought-after conductors, acclaimed worldwide for his incisive musicianship and adventurous artistic commitment, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow and studied at the Music Academies of Dresden and Berlin. In 1995 he made his international debut at the Wexford Festival conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night, and the same year saw his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with Nabucco.

Vladimir Jurowski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, becoming Principal Conductor in 2007. He also holds the titles of Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Artistic Director of the Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra. He has previously held the positions of First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin (1997–2001), Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2000–03), Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (2005–09), and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (2001–13).

He is a regular guest with many leading orchestras in both Europe and North America, including the Berlin, New York and St Petersburg Philharmonic orchestras; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; The Philadelphia Orchestra; The Cleveland Orchestra; the Boston, San Francisco and Chicago symphony orchestras; and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden and Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

His opera engagements have included Rigoletto, Jenůfa, The Queen of Spades, Hansel and Gretel and Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Parsifal and Wozzeck at Welsh National Opera; War and Peace at the Opéra national de Paris; Eugene Onegin at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan; Ruslan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi Theatre; and numerous operas at Glyndebourne including Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Don Giovanni, The Cunning Little Vixen, Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons, and Ariadne auf Naxos.

Quite apart from the immaculate preparation and the most elegant conducting style in the business, Jurowski programmes with an imagination matched by none of London’s other principal conductors.The Arts Desk, December 2012

lpo.org.uk/about/jurowski

Watch a video of Vladimir Jurowski introducing the LPO 2014/15 season: lpo.org.uk/whats-on/season14-15.html


Natalya Romaniwsoprano

Woglinde (Das Rheingold)

Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with John Llewellyn Evans, where she was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal in her final year. While at the Guildhall her roles included the title role in Almeida’s La Spinalba, Blanche in

Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites and the title role in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta.

Natalya joined Houston Grand Opera’s Young Artist Program in 2012, where her roles have included Mimi in La bohème, Ines in Il trovatore, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Micaela in Carmen and Krystina in Weinberg’s The Passenger, which will be staged at Lincoln Center in New York this summer. Last summer she received outstanding reviews for her portrayal of Maliella in Wolf-Ferrari’s I gioielli della Madonna at Opera Holland Park.

This season’s engagements include the Governess in The Turn of the Screw for Glyndebourne on Tour, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 for Garsington Opera, a series of Viennese Gala concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ortlinde in Die Walküre for Houston Grand Opera, and an Opera Gala for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Natalya will sing Tatyana in Eugene Onegin for Garsington Opera in 2016.

Rowan Helliermezzo soprano

Wellgunde (Das Rheingold)

Rowan Hellier was a member of the International Opera Studio at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where her roles included Second Woman in The Magic Flute, Annina in La traviata and Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. She studied at the Royal

Scottish Academy of Music & Drama and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Rowan has worked with leading conductors such as Alexander Vedernikov, Laurence Cummings, Christian Kluxen, Julien Salemkour, Nicholas Collon, Leo Hussain, Alexander Soddy, André de Ridder and Omer Meir Wellber.

Recent and future engagements include Penelope in Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses for the Iford Arts Festival conducted by Christian Curnyn; Handel’s Messiah and Cyrus in Belshazzar with The King’s Consort in Versailles; Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder at the Bath International Festival; Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Trevor Pinnock at Wigmore Hall; the title role in J C Bach’s Adriano in Siria with Classical Opera; Messiah with the Dunedin Consort; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra; and Frau Grubach/Washerwoman in the world premiere of Philip Glass’s The Trial with Music Theatre Wales at the Linbury Studio Theatre, the Royal Opera House and on tour.

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Sergei Leiferkusbass-baritone

Alberich (Das Rheingold) Baron (The Miserly Knight)

Sergei Leiferkus is considered one of the world’s most renowned performing artists. He has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the Vienna State Opera; Opéra Bastille, Paris; La Scala, Milan; Deutsche Oper Berlin; San Francisco Opera; Metropolitan

Opera; Palau de les Arts, Valencia; Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam; Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires; and at the Edinburgh, Bregenz, Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals.

Most recent engagements have included his role debut as Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne; Professor Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky (a role written especially for him) in Alexander Raskatov’s opera A Dog’s Heart in Lyon and Amsterdam; Aleko and Francesca da Rimini at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires; Aleko at the new State Primorsky Theatre in Vladivostok; and The Cunning Little Vixen at the Semperoper Dresden. In concert, he has appeared at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, with The Philadelphia Orchestra and with the MDR Sinfonie-Orchestra.

He has sung with orchestras such as the London Symphony, Boston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, National Symphony and New York Philharmonic orchestras, under conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, Leonard Slatkin, Kurt Masur and Sir Georg Solti.

Future engagements include The Miserly Knight with Brussels Opera; Guillaume Tell and The Cunning Little Vixen in Hamburg; and Tosca and Boris Godunov at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. In concert, he performs Boris with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London and Budapest, and Francesca da Rimini in Darmstadt.

Sergei Leiferkus has recorded almost 40 CDs. His first CD of songs by Mussorgsky received a Grammy nomination, while another recording of all of Mussorgsky’s songs was awarded the Cannes Classical Award and the Diapason d’Or Prize in 1997.

Harriet Williamsmezzo soprano

Flosshilde (Das Rheingold)

Harriet Williams made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as First Esquire in Parsifal; her English National Opera debut as Polinesso in Ariodante; and her debut with The Royal Ballet performing songs by Duparc in choreographer Michael Corder’s L’Invitation au

Voyage. Her international engagements have included Mrs Olsen in Weill’s Street Scene for Opéra de Toulon, the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, and the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona; and Maria in the Italian premiere of For You by Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan at the Teatro Olimpico in Rome.

Harriet has sung principal roles with Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera Holland Park, Grange Park Opera, Longborough Festival Opera and the Early Opera Company. She originally performed Mrs Olsen in Street Scene for The Opera Group, which was voted Best Musical in the 2008 Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

Her repertoire includes the title roles in Carmen and Ariodante; Waltraute in Die Walküre; Ottavia, Arnalta and Fortuna in L’incoronazione di Poppea; Dido in Dido and Aeneas; Mistress Quickly in Falstaff; Fenena in Nabucco; Hannah Kennedy in Maria Stuarda; Smeaton in Anna Bolena; Flora and Annina in La traviata; Madame Larina in Eugene Onegin; Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro; Suzuki and Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly; Angelina in La cenerentola; Rosina in The Barber of Seville; Albine in Thaïs; Governess in The Queen of Spades; Nenila in The Enchantress; and Parseis in Massenet’s Esclarmonde.

Harriet Williams sang Flosshilde in the Ring Cycle for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Waltraute in Die Walküre for Longborough Festival Opera. Her forthcoming engagements include Girl in Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde for Longborough Festival Opera.


Vsevolod Grivnovtenor

Loge (Das Rheingold) Albert (The Miserly Knight)

Russian tenor Vsevolod Grivnov studied at the Russian Chorus Academy from 1986 under Professor Byelov. In 1990 he became a soloist of the New Opera Company of Moscow’s Municipal Theatre. Also a principal soloist with the Bolshoi Theatre, performances with the company have

included La traviata, Luisa Miller, Un ballo in maschera and Adriana Lecouvreur.

Highlights in previous seasons have included Cherevichki for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Teatro alla Scala, Milan; Don José (Carmen) at the Savonlinna Opera Festival and the Bolshoi Theatre; Rusalka with Nice Opera; Khovanshchina for Opera de Paris; Macduff (Macbeth) for the Edinburgh International Festival; Lensky (Eugene Onegin) and Grigori/Dmitri (Boris Godunov) at La Monnaie in Brussels, the Teatro Real Madrid and San Francisco Opera; and Betrothal In A Monastery for Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Vsevolod’s recent triumphs include The Enchantress at the Bolshoi Theatre, La forza del destino and Aida with Cologne Opera, Sergei (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) for the New Israeli Opera, and Lensky (Eugene Onegin) for Los Angeles Opera.

Concert highlights in previous seasons include Rachmaninoff songs at the Dresden Philharmonie under the baton of Michail Jurowski; The Bells with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski; and Schnittke’s Requiem with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Other recent engagements include Verdi’s Requiem with the Noord Nederlandse Orkest and Rachmaninoff’s songs for tenor and orchestra with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. This season Vsevolod has sung Mazeppa with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Alexander Vedernikov, and will make a return to the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall on 29 April for Rachmaninoff songs, again conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

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Maxim Mikhailov was born in Moscow and descends from a traditional operatic heritage. In 1987 he joined the Bolshoi Opera as a principal soloist, and soon after won the Glinka Vocal Competition.

His international career began in 1993, when he won the International Belvedere Competition in Vienna. Over the years Maxim has performed at some of the world’s leading opera houses including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; L’Opéra Bastille in Paris; La Monnaie, Brussels; La Scala, Milan; the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona; the Teatro San Carlo, Naples; the Teatro La Fenice, Venice; the Staatsoper Berlin; De Nederlandse Opera; Houston Grand Opera; and the Metropolitan Opera, New York, as well as at many festivals including Glyndebourne, Wexford, the BBC Proms and the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Maxim has worked with many renowned conductors including Claudio Abbado, Antonio Pappano, Michail Jurowski, Vladimir Jurowski and Dmitri Jurowski. He also has an ongoing collaboration with the Northern Lights International Music Festival in Minnesota as staging director, vocal teacher and singer; there he sang the title role in his own production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.

Maxim Mikhailovbass

Wotan (Das Rheingold) Servant (The Miserly Knight)


Albert Shagidullinbaritone

Duke (The Miserly Knight)

Albert Shagidullin made his debut in the role of Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Dublin Opera. Since then, he has appeared at the Staatsoper Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Stuttgart Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Dresden Opera,

Stockholm Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Théâtre du Châtelet, Opéra Bastille, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro Massimo (Palermo), Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Teatro Carlo Felice (Genova), Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Teatro di San Carlo (Napoli), Salzburg Festival, Bregenz Festival, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Amsterdam Opera, La Monnaie (Brussels), Teatro Municipal de Santiago (Chile), in Tokyo with Vienna Staatsoper, Liceu de Barcelona, Teatro Real de Madrid, Gran Teatro Lisboa and Teatro alla Scala.

He has sung at concert venues worldwide including the Oslo Concert Hall, Hamburg Philharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Grosse Musikvereinsaal (Vienna), Palais Garnier (Paris), Symphony Hall Birmingham, NHK Hall (Tokyo), Moscow’s Great Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie Cologne, London’s Royal Albert Hall, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Israeli Philharmonic Hall (Tel Aviv) and Moscow Philharmonic Hall.

Albert Shagidullin appears on numerous recordings released on CD and DVD by Sony Classical, Virgin, EMI Classical and Deutsche Grammophon.

Please note a change to the artist as originally advertised.

Peter Bronder studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio, before taking his first engagements at Glyndebourne and Welsh National Opera,

where he was engaged as principal tenor in mainly Italian lyric repertoire. Recently he has moved into the more dramatic, predominantly German repertoire, while retaining the lyrical qualities necessary for the Mozartean roles of Idomeneo and Tito, which he has performed at Glyndebourne. He has made numerous appearances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, Opera North and Scottish Opera.

Notable successes include Mime in the Ring Cycle (Teatro alla Scala Milan, Staatsoper Berlin); the title role in Rienzi (Oper Frankfurt); Herod in Salome (Teatro alla Scala Milan, Teatro Real Madrid, Teatro Regio Turin); the title roles in Der Zwerg and Palestrina in Frankfurt; and Loge in Das Rheingold (Edinburgh Festival, Stuttgart), as well as appearing at the Metropolitan Opera New York, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, San Francisco Opera, Netherlands Opera, La Monnaie Brussels, Komische Oper Berlin, Flanders Opera, Teatro de la Maestranza Seville and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Peter Bronder has appeared in concert with the major orchestras in London, Cleveland, Boston and Pittsburgh with eminent conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Jordan, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kirill Petrenko and Sebastian Weigle. He has made numerous radio broadcasts, and recorded for Decca, DGG, EMI, Philips, Teldec and Chandos.

Forthcoming engagements include Mime in Siegfried (Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona), Herman in The Queen of Spades (English National Opera), and Hauptmann in Wozzeck (Oper Frankfurt).

Peter Bronder tenor

Moneylender (The Miserly Knight)

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Annabel Ardendirector

Annabel Arden graduated from Cambridge University and then trained in Paris with Monika Pagneux, Philippe Gaulier and Jacques Lecoq. In 1983 she co-founded the renowned Théâtre de Complicité. Her award-winning production of Dürrenmatt’s The

Visit was Complicité’s first existing-text production and established the company’s relationship with the National Theatre.

Annabel’s landmark production for Complicité of The Winter’s Tale led to The Magic Flute for Opera North, followed by The Return of Ulysses, La traviata and The Cunning Little Vixen. She made her English National Opera debut in 2001 directing The Rake’s Progress. In 2004 she directed Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Rachmaninoff’s The Miserly Knight at Glyndebourne, followed by the much-revived and toured L’elisir d’amore. Georges Aperghis’s Conversations et Récitations was created with Philip Headlam at the Purcell Room in 2002, and Little Red Riding Hood at the Almeida Theatre in 2005. In 2012 Annabel directed The Soldier’s Tale with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and John Lithgow, and La bohème for Welsh National Opera. Later this year she will direct Giordano’s Andrea Chenier for Opera North and The Barber of Seville for Glyndebourne.

Her recent theatre productions have included Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz at the Arcola Theatre and Stephen Jeffreys’ The Art of War for the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2013 she directed the original production of Lionboy for Complicité. In 2009 Annabel directed productions of two Schnittke works with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski: excerpts from the opera The History of D. Johann Faustus, and The Yellow Sound. In 2011 she continued the collaboration with Zimmermann’s Ich wandte mich... and Nono’s Julius Fučík. Next month she will direct the Orchestra’s family concert on 8 February featuring the world premiere of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Colin Matthews, narrated by author Michael Morpurgo.

Lucy Carter has been designing lighting for dance, ballet, opera and theatre for 20 years. She trained in Dance and Drama at Roehampton Institute and in Lighting Design at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Her most recent designs

for opera include La finta giardiniera (Glyndebourne); Lohengrin (Welsh National Opera, Polish National Opera); Janáček’s The Adventures of Mr Brouček (Opera North/Scottish Opera); Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Handel’s Acis and Galatea (The Royal Opera/The Royal Ballet); Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (Opera North); James MacMillan’s Parthenogenesis (Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House); and Handel’s Imeneo (Opera Ireland). Recent theatre designs include Emil and the Detectives and Medea (National Theatre); Ubo Roi (Hampstead); The Crucible at the Abbey Theatre; and the musical Kirikou and Karaba, directed and choreographed by Wayne McGregor. Lucy works extensively in dance and ballet, and is a regular collaborator with choreographer Wayne McGregor. Their recent work includes Outlier (Sadlers Wells, New York City Ballet), Ravengirl (Royal Opera House), Chroma (Bolshoi Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet); L’Anatomie de la Sensation (Paris); Live Fire Exercise (The Royal Ballet); Atomos, FAR and Entity (Random Dance); Yantra (Stuttgart Ballet); Chroma, Limen, Infra and Qualia (The Royal Ballet); Dyad 1909 (Random Dance, Sadlers Wells); and Dyad 1929 (Australian Ballet Theatre). In 2008 she won the Knight of Illumination Award for Dance, for Chroma. She also recently designed lighting for The Most Incredible Thing at Sadlers Wells, directed and choreographed by Javier De Frutos with Pet Shop Boys; Still Life for Val Caniparoli and Scottish Ballet; Invitus Invitam by Kim Brandstrup and The Royal Ballet; and When Once is Never Enough, Faun and As You Are for CoisCéim Dance Theatre, Ireland.

In September 2011 Lucy designed the lighting for a London Philharmonic Orchestra performance of Scriabin’s Prometheus, Poem of Fire at Royal Festival Hall.

Lucy Carterlighting designer


Joanna Parkerdesign consultant

Joanna Parker designs sets and costumes for theatre, opera and dance.

Recent designs for opera include Smetana’s The Two Widows for l’Opéra d’Angers-Nantes in 2012, and in 2014 she worked with Annabel Arden on Café Kafka, a co-production between

Aldeburgh, the Royal Opera House and Opera North. For English Touring Opera she designed productions of Flavio, Eugene Onegin (revived in 2012), Falstaff, Alcina, The Marriage of Figaro and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Joanna designed costumes for David Horne’s Friend of the People at Scottish Opera; set and costumes for Handel’s Giulio Cesare for the Royal Opera House at the Shaftesbury Theatre and the Barbican; Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen for English Touring Opera and Brno Festival; Smetana’s The Kiss and Handel’s Flavio in Dublin and on a European tour; Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for the Royal College of Music; Nielsen’s Masquerade for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama; and a site-specific design at the Corn Exchange, Cambridge for Heroes Don’t Dance, a Royal Opera House community project.

For Complicité, with the Emerson String Quartet, she designed The Noise of Time, seen at New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and European festivals. Other set and costume designs include Martin Crimp’s version of The Misanthrope; David Mamet’s American Buffalo at the Young Vic; Off Camera at the West Yorkshire Playhouse; Dealer’s Choice at the Salisbury Playhouse; Schiller’s The Robbers at the Gate, Featuring Loretta, costumes for Nabokov’s Gloves and the premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s After Darwin at the Hampstead Theatre; and Sarajevo Story at the Lyric Hammersmith. Dance designs have included Phantasmaton and Hinterlands for the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and Pastorale for The Cholmondeleys.

Future plans include The Barber of Seville at Glyndebourne and Andrea Chenier for Opera North, both in 2016.

Olivia began her career in theatre at the King’s Head in Islington, after graduating with a degree in Ceramic Design from Central Saint Martins College of Art And Design.

Olivia’s production management credits include the ‘China to

Hackney’ Festival at the Hackney Empire, coinciding with the London 2012 Olympics; A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and Nanny McPhee at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells for London Children’s Ballet; Richard III, Macbeth and Othello for Guildford Shakespeare Company; and various productions for Guildford School of Acting, where she is an Associate Tutor in Prop Making. Olivia was Assistant Production Manager at Opera Holland Park from 2012–14.

Stage management credits include Fame (UK tour); Miss Saigon (UK tour); A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (New Ambassadors); Umoja (New London Theatre); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium); Angelina’s Star Performance (English National Ballet UK tour); Swan Lake on Ice (international tour); Northern Ballet (2008–11); Opera Holland Park (2011–14); and various dance and opera projects for the Royal Opera House at the Linbury Studio Theatre including the 2014 Christmas show The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with ZooNation.

In June 2012 Olivia co-founded IOGIG Ltd, and in 2013 co-founded the Technical Theatre Awards, an innovative set of awards highlighting outstanding achievement and dedication within the technical theatre industry.

Olivia Dermot Walshproduction stage manager


Introduction

Born three years before the premiere of the Ring in Bayreuth, Rachmaninoff was – like many composers of his generation – very much influenced by Wagner, especially early in his composing career. He grew up and studied in the relatively Wagner-hostile environments of the St Petersburg and Moscow conservatoires, but later in life he travelled to Dresden where he saw many of both Wagner’s and Strauss’s operas. He would also have seen Wagner’s operas in Russia, and maybe even conducted some of them during his tenure as an opera conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre and at Savva Mamontov’s Private Opera Company.

The musical style of opera that Rachmaninoff was developing in The Miserly Knight is clearly related to Russian sources; in particular to the tradition established by 19th-century Russian composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky, who based his last (recitative-dominated) opera The Stone Guest on Pushkin’s ‘little tragedy‘ of the same name. However, as a psychological character-drama without chorus – a sort of anti-opera in many ways – the real precursor to The Miserly Knight is Wagner’s Ring. There is also a direct parallel between Rachmaninoff’s Baron and Wagner’s Alberich – the man who curses love in order to obtain riches and then perishes as a result of that curse. Of course there are massive Wagnerian influences in the orchestration too, which – particularly in the Baron’s

central scene – is dominated by low woodwind and low strings, and bursts with dark, gloomy colours. The harmonic language is appropriately dark too, full of dissonant clashes, which is also typical of the musical vocabulary of Das Rheingold. It also hints at Wagner’s epic scale in its majestic, ‘knightly‘ episodes (compare some of the Duke’s music with the leitmotifs of the Gods and their Entrance into Valhalla).

Rachmaninoff’s music, when performed in concerts and particularly in the opera house, is not generally paired with anything other than his own or other Russian music. At Glyndebourne, though, we successfully paired Rachmaninoff with Puccini in 2004 and I could certainly imagine possible pairings of Rachmaninoff’s one-act operas with those of other composers like Strauss, Schreker or Zemlinsky.

The thought of pairing The Miserly Knight with fragments from Das Rheingold had been brewing for some time, but clarified when Sergei Leiferkus (who was such a star in Glyndebourne’s 2004 production of this opera) told me that he also sings Alberich. Since on this occasion we could not perform Das Rheingold in its entirety, I decided to adopt a long-standing practice of extracting vocal and symphonic fragments, creating a kind of ‘listener’s digest’ out of Wagner’s musical drama. Annabel Arden, who staged the production of The Miserly Knight both at Glyndebourne and in concert at the BBC Proms in 2004, has come on board specifically to revisit this opera with us and to realise the scene between Alberich and the Rhinemaidens, thus creating not only an audible, but hopefully also a visible bridge between these two operas.

Vladimir Jurowski, October 2014

An introduction to tonight’s programme by Vladimir Jurowski, LPO Principal conductor and Artistic Advisor

Phot

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RichardWagner

1813–83

Das Rheingold (excerpts; semi-staged)

natalya Romaniw Woglinde Rowan hellier Wellgunde harriet Williams Flosshilde Sergei Leiferkus AlberichMaxim Mikhailov Wotan Vsevolod grivnov Loge Annabel Arden director Lucy carter lighting designer Joanna Parker design consultant

When Wagner finally got down to composing what he called the ‘preliminary evening’ of the Ring (insisting on that point, so that the rest of the work could be a trilogy, like the Greek tragedies which he loved so much), he wrote something which is almost all the time wholly unlike any music that he, or anyone else, had written before. Whether deliberately or not, the prelude sounds, at its start, pre-musical, a seemingly unpitched note coming from the depths of the orchestra, out of which arpeggios gradually emerge: a depiction of the depths of the Rhine, but equally of the beginning of all things. It is as if Wagner is showing how everything has to begin again, by showing where it all started. It is only when the Rhinemaidens begin their singing that we hear a melody, and only when the intrusive dwarf Alberich appears that we hear anything other than regular rhythm. This is the primal scene, then, though much later it turns out that in fact a lot has happened in the world before Scene 1 of Das Rheingold.

Wagner regarded the traditional forms of opera, in which dry, almost spoken recitative alternates with more or less florid arias – and, worse still, with ensembles in which several characters sing different words simultaneously, so that it is impossible to tell what they are saying – as inherently decadent, though of course he didn’t deny that great things had been

achieved by, for instance, Gluck and Mozart. But for his new form, ‘music drama’, he required something less artificial: continuous melody from the singers, who were never to sing together unless their words were the same; and an orchestral tissue which casts incessant light on what is happening, what the characters are feeling, and which is as continuous as the vocal lines.

Clearly a new principle of organisation would be needed if the music wasn’t to be merely formless. Wagner introduced the idea – which is to be found often, but not systematically, in earlier operas – of what came to be called Leitmotiven (‘leading motifs’), though that wasn’t an expression that he liked or used. The rough principle of leading motifs is that they adumbrate or recall an action, a state of mind, a character, even a general notion such as Law, and that they are short, plastic, adaptable and able to be combined contrapuntally or otherwise linked. At first Wagner was very strict in his idea of how they should be employed; later he relaxed his views on the subject. Das Rheingold is, in fact, the only work where he abides by his own stated precepts strictly, partly because, as a result of reading Schopenhauer, he came to award music a more dominant role than when he wrote Opera and Drama. In Das Rheingold the orchestra, whenever it accompanies the singers, is firmly subordinated to them; it is given its head in the impressive descriptive and evocative interludes which link the four scenes. In the first interlude, for example, the motif of the ring, which Alberich has just forged out of the Rhinegold that he stole in the preceding scene, is transmuted before our very ears into the motif of Valhalla, the new home of the gods and thus of world power, leading us, if not perhaps the first time we hear it, to meditate on, or feel, the intimate relationship that exists between the exercise of power and the renunciation of love.

Programme notes


At the bottom of the Rhine the three Rhinemaidens are playing and singing, when Alberich, an ugly Nibelung dwarf, appears and propositions each of them in turn. They flirt mercilessly with him and tell him that they are guarding the Rhinegold, which can be stolen only by someone who renounces love – so there’s no chance that it will be him. The Rhinegold glows in the darkness. Alberich, taunted beyond endurance, does renounce love, and duly makes off with the gold while the Rhinemaidens are left squealing in the darkness.

On a mountain height Wotan and his consort Fricka, goddess of marriage, are asleep. She wakes him and he greets the newly constructed fortress Valhalla, which has been built at his command by two giants, Fafner and Fasolt. The agreed price was Freia, Fricka’s sister and the goddess of youth and love. Wotan has to find a way out of the contract and is desperate for Loge – god of fire and deceit – to turn up and help him. The giants arrive in pursuit of Freia, and are incredulous with indignation when Wotan refuses to honour his word. Finally Loge arrives from his worldwide travels and tells them all of Alberich’s rape of the Rhinegold, which could mean that the Nibelung will rule the world. The giants agree to accept the Rhinegold in place of Freia, but will hold her hostage until Wotan pays her ransom. Wotan decides to go with Loge down to Nibelheim, the mine where the Nibelungs toil, to steal the gold.

In Nibelheim Mime, brother of Alberich and an expert smith, is being tormented by his brother, who can now change himself into any shape he desires thanks to the magic ‘tarnhelm’ (helmet) that Mime has made for him. Wotan and Loge arrive to find Mime whimpering, and he tells them his sad story. Soon Alberich arrives too, and gives vent at length to his dreams for world domination, now a possibility thanks to the ring he has forged from the gold. Loge asks him how he

guards it while he is asleep, and to display his powers of camouflage Alberich transforms himself first into a terrifying dragon, then into a tiny toad – in which form Wotan and Loge grab him and carry him back up to the rocky heights.

Alberich, bound and humiliated, agrees to give up his vast hoard of gold, and at his command the Nibelungs swarm up and bring it. Next Wotan demands the tarnhelm, and finally the ring. When Alberich refuses to surrender it, Wotan takes it by force. Set free at last, Alberich lays a curse on anyone who owns the ring, before disappearing back down to Nibelheim, laughing wretchedly. The giants now return to settle their account. Fasolt, the more amiable of the two, is in love with Freia and demands that the gold be stacked in such a way that she is rendered invisible behind it – a potent piece of symbolism. When he can still see her through a chink, he demands that first the tarnhelm and then the ring be used to plug the gap. While Wotan is happy to give up the tarnhelm, he refuses to surrender the ring. But Erda, the earth goddess, suddenly appears and solemnly warns him of the coming end of the gods, indeed of everything, and adjures him to give it up. He reluctantly agrees, and at once the giants fight over it, Fafner killing Fasolt. Horrified, Wotan commands Donner, the thunder-god, to swing his hammer and, as the stormclouds disperse, Valhalla is seen across a rainbow bridge. The gods cross the bridge, while below them the Rhinemaidens lament the loss of their gold. Loge, who finds the gods too corrupt to join them in their fortress, tells the maidens to bask contentedly in the gods’ splendour instead. The gods laugh grandly as they enter Valhalla to music which is both stunningly grand and hollow.

Programme note and synopsis © Michael Tanner

Surtitles © Simon Rees

Interval – 20 minutesAn announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.

Das Rheingold: Synopsis of the complete opera


SergeRachmaninoff

1873–1943

the Miserly Knight (semi-staged)

Programme notes continued

Vsevolod grivnov AlbertMaxim Mikhailov Servant Peter bronder Moneylender Sergei Leiferkus BaronAlbert Shagidullin DukeAnnabel Arden directorLucy carter lighting designerJoanna Parker design consultant

During the concert season of 1897/98 Rachmaninoff was employed as deputy conductor at the Moscow Private Opera Company, founded and financed by the wealthy industrialist Savva Mamontov. Compared with his activities as a composer and as a pianist, Rachmaninoff’s reputation on the rostrum has been cast into the shadows, chiefly, perhaps, because his recorded legacy as a conductor is much smaller than that of his piano-playing: indeed, the only recordings he made as a conductor were of his Third Symphony, the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead and his own orchestral arrangement of the Vocalise. Yet to judge from those performances and from contemporary critiques of his interpretations on the podium, his conducting was by no means second best. When he made his London debut in 1899, The Times reported that ‘his command was supreme; his method, quietness idealised.’ In response to his conducting of his orchestral fantasy The Rock, The Musical Standard commented that Rachmaninoff ‘succeeded in making the Philharmonic orchestra play as it has not played for many a long day’.

All of which stood him in good stead as No. 2 to the Italian Eugenio Esposito at Mamontov’s company, where Rachmaninoff covered a gamut of operas from Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar to Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, from Dargomyzhsky’s Rusalka and Serov’s The Power of Evil to Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice and Bizet’s Carmen.

Just as important – and perhaps even more so – he encountered during his time at the Mamontov Opera a Russian bass who was then on the foothills of his career but was soon to take the opera world by storm – Chaliapin. Chaliapin and Rachmaninoff forged a firm friendship, and it was with the distinctive Chaliapin timbre and presence in mind that Rachmaninoff wrote the central role of his opera Skupoy rytsar’ (The Miserly Knight).

This was not Rachmaninoff’s first opera. In 1892 he had graduated from the composition class of the Moscow Conservatoire with his score of Aleko, a one-acter to a libretto cobbled together from Pushkin’s extended poem Tsygany (The Gypsies) by the distinguished dramatist Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. For The Miserly Knight he once again chose Pushkin, but opted to do without a librettist. Instead, he decided to set more or less word-for-word one of Pushkin’s so-called ‘little tragedies’, those extended poems dealing with different moral issues that were laid out in the form of plays but which were never intended to be performed on stage – and certainly not to be set as operas. Nevertheless, there were precedents in Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone Guest of 1868, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri of 1897 and César Cui’s A Feast in Time of Plague of 1900, all of them putting music to a different Pushkin ‘little tragedy’. Rachmaninoff made a few changes to the text of The Miserly Knight, omitting about 40 lines of Pushkin and adding two words for the Baron to sing in the final scene. The opera is in a single act divided into three scenes, though its structure and its musical demeanour are in marked contrast to the earlier Aleko. Whereas Aleko had been cast in a series of discrete numbers and had also manifested a strong influence from Tchaikovsky (who, incidentally, enthusiastically applauded it at its Bolshoi Theatre premiere in 1893), The Miserly Knight – like its companion piece Francesca


da Rimini – is through-composed, owing much to Mussorgsky rather than to Tchaikovsky in the way that musical inflection matches the contours of the text in a sort of continuous melodic arioso.

It is the format of Pushkin’s poem rather than Rachmaninoff’s music that has probably militated against any sort of regular presence for The Miserly Knight in the opera theatres. When it does appear, it only tends to underline the feeling that the score, again like that of Francesca da Rimini, makes much more of an impact in the concert hall. The difficulties begin with the cast – all male, and no female voice to lighten the spectrum of timbre, and certainly no love interest. Then there is the question of the dramatic structure. Pushkin’s poem is dominated by monologue, with only a few conversations and one ensemble passage at the very end. It is a testament to Rachmaninoff’s skill and sensibility that the score moves as swiftly as it does and that the dramatic points are so firmly made, allied to the fact that he responded so keenly to the matter of characterisation. The key figure in The Miserly Knight is the knight himself, the personification of the avarice that is the nub of Pushkin’s cautionary tale. His particular moment is the long monologue that constitutes Scene 2, a section that Rachmaninoff conceived with the voice of Chaliapin in mind, although, as Chaliapin had not learnt the part in time, it was sung at the 1906 Bolshoi Theatre premiere by Georgy Baklanov. In this long scene, which takes place in the castle vaults, Rachmaninoff translates into musical terms Pushkin’s psychological study of the Knight, depicting his maniacal, unhealthy excitement as he contemplates his hoarded wealth. This is the focal point of the opera, with a superb climax at the Knight’s ecstatic cry ‘Ya tsarstvuyu’, implying that he is lord of all he surveys. Chilling orchestral effects make the moment all the more sinister, while elsewhere luxuriant orchestration echoes the Knight’s wistful lines, ‘In my magnificent gardens a playful host of nymphs will gather, and muses will bring their gifts to me.’ Rachmaninoff also achieves a degree of pathos in the passage where the Knight recalls how he got his hands on some of his money: ‘Here is an old doubloon. Today a widow gave it to me, but before that she and her three children knelt half the day wailing outside my window. It rained, then it stopped and started again; the hypocrite did not move.’ To portray the widow’s wailing Rachmaninoff had recourse to the descending four-

note figure that he remembered from his childhood in the chiming bells of St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod. He had used the same motif in the third movement of his Fantaisie-tableaux Op. 5 for two pianos, inspired by Fyodor Tyutchev’s poem Tears.

Rachmaninoff thought the first scene of The Miserly Knight tedious. Certainly some of the vocal writing is less interesting than in the Knight’s monologue, though we have here a sharp contrast between the impetuous, impecunious Albert and the insidious Moneylender weedling his way into Albert’s orbit and suggesting poison as a precipitate solution to securing his inheritance. Rachmaninoff also criticised his final scene as being too short. It is indeed short, though that is because Pushkin’s scene is short and it does at least tie up the loose ends: Albert and his father have a surprise confrontation at the palace of the ruling Baron. Not realising that Albert is in the room next door, the Knight accuses him of being a spendthrift and of plotting to murder him. Albert emerges and is dismissed by the Baron, and the Knight collapses and dies from the strain, gasping in his final breath, ‘Where are my keys?’ Rachmaninoff’s treatment of dramatic moments such as these attests to an operatic instinct that, if not infallible, can pack a powerful punch.

Programme note © Geoffrey Norris

Surtitles © Meredith Oakes


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Advisory councilVictoria Robey OBE Chairman Christopher Aldren Richard Brass David Buckley Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Andrew Davenport Jonathan Dawson Edward Dolman Christopher Fraser OBE Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Jamie Korner Clive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwham Sir Bernard Rix Baroness ShackletonLord Sharman of Redlynch OBE Thomas Sharpe QC Martin SouthgateSir Philip Thomas Sir John TooleyChris VineyTimothy Walker AMElizabeth Winter

American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Inc.Jenny Ireland Co-ChairmanWilliam A. Kerr Co-ChairmanKyung-Wha ChungAlexandra JupinDr. Felisa B. KaplanJill Fine MainelliKristina McPhee Dr. Joseph MulvehillHarvey M. Spear, Esq.Danny Lopez Hon. ChairmanNoel Kilkenny Hon. DirectorVictoria Robey OBE Hon. DirectorRichard Gee, Esq Of Counsel Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA,

EisnerAmper LLP

chief Executive

Timothy Walker AM Chief Executive and Artistic Director

Amy SugarmanPA to the Chief Executive / Administrative Assistant

Finance

David BurkeGeneral Manager and Finance Director

David GreensladeFinance and IT Manager

Samanta Berzina Finance Officer concert Management

Roanna Gibson Concerts Director

Graham WoodConcerts and Recordings Manager

Jenny Chadwick Tours Manager

Tamzin Aitken Glyndebourne and UK Engagements Manager

Alison JonesConcerts and Recordings Co-ordinator

Jo CotterTours Co-ordinator Orchestra Personnel

Andrew CheneryOrchestra Personnel Manager

Sarah Holmes Sarah ThomasLibrarians ( job-share)

Christopher AldertonStage Manager

Damian Davis Transport Manager

Ellie Swithinbank Assistant Orchestra Personnel Manager

Education and community

Isabella Kernot Education Director

Alexandra ClarkeEducation and Community Project Manager

Lucy DuffyEducation and Community Project Manager

Richard MallettEducation and Community Producer

Development

Nick JackmanDevelopment Director

Catherine Faulkner Development Events Manager

Kathryn HagemanIndividual Giving Manager

Laura Luckhurst Corporate Relations Manager

Anna Quillin Trusts and Foundations Manager

Helen Etheridge Development Assistant

Rebecca FoggDevelopment Assistant

Kirstin PeltonenDevelopment Associate

Marketing

Kath TroutMarketing Director

Mia RobertsMarketing Manager

Rachel WilliamsPublications Manager (maternity leave)

Sarah BreedenPublications Manager (maternity cover)

Samantha CleverleyBox Office Manager(Tel: 020 7840 4242)

Libby Northcote-GreenMarketing Co-ordinator

Lorna Salmon Intern

Digital Projects

Alison Atkinson Digital Projects Director

Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant Public Relations

Albion Media (Tel: 020 3077 4930) Archives

Philip StuartDiscographer

Gillian Pole Recordings Archive Professional Services

Charles RussellSolicitors

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLPAuditors

Dr Louise MillerHonorary Doctor

London Philharmonic Orchestra89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TPTel: 020 7840 4200Box Office: 020 7840 4242Email: [email protected]

The London Philharmonic Orchestra Limited is a registered charity No. 238045.

Photographs of Wagner and Rachmaninoff courtesy of the Royal College of Music, London. Cover design: Chaos Design.Printed by Cantate.

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Documents

London Philharmonic Orchestra concert programme 21 Jan 2015