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BBC Symphony Orchestra ‒ casting new light on Smetana's tragic opera, Dalibor

2015-05-14T11:31:22+00:00

Dalibor at the Barbican Hall. Photo: Mark Allan/BBC

In the past the BBC Symphony Orchestra's former chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek has conducted a number of Czech operas by Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček and Martinů in highly successful concert performances.

A few years ago we performed Dvořák's The Jacobin which was huge fun for everybody and I remember being surprised to learn that Dvořák had actually written nine others. Yet, surprisingly, his most popular opera, Rusalka, was not staged in London until English National Opera performed it in 1983. The Met in New York waited until 1993 to premiere it and Covent Garden (amazingly) as recently as 2003!

Smetana's jolly The Bartered Bride fared better (reaching London in 1907) and is regularly staged, yet we scarcely hear a semi-quaver of his other eight operas. Part of the problem (as one who has struggled even to pronounced 'Jiří' correctly) is the Czech language: for most people it is very difficult to get your tongue around.

Two weeks ago the BBCSO performed Smetana's third opera, Dalibor. It is a romantic tragedy similar in story to Beethoven's Fidelio. While the story is unlikely (the sister of the murdered Burgrave falls in love with his murderer, Dalibor), the music is wonderfully fluent, and typical of Smetana. Despite the gruesome story, Smetana includes the folk elements that he loved so much ‒ polkas, fanfares and even a March in 3/4 time! But there is much warmth and beauty in the score too.

Notable amongst all of our opera performances has been the uniformly excellent Czech cast, many of whom have positions at the National Opera house in Prague. As Czech is a notoriously difficult language to sing in, and given that composers such as Smetana and Janáček relied heavily on the sound and rhythm of the language in their music, it makes perfect sense to use native speakers. It has always been a privilege to work alongside them.

As usual, Jiří sang along (very quietly) all the way through with the soloists and the BBC Singers, but managed to balance the orchestra perfectly so that we would not overwhelm the singers, sometimes a risk when orchestras come out of the opera theatre pit and accompany casts on stage.

Dalibor drew excellent reviews in the Press and you can listen to the broadcast at 2pm on Thursday 14 May, or for thirty days on the BBC iPlayer.

Na zdravi!

Photo Mark Allan/BBC

Composing A Violence of Gifts - Part 4

2015-04-15T10:51:27+00:00

Time to Write

The orchestra rehearsals are about to begin in advance of the premiere of A Violence of Gifts. I find the days immediately before rehearsals an unsettling time – a strange mixture of disquiet and anticipation. I think it’s due to the imminent transition from having a new work exist only in your mind to having it brought suddenly and vividly to life by musicians. As I prepare for this experience, I find thinking back to the solitude of the early stages of writing the music helps to calm my nerves…

I hadn’t paid much attention to the North Polar Vortex until the day before I flew to Boston. It had been a few months since Owen and I returned from CERN. Armed with the first draft of Owen’s text, I was getting ready to travel to New Hampshire, in the USA, to the MacDowell Colony to undertake an artist residency and start writing the piece. Just before setting off I received an email: an arctic cold blast was due to drop around 10 inches of snow overnight. I packed a couple of extra jumpers. Arriving at the Colony a few hours before the snow came, I was shown to my room where I unpacked and fell asleep. In the morning, the 450-acres of woodlands and fields, which make up the Colony, had been transformed. It was a striking, glittering landscape covered in snow, worlds away from my usual environment in South East London. I felt excited about the weeks of writing stretching before me.

The MacDowell Colony

After settling in and getting my bearings I stuck Owen’s text up on a huge, freestanding pinboard, spread out some of my initial sketches on the piano, and stared down at the blank manuscript paper. But nothing came. I started to feel worried. What if I had developed writer’s block? At home I often have the feeling there is never enough time in the day to get things done, but here the morning stretched on forever. They say a week at MacDowell is equivalent to four in the real world. Without the usual distractions of home there seemed to be endless hours to fill. But after a day or so adjusting to this new rhythm, it struck me: time was exactly what I needed and what I was here for. I quickly adjusted to life at MacDowell and began working on the piece in earnest.

The MacDowell Colony is a very special place. In 1896, composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell bought a farm where they spent summers working in the peaceful surroundings. Shortly afterwards, Edward fell ill and talked to Marian about his wish to give other artists the same creative experience they enjoyed. Marian set about building a community on the estate where writers, artists, composers and filmmakers from all over the world could come to work. All the studios at MacDowell have names. Mine was called Watson and was one of the first studios Marian had built. It was initially used as a concert space, so had the dimensions of a small recital hall. Today, being a live-in studio, it is furnished with a bed, small kitchen, bathroom and giant wooden desk in front of a beautiful open fire. Artists are invited to inscribe their name on to wooden ‘tombstones’ hanging on the walls of each studio following their stay as a record of all those who pass through. On closer inspection of this lovely tradition, I discovered my studio had hosted Leonard Bernstein several times. He had composed his Mass there during a residency. Other composers included Aaron Copland and Meredith Monk. I was in good company!

My existence became a happy cycle of writing from morning until evening, punctuated with long walks in the woods and building fires to keep warm. Lunch was delivered in a picnic basket to the doorstep each day to minimize interruptions. In the evenings, the day’s work could be shared with other colony fellows over hearty home cooked meals and table tennis in Colony Hall. By the end of my residency I had written more than I could have hoped for. I had a full structure planned out with almost all of the vocal music written and about a third of the work completed in full score. Back in the UK, I was lucky enough to find time and space in Wales and at Aldeburgh Music to continue working, until I eventually completed the piece.

Now, just before rehearsals begin, I look back to my first blog and Lawrence M. Krauss’s idea: everything comes from nothing. He explains in his book, A Universe from Nothing, how a vacuum is not really empty at all but full of matter and antimatter being continually created and destroyed. The infinitesimally small spot the universe would have occupied in its first moments would have been bursting with particles and energy that just had to go somewhere, and so they did. On reflection, I think the act of writing poetry or composing music is in some sense making something from nothing. And in a concert, there is silence and then the music starts. So, on some level Krauss’s idea could be a metaphor for all music and all art.

I hope you’ll join me and the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales for the premiere of A Violence of Gifts on Saturday 18 April at 7.30pm, either at St David’s Hall in Cardiff or by tuning in to BBC Radio 3 for the live broadcast.

The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales will perform A Violence of Gifts on Saturday 18 April, 7.30pm at St David’s Hall, Cardiff. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

New season plans for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and the BBC Singers

2015-02-17T16:52:03+00:00

Paul Hughes is the General Manager responsible for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers. The job involves keeping a giddying calendar of dates stretching years hence, in his head. In this blog, Paul reflects on the 2015-16 season which has just been announced.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo. Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke

I find this a strange time of the planning year, when the present season is well over half way through. the new season has just gone public and my mind is focused on the season yet-to-be planned and the last few details of the Proms season ahead. I know this to be true when a friend asked me what we are doing next season and my mind went blank ‒ full of this week’s concert and the ideas for 2016-2017 that are swirling around in my head. And then I got home and went straight to the laptop to be reminded, as a smile crept over my face, of a season as full of musical adventures and journeys, pleasures and indulgences as you would expect of the BBCSO.

Any concert conducted by Sakari Oramo is a major event these days and his season-opening Mahler 3 will be unmissable, setting out a series of concerts that are truly inspired, including symphonies by Elgar, and Strauss’s monumental Alpine Symphony, but perhaps my favourite of Sakari’s programmes will showcase the orchestra section by section, with Schoenberg’s transcendental Verklärte Nacht for strings, Mozart’s sublime Gran Partita for wind ensemble, and bringing the whole orchestra together in a nostalgic evocation of old Vienna, Strauss’ suite from the opera Der Rosenkavalier.

Our Total Immersion days of discovery explore the music of two recently departed European greats, Henryk Górecki and Henri Dutilleux and one very much alive master ‒ Louis Andriessen. In fact Andriessen’s rich, irreverent and exuberant take on Dante, La Commedia ‒ part opera, part music-theatre ‒ this large-scale work is followed by two further operatic and completely contrasting collaborations with Opera Rara: Zaza by Leoncavallo and Adelson e Salvini by Bellini. Fans of great singing will remember our electrifying sell-out performance of Donizetti’s Belisario in 2012.

Commissions and premieres sit at the heart of what we do and with new works from Richard Ayres, Anna Clyne, George Benjamin and Ryan Wigglesworth leading the British contingent, and Andrew Norman, Brett Dean, Henryk Górecki and Richard Dubugnon showing how much exciting new music is being written around the world, there are many musical adventures waiting to be shared. In fact, finding just the right context for a new work ‒ the ‘frame’, if you will ‒ is one of the great pleasures of introducing new works to our audiences.

Renée Fleming, one of the greatest sopranos of our time, returns to work with us in a new song cycle written for her by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg, alongside Robin Holloway’s exquisite orchestrations of Debussy songs. Jiří Bělohlávek will conduct a programme that should carry a health warning, so rich is the musical fare on offer. Renée leads a whole host of glittering soloists and one of our strongest ever list of conductors; I would like to pay a particular welcome to Polish maestro Antoni Wit making his BBCSO debut and the long-overdue return of Markus Stenz.

BBC Symphony Chorus. Photo: Mark Allan

Of course, I don’t just have the privilege of managing the BBC Symphony Orchestra but also the outstanding BBC Symphony Chorus who will be featuring in a number of great choral works especially from the 20th century. Edward Gardner and I have taken particular pleasure in recent years of planning a December programme that has nothing seasonal about it, and this year will be no different ‒ Tippett’s A Child of our Time with its profound spiritual choruses punctuating Tippett’s own anti-war text will, in Ed’s hands, be profoundly moving and unmissable.

Programming with the BBC Singers is like having another set of toys to play with and the wonderful virtuosic artistry they display thrills me every time. I’m particularly looking forward to heading over to the luxurious acoustics of Milton Court at the Barbican for David Hill conducting Monteverdi’s great Vespers of 1610, when we’re joined by the vocal ensemble I Fagiolini and St James’s Baroque, and James O’Donnell taking time off from his day job at Westminster Abbey to direct Handel’s magnificent theatrical oratorio Saul, with a terrific cast including the wonderful Iestyn Davies. As a life-long listener to R3 and R4, the mixture of spoken word and music has always been close to my heart, and so the chance to explore the heart-breaking poetry and musical settings of, and inspired by the battle of the Somme, contrasted with that most enchanting of seasonal stories ‒ Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales ‒ wrapped up in favourite and new carols will, for me, be irresistible. Familiar faces and voices will join us for to narrate these concerts in Milton Court. I’m feeling all toasty at the prospect already!

Whether you join us a season listener, a new audience member, or a willing participant in one of the many audience-friendly learning events we offer, everyone will be enormously welcome. And if you can’t make it along to see the music and thrill to its sounds, then R3 will be there to broadcast it for you. That’s the wonderful thing about the BBC - you can have it both ways, and listen to it again!

Composing A Violence of Gifts - Part 2

2015-01-27T10:32:03+00:00

Large-scale structure of light distribution in the Universe

FORM AND TEXT

I’ve been writing A Violence of Gifts for what feels like an eternity but, finally, the composition work is coming to an end. I’m now in the midst of making the conductor’s score, orchestral parts and the piano reduction for the choir and soloists. It seems a good moment to take stock and reflect on the origin of the project, particularly as the piece itself is concerned with beginnings.

The initial idea predates my residency with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. It had been simmering at the back of my mind for several years before taking up my post. The first official meeting with the orchestra’s artistic team happened just over three years ago, in December 2011, over a coffee at the Wales Millennium Centre. I talked about my desire to create a work exploring the origins of light, matter and life, inspired by Haydn’s 1798 masterpiece The Creation but considered from the scientific viewpoint of the 21st century. It is testament to the supportive nature of the orchestra that their answer was simply to say, ‘Yes, let’s go for it!’

My first task was to think about text. I had been rereading the Book of Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost, which were important sources of inspiration for Haydn’s oratorio. I searched through existing poetry but nothing took hold. The contemporary scientific viewpoint I wanted to incorporate hadn’t seemed to filter into the works of the poets I admired. I knew I needed to commission a new text rather than use existing words.

I heard Owen Sheers speak at the Hay Festival and then read his beautiful poetry collection Skirrid Hill. I was immediately struck by the vivid imagery and powerful themes in his writing. I had a hunch he might be interested in the subject matter and so I contacted him to ask if he’d like to get involved. He was keen. We arranged a breakfast meeting in early January 2012. Owen was deep in rehearsals for his new play – The Two Worlds of Charlie F – so we didn’t have much time. I swiftly explained my idea and Owen was fired up by the concept. We decided to work together.

In subsequent meetings we discussed structure, form, language, and potential characterisation. We studied the three-part construction of The Creation – the first part explores the creation of light and matter, the second explores the creation of life and the third tells the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Owen had the idea to make our piece in two parts: the first looking at the early universe – the origins of time, space and matter – and the second exploring the conditions which allowed the first living organisms to emerge from the early Hadean Earth. Owen also thought about the idea of writing for two soloists, a man and a woman, potentially characterised as a couple of scientists working together. Their tale could be woven through the structure of the piece mirroring the third part of Haydn’s oratorio.

As the piece developed these initial structural ideas have informed and influenced our thinking although the piece now has a much more fluid form. We have retained the twin strands exploring the origins of the universe and the origins of life, but, rather than being in two distinct sections, the two strands are now intertwined throughout the work in a sort of double helix structure. One section, a duet for the solo soprano and baritone called Imagine that moment, mirrors this idea perfectly as the soprano ruminates on the idea of being present at the dawn of time whilst the baritone considers what the Earth may have been like as the first single-cell life forms began to emerge. The soprano and baritone do not represent specific characters although the last number, 'It is not answers we seek', alludes to the idea they may be a couple about to bring a new life into the world. They consider how each new living thing is a culmination, an unbroken thread, stretching back millennia to the early Earth.

It was to be another 18 months before funding was in place from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation to support the commissioning of Owen’s text. The next stage was to travel to Switzerland to begin our creative journey and start exploring our ideas for the piece in more depth. But more on that in the next blog.

The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales will perform A Violence of Gifts on Saturday 18 April, 7.30pm at St David’s Hall, Cardiff. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

All you need to know about Nielsen symphonies ...

2015-01-15T10:57:26+00:00

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke

BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo continues his Nielsen series on Friday the 16^th, with the Third Symphony. It starts with 26 bangs, as Sub-Principal Viola Phil Hall explains in this insider’s guide to the symphonies

Anniversary years often provide a useful opportunity for reviewing a composer's output. In 2015 we have the sesquicentenary of the birth of two of Scandinavia's greatest symphonists: Finland's Jean Sibelius and from Denmark, Carl Nielsen. In our 2014-15 Barbican season the BBCSO has elected to celebrate the six symphonies of Nielsen with chief conductor Sakari Oramo. A canny decision as Sakari has just finished recording them all for the Swedish BIS label with his ‘other’ orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, to much critical acclaim.

One of the nice things about doing a complete symphonic cycle (with the possible exception of those by Beethoven and Brahms) is that new discoveries will be made because you have probably not played them all before. There are inevitably some that are performed much more than others and often it is the earlier ones that are overlooked in favour of the composer's more mature works.

Carl Nielsen

It has been 25 years since we last played Nielsen's first two symphonies. When he wrote his first symphony Nielsen was still a jobbing second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen. He must have been a brave man (I can't imagine having a big piece of mine performed by critical colleagues!) yet the work was a success. Working on it with Sakari I was struck by some of the piece's novel ideas ‒ unusual use of instruments and key relationships ‒ but more so by how much like the Nielsen we all know and love it sounded. Sure, you can detect other influences (notably Brahms) but the piece already bears his quirky stamp, trademark energy and difficult fugal writing.

Even more so the Second Symphony which positively brims over at the start. As with four of the others, Nielsen gives this symphony a subtitle ‒ The Four Temperaments ‒ and each movement reflects these human moods brilliantly.

The optimistic Third Symphony ‒ Sinfonia Espansiva ‒ (my personal favourite which we will perform on Friday) starts with a bang; well, 26 bangs actually, the same note repeated, before launching into a typically urgent theme. Calm is restored in the bucolic second movement with the unusual inclusion of a wordless soprano and baritone.

The best known and most dramatic is the Fourth, known as The Inextinguishable; it is a continuous ‘tour de force’ relenting only for a brief quasi-Baroque passage in the middle. Written during the First World War, the double timpani ‘battle’ at the end is usually worth the ticket price alone!

Another battle of sorts takes place in the Fifth symphony, this time with the orchestra and a snare drum which seemingly tries to disrupt things in the first movement. The piece is also quite war-like but unusually in just two parts. In the second part the drummer plays in the distance, off-stage, as if defeated by the orchestra. Twenty years ago this led to an embarrassing situation when the BBCSO played it in Munich. The over-zealous usher tried to stop Kevin Nutty playing his drum off-stage saying: ‘You cannot play that here, there is a concert going on!’

The final Nielsen symphony is probably the most difficult and (ironically) sub-titled Simple Symphony! Although he reverts to four movements it is easily his most quirky and contains a movement for just wind and percussion instruments (with no real melody!) and is probably the only symphony ever written to end with a bassoon raspberry!

A Soho Symphony

2014-11-17T14:51:56+00:00

Tomorrow night (Tuesday 18 November), the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Clark Rundell are appearing at the EFG London Jazz Festival with two new BBC commissions. The BBC CO's Associate Composer Guy Barker has used a scenario by Robert Ryan to paint a portrait in music of London's Soho, and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Trish Clowes appears with her own quintet with tracks from her new album and 'The Fox, the Parakeet and the Chestnut', also written specially for this concert.

You can hear the concert at 7.30pm live on BBC Radio 3, introduced by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Guy Barker’s collaborator, Robert Ryan, says: ‘Earlier this year, I received a phone call from Guy Barker, saying he had a hankering to write a new orchestral piece for the BBC CO; however, he was staring at a blank page and needed a framework. We have done this before, with dZf, a re-working of The Magic Flute, and last year That Obscure Hurt, a Henry James/Britten-inspired piece. I give Guy a narrative: he builds his music around it. This time all he had was “Soho” as a theme…’

Rob gives a fascinating and detailed explanation of the narrative he devised for Guy in this recommended personal blog post.

The concert will be available for 30 days on the BBC iPlayer.

A Violence of Gifts

2014-11-12T15:05:50+00:00

Mark Bowden and Owen Sheers at CERN

In the first of a series of blogs, Mark Bowden, resident composer at the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, writes about the journey from initial idea to world premiere – as he prepares to write a new work for the crchestra and chorus

Everything came from nothing. Time, space and matter. Life. Ideas, even. This simple yet devastating scientific concept, put forward by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, is the starting point for my current project: a new work for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra on the theme of creation. The piece is for the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, and is created in collaboration with the poet Owen Sheers.

William Herschel

Since Plato suggested music and astronomy ought to be studied together as part of a classical education, many composers have been influenced by harmony’s relation to cosmology and the origins of the universe. A famous example is Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. Haydn claimed a visit to William Herschel ‒ composer, astronomer and discoverer of Uranus ‒ in Slough in 1792 helped him to write his most famous work. After looking through Herschel’s telescope, Haydn was reported to have been dumbstruck for 20 minutes eventually exclaiming, ‘So high, so far’.

To prepare for writing our piece, Owen and I read many books on the subject of origins: origins of matter, time, the universe and life here on Earth, but we didn’t feel as though we were getting close enough to the latest ideas in the way that Haydn had in the 18th century. So we arranged a trip to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on the Franco-Swiss border, where we met particle physicists who introduced us to their latest research into the early universe. Talking to the scientists stretched our minds between extremes of scale – from the inconceivable vastness of the observable universe to the unimaginable quantum world of quark-gluon plasma (basic building blocks of matter) – and provided the springboard for the piece.

It’s important to say the piece will not be a didactic musical lecture but rather, more in the spirit of Haydn, a personal response to the new mind-expanding scientific knowledge of our own time.

The piece has a title already – A Violence of Gifts – and as I write I am very close to completing the first full draft of the score. So this blog will not be a diary documenting my writing experiences and ideas as they occur but rather a series of reflections upon the discussions with Owen, our trip to CERN, my self-imposed periods of variously snowy and sunny solitude, and my thoughts on music’s relationship to science. Through the blog I hope to reveal a little about the intangible process of writing music, brimming as it does with creative uncertainties and constantly shifting ground, the experience of collaboration between music, poetry and science and, ultimately, what it might mean to say that something, everything, could have come from nothing.

A Violence of Gifts will be performed by BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, on Saturday 18 April 2015.

BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales
Mark Bowden
Owen Sheers
Read parts two, three and four of this series of blog posts.

Planes, trains and mobiles - the BBC Symphony Orchestra on tour

2014-11-04T12:59:34+00:00

BBC Symphony Orchestra sub-principal viola Phil Hall reports from Spain

The tour did not begin well ‒ I left home with my wife's car keys in my pocket and no passport. Fortunately I realised these blunders just before boarding the train to Heathrow. The orchestra has been split into two groups for travelling to Alicante and my second group arrives at the hotel at midnight after 2 flights and a G&T stop in Madrid airport in between.

After the cool of London, Alicante is deliciously warm in the balmy night air and we check-in to the luminously-named Eurostars Lucentum hotel, opposite the wonderful central food market. There is time in the morning to climb the ancient Citadel and a quick dip in the crowded Mediterranean after lunch before the general rehearsal.

The Auditorio de la Disputacion

This is the first time the BBCSO has played in the new 1200-seater Auditorio de la Disputación de Alicante. The Hall is only three years old and privately built by a petrol tycoon. The acoustics are bright with a strange echo which makes the noisy Infernal Dance bounce back at us a quaver later! The concert is sold out and I feel sorry for a disconsolate man outside, queuing for a return ticket ‒ ‘The problem is you are the best...’ ‒ he complains to me in bittersweet tones.

Our soloist for the tour is the Spanish pianist Javier Perianes who plays the Ravel G major concerto quite wonderfully. Unfortunately a mobile phone joins in with the close of his encore, Debussy's Girl with the flaxen hair. This is to become an unwelcome feature of all the concerts unfortunately, despite the public address announcements.

Stravinsky's 1945 suite for The Firebird takes wing and brings the house down and after encores of Khatchaturian's Maskerade Waltz and Grieg's Morning we decamp to the hotel where our wonderful friend and tour promoter Gonzalo Augosto lays on a post-concert reception for the whole orchestra.

The Kursaal, San Sebastian

Early the next morning we climb aboard a charter flight to Biarritz and then it's a bus back across the border to nearby San Sebastián (or Donostia as it is called in Basque). Happily the good weather has followed us northwards, although my broken air-conditioning means I have the hottest hotel room in Christendom. After lunch by the cathedral we rehearse at the Kursaal, a fantastic setting, located hard by the Bay of Biscay.

It is quite a loud hall and takes a little bit of getting used to. Our conductor Sakari Oramo runs to the back of the hall to listen while we carry on playing, in order to hear the balance. He comments that the acoustics cause the trumpets to sound as if they are coming from the other side of the stage from where they are sitting! We start the concert with Sibelius's dramatic tone poem En Saga, which gets whipped into a Finnish frenzy. It is always revealing performing any Sibelius with a Finnish conductor and Sakari brings many insights to the score, notably that nobody really knows how fast Sibelius wanted the opening string arpeggios, other than we know he admired Thomas Beecham's 1930s recording of the work. Javier plays an exquisite Grieg piano concerto and we finish with the Stravinsky which
sounds amazing in the hall but is marred only by some expert coughing and another mobile phone ring.

The Auditorio di Zaragoza

Afterwards we do our bit for international relations and try and learn some Basque from the waiter. An ancient Pre-Indo-European language, the best we can do is: ‘Eskerrik asko’, the Basque for 'thank you'. I go for a run to the sea at sunrise before three buses transport us to Zaragoza. Half way there we stop for coffee at an unlikely Wild West saloon cafe by the roadside. Unfortunately one of the drivers manages to reverse into an air-conditioning unit, shattering the rear windscreen. Amazingly a replacement bus arrives in only 20 minutes and we reach Zaragoza just a few minutes behind schedule. The glorious weather continues and it's a joy to return here as the Auditorio di Zaragoza is arguably the best hall in Spain. All the more remarkable since, as with Alicante, there is no resident orchestra here. Now 20 years old, it is modelled on the Philharmonie in Berlin and has exemplary acoustics. Sakari drives the orchestra hard in rehearsals for Shostakovich 5 and gets great results in the concert with a scarily quiet 3rd movement and a terrific finale.

AVE high-speed train near Zaragoza

It's a leisurely 11 o'clock departure to Zaragoza's deliciously named Delicias station for an AVE high speed train to Madrid. It is a VERY fast train indeed as the indicator screen tells me the speed which is 253kph – or 157mph. We arrive at Madrid's Atocha station after one-and-a-half hours, having covered a distance of 195 miles. We have played in the Auditorio Nacional many times before and it has good acoustics with the added bonus of the audience sitting all around us. Speeches of thanks are given from Sakari and management and everyone agrees it has been a highly successful tour. But Sakari urges us on to greater heights of spontaneity and excitement in the Stravinsky. Strauss's Don Juan erupts on stage and there is an end-of-tour feel, a spring in our collective step. Javier shows no sign of wear-and-tear either as he launches into the Grieg with gusto. It has been a joy to work with him and observe the good nature between him and Sakari. But it was his warm, poetic playing that will linger in the memory banks. Happily we will perform the Grieg Concerto at the Barbican with him upon our return ‒ Live in Concert on BBC Radio 3, and recorded for CD... mobile phones permitting...

History man - 30 years with the BBC National Chorus of Wales

2014-06-12T13:05:06+00:00

BBC National Chorus of Wales - 30th anniversary (Betina Skovbro)

The BBC Welsh Chorus, as it was then known, first performed Brahms’s Requiem in December 1983, in their first public concert at St David’s Hall, Cardiff. Now called the BBC National Chorus of Wales, the 120-strong amateur Chorus revisits Brahms’ masterpiece on Friday 13 June, live on BBC Radio 3.

In this blog, Founder member Jeff Davies writes of some of the highlights of 30 years of music-making.

BBC National Chorus of Wales at St David's Hall, 2012 (Betina Skovbro)

I’ve always enjoyed singing - my dad ran a youth choir in Tredegar, and I joined when I was about 7. After singing for many years, I vividly remember the audition for the BBC National Chorus of Wales back in 1983 - never thinking I would get in. I’m glad I did though, and I’ve had such a wonderful time singing with them for the past 30 years.

When I first joined the choir in 1983, I was Head of PE at Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff. Perhaps it was an unusual hobby for a PE teacher – and it wasn’t easy looking after the voice when teaching gymnastics or out on the games field.

I’ve now retired, and keep busy with plenty of hobbies, but I always fit them around the Chorus. I’ve always tried to give the choir 100% commitment. When I retired I was a deputy head, but the governors knew not to call a meeting on a Tuesday night - that was choir night!

Recording O Come All Ye Faithful - Shepherds' Field, Bethlehem - 1984

There have been many highlights over the years – I’ve sung in over 25 BBC Proms, and worked with some fantastic conductors. I’ve also been lucky enough to tour with the Chorus – including concerts in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and a tour to the Holy Land as part of a BBC Television recording in 1984.

What’s wonderful about the Chorus is working with top class professionals – every concert is a special occasion. I’m particularly looking forward to performing alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for the First Night of the Proms this year in July. Broadcasting live on BBC Two at the Proms isn’t a bad gig for an amateur singer, but it is what you get with BBC National Chorus of Wales!

BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, perform Brahms’s Requiem on Friday, 7.30pm at St David’s Hall, Cardiff. It will be broadcast on Live in Concert on BBC Radio 3, and will be available for seven days after broadcast via BBC iPlayer Radio.

An orchestra for all of Wales – and all of the UK

2014-05-08T13:24:35+00:00

Michael Garvey, director of the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, introduces the new season ...

Launching a new concert season is always exciting, but launching your first season as director of a national orchestra is particularly energising. I’ve been in post since December, and in the last six months I have been truly amazed by the breadth and diversity that we deliver – both on the radio and in the concert hall.

Unlike many orchestras, we have a dual role as both a broadcast orchestra, and as an orchestra providing live classical music for the whole of Wales. We regularly perform in towns and cities including Bangor, Aberystwyth, Wrexham, Llandudno, Swansea, Newtown and Brecon – and at each venue we love to meet our audiences, who have a real passion for live classical music.

Bryn Terfel

Our new season is set to be one of our most ambitious to date – and there was much excitement around the office when the Welsh opera star Bryn Terfel was confirmed. He’ll be joining us for our annual St David’s Day gala on 1March 2015 – one of the most popular events in Cardiff’s calendar, celebrating the wonderful music and culture of Wales.

There are many other highlights throughout the season this year – including some fantastic programmes led by our principal conductor Thomas Søndergård. Thomas has quickly built a strong relationship with the orchestra – we’re only now approaching his third year in post – and I know he’s keen to get his teeth into some big pieces. This season, look out for his interpretations of Mahler 2 and Sibelius 2 at St David’s Hall in Cardiff, and Shostakovich 10 and Bruckner 8 in a newly refurbished Brangwyn Hall in Swansea.

Plus ahead of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World in 2015, there’s a season of music at St David’s Hall celebrating the voice – where we’ll be working with fantastic performers including Ann Petersen, Neal Davies, Roderick Williams, Jeremy Ovenden and Jennifer Johnston. In Swansea, Thomas Søndergård works with three talented pianists in a season of piano concertos – with performances from Igor Levit, Benjamin Grosvenor and Stephen Hough.

Even if you don’t live in Wales, you can join us for our new season from the comfort of your home - as almost all of the concerts we do right across Wales and the UK can be heard on BBC Radio 3. It’s going to be a fantastic season of music – and we can’t wait to get started.

Watch Thomas Søndergård comment on the new season:

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Thomas Søndergård

When rain didn't stop play - the BBCSO 2014 Swiss tour

2014-05-01T12:55:00+00:00

BBC SO sub-principal viola Phil Hall reports from the orchestra's tour of Switzerland ...

As the headboard of my bed in Bern's Holiday Inn knocks me awake, (why did my neighbour have to bang his door so early?) I notice that it is STILL raining. This is day three of a potentially scenic and delightful Swiss tour - the first tour with our new(ish) chief conductor Sakari Oramo. But it has barely stopped precipitating since we boarded the flight to Zürich. I can't even make out the Toblerone factory next door!

Sakari Oramo and Anu Komsi

Joining us for four concerts are the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos and Finnish soprano Anu Komsi, aka Mrs Oramo. She is singing in Mahler's fourth symphony and Leonidas (a popular touring soloist with us) is playing Brahms and Sibelius concertos. He dashes off both of these masterpieces with his customary virtuosity and broad slow movements. He is fond of the orchestra and has many friends here so he is happy to oblige when someone asks him to play the mind-bogglingly difficult Recuerdos de la Alhambra, as an encore. This involves feats of unbelievably nimble bow control and every string player is glued to his bow, trying to work out how on earth he does it.

Anu similarly wows audience and orchestra alike with her glowing but pure voice, conjuring up Mahler's child's view of heaven so beautifully. She is amiable at breakfast too as I try my basic Finnish out on her.

The only piece played in every concert is a contemporary one - Boost by Swiss composer Dieter Amman. He joins us for the performances in Zürich and Bern and seems thrilled with our efforts, hugging the conductor and bowing deeply to the orchestra. The piece fizzes for most of its 15 minutes and puts me in mind of Magnus Lindberg in terms of its energy and harmony.

Viola part for Elgar's Enigma Variations

For the final two concerts in Bern and Geneva we fly the flag for Blighty with Elgar's Enigma Variations. It occurs to me in rehearsal that the orchestral parts we use for this piece are very old; you can still see the imprint of the copper printing plates and even some comments about bowing made by such eminent conductors as Pierre Monteux. Nice to think we still use these original parts.

We toured this piece recently with Sir Andrew Davis but Sakari's take is quite different. He has a unique way of describing the music: 'This passage is like your grandmother dancing... not like electronic music, not Pokemon...'

As we arrive in Montreux finally the clouds lift and our spirits too, and I am afforded this not-too-shabby view of Evian from my hotel room. Word spreads in the final concert in Geneva that we have already been invited back in 2017; let's hope the weather is better.

BBC Scottish SO in India - Mark Tully reports

2014-04-04T22:05:04+00:00

Mark Tully with tuba

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is currently on tour in India. They have been joined by journalist and broadcaster Sir Mark Tully …

Delhi audiences are accustomed to Indian classical music concerts where they shout their approval at particularly moving moments in recitals. On Thursday night (3 April) 1800 people crowded into a cavernous auditorium and observed the Western Classical tradition by sitting in pin-drop silence to hear the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra play Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave), Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 5 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 4.

But there was no doubting the audience’s enthusiasm as they rose to their feet, shouted and clapped, clapped, and clapped again, to applaud the orchestra, the conductor James MacMillan and the violinist Nicola Benedetti. Discipline did break down during the lighthearted encores. The audience roared with laughter when they recognised the tunes in Eddie McGuire's arrangement of Bollywood melody The Snake Charmer, and clapped in time to the final Highland Reel. Then once again they rose to their feet to show what the rare visit of a Western orchestra meant to them. Ensuring that there will be a future audience for Western Classical music, on Wednesday (2 April) the orchestra gave two concerts for schoolchildren. Care had been taken to see that most of the audiences, totalling 3600, came from government schools which are attended by children of poorer parents.

Now the orchestra has moved on to Mumbai, a very different city. Delhi, the capital of India is dominated by politicians, bureaucrats, and all those whose business lies with the central government. Political activity is particularly frenetic at this time with India about to mount the world’s greatest democratic spectacle, the largest general election ever held. Delhi has grown in the 70-plus years since independence from a city which felt more like a small town than a capital to a vast conurbation, with one of the world’s biggest diplomatic communities. On the other hand Mumbai, or Bombay as it was known, is one of the three great metropolises founded by the British. The commercial capital of India today, it’s also the city most influenced by modern Western culture, and the home of the country’s only professional symphony orchestra.

Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny and Mark Tully at the National Centre for Performing Arts

Yet, in one of those contrasts so common in India, which throughout its known history has been a melting-pot of races and religions, Mumbai is also the home of that peculiarly Indian cinema, Bollywood, and the music that goes with it. During their visit to another of the metropolis founded by the British, Chennai (once known as Madras), members of the orchestra visited the KM Music Conservatory which Bollywood’s most prominent composer A.R. Rahman founded. He composed the music for the international hit Slumdog Millionaire. They also played to another 3000 children from Chennai schools where the educational institution Rhapsody delivers much-needed curriculum music.

During this last stage of their highly successful Indian tour, organised in partnership with the British Council, the orchestra, which also contains 14 students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, will continue their educational work in Mumbai, work with the Mehli Mehta Foundation, and give another public concert broadcast live in the UK on BBC Radio 3. The concert-goers in the auditorium of the National Centre for the Performing Arts will be more familiar with Western classical music than the Delhi audience, but I am confident they will be no less enthusiastic.

World To Come – a conversation with cellist Maya Beiser and composer David Lang

2014-03-25T17:11:51+00:00

In February the BBC Concert Orchestra performed the UK premiere of David Lang’s concerto (world to come) with cellist Maya Beiser. The performance formed part of the orchestra’s concert World To Come at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The concerto, written in the aftermath of 9/11, is a meditation on the spiritual world and what happens to us after we leave this earth, and to find out more we caught up with Maya and David backstage during the rehearsals.

An interview with cellist Maya Beiser and composer David Lang

World To Come is being broadcast on Tuesday 1 April at 2pm during Afternoon on 3.

World To Come’s sister concert World Once Known (31 March) featuring music by Debussy, Ravel, Butterworth, Barber, Janáček and Bartók will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm from Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Maxim-ising Sheherazade

2014-03-04T00:23:05+00:00

BBC Symphony Orchestra sub-principal viola Phil Hall always has a ringside seat close to the conductor at concerts and rehearsals. Here, Phil reports from the rehearsals for last Friday’s BBCSO concert at the Barbican.

Guest leader Simon Blendis and Maxim Vengerov Photo: Mark Millidge

When it came to the orchestra's attention that the great Russian violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov would direct Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade from the violin, my curiosity was aroused. Not because I doubted Vengerov's musicianship or talent but because I had never heard of any violinist attempting this extraordinary juggling act. Not that surprising as it turns out since, as Maxim claimed, no-one has done it since the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysayë a hundred years ago.

Maxim began the rehearsal with an apology: ‘I must say sorry to Simon our concert master for stealing his beautiful solos.’ But as soon as he launched into the first solo there are smiles all round as his big, passionate Russian sound heated up the chill of Maida Vale Studio 1. Maxim was a pleasure to rehearse with – a very big-hearted, charming person, constantly addressing the orchestra as ’friends’ with names of principal wind players written into his score above their solos. A small gesture that means a lot. By turns he directed with his hands, baton, violin bow or just a nod of his head.

Maxim has spent the last three years on a sabbatical studying conducting in St Petersburg with Vag Papian and Yuri Simonov, but has developed a style all his own. He takes broad tempi because, as he recently admitted in an interview in the Daily Telegraph: ‘...we used to be right to use slower tempi...to feel the space between the notes’.

In rehearsal was a cute ‘Lost in Translation’ moment; ever courteous Maxim addressed our second clarinet: ‘Peter, you must play like over-the-hill.’ Titters all round until guest leader Simon Blendis gave Maxim the meaning of the idiom. ’No!’ he exclaimed, ‘Sorry, I didn't mean that! I meant in the distance, far away.’ We string players were glued to his amazing bow arm and he gave an object lesson in how to play the theme of the slow movement. We didn't want him to stop demonstrating.

In the second half of the Barbican concert last Friday, Vengerov strode boldly on to the stage, Stradivarius and baton in hand, and a full house held its breath. I was holding my breath too as he seemed to leave it to the very last second to put down the baton and pick up his violin from the table just in time. Occasionally there were moments of Svetlanov-like expansiveness and some eyebrow gestures and smiles worthy of Rozhdestvensky. Moments too of complete uncertainty when his back was turned to play the solos ‒ (how the wind players placed their chords I'll never know) ‒ but it was an exciting ride for the orchestra, like playing giant chamber music. One of those concerts to tell the grandchildren about, if I ever have any…

BBC Concert Orchestra's new worlds

2014-02-17T16:23:03+00:00

Keith Lockhart, Principal Conductor, BBC Concert Orchestra. Photo: Chris Christodoulou

The BBC Concert Orchestra’s Principal Conductor Keith Lockhart reflects on his two upcoming concerts at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall: World To Come (24 February) and World Once Known (31 March).

2014 marks the beginning of the worldwide observance of the centennial of World War I. As such, it is the perfect time to reflect on the changes wrought by 'the war to end all wars.'

When the smoke cleared in 1918, most of the social and political structures that had defined life in Europe since the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire had disappeared. This change not only had profound political consequences, but was reflected in people’s new attitudes toward social convention, religion, and artistic expression. Composers, and other artists, simply didn’t recognise the world around them.

World To Come
As a cataclysm like the First World War closes some windows for good, it opens doors for fresh voices and new ideas. In the years immediately following the conflict, innovation and new energy in classical music moved away from its traditional European epicenter. New York was the quintessential 'modern city' of the 1920s. Skyscrapers shot upwards, and the energy and optimism of its inhabitants soared right along with them. Composers availed themselves of the edgy harmonies and catchy rhythms of jazz – the first musical art form that was truly and indigenously American. This was the world in which Aaron Copland penned his Music for the Theatre in 1925. This was not the Copland we revere today – the gentle poet of the American expanse – but the Copland of whom Walter Damrosch (who was about to conduct the premiere of Copland’s Organ Symphony in 1924) said, 'I’m sure you’ll all agree that if a young composer can write such a symphony, in five years he should be capable of murder!' John Alden Carpenter also made full use of this new and intensely American musical material in his 1921 ballet Krazy Kat, in which the iconic characters in this oh-so-Roaring Twenties comic strip come to life on stage. Leonard Bernstein was born in the waning months of the First World War, and his 1944 ballet Fancy Free evokes New York at the very top of its game.

BBCCO Maya Beiser Photo: ioulex

Our World To Come concert focuses on the progressive buoyancy, the youth, and the vigor of a young nation, a young city, and young artists in the years between the wars. Its title, though, derives from David Lang’s concerto for cello, which receives its UK premiere in this performance. The artist for whom the work was written is the extraordinary Maya Beiser, and I suppose what I like most about this concert is that it affords me the opportunity to introduce this amazing performer to our Concert Orchestra audience. Lang’s world to come was written in the shadow of the September 11terrorist attacks. Its title reflects both fear – are the events of 9/11 a foreshadowing of the world that will be – and the consolation of religious faith that there is indeed a better world beyond this one. The World Trade Center was abbreviated 'WTC' by in-the-know New Yorkers, and it is no coincidence that the letters also outline world to come. In a way, Lang’s powerful music brings us full circle all the way back to where we started…in the aching void and uncertainty of a century ago. Composers and all creative artists have the power to ask, profoundly, the questions which gnaw at all of us. What have we lost, and what sort of world is yet to come?

American soprano Nicole Cabell: performing Knoxville - Summer of 1915. photo: Devon Cass

World Once Known
Some composers, like Arnold Schoenberg, resolutely left the past behind them and marched into the future, brandishing a musical language that would have been unrecognisable to nineteenth century ears. Others looked to the past for reassurance – Maurice Ravel based his Le Tombeau de Couperin on Baroque dance forms from the heyday of the French empire, but dedicated each individual movement to the memory of one of his friends lost in battle. George Butterworth was another casualty of the war, one of 'the flower of England’s youth', cut down in his prime, leaving us to speculate on how profound his influence over music in the 20th century would have been. Other composers, like Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók, looked to their country’s folk tales and folk music of a simpler time, ironically echoing the surging nationalism of the late nineteenth century – which itself fanned the flames of the conflict to begin with. Perhaps my favorite music on this programme is Samuel Barber’s sublime Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a setting of James Agee’s words that evokes a simpler time, 'when old people sat on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently.' Although Barber’s and Agee’s world was one far removed from the European conflict, its sweet and sad nostalgia for a World Once Known is the thread of continuity through this entire programme, as composers stared into an uncertain future, and longed for a world that would never be again…and perhaps never was.

World To Come
Monday 24 February, 7.30pm
Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall
Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 2pm on Tuesday 1 April

World Once Known
Monday 31 March, 7.30pm
Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall
Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3