Death & Transfiguration

Ludwig van Beethoven
Violin Concerto in D major 42’

INTERVAL: 15 minutes

SirGeorge Benjamin
Concerto for Orchestra 18’

Richard Strauss
Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) 23’

Alexandre Bloch conductor
Veronika Eberle violin

BBC Hoddinott Hall is certified by EcoAudio and we’re proud to be supporting the BBC in becoming a more sustainable organisation. For more information on the BBC’s net-zero transition plan and sustainability strategy please visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/bbc-net-zero-transition-plan-2024.pdf

The concert is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for Radio 3 in Concert; it will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds, where you can also find podcasts and music mixes.

1  Allegro ma non troppo
2  Larghetto –
3  Rondo: Allegro

Veronika Eberle violin

By the time Beethoven composed his first – and only – complete concerto for the violin, he was already a master of writing for the instrument. He had under his belt a series of nine sonatas for violin and piano, two solo Romances for violin and orchestra and the start of a youthful Violin Concerto in C major, WoO5. So it’s perhaps surprising that the reception at the 1806 premiere of his Violin Concerto in D major was lukewarm at best. ‘The concerto enjoyed no great success,’ wrote his biographer, Anton Schindler. ‘It was totally ignored: violinists … rejected the work as unrewarding.’

It was not until 1844, when the 12-year-old Joseph Joachim resurrected the concerto under Mendelssohn’s direction to ‘frenetic applause’, that the work became firmly established within the repertoire. By then, tastes had changed and features that nearly 40 years earlier had been regarded as ‘risky’ and ‘disconcerting’ were now deemed more acceptable. The mysterious strokes on the timpani at the opening no longer seemed bizarre. The concerto’s surprising length – at 15 minutes longer than any of Mozart’s own for the violin – was now more in keeping with the extended nature of the Romantic concerto. And the virtuosity of the solo violin part was a real draw for audiences, who were now accustomed to inspiring and impressive musical feats within the concert hall.

That said, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto as we know it today is thought to be considerably revised from the version heard at the 1806 premiere. According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven completed the work in haste at the request of Franz Clement, the concerto’s dedicatee and commissioner. Clement wanted a new concerto to perform at a benefit concert in Vienna in December 1806 and reports suggest that the score was barely finished before the first rehearsals began – to the extent that Clement was all but sight-reading at the premiere. The work underwent several revisions before its publication, including its transformation into a concerto for piano.

Like the knocking of ‘Fate’ at the start of the Fifth Symphony, the timpani beats with which the work opens form the foundations of the concerto. These five simple strokes saturate the opening movement, intertwining themselves with the first theme and underpinning the accompaniment of the second, alternating between ominous and celebratory at every turn.

This expansive first movement, wrought with dense thematic interplay and dramatic dynamic contrasts, is quite at odds with the stillness of the central Larghetto– a series of ethereal variations in which the soloist appears to extemporise freely over muted strings. This quiet corner of the concerto has none of the brilliance of the outer movements, its serene, bird-like utterances almost seeming to prefigure those of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending by more than 100 years.

The finale, by contrast, is a riot of drama and colour, bursting out of the Larghetto without pause. A pastoral solo violin melody is quickly taken up by the full orchestra and with every repetition this simple folk-like theme becomes increasingly virtuosic, eventually leading to a climactic coda packed full of exhilarating showmanship.

^{Programme note © Jo Kirkbride}

INTERVAL: 15 minutes

This Concerto for Orchestra was written in memory of Oliver Knussen, with whom I maintained the closest of friendships for 40 years. His passing in 2018 was widely mourned in the musical world; his extraordinary brilliance as composer and conductor – and kindness and generosity as a person – are irreplaceable. In some ways this work attempts to conjure a trace of the energy, humour and spirit I associate with my friend and its mood is often playful, though on occasion it twists into much more turbulent terrain.

The score is also dedicated to – and was written for – the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble with which I have developed a particularly close working relationship. The orchestral writing is frequently virtuosic and every instrument has its moment in the foreground – hence the title.

During its virtually unbroken 18-minute span, shaped almost entirely within a single tempo, a wide diversity of instrumental invention evolves, interacts and superimposes. Long, suspended lines weave a path through contrasting textures, some rapid and skittish, others more dynamic and propulsive. All of the instruments play multiple roles – both dramatic and sonoric – across the structure, among them a volatile solo tuba, elaborate horn duos, bubbling clarinets and two pairs of rumbling timpani. Most prominent of all are the impassioned first violins, which almost have the last word during the work’s tranquil conclusion.

^{Programme note © Sir George Benjamin}

In November 1889 Richard Strauss had his first compositional triumph with the orchestral tone-poem Don Juan. The same month, he completed a very different piece in the same genre, on which he had been working since the previous summer. In his words, Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklärung) depicts ‘the dying hours of a man who had striven towards the highest idealistic aims, maybe indeed those of an artist’. It is not clear what prompted Strauss – in his mid-twenties and in good health – to explore this topic, though its theme of transfiguration may relate to his interest in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

The composer outlined the work’s narrative in a letter of 1894. In the opening section, quietly pulsing rhythms illustrate the sick man’s ‘heavy irregular breathing’, while woodwind and violin solos portray his ‘friendly dreams’. The second section depicts his ‘horrible agonies’ on waking, characterised by snarling brass and surging strings. As his pain eases, we hear a rising motif in the brass: the first stirrings of the work’s ‘transfiguration’ theme. In the third section the man recalls his past. A gentle dialogue between strings and woodwind suggests his childhood: horn fanfares illustrate his heroic striving, while an ardent string melody evokes an intense romance. His pain returns and with it the second section’s fierce music, followed by a full statement of the transfiguration theme in the brass. Death itself is depicted by a glissando (slide) followed by a single gong stroke. The final section explores the noble transfiguration theme, which builds in intensity as the soul finds ‘gloriously achieved in everlasting space those things which could not be fulfilled here below’. Like Tristan’s closing ‘Liebestod’, the work ends with transcendent, ethereal chords.  

Death and Transfiguration received its successful premiere at the 1890 Eisenach Festival, conducted by the composer. Strauss never forgot this tone-poem, quoting from it in one of his last compositions, ‘Im Abendrot’ from his Four Last Songs (1948). And as he lay dying the following year, he reassured his daughter-in-law that the experience was ‘just as I composed it in Tod und Verklärung’. 

^{Programme note © Kate Hopkins}

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If you’ve enjoyed the concert today, bring friends and family and come along to this forthcoming concert. As an existing audience member, you can buy tickets for it for £7 using promotion code NOWYOU when buying online.

Seasons & Stories

Thursday 28/5/26, 7.30pm
BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff

Friday 29/5/26, 7.30pm
Brecon Cathedral 

Marta Ptaszyńska A Winter’s Tale
Schumann Cello Concerto
Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night’s Dream – overture
Beethoven Symphony No. 2

Paweł Kapuła conductor
Sterling Elliott cello

ENTERTAINING | TUNEFUL | VIVACIOUS

Conductor Paweł Kapuła makes his BBC NOW debut with music from his native Poland, bringing Marta Ptaszyńska’s A Winter’s Tale (1984) to life as it transforms familiar echoes of Vivaldi into an eerie, dream‑like sound world. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Sterling Elliott also makes his debut with the orchestra in Schumann’s Cello Concerto, a work of quiet intensity and inward lyricism, before the overture to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream whisks us into a shimmering, cinematic fairytale. The programme culminates in Beethoven’s Second Symphony: a work bursting with personality, humour and exuberance, revealing a composer on the brink of transformation and offering a joyful, radiant release.

Book tickets for just £7 using promotion code NOWYOU https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/evr6gw

Biographies

Alexandre Blochconductor

French conductor Alexandre Bloch becomes Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro RTVE at the start of next season. He first attracted international attention when he won first prize at the 2012 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition; soon after, he made his acclaimed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut, replacing Mariss Jansons at short notice.

Recent and forthcoming engagements include debuts with and returns to the Adelaide, Basque, Bournemouth, City of Birmingham, Düsseldorf, London, Utah and Vancouver Symphony orchestras, Brussels, Dresden, George Enescu, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Oslo, Radio France, Rotterdam, Royal Liverpool and Seoul Philharmonic orchestras, the Hallé, Philharmonia, European Union Youth Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, Los Angeles and Scottish Chamber orchestras and Suisse Romande Orchestra.

He is equally at home in the opera house and has appeared at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Düsseldorf’s Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra de Lille and Opéra de Lyon.

Alexandre Bloch was Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lille from 2016 to 2024. While with the orchestra he programmed a diverse range of repertoire, including a Mahler cycle and Stravinsky ballets, as well as inviting and collaborating with leading composers Magnus Lindberg, Sir George Benjamin and Thierry Escaich. An innovator on and off the podium, he initiated special projects with the aim of attracting new audiences into the concert hall. He and the orchestra have featured on a wide range of labels and broadcast channels.

He has collaborated with many internationally established soloists, including Frank Peter Zimmermann, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Mischa Maisky, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Sol Gabetta, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Steven Isserlis, Sharon Kam, Alice Sara Ott, Nemanja Radulović, Veronika Eberle, Véronique Gens and Xavier Demaîstre.

Alexandre Bloch is Principal Guest Conductor of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra and was an ADAMI emerging talent and a Tanglewood Conducting Fellow, drawing the attention of mentors such as Mariss Jansons, Charles Dutoit, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Sir Mark Elder and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Veronika Eberleviolin

Veronika Eberle’s talent and the poise and maturity of her musicianship have been recognised by many of the world’s finest orchestras, venues and festivals, as well as by some of the most eminent conductors. 

This season she makes her Carnegie Hall debut in a tour of Europe and the USA with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Other notable debuts include the Berlin Konzerthausorchester Berlin with Thomas Søndergård, Helsinki Philharmonic with Anja Bihlmaier, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony with John Storgårds, Hyogo PAC Orchestra with Andreas Ottensamer and Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Jörg Widmann. She also makes returns to Dresden Philharmonic with Marc Albrecht, Gürzenich Orchestra with Anja Bihlmaier and Brussels Philharmonic with Kazushi Ono.

Recent highlights include US debuts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra  and returns to the LA Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Budapest Festival Orchestra.

She has worked with leading conductors, including Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Christian Thielemann, Lorenzo Viotti, Louis Langrée, Robin Ticciati, Paavo Järvi, Alan Gilbert, Heinz Holliger, Sir Antonio Pappano and Andrés Orozco-Estrada. She has also collaborated with composers such as Toshio Hosokawa, who dedicated his violin concerto Genesis to her, and Jörg Widmann, who composed new cadenzas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, which she recorded with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.

As a dedicated chamber musician, she performs regularly with artists such as Sol Gabetta, Steven Isserlis, Julia Hagen, Beatrice Rana, Nils Mönkemeyer and Dénes Várjon, appearing at festivals including Klosters, Gstaad, Rheingau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Carinthian Summer and Vevey Spring. In the 2024/25 season, she returned to Wigmore Hall as Artist-in-Residence.

She has benefited from the support of several prestigious organisations, including the Reinhold Würth Musikstiftung, Nippon Music Foundation, Borletti–Buitoni Trust, Orpheum Stiftung, Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the Jürgen-Ponto Stiftung; she was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist 2011–13.

Veronika Eberle was born in Donauwörth and was a junior student at the Richard Strauss Konservatorium in Munich, studying with Olga Voitova, later continuing her studies with Christoph Poppen and Ana Chumachenco. She plays the 1693 ‘Ries’ Stradivarius, which is kindly on loan from the Reinhold Würth Musikstiftung.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

For over 90 years, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the only professional symphony orchestra in Wales, has played an integral part in the cultural landscape of the country, occupying a distinctive role as both a broadcast and national orchestra, and serving as an ambassador of Welsh culture, regularly performing music created in Wales and championing Welsh composers and artists.

Part of BBC Cymru Wales and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, BBC NOW performs a busy schedule of concerts and broadcasts, working with acclaimed conductors and soloists from across the world, including its Principal Conductor, the award-winning Ryan Bancroft.

The orchestra is committed to working in partnership with community groups and charities, taking music out of the concert hall and into settings such as schools and hospitals to enable others to experience and be empowered by music. It undertakes workshops, concerts and side-by-side performances to inspire and encourage the next generation of performers, composers and arts leaders, and welcomes thousands of young people and community members annually through its outreach and education projects.

BBC NOW performs annually at the BBC Proms and biennially at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and its concerts can be heard regularly across the BBC – on Radio 3, Radio Wales and Radio Cymru. On screen, music performed by BBC NOW can be heard widely across the BBC and other global channels, including the soundtrack and theme tune for Doctor Who, Planet Earth III, Prehistoric Planet, The Pact and Children in Need.

Based at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, BBC NOW utilises a state-of-the-art recording studio with a camera system for livestreams and TV broadcasts to bring BBC NOW’s music to a broader audience across Wales and the world. For more information about BBC NOW please visit bbc.co.uk/now

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Patron
HM King Charles III ^{KG KT PC GCB}
Principal Conductor
Ryan Bancroft
PrincipalGuest Conductor
Jaime Martín
Composer-in-Association
Gavin Higgins

First Violins
Lesley Hatfield leader
Tom Aldren  leader for Beethoven
Martin Gwilym-Jones sub-leader
Gwenllian Hâf MacDonald
Terry Porteus
Suzanne Casey
Carmel Barber
Kerry Gordon-Smith
Emilie Godden
Anna Cleworth
Ruth Heney **
Žanete Uškāne
Alejandro Trigo

Second Violins
Anna Smith *
Kirsty Lovie #
Ros Butler
Sheila Smith
Vickie Ringguth
Joseph Williams
Michael Topping
Katherine Miller
Beverley Wescott
Roussanka Karatchivieva
Lydia Caines **
Gary George-Veale

Violas
Rebecca Jones *
Alex Thorndike #
Tetsuumi Nagata
Peter Taylor
Robert Gibbons
Lydia Abell
Laura Sinnerton
Catherine Palmer
Anna Growns
Nancy Johnson

Cellos
Findlay Spence ‡
Raphael Lang
Sandy Bartai
Alistair Howes
Keith Hewitt
Carolyn Hewitt
Rachel Ford
Kathryn Graham

Double Basses
David Stark *
David F. C. Johnson
Christopher Wescott
Emma Prince

Flutes
Matthew Featherstone *
John Hall †
Lindsey Ellis

Piccolo
Lindsey Ellis †

Oboes
Steve Hudson *
Alec Harmon
Amy McKean †

Cor anglais
Amy McKean †

Clarinets
Nicholas Carpenter *
William White
Lenny Sayers +**

Bass Clarinet
Lenny Sayers †+**

Contrabass Clarinet
Steve Morris

Bassoons
Jarosław Augustyniak *
Llinos Owen
David Buckland

Contrabassoon
David Buckland †

Horns
Isabella Ackland
Meilyr Hughes
John Davy
Flora Bain
Tom Taffinder

Trumpets
Philippe Schartz *
Robert Samuel
Corey Morris †

Trombones
Donal Bannister*
Ryan Hulme

Bass Trombone
Darren Smith †

Tuba
James Tavares

Timpani
Steve Barnard *
Phil Hughes

Percussion
Phil Girling
Andrea Porter 

Harps
Tomos Xerri
Bethan Semmens

* Section Principal
† Principal
‡ Guest Principal
# Assistant String Principal

The list of players was correct at the time of publication

Director Lisa Tregale
Orchestra Manager Liz Williams
Assistant Orchestra Manager Nick Olsen **
Orchestra Personnel ManagerKevin Myers
Orchestra and Operations CoordinatorEleanor Hall
Business Coordinator Georgia Dandy **
Head of Artistic Planning and ProductionGeorge Lee
Artists and Projects Manager Victoria Massocchi **
Orchestra Librarian Naomi Roberts **
Producer Mike Sims
Broadcast Assistant Emily Preston
Head of Marketing and Audiences Sassy Hicks
Marketing Coordinator Angharad Muir–Davies (maternity cover)
Digital Producer Angus Race
Social Media Coordinator Harriet Baugh
Marketing Apprentice Mya Clayden
Education Producer Beatrice Carey
Education Producer/Chorus Manager Rhonwen Jones
SeniorAudio Supervisors Simon Smith, Andrew Smillie
Production Business Manager Lisa Blofeld
Stage and Technical Manager Josh Mead +
Assistant Stage and Technical Manager Richie Basham

+ Green Team member
** Diversity & Inclusion Forum