Welcome to tonight’s London Philharmonic Orchestra performance here at Battersea Arts Centre. Throughout March we’re celebrating the creativity in everyone during our festival ‘The Music in You’. Reflecting our adventurous spirit, the festival embraces all kinds of expression – from dance, to music theatre and even audience participation.
Scan to see all events in the festival.
lpo.org.uk/themusicinyou
Please note there will be no interval in tonight’s concert.
LUÍS TINOCO BORN 1969
ACCORDION CONCERTO 2023 (UK PREMIERE) (20’)
EDWARD GARDNER CONDUCTOR JOÃO BARRADAS ACCORDIONThis concerto, written following a joint commission from CCB/Centro Cultural de Belém and Fundação Casa da Música, is divided into two movements, each approximately ten minutes long. In the first, calm and meditative in nature, varied colours and characteristic registers of the solo instrument are introduced in dialogue and blending with the orchestra, presenting a sequence of events that explore both intimate and chamber-like moments, as well as dense orchestral textures of greater intensity. A transition/short cadenza follows, opening the second movement and introducing motifs and gestures that give rise to strenuous and pulsating music, which challenges the soloist to reveal virtuosity, expressiveness and, also, physical resistance.
Sometimes a concerto is born from the desire to write for a particular instrument and from the affinity and familiarity that a composer may have with its sounds. It can also be born from the admiration nurtured by performers with whom one really wants to collaborate in the creation of a new score. This Concerto is the result of both scenarios, seeking to respond to my curiosity about the very particular potential of the accordion and, simultaneously, offering me the opportunity to write for a musician that I admire so much and who I consider to have extraordinary qualities.
LUÍS TINOCO, NOVEMBER
Lisbon-born Luís Tinoco is a composer, producer of new music programmes for the Portuguese radio station Antena 2/RTP, and artistic director of the station’s Young Musicians’ Prize and its festival. He also lectures at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon and is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Tinoco’s catalogue includes vocal and stage music, as well as orchestral works which have been premiered by the Royal Philharmonic, Radio France Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, São Paulo Symphony, Porto Casa da Música Symphony and Gulbenkian orchestras, among others.
His music is available on CDs recorded with the Gulbenkian Orchestra (Naxos 2013) and Ensemble Lontano (Lorelt 2005). In 2018 Odradek Records released a CD of his orchestral music. Also for Odradek, Tinoco recorded Archipelago, an album devoted to his percussion works. In 2022, the new label Artway Next released Aleppo and Other Silences, featuring Tinoco’s chamber music.
Luís Tinoco is attending tonight’s UK premiere of his Accordion Concerto with generous support from the SPA (Portuguese Society of Authors).
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 1933 (34’)
EDWARD GARDNER CONDUCTOR
DANIELLE DE NIESE ANNA (SOPRANO)
CALLUM THORPE MOTHER (BASS)
ADAM GILBERT FATHER (TENOR)
ROSS RAMGOBIN BROTHER (BARITONE)
AMAR MUCHHALA BROTHER (TENOR)
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE DIRECTOR
EMMA CHAPMAN LIGHTING DESIGNER
MIKE ASHCROFT MOVEMENT DIRECTOR
1 INTRODUCTION
2 SLOTH (CITY UNNAMED)
3 PRIDE (MEMPHIS)
4 ANGER (LOS ANGELES)
5 GLUTTONY (PHILADELPHIA)
6 LUST (BOSTON)
7 GREED (BALTIMORE)
8 ENVY (SAN FRANCISCO)
9 FINALE
Described as a ‘sung ballet’, The Seven Deadly Sins was written by German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill, with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht. The two had enjoyed great success together in Germany in the late 1920s – most notably with The Threepenny Opera. However, in 1933 Weill and Brecht were both forced to flee Nazi Germany. Weill headed straight for Paris, but Brecht stayed briefly in Prague, then Vienna, then Zurich, then Lugano in Switzerland … it was this uprooted travelling that served as a key inspiration for the journey through seven different cities in the piece. The Seven Deadly Sins would be this great duo’s last collaboration. It premiered in Paris in 1933, and while it fairly baffled the audience (largely because it was in German!), Weill regarded it as ‘the finest score I’ve written up to now’. Today, it is one of his most frequently performed works, and is often presented in concert (as tonight), as well as fully staged.
The Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of Anna, who is sent by her exploitative family on a seven-year journey through seven different American cities to earn enough money for them to build a house. Anna is torn between the need to make money and her morals, and as such has a split personality: ‘Anna I’ represents her practical, cynical side, and ‘Anna II’ her passionate, idealistic side. Meanwhile, the family fills the role of a ‘Greek chorus’, singing as one and providing a mocking commentary on the action.
Anna II tries to follow her heart, but every time she is scolded by practical Anna I for committing one of the deadly sins (Sloth, Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Lust, Greed and Envy), because each ‘sin’ in some way gets in the way of the money-making. In Memphis, Anna II must give up her ‘Pride’ to satisfy her clients as a cabaret dancer, and her ‘Lust’ in Boston when she wants to share her earnings with the man she loves. It’s all timelessly satirical, ironising society’s willingness to sacrifice values for the sake of financial gain.
Weill’s score for The Seven Deadly Sins is witty, very accessible, and plays with musical styles popular in America in the 1920s/30s, like foxtrot and barbershop. It is also full of musical parodies which run alongside the libretto’s satire. At the end of ‘Sloth’, the family imitates a religious madrigal as they pray that Anna will make lots of money for them, while ‘Pride’ features a parody of the waltz from Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus as Anna sings about life as a cabaret dancer. ‘Envy’ (the final sin) is accompanied by a bitter and hollow victory march – Anna II has submitted to Anna I and the money is made, but at what cost?
PROGRAMME NOTE © JESSICA FITTON (DIGITAL CONTENT PRODUCER, OPERA NORTH)
THESE PERFORMANCES OF WEILL’S THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS ARE FUNDED IN PART BY THE KURT WEILL FOUNDATION FOR MUSIC, INC., NEW YORK, NY.
The Kurt Weill Foundation, Inc. promotes and perpetuates the legacies of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya by encouraging an appreciation of Weill’s music through support of performances, recordings, and scholarship, and by fostering an understanding of Weill’s and Lenya’s lives and work within diverse cultural contexts. It administers the Weill-Lenya Research Center, a Grant and Collaborative Performance Initiative Program, the Lotte Lenya Competition, the Kurt Weill/Julius Rudel Conducting Fellowship, the Kurt Weill Prize for scholarship in music theater, and publishes the Kurt Weill Edition and the Kurt Weill Newsletter. Building upon the legacies of both Weill and Lenya, the Foundation nurtures talent, particularly in the creation, performance, and study of musical theater in its various manifestations and media. Since 2012, the Kurt Weill Foundation has administered the musical and literary estate of composer Marc Blitzstein. www.kwf.org
WITH THANKS TO
Pauline Lecrass, Head of Costume, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR
Luis Castillo-Briceño
Kurt Weill
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
Ballet with Singing
Text by Bertolt Brecht
Performed in the English translation by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. By arrangement with Schott Music Ltd
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
We hope you enjoy tonight’s performance. Could you spare a few moments afterwards to complete a short survey about your experience? Your feedback is invaluable to us and will help to shape our future plans. Just scan the QR code to begin the survey. Thank you!
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