Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No 1

When Tchaikovsky played his first piano concerto to his friend Nicholas Rubenstein, the director of the Moscow Conservatoire, Rubenstein famously described it as worthless and unplayable. Tchaikovsky had originally dedicated the work to Rubenstein, but was so offended that he rededicated it to the German pianist Hans von Bülow. Bülow gave the world premier in Boston in 1875 to huge success. Even Rubenstein soon changed his mind about the work and championed it. The piano concerto was composed in 1874/5 when the composer was 34. Although he had already had some success with two symphonies and the Romeo and Juliet Overture, the piano concerto was the work that made him famous. The composer revised the concerto in 1889, and this is the version usually played today. With its dramatic opening, rich orchestral colour and wonderful melodies, including two Ukrainian folk songs and a French song (a French cabaret song Il faut s’amuser”), it has always been popular with audiences, if not always with critics who judged it deficient in form. The work is now possibly the most popular piano concerto in the world. The opening tune in the first movement, after the crashing chords at the start, was used for a pop song by Freddie Martin in 1941 - Tonight we Love.

Links

The Piano Concerto - 1

The Piano Concerto - 2

The Piano Concerto - 3

The Composer - 1

The Composer - 2

The Composer - 3

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
The Kestrel Road

The programme will feature The Kestrel Road, a new work by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, one of Britain's leading composers and Master of the Queen's Music. The Kestrel Road has been jointly commissioned by forty-seven choirs, including the Southampton Philharmonic Choir, all of them members of Making Music, the national umbrella organization for several thousands of amateur choirs and orchestras. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, or Max as he is widely known, has been the President of Making Music since 1989 and the work has been commissioned as a tribute to mark his seventieth birthday. The new work will be heard at venues across the nation throughout the 2004-5 season. Max lives in the Orkney Islands, where he finds much of the inspiration for his music. The Kestrel Road is a song-cycle for chorus and piano, settings of poems by the “Bard of Orkney” George Mackay Brown (1917-96). The poems are highly evocative of Orkney life, history and folklore, with shepherds, crofters, fisher folk, a laird, a scarecrow King Barleycorn, and the timeless figure of Ikey the Tinker, who passes through many of Brown’s poems, seemingly linking past and present. According to Max, the music is suggestive of the "elusive land and seascapes" of the islands and is much influenced by the local folk music.

Some notes relevant to the poems:

“We call the track to the peats The kestrel road” (from “Roads” by George Mackay Brown.)

A kestrel hovering in the wind is known in Orkney as a moosie-haak or a wind-cuffer.

“The essence of Orkney’s magic is silence, loneliness and the deep marvellous rhythms of sea and land, darkness and light.” (George Mackay Brown)

"Without literature, I would have become a scarecrow in the community." (George Mackay Brown) Ikey the Tinker, and tinkers generally, feature in many of GMB’s poems. Ikey crops up in poems about Viking, medieval and later times, as well as the present.

The character John Barleycorn in the ancient British folk song represents the cereal grain crop barley, and the alcoholic beverages made from it, beer and whisky.

St Lucy’s Eve (12 Dec 2004) In Scandinavia and Viking settled areas of Britain, St Lucy’s Eve, (St Lucia’s Eve), was associated with witches and bad fairies, much as is Halloween.

St Lucia’s Day (13 Dec 2004) A pagan-connected festival in Sweden celebrating Lucia, Queen of Light.

Each December there is a Procession of St Lucy in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney.

[Southampton Central Library has some books of poems by GMB, under the code 821BRO.]

Karl Jenkins
The Armed Man - A Mass for Peace (Choral Suite)

Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace was commissioned by the Royal Armouries to mark the passing of the 20th century, “the most war-torn and destructive century in human history”. It was dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo Crisis. The closing section of the Mass looks ahead with hope to the new millennium.

Championed by Classic FM, the work has captured the imagination of music lovers everywhere to become a best-selling CD and one of the most performed choral works of the moment.

The complete mass uses a wide range of sacred and secular texts from around the world, all set within the framework of the Christian mass. There are sacred texts from the Bible and Koran, and the Mahàbharàta, a 6th century Hindu poem. Secular texts are by Malory, Dryden, Tennyson, Swift, Kipling, Togi Sankichi (a survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, who later died of leukaemia caused by radiation exposure) and Guy Wilson (of the Royal Armouries). The work embodies a wide range of musical influences, from Islamic and Gregorian chant, to Mozart, Walton and Samuel Barber. The name of the Mass comes from the 15th century French song L’Homme Armé; the opening section and the tune of part of the Kyrie come from this song. The song was written at the court of Charles the Bold of Burgundy between 1450 and 1463, and the tune was used in a large number of mass settings (36 or more) by renaissance composers Dufay, Josquin, Palestrina, Ockeghem, Busnois and others. “The armed man must be feared . . . “.

We shall be performing a suite for choir and orchestra, taken from the complete mass, made up of the following movements: Kyrie, Sanctus, Hymn Before Action, Agnus Dei and Benedictus. The suite is a profoundly moving and very accessible contemporary work which offers some of the best sections of the full Mass. Part of the Kyrie briefly quotes from Palestrina’s setting of L’Homme Armé. The words to the Hymn Before Action are by Rudyard Kipling, written in 1898. The words of the other sections of the suite are taken from the Latin Mass. The Sanctus is “full of menace”, and has “a primeval, tribal character”. The Agnes Dei is lyrical, and the slow, stately Benedictus features a solo cello.

Karl Jenkins comes from South Wales. He started his musical career in jazz, and in the 1970s was a member of the progressive rock band Soft Machine. He went on to a successful career writing music for advertisements before turning to composing more classically-inspired music.

Link

Karl Jenkins official website

Brahms
Academic Festival Overture

Brahms’ tongue-in-cheek Academic Festival Overture is based entirely on German student songs which celebrate the less intellectual sides of student life. Our performance of the work will end with a rousing rendition of the famous song Gaudeamus igitur.

Martin Sturfalt
Piano

Born in Katrineholm, Sweden in 1979, Martin Sturfält started to play the piano around the age of four, inspired by his grandfather, who was an organist. After studying with various local teachers, from 1991-1998, he studied in Stockholm with Esther Bodin-Karpe, and from 1998-2001 he studied with Stefan Bojsten at the Stockholm Royal College of Music (KMH). Since September 2001, Martin studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (GSMD) in London, where in October 2002 he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree with an over all distinction, as well as a Concert Recital Diploma (Premier Prix). In August 2002 Martin entered the Postgraduate Soloist Diploma class at KMH, while continuing to study at the GSMD, where he holds a Piano Fellowship for 2004/05. His current teachers are Stefan Bojsten and Staffan Scheja in Stockholm, and Paul Roberts and Ronan O’Hora in London. Martin has also devoted much time to chamber music, and has been coached by well-known teachers, such as Johannes Goritzki and David Takeno. Recent projects have included duos with pianist Oskar Ekberg in Stockholm 'cellist Marie Macleod in London. Martin has participated in master-classes with distinguished teachers such as Håkon Austbø, Oxana Yablonskaya, Dominique Merlet, Peter Donohoe, John O´Connor, Mikhail Voskresensky and Murray Perahia. Since the age of 11, Martin has performed extensively, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, in Scandinavia, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Poland. In recent years Martin has performed in such prestigious venues as London’s Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall, as well as all major venues in Stockholm and around Sweden. He has appeared several times on Swedish and Nordic radio and TV. Martin has participated in numerous piano festivals and competitions and has won first prizes in the 1999 Swedish and the 2002 UK Yamaha competitions, the 2000 Kil Nordic Piano Competition, the 2002 Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist Competition, the 2002 Nordic Bluthner Piano Competition, and the 2004 John Ogdon Prize. In 2004 he was one of three finalists in the Swedish Soloist Prize and proceeded to win a shared second prize. Through the years Martin has received financial assistance from among others, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and the Philharmonia/Martin Musical Fund.

David Gibson
Conductor

David Gibson began his musical training as a chorister and Lay Clerk in Chichester Cathedral Choir. As an Organ Scholar, he later studied music at the universities of London and Sussex. He has worked extensively as a pianist and organist but has been a freelance conductor for the past twelve years, working with many of the top orchestras in the country, including the Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the New London Sinfonia, which he founded in 1987. In 1991 he was appointed Assistant Director of Music and Chorus Master of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Since then he has worked for them as Guest Conductor, performing all the major G & S works together with Die Fledermaus and Orpheus in the Underworld throughout the UK. He is currently Musical Director of the Southampton Philharmonic Society, Basingstoke Choral Society, the Occam Singers and, since 1999 the Croydon Philharmonic Choir..

In 1994 he was appointed Musical Director of European Chamber Opera and took up a similar post with Opera Holland Park in 1996. He has also conducted extensively for Travelling Opera with repertoire including Carmen, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Magic Flute, Barber of Seville, La Bohème, Tosca, Madam Butterfly and Un Ballo in Maschera, performing in Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Barbados, and the USA.

Other engagements have included a return visit to the Barbados Opera Festival, a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonia and a series of concerts with the London Mozart Players as part of their 50th Anniversary. This included a world premiere of Michael Nyman's Suite from Drowning by Numbers. David has also worked as Musical Director in the West End for Raymond Gubbay in the highly successful D’Oyly Carte production of The Pirates of Penzance at the Queen’s Theatre.

Recent successes include further concerts with the London Mozart Players, a Michael Nyman opera at the Bridewell Theatre in London and a memorable performance of Belshazzar’s Feast with the New Queens Hall Orchestra. In 2002, he took up a new post as Director of Music of the Surrey Festival Choir, founded by Vaughan Williams.

He has recently been appointed Musical Director of the British Philharmonic Orchestra, performing in major venues throughout the UK and 2003 saw the release of a debut CD with the Occam Singers. Future plans include conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the Britten War Requiem in 2005.