LPO programme: 6 Mar 2024 - Dance Re-imagined

2023/24 concert season at the Southbank Centre

Free concert programme

Principal Conductor Edward Gardner supported by Aud Jebsen

Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis

Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KG

Artistic Director Elena Dubinets Chief Executive David Burke Leader Pieter Schoeman supported by Neil Westreich

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Wednesday 6 March 2024 | 7.30pm

Dance Re-imagined

Tania León Raíces (Origins)* (world premiere) (14’)

Ravel La valse (13’)

Interval (20’)

Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie)† (40’)

Edward Gardner conductor

Generously supported by Aud Jebsen

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography

Ben Cullen Williams sculpture design, film creation & AI development

Company Wayne McGregor original dance

Robert Murray tenor

Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir)

Musical Director: Bart Van Reyn

*Co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge.

†An original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor. Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge.

Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE

The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide. Concert presented by the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Contents

2 Welcome LPO news

3 On stage tonight

4 The Music in You:

2–16 March 2024

6 London Philharmonic Orchestra

7 Leader: Pieter Schoeman

8 Edward Gardner

9 About the artists

12 Programme notes

19 Recommended recordings

21 Sound Futures donors

22 Thank you

24 LPO administration

Free pre-concert event

6.15–6.45pm

Royal Festival Hall

LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets discusses the evening’s programme with Composer-inResidence Tania León.

All welcome – free to attend, no ticket required.

Welcome LPO news

Welcome to the Southbank Centre

We’re the largest arts centre in the UK and one of the nation’s top visitor attractions, showcasing the world’s most exciting artists at our venues in the heart of London. We’re here to present great cultural experiences that bring people together, and open up the arts to everyone.

The Southbank Centre is made up of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Hayward Gallery, National Poetry Library and Arts Council Collection. We’re one of London’s favourite meeting spots, with lots of free events and places to relax, eat and shop next to the Thames.

We hope you enjoy your visit. If you need any information or help, please ask a member of staff. You can also write to us at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, or email hello@southbankcentre.co.uk

Subscribers to our email updates are the first to hear about new events, offers and competitions. Just head to our website to sign up.

Drinks

You are welcome to bring drinks from the venue’s bars and cafés into the Royal Festival Hall to enjoy during tonight’s concert. Please be considerate to fellow audience members by keeping noise during the concert to a minimum, and please take your glasses with you for recycling afterwards. Thank you.

Enjoyed tonight’s concert?

Help us to share the wonder of the LPO by making a donation today. Use the QR code to donate via the LPO website, or visit lpo.org.uk/donate. Thank you.

LPO Fellow Conductors 2024/25

We’re thrilled to announce our new LPO Fellow Conductors for the 2024/25 season: Matthew Lynch and Juya Shin, who will join the LPO family from September 2024. Guided by Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, they will become fully immersed in the life of the LPO over the next season. We can’t wait to work with them!

Launched last year, our flagship LPO Conducting Fellowship programme seeks to support the development of world-class conductors of the future. Each season the programme offers an intensive opportunity to work closely with the Orchestra to two outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession.

The LPO Conducting Fellowship is generously supported by Patricia Haitink with additional support from Gini and Richard Gabbertas.

LPO on Sky Arts

Back in August, the TV channel Sky Arts filmed a four-part documentary, Backstage with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, spending time behind the scenes with our musicians and following their journey with conductor Edward Gardner as they prepared for this season’s opening concert of Mahler’s Second Symphony, which took place at the Royal Festival Hall on 23 September 2023.

The first episode will be broadcast on Sky Arts next Wednesday, 13 March at 9pm, and subsequent episodes will air on the next three Wednesdays at 9pm. Sky Arts is free to watch on Freeview channel 36 and Freesat channel 147. If you have a Sky subscription or a Now TV entertainment pass, you can also watch on demand.

London Philharmonic Orchestra • 6 March 2024

On stage tonight

First Violins

Pieter Schoeman* Leader

Chair supported by Neil Westreich

Alice Ivy-Pemberton Co-Leader

Kate Oswin

Chair supported by Eric Tomsett

Lasma Taimina

Chair supported by Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave

Minn Majoe

Thomas Eisner

Chair supported by Ryze Power

Martin Höhmann

Katalin Varnagy

Chair supported by Sonja Drexler

Cassandra Hamilton

Amanda Smith

Eleanor Bartlett

Alice Apreda Howell

Jamie Hutchinson

Gabriela Opacka

Nilufar Alimaksumova

Alice Hall

Second Violins

Tania Mazzetti Principal

Emma Oldfield Co-Principal

Claudia Tarrant-Matthews

Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra

Helena Smart

Nancy Elan

Fiona Higham

Chair supported by David & Yi Buckley

Nynke Hijlkema

Ashley Stevens

Sioni Williams

José Nuno Cabrita Matias

Marie-Anne Mairesse

Kate Birchall

Erzsébet Rácz

Paula Clifton-Everest

Violas

James Heron

Guest Principal

Martin Wray

Benedetto Pollani

Laura Vallejo

Lucia Ortiz Sauco

Michelle Bruil

Raquel López Bolívar

Kate De Campos

Daniel Cornford

Toby Warr

Anita Kurowska

Julia Doukakis

Cellos

Waynne Kwon Principal

David Lale

Francis Bucknall

Tom Roff

Helen Thomas

George Hoult

Auriol Evans

Hee Yeon Cho

Iain Ward

Jane Lindsay

Double Basses

Kevin Rundell* Principal

Sebastian Pennar Co-Principal

George Peniston

Laura Murphy

Lowri Estell

Elen Roberts

Charlotte Kerbegian

Colin Paris

Flutes

Juliette Bausor Principal

Alberta Brown

Stewart McIlwham*

Piccolo

Stewart McIlwham* Principal

Oboes

Ian Hardwick* Principal

Alice Munday

Sue Böhling*

Cor Anglais

Sue Böhling* Principal Chair supported by Dr Barry Grimaldi

Clarinets

Benjamin Mellefont* Principal

Chair supported by Sir Nigel Boardman and Prof. Lynda Gratton

Thomas Watmough

Paul Richards*

E-flat Clarinet

Thomas Watmough Principal

Chair supported by Roger Greenwood

Bass Clarinet

Paul Richards* Principal

Bassoons

Jonathan Davies* Principal

Chair supported by Sir Simon Robey

Ruby Collins

Contrabassoon

Simon Estell* Principal

Horns

John Ryan* Principal

Martin Hobbs

Stephen Nicholls

Gareth Mollison

Duncan Fuller

Trumpets

Paul Beniston* Principal

Tom Nielsen Co-Principal

Anne McAneney*

Trombones

Mark Templeton* Principal Chair supported by William & Alex de Winton

David Whitehouse

Bass Trombone

Lyndon Meredith Principal

Tuba

Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal

Timpani

Simon Carrington* Principal Chair supported by Victoria Robey CBE

Percussion

Andrew Barclay* Principal Chair supported by Gill & Garf Collins

Karen Hutt

Chair supported by Mr B C Fairhall

Emmanuel Joste

Feargus Brennan

Richard Horne

Oliver Butterworth

Harps

Sue Blair Guest Principal Tomos Xerri

Piano/Celeste

Iain Clarke

Assistant Conductor

Charlotte Politi

*Professor at a London conservatoire

The LPO also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert:

Bianca & Stuart Roden

Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Welcome to tonight’s concert, part of our festival ‘The Music in You’. Reflecting our adventurous spirit, throughout March the festival will embrace all kinds of expression – from dance, to music theatre and even audience participation.

Tonight’s concert opens with a brand new work by Composerin-Residence Tania León, followed by a deliciously dark waltz by Ravel. After the interval Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams join forces with the LPO for a reinvention of Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie , using digitally-enhanced choreographic storytelling to open a portal to a new expressive world. We hope you enjoy it!

Genius. Creator. Mastermind. When an artist makes something incredible, it’s tempting to describe them with words like these – as though creativity is some sort of superpower, and famous artists are somehow more than human. But everyone can be creative, and we all have the potential to demonstrate and develop our creativity. Music comes from gifted composers and talented performers, but it’s nothing without receptive listeners.

‘If you think about it, each of us is a creative personality’, says LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets. ‘Every human being has the need to express themselves creatively, and everyone has a gift and the power to do so. It’s just that we sometimes apply our creativity differently.’ So this month, the LPO aims to liberate and celebrate the music in you. The goal is to demonstrate that each one of us – a professional composer, an orchestral musician, an audience member – can have a chance to express ourselves through music.

At the Royal Festival Hall we’ll be performing music from across four centuries and many different countries that demonstrates the infinite possibilities of creativity unchained. Haydn’s oratorio The Creation – which opened the festival on Saturday 2 March – seems like an obvious choice, but in fact this gloriously optimistic work was composed to cross linguistic and cultural barriers, conveying a message that even the humblest living creature shares in a universal creative spirit.

On Sunday 3 March, young concertgoers became performers and co-creators in Clarice Assad’s É Gol!, as part of a football-themed FUNharmonics family concert. And tonight’s performance sees us throwing ourselves open to other artforms, in a daring multimedia collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor. His digitally enhanced choreographic storytelling will open a portal to a new expressive world, reimagining Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie through the use of human and digital intelligence, taking the form of a kinetic, sculptural video installation. Opening this

concert is Raíces (‘Origins’): the first new commission written specially for the LPO by Composer-in-Residence Tania León, who will also join Elena Dubinets for a free pre-concert talk before the evening’s performance.

On Tuesday 12 March we break out of the concert hall for ‘An Imagination Shared’: an immersive performance at St John’s Church Waterloo. In this 6.30pm ‘rush-hour’ concert led by LPO Fellow Conductors Charlotte Politi and Luis Castillo-Briceño, British-Chinese composer Alex Ho invites us to Breathe and Draw, before American composer Ryan Carter creates a concerto in which the audience becomes the soloist.

Wednesday 13 March sees more new music, this time at Battersea Arts Centre – the first UK performance of Luís Tinoco’s new accordion concerto, written for and performed by accordion sensation João Barradas, which, paired with Kurt Weill’s satirical, theatrical Seven Deadly Sins (starring Danielle de Niese), demonstrate that artistry is no respecter of rigid musical genres.

In the festival’s closing concert, ‘The Gift of Youth’ on Saturday 16 March, Mozart’s C minor Mass – composed by one of music’s most famous former child prodigies – reminds us that creativity knows no boundaries of age, or social convention. It’s programmed alongside the world premiere of a violin concerto, titled Aloud, by another talented young composer – Daniel Kidane –performed by Julia Fischer.

But The Music in You doesn’t stop there – ‘We must inspire, challenge, provoke and transform by celebrating communal creativity and removing barriers to participation’, says Elena. ‘That’s why we are talking about music in us, in all of us’. Join us and listen to that inner music this season – you might be excited at what you hear.

Browse and book now at lpo.org.uk/themusicinyou

THE MUSIC IN YOU

2–16 MARCH 2024

lpo.org.uk/themusicinyou

Haydn’s Creation

Saturday 2 March | 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Haydn The Creation

Sung in English

Edward Gardner conductor

Louise Alder soprano

Allan Clayton tenor

Michael Mofidian bass-baritone

London Philharmonic Choir

Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE.

FUNharmonics Family

Concert: Goal!

Sunday 3 March | 12 noon

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Charlotte Politi conductor

Clarice Assad presenter

Join the LPO for the European premiere of É Gol! by Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad, imagining a day in the life of legendary Brazilian footballer Marta Vieira da Silva as she gets ready for the big game.

Created for orchestra and audience, this piece offers the whole family a chance to perform with the LPO throughout, using your voices, breath and body percussion.

So grab your favourite football shirt and join us for this fun, participatory concert, culminating in a football match soundtrack finale!

Join in the free pre-concert foyer activities from 10am–12 noon (concert ticket-holders only).

Dance Re-imagined

Wednesday 6 March | 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s

Royal Festival Hall

Tania León Raíces (Origins) (world premiere)*

Ravel La valse

Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams

A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie)**

Edward Gardner conductor

Robert Murray tenor

Flemish Radio Choir

* Co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge.

** An original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor. Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge.

Seven Deadly Sins

Wednesday 13 March 6.30pm & 8.15pm

Battersea Arts Centre

Luís Tinoco Accordion Concerto (UK premiere)

Weill The Seven Deadly Sins

Edward Gardner conductor

João Barradas accordion

Danielle de Niese Anna

Ross Ramgobin Brother

Callum Thorpe Mother

Adam Gilbert Father

Amar Muchhala Brother

Dominic Dromgoole director

* These performances are funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY.

The Gift of Youth

Saturday 16 March | 7.30pm

Concert generously supported by Victoria Robey CBE.

6.15–6.45pm | Free pre-concert event

Royal Festival Hall

LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets discusses the evening’s programme with Tania León.

An Imagination Shared

Tuesday 12 March | 6.30pm

St John’s Church Waterloo

Alex Ho Breathe and Draw (for sinfonietta, two conductors and audience participation)

Ryan Carter Concerto Molto Grosso (for audience and orchestra) (UK premiere) Ligeti Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes

Charlotte Politi conductor*

Luis Castillo-Briceño conductor*

*Inaugural participants in the LPO Conducting Fellowship programme. This programme is generously supported by Patricia Haitink with additional support from Gini and Richard Gabbertas.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Mozart Overture, The Magic Flute

Daniel Kidane Aloud, for violin and orchestra (world premiere)*

Mozart Mass in C minor

Edward Gardner conductor

Julia Fischer violin

Hera Hyesang Park soprano

Elizabeth Watts soprano

Pavel Kolgatin tenor

Ashley Riches bass-baritone

London Philharmonic Choir

* Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Concert generously supported by Aline Foriel-Destezet.

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. With every performance we aim to bring wonder to the modern world and cement our position as a leading orchestra for the 21st century.

Our home is here at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour throughout the UK and internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. Each summer we’re resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, combining the magic of opera with Glyndebourne’s glorious setting in the Sussex countryside.

Sharing the wonder

You’ll find us online, on streaming platforms, on social media and through our broadcast partnership with Marquee TV. During the pandemic period we launched ‘LPOnline’: over 100 videos of performances, insights and introductions to playlists, which led to us being named runner-up in the Digital Classical Music Awards 2020. During 2023/24 we’re once again be working with Marquee TV to broadcast selected live concerts, so you can share or relive the wonder from your own living room.

Our conductors

Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In 2021 Edward Gardner became our 13th Principal Conductor, taking the Orchestra into its tenth decade. Vladimir Jurowski became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his impact as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor and Tania León our Composer-in-Residence.

Soundtrack to key moments

Everyone will have heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whether it’s playing the world’s National Anthems at every medal ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, our iconic recording with Pavarotti that made Nessun Dorma a global football anthem, or closing the flotilla at The Queen’s Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. And you’ll almost certainly have heard us on the soundtracks for major films including The Lord of the Rings

We also release live, studio and archive recordings on our own label, and are one of the world’s moststreamed orchestras, with over 15 million plays of our content each month.

© Mark Allan

Next generations

There’s nothing we love more than seeing the joy of children and families enjoying their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about equipping schools and teachers through schools’ concerts, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

Our LPO Junior Artists programme is leading the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers. We also recently launched the LPO Conducting Fellowship, supporting the development of outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession.

Looking forward

The centrepiece of our 2023/24 season is our spring 2024 festival The Music in You. Reflecting our adventurous spirit, the festival embraces all kinds of expression – dance, music theatre, and audience participation. We’ll collaborate with artists from across the creative spectrum, and give premieres by composers including Tania León, Julian Joseph, Daniel Kidane, Victoria Vita Polevá, Luís Tinoco and John Williams.

Rising stars making their debuts with us in 2023/24 include conductors Tianyi Lu, Oksana Lyniv, Jonathon Heyward and Natalia Ponomarchuk, accordionist João Barradas and organist Anna Lapwood. We also present the long-awaited conclusion of Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s Wagner Ring Cycle, Götterdämmerung, and, as well as our titled conductors Edward Gardner and Karina Canellakis, we welcome back classical stars including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Robin Ticciati, Christian Tetzlaff and Danielle de Niese.

Pieter Schoeman Leader

Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002. He is also a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance.

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 the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. As a chamber musician he regularly appears at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. His chamber music partners have included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Veronika Eberle, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Boris Garlitsky, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Martin Helmchen and Julia Fischer.

Pieter has performed numerous times as a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Highlights have included an appearance as both conductor and soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, the Brahms Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and the Britten Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the LPO Label to great critical acclaim.

Pieter has appeared as Guest Leader with the BBC, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon and Baltimore symphony orchestras; the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Pieter’s chair in the LPO is generously supported by Neil Westreich.

© Benjamin Ealovega

Edward Gardner

Principal Conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Gardner has been Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since September 2021. He is also Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic, a position he will relinquish at the end of the 2023/24 season. From August 2024 he will undertake the Music Directorship of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, having been their Artistic Advisor since February 2022.

This season Edward conducts the LPO in ten concerts at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. In October 2023 he toured with the Orchestra to South Korea and Taiwan, and this season will also take them to major European cities including Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Bruges. As part of the LPO's cross-arts festival ‘The Music in You’ in March 2024, Edward will conduct concerts including Haydn’s The Creation; a reinvention of Szymanowski’s ballet Harnasie in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor; Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins; and Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Other highlights with the Orchestra this season include Holst’s The Planets and Stravinsky’s Petrushka

Edward opened the Bergen Philharmonic season in September with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. He completes his tenure as Chief Conductor at the closing of next summer's Bergen International Festival, conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. The orchestra will be joined by several choirs, including the Edvard Grieg Kor, of which Edward is the Principal Conductor.

As Artistic Advisor of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, this season Edward will conduct a triple-bill of Schumann’s Frauen-Liebe und Leben, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy Future plans with the company include a Wagner Ring Cycle commencing in spring 2026.

In demand as a guest conductor, recent seasons have seen Edward make debuts with the Cleveland Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, Bavarian Radio Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony and Vienna Symphony orchestras; while returns have included engagements with the Chicago Symphony, Montreal Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. He also continued his longstanding collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where he was Principal Guest Conductor from 2010–16, and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whom he has conducted at both the First and Last Nights of the BBC Proms.

Music Director of English National Opera for eight years (2007–15), Edward has also built a strong relationship with New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where he has conducted productions of The Damnation of Faust, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier and Werther. In London he made his Royal Opera House debut in 2019 in a new production of Káťa Kabanová, followed by Werther a season later. Elsewhere, he has conducted at the Bavarian State Opera, La Scala, Chicago Lyric Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Opéra National de Paris, and this season he will conduct a double-bill of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Poulenc's La voix humaine at Teatro di San Carlo.

A passionate supporter of young talent, Edward founded the Hallé Youth Orchestra in 2002 and regularly conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He has a close relationship with The Juilliard School of Music and with the Royal Academy of Music, which appointed him its inaugural Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Chair in 2014.

Born in Gloucester in 1974, Edward was educated at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. He went on to become Assistant Conductor of the Hallé and Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera. His many accolades include being named Royal Philharmonic Society Award Conductor of the Year (2008), an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera (2009), and an OBE for Services to Music in The Queen’s Birthday Honours (2012).

Edward Gardner’s position at the LPO is generously supported by Aud Jebsen.

© Photographer London

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography

Born in 1970, Wayne McGregor CBE is a multiaward-winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potentials, his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines and technological interventions. The startling and multi-dimensional works resulting from these interactions have ensured McGregor’s position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for over 30 years.

He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, encompassing creative collaborations in dance, film, music, visual art, fashion, technology and science; a touring company of dancers: Company Wayne McGregor; and learning and research programmes.

Wayne McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, and Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale. He is regularly commissioned by, and has works in the repertoires of, the most important dance companies around the world including Paris Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and Australian Ballet.

He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court, Donmar), opera (La Scala/Royal Opera, ENO), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them 1 ,2, 3, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots), and music videos (Radiohead, The Chemical

Brothers). McGregor choreographed the highly anticipated ABBA Voyage concert which premiered in London in May 2022.

McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

In 2011 Wayne McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance, and in 2021 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne.

© Pål Hansen

Ben Cullen Williams

sculpture design, film creation & AI development

Ben Cullen Williams is a London-based artist whose practice consists of sculptures, installations, photography and video. In his work, Williams explores humankind’s relationship to the world in a rapidly changing environment; he focuses on the intersection between space, technology and landscape. Having initially studied architecture prior to studying sculpture, his practice is underpinned by a longstanding investigation into how we live, and how those environments shape us.

His work has been shown internationally in a range of spaces, galleries and environments, as well as collaborating with a range of different disciplines and fields. He has collaborated with Wayne McGregor, Marina Abramović, Gaika, Polar Explorer Robert Swan, and Google Arts & Culture and MIT. His projects have won and been listed for a number of awards including a D&AD Yellow Pencil, a RIBA Award and an Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2021 he represented Antarctica at the London Design Biennale.

Ben Cullen Williams lectures internationally and has written for a number of publications. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Art. He is currently an associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts, London.

Company Wayne McGregor

original dance

Multi-award-winning choreographer and director Wayne McGregor CBE founded his own company in 1993 as a creative engine for his pioneering projects and his life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. Company Wayne McGregor remains the crucible of his creative energy, where his most experimental work is realised.

Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London. With over 30 works created by McGregor, the company has toured to more than 50 countries, visiting some of the world’s most prestigious theatres, as well as creating site-specific performances at the Venice Biennale Danza, Frieze London, Roundhouse, Barbican Curve and Secret Cinema, and performing at the Brits, New York and London Fashion Weeks, and the BBC Proms.

Company Wayne McGregor sits within Studio Wayne McGregor, the organisation that supports the breadth of McGregor’s artistic collaborations in dance, visual arts, film, theatre, opera, fashion and music video; a portfolio of international commissions; highly specialised creative learning programmes for individuals and communities; artist development initiatives; and collaborative research projects across the interface of the arts with science, technology and academic research.

Wayne McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, where his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. He is Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale, Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, and a member of the King’s College London Circle of Cultural Fellows.

Robert Murray tenor

Robert Murray has performed principal roles with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Hamburg State Opera; English, Welsh and Bergen national operas; Norwegian Opera; Beijing Music Festival; Venice Biennale; and the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals. In September 2022 he sang Klaus the Fool in Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the LPO under Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall. He also sang the role of Mark in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage under Gardner in September 2021, which was later released on the LPO Label, winning a Gramophone Award. Robert also appears regularly in concert with the London Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Philharmonia and Mahler Chamber orchestras; the Handel & Haydn Society; and the Boston Philharmonic and Seattle Symphony orchestras, with conductors such as Harry Christophers, Paul McCreesh and Sir Simon Rattle. Concert performances this season include the title role in La damnation de Faust with the RTVE Symphony Orchestra Madrid, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, and Tippett’s New Year with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins.

Recent highlights include debut appearances with the Teatro alla Scala Milan (Thomas Adès’s The Tempest), Theater an der Wien (Belshazzar) and Bavarian State Opera (Peter Grimes); role debuts as Florestan in Fidelio (Irish National Opera) and the title role in Mitridate (Garsington Opera); and return appearances with ENO (Gloriana) and The Royal Opera (Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground).

Robert Murray graduated from the University of Newcastle and the Royal College of Music, and was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House.

Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir)

Musical Director: Bart Van Reyn

The Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir) was founded in 1937 by the Belgian public broadcaster of the day. Today, the choir is renowned for vocal music in Flanders and Europe, and is counted among the top ensembles both at home and abroad. This is their first collaboration with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The young Belgian conductor Bart Van Reyn is Musical Director of the Radiokoor. A shared passion for Baroque and contemporary repertoire, the belief that the voice is the ultimate interpreter of our emotions, and the commitment to make our vocal heritage accessible to singers and audiences alike are what binds the ensemble together.

Based in Studio 1 in Flagey (Brussels), the 32 singers of the Vlaams Radiokoor are working on a musical project built on three major pillars. First and foremost, the Vocal Fabric productions – the laboratory of the Radiokoor. Vocal Fabric organises concerts that test the boundaries of vocal music and are challenging, quirky and non-conformist. With great hospitality and an intense experience as the golden thread, they bring together the people on stage and those in the hall: vocal harmony is proof that people are more magnificent together than alone.

In addition, the choir works regularly with renowned instrumental ensembles from Belgium and abroad, such as the Brussels Philharmonic, the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Il Gardellino, I SOLISTI, Les Siècles, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In this way, the Radiokoor has gradually built up its presence on various international stages.

Lastly, the Vlaams Radiokoor is and remains a living portal for repertoire, knowledge, experience and voices. It makes our vocal heritage accessible to singers and the audience, while also investing in the creation of new vocal works. The choir thus shares its programme, technique and expertise with music lovers, amateurs and professionals.

The Vlaams Radiokoor retains its unique status as a radio choir: a great many concert productions are recorded, and hence the choir has built up a unique collection of live recordings. The collection is constantly supplemented with a selection of studio recordings, thus preserving its vocal heritage for the future.

The Vlaams Radiokoor is an institution of the Flemish Community.

© Gerard Collet

Tania León

LPO Composer-in-Residence | born 1943

Raíces (Origins) (world premiere)

The title of this work is a Spanish word that means ‘roots’, or ‘origins’. I prefer ‘origins’, because it’s more general. It’s also a word I’ve used before as a title, in my Origines for brass and percussion, which I wrote in 2012. In the case of this new piece, the origins are partly mine and therefore very mixed, for, like many people in Cuba, where I come from, I have quite a lot in my heritage: Spanish, Cuban, Chinese and French. Like a jambalaya. That’s why I’m not threatened by any culture; in fact, I’m very curious, and I want to learn. Living now in the United States, there’s a lot I have absorbed, to the point that when I go back to Cuba they think I’m from Arizona!

Every time I read a book by Gabriel García Márquez it’s like going back home to my childhood. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood and there was always a tapestry of sound in the background; somebody always had a radio on. Also, in Cuba, and indeed all over Latin America, we have a very strong dance element in our culture, and that’s how I grew up: dancing – Cuban, Spanish, even Scottish dancing. You’ll certainly hear dancing in this piece. And then there’s a touch of Latin America in the orchestra, including an instrument that I’m using for the first time, which is a chime made from animal nails. It’s found in various areas of Peru and Colombia.

The piece is in three main sections, but first of all there’s a short introduction, which I’ve marked ‘Calm’. It’s scored for the strings, playing harmonics, and it has an internal character. It’s a state I try to find in myself: contemplative. Even when the music is much more active, this contemplation is going on behind the scenes. Towards the end of the second section it comes right forward.

When the introduction has come to a stop there’s a pause and then the big first section comes in, with the marking ‘Jovial’. It’s a dance-inspired movement that explodes. This is where I really went ethnic, especially in

the transition at the end, where the piano and percussion continue but in the strings, especially the basses, you immediately recognise a Cuban style of syncopation. And then it totally disappears and goes into the second section.

This is really for the woodwinds, under the heading ‘Enchanted’ It’s like a forest. And then the brass come in, like the wind, that pushes things. I didn’t use the trumpets so much here, because I was reserving them for the finale. It’s like a walk through a forest. It always impressed me tremendously, something I heard as a child, that Beethoven used to walk through the forest to gain inspiration. Whenever I have the opportunity, I do that. Also, I owed a lot to Hans Werner Henze, and when we first met, and were discussing how we composed, we did so as we walked through a forest. He invited me to come and see him in Castel Gandolfo. He sent me a fax, and I thought it was a prank until I telephoned him. We spoke in Spanish, and he asked me to be on the jury at his Munich Biennale in 1992. From then on he became like a father to me in Europe.

The last part of the piece is very upbeat. It’s a conversation between Latin American influences and jazz influences. It’s a way of questioning everything that I have become. And it’s a way of leaving the stage.

Tania León

From a conversation with Paul Griffiths, February 2024

Raíces was co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Brugge. Following tonight’s world premiere, the LPO and Edward Gardner will give the work’s second performance, at the Concertgebouw Brugge on 9 March.

Tania León LPO Composer-in-Residence

In September 2023 Tania León became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence for two seasons. As well as presenting exciting new commissions and performances of her earlier works, during her time with us Tania will continue her lifelong advocacy for the music of living composers as mentor to our LPO Young Composers.

In December 2022 Tania León received a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor, awarded annually to figures in the performing arts for their contributions to American culture. In addition, she won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Stride (given its UK premiere by the LPO on 31 March 2023), and she was recently announced as winner of the 2023 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition and received SGAE’s XIX Premio de la Música Iberoamericana Tomás Luis de Victoria 2023.

Having studied piano in her native Cuba since the age of four and earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music (plus a certification in accounting), Tania left Cuba for the United States in 1967. She settled in New York City, where she received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees again, this time from New York University, and in 1969 staked her place in New York’s cultural scene as a founding member and music director of Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem. Five years later she instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert series. She was New Music Advisor at the New York Philharmonic from 1993–97, and from 1994–2001 she served as Latin American music advisor for the American Composers Orchestra. She is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, dedicated to empowering living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.

On 25 October 2023 the LPO and Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis gave the UK premiere of Tania León’s orchestral work Horizons at the Royal Festival Hall. Last month her work Ácana featured in a pre-concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall by an ensemble of LPO members, Foyle Future Firsts and students from the Royal Academy of Music, under Edward Gardner.

Tania León conducts LPO Debut Sounds 2024: Sound in Motion

Thursday 27 June 2024 | 8pm

Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall

Five world premieres by members of the LPO’s Young Composers programme, performed by an ensemble of LPO musicians and Foyle Future Firsts, with live choreography by Trinity Laban postgraduates. The performance will be artistically directed and conducted by Composer-inResidence and Composer Mentor Tania León.

Tickets will go on sale later in the spring: find out more at lpo.org.uk/youngcomposers

The LPO Young Composers programme 2023/24 is being delivered in collaboration with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. The programme is generously supported by Allianz Musical Insurance, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Vaughan Williams Foundation and The Marchus Trust.

© Gail Hadani

Programme notes

Maurice Ravel

1875–1937

La valse

1919/20

Ravel composed La valse in 1919 and 1920 to be danced by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company, and was greatly disheartened by the impresario’s rejection of it as unsuitable for the stage. It was first performed as a concert piece, and was never staged as a ballet in Ravel’s lifetime. But when he published it, he retained its subtitle of ‘choreographic poem’; and he printed as an introduction to the score his scenario for the opening minutes of the work: ‘Swirling clouds allow glimpses, through occasional rifts, of waltzing couples. The clouds gradually disperse, revealing a whirling mass of people in an immense ballroom. The stage lightens progressively ... An Imperial Court, around 1855.’

It is clear from this that Ravel’s intention was to reproduce, in his own musical language and in brilliant orchestral colours, the Viennese waltzes of the Strauss family, which he greatly admired. The work even has the formal outline of a Strauss waltz, with an introduction, a series of dances, and a coda. But inevitably, looking back at the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian empire from just after the end of a ruinous European war, the piece could hardly be a simple celebration. Ravel himself said to a friend that he had intended it ‘as a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic and fateful whirl’ (un tournoiement fantastique et fatal).

And there is indeed something decidedly dark, and ultimately even savage, in La valse. It manifests itself in the mysterious introduction, with its shadowy string tremolos and sinister bassoons, and its uneasy superimposition of 2/2 time on the basic mouvement de Valse viennoise; it is heightened by the nightmarish

inexorability of the main sequence of waltzes; and it reaches a culmination in the ‘over-the-top’ mechanistic frenzy of the closing pages.

Programme note © Anthony Burton

Interval – 20 minutes

An announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.

Programme

Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowski’s Harnasie )

Edward Gardner conductor

Generously supported by Aud Jebsen

Wayne McGregor direction and choreography

Ben Cullen Williams sculpture design, film creation & AI development

Company

Wayne McGregor original dance (Rebecca Bassett-Graham, Jordan James Bridge & Jasiah Marshall)

Karol Szymanowski music

Robert Murray tenor

Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Sculpture

Technical design Rob Ashworth

Fabrication Fabrication Facility

Structural engineer CCS-Consulting Motor design Wahlberg Motion Design

Film

Additional AI generation

Creative Technologist: Bryce Cronkite-Ratcliff

Drone footage

Camera Operator: Oliver Wheeldon

Live action dance

DOP: Ricky Patel Focus Puller: Anıl Duru Gaffer: Arthur Miller

CGI and MOCAP

Animator: Yibing He

Szymanowski: Harnasie

Karol Szymanowski: Harnasie, Ballet-pantomime Op. 55 (1923/1931)

Libretto by Jerzy Rytard & Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz

© by Max Eschig (Universal Music Publishing Group, Classics & Screen)

By arrangement with G. Ricordi & Co. (London) Ltd.

Surtitles created and operated by Andrew Kingsmill

English translation of Harnasie: Jagna Wright, courtesy Chandos Records*

World premiere

26 February 2024: Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner (conductor), NOSPR, Katowice, Poland

Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams’s A Body for Harnasie is an original co-production of NOSPR The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (initiator), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute), conceived and produced by Studio Wayne McGregor, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. Project partner: Concertgebouw Brugge.

*Despite every effort, we have proved unable to reach the estate of the translator, and should be grateful to hear from any individuals able to put us in contact with them so we may agree reasonable terms for the right to reproduce their text.

Wayne McGregor on A Body for Harnasie

‘This scenario is a very general outline, within which the director and ballet-master may change many details and enrich the content with new episodes and ideas. In repudiating a too rigorous use of folk customs and dances, the author wishes to avoid confining the director’s imagination in this respect, for he knows well that neither the composer nor the author of the scenario can foresee all the possibilities that may arise in the imagination of a talented director. This is especially true of such a ballet as Harnasie, which does not claim any preconceived ideas but is an unassuming picture drawn from the life of country-folk; facts do not play an essential role in it and should rather be adjusted to the possibilities offered by the stage than vice versa: the staging should not be subordinated to facts rigorously imposed by the author.’

– Karol Szymanowski

Szymanowski was a composer and an artist who understood and valued transformations. Indeed, instead of writing a libretto for Harnasie that was fixed in aspic, Szymanowski wanted new interpretations of the work to be in constant evolution, morphed and moulded in the times that they were newly conceived. Szymanowski knew for his art to live for future generations, one had to be open to new forms of expression and collaboration – forms not yet invented when his musical work originated. Liveness is a present tense form.

In approaching the choreographic potential for Harnasie we have explored several creative avenues which parse the score into atoms of physical experience, emotion and process. Explicitly, we are experimenting with the very fundamentals of dance: Body–Time–Space, to re-articulate them in a fresh re-combinatory form. Live dance, new photographic and film material of the Tatra mountains, and an emergent AI trained on hours of mountain footage, mixed with motion data from the newly created dances, innovative our visual language and develop unique movement themes which are assembled into original multi-narratives for the work. The music is played live –A Body For Harnasie responds in colour, light, motion, image, and fluid sculpture.

New forms of ‘dance’ are core to this work, but the process of making the live dance for film and motion capture is in some ways the most conventional. Every element of the work has originated from this analogue live dance – a trio for two males and a female mirroring, or at least referencing, the original cast of Szymanowski protagonists. The studio process is a combination of body-to-body transmission, teaching dance phrases, working with the dancers as architectural entities to think with and a series of improvisatory tasks where the dancers have the freedom to generate language within outlined constraints. This dance language is then edited, refined, and composed in an order that corresponds with specific sections of the score. This danced trio is filmed, multi-cam and in progressive close-ups, and the motion data is also captured. During this process dancers are also filmed performing their parts individually, and instructed with new dance vocabulary in the moment. By the end of filming, we have a bank of movement material, a fully composed trio, and a series of physical fragments – all the movement data for each of these choreographic objects is motion captured.

When training the AI on the live dance fragments and coherent phrases, new original dance moves and kinetic phrases are produced – the AI and the human in the mutual mix of creative action. Motion data from the dance is grafted onto the still drone images of the mountains, prompting a kind of weird motion. The drone footage of the mountains is injected into the dance and perturbs its flow to make unusual patterns, and the ‘values’ of the motion capture data are transplanted onto spatial images to create unexpected variations. The ‘danced vocabulary’ is also re-formed as a result and provides cues for the next phrase of movement to be produced.

The traditional conventions of what is dance and what is space collapses as a new continuum of time emerges. Dance, landscape and AI blend seamlessly –a choreographic blur. The final phase of the project takes the various kinetic language streams and works them into (and in between) the score – this compositional task is directed by analysis of the score and informs the unconventional playback of themes and images onto the kinetic sculpture. Testing and

articulating the motion of the kinetic sculpture adds the final motion element to the work to realise A Body for Harnasie

There is no doubt that Harnasie was influenced in part by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Harnasie shares many similarities to that iconic score, not least in the propulsive rhythms, the folkloric attitudes and the incredible orchestral range. It was also written and conceived as a ballet score – dance-ready and in the spirit of the great Diaghilev collaborations meant to be a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. A Body For Harnasie attempts to re-frame this epic musical work for our times, to create a choreographic instrument that invites a new kind of sculptural dance between artist and orchestra, motion and AI – all in constant transformation. We hope Szymanowski would have been thrilled and somewhat surprised. Diaghilev too!

Wayne McGregor, 2024

Images courtesy Studio Wayne McGregor and Ben Cullen Williams

Karol Szymanowski

1882–1937

Harnasie

1923–31 Synopsis

The ballet's story is very simple: preparing for her wedding, not very happy in love, a highland girl falls in love with a Harnaś – a highland robber, who reciprocates her love. However, she decides to do her duty and go on with the marriage, having given her word. The colourful, ritual wedding celebration is interrupted by the sudden raid of a group of highland robbers who abduct the bride.

Tableau I: Na hali (In the Mountain Pasture)

1. Redyk (Wiosenne wyjście stąd na halę) (Spring departure for the mountain pastures)

2. Zaloty (Courtship)

3. Marsz zbójnicki (Robbers’ March)

4. Harnaś i dziewczyna (Harnaś and the Girl)

5. Taniec zbójnicki. Finał (Robbers’ Dance. Finale)

Tableau II: W karczmie (In the Inn)

6a. Wesele (Wedding)

6b. Cepiny (Capping the Bride)

6c. Pieśń siuhajów (Song of the Siuhaje)

7. Taniec góralski (Góral Dance)

8. Napad harnasiów. Taniec. Porwanie młodej (Raid of the Harnasie. Dance. Abduction of the Bride)

9. Epilogue

The First World War devastated much of Europe, tearing apart its social and political fabric. In the case of Poland, the changes were particularly dramatic because it regained its independence in 1918 after over a century of occupation and subjugation by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The country’s borders were redrawn, and it had to reconcile three different currencies and education systems and many other fundamental aspects of its divided self. Small wonder, then, that the early years of the Polish nation state were turbulent (three uprisings in Silesia, war with the new Soviet Union to the east). While dealing with the very real problems of daily existence, Polish creative artists also tried to work out their own role in shaping the new Poland.

It fell largely to Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) to articulate what Polish music might be after 1918. Certainly, he had his critics, who were reactionary in their tastes. Szymanowski was no revolutionary – indeed, his artistic interests too were on the conservative side, but he had views on how Poland might regain a place in the wider discourse of European music by asserting its musical independence.

In the early 1920s, Szymanowski wrote a number of articles in which he distanced himself, and Poland, from the Austro-German cultural hegemony to which he had subscribed as a young composer. Instead, he held up Chopin as a model of musical independence, partly, but by no means wholly, because of the ethnicity of

his predecessor’s output. Without totally abandoning certain aspects of the music of his first period, and still maintaining the non-Germanic sensuality which had characterised his music since 1911 (melding Arabic and Greek culture with musical impulses from France), Szymanowski began to explore his native heritage more assiduously.

In 1921 he composed a short cycle of songs, Słopiewnie (‘Wordsongs’), which introduced new scalic elements and showed an affinity with folk-related works by Stravinsky, such as Les Noces (premiered in 1923). In 1925, Szymanowski responded to one of Chopin’s favourite genres with his Twenty Mazurkas for piano. This was followed in 1927 by the Second String Quartet, which was imbued with folk idioms from the Polish Tatra mountains.

Harnasie, the most colourful work from this final period of Szymanowski’s output, takes its name from the legendary robbers of the Tatra mountains. He worked on it for eight years (1923–31) and its two main tableaux were given concert performances in Poland in 1929 and 1931 respectively, while the stage premiere did not take place until 1935, in Prague. During its composition, Szymanowski immersed himself in the life and culture of the Podhale region of the Tatra mountains. He lived in the villa ‘Atma’, in the main town of the region, Zakopane, and was invigorated by the sheer exuberance of the local góral (highlander) musical tradition. As a result, Harnasie has a rawness and energy that go beyond those of the other folkrelated works of his third period.

Many people were involved in encouraging Szymanowski to compose a góral ‘frolic’ in music. These initially included the folk fiddler Bartek Obrochta (1850–1926) and a cousin of Szymanowski, and the writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980; he had been involved in the libretto for the opera Król Roger), but the two most closely involved in the early stages were the poet Jerzy Rytard (1899–1970) and his wife, Helena Roj (1899–1955; Szymanowski was best man at their folk-infused wedding in 1923). Roj, who came from near Zakopane, sang highlander songs for Szymanowski and Rytard drafted the first scenario, since lost. Although the composer did proffer his ideas on the details of the final scenario, he did not wish to confine the imagination of future directors and left Harnasie open to new interpretations, as in tonight’s performance.

Programme note © Adrian Thomas

Recommended recordings of tonight’s works

by Laurie Watt

Ravel: La valse

Les Siècles | François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi)

Szymanowski: Harnasie (original ballet)

BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Edward Gardner (Chandos)

We’d love to hear from you

We hope you enjoyed tonight’s concert. Could you spare a few moments 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!

Karol Szymanowski, 1936, France

Photo by Boris Lipnitzki, courtesy of NOSPR, Katowice

Adam Mickiewicz Institute is a national cultural institution, whose goal is to build a lasting interest in Polish culture around the world. The institute works with foreign partners and initiates international cultural dialogue in line with the goals and aims of Polish foreign policy. The institute has put on cultural projects in 70 countries on 6 continents, including Great Britain, France, Israel, Germany, Turkey, USA, Canada, Australia, Morocco, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, as well as in China, Japan and Korea. The highest quality of the Institute’s projects is confirmed by awards at international exhibitions and festivals. In 2023, the Polish Pavilion “Poetics of Necessity” organised by AMI received a medal at the London Design Biennale.

The institute’s flagship brand CULTURE.PL – an up to date cultural news service, discussing the most interesting events and phenomena related to Polish culture – offers articles and news in three languages: Polish, English, and Ukrainian.

AMI is funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Sound Futures donors

We are grateful to the following donors for their generous contributions to our Sound Futures campaign. Thanks to their support, we successfully raised £1 million by 30 April 2015 which has now been matched pound for pound by Arts Council England through a Catalyst Endowment grant. This has enabled us to create a £2 million endowment fund supporting special artistic projects, creative programming and education work with key venue partners including our Southbank Centre home. Supporters listed below donated £500 or over. For a full list of those who have given to this campaign please visit lpo.org.uk/soundfutures

Masur Circle

Arts Council England

Dunard Fund

Victoria Robey CBE

Emmanuel & Barrie Roman

The Underwood Trust

Welser-Möst Circle

William & Alex de Winton

John Ireland Charitable Trust

The Tsukanov Family Foundation

Neil Westreich

Tennstedt Circle

Valentina & Dmitry Aksenov

Richard Buxton

The Candide Trust

Michael & Elena Kroupeev

Kirby Laing Foundation

Mr & Mrs Makharinsky

Alexey & Anastasia Reznikovich

Sir Simon Robey

Bianca & Stuart Roden

Simon & Vero Turner

The late Mr K Twyman

Solti Patrons

Ageas

John & Manon Antoniazzi

Gabor Beyer, through BTO Management Consulting AG

Jon Claydon

Mrs Mina Goodman & Miss Suzanne

Goodman

Roddy & April Gow

The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris

Charitable Trust

Mr James R.D. Korner

Christoph Ladanyi & Dr Sophia Ladanyi-Czernin

Robert Markwick & Kasia Robinski

The Maurice Marks Charitable Trust

Mr Paris Natar

The Rothschild Foundation

Tom & Phillis Sharpe

The Viney Family

Haitink Patrons

Mark & Elizabeth Adams

Dr Christopher Aldren

Mrs Pauline Baumgartner

Lady Jane Berrill

Mr Frederick Brittenden

David & Yi Yao Buckley

Mr Clive Butler

Gill & Garf Collins

Mr John H Cook

Mr Alistair Corbett

Bruno De Kegel

Georgy Djaparidze

David Ellen

Christopher Fraser OBE

David & Victoria Graham Fuller

Goldman Sachs International

Mr Gavin Graham

Moya Greene

Mrs Dorothy Hambleton

Tony & Susie Hayes

Malcolm Herring

Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle

Mrs Philip Kan

Rehmet Kassim-Lakha de Morixe

Rose & Dudley Leigh

Lady Roslyn Marion Lyons

Miss Jeanette Martin

Duncan Matthews KC

Diana & Allan Morgenthau

Charitable Trust

Dr Karen Morton

Mr Roger Phillimore

Ruth Rattenbury

The Reed Foundation

The Rind Foundation

Sir Bernard Rix

David Ross & Line Forestier (Canada)

Carolina & Martin Schwab

Dr Brian Smith

Lady Valerie Solti

Mr & Mrs G Stein

Dr Peter Stephenson

Miss Anne Stoddart

TFS Loans Limited

Marina Vaizey

Jenny Watson

Guy & Utti Whittaker

Pritchard Donors

Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle

Mrs Arlene Beare

Mr Patrick & Mrs Joan Benner

Mr Conrad Blakey

Dr Anthony Buckland

Paul Collins

Alastair Crawford

Mr Derek B. Gray

Mr Roger Greenwood

The HA.SH Foundation

Darren & Jennifer Holmes

Honeymead Arts Trust

Mr Geoffrey Kirkham

Drs Frank & Gek Lim

Peter Mace

Mr & Mrs David Malpas

Dr David McGibney

Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner

Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill

Mr Christopher Querée

The Rosalyn & Nicholas Springer

Charitable Trust

Timothy Walker CBE AM

Christopher Williams

Peter Wilson Smith

Mr Anthony Yolland

and all other donors who wish to remain anonymous

London Philharmonic Orchestra •

Thank you

We are extremely grateful to all donors who have given generously to the LPO over the past year. Your generosity helps maintain the breadth and depth of the LPO’s activities, as well as supporting the Orchestra both on and off the concert platform.

Artistic Director’s Circle

The American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Anonymous donors

Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet

Aud Jebsen

In memory of Mrs Rita Reay

Sir Simon & Lady Robey CBE

Orchestra Circle

William & Alex de Winton

Edward Gardner & Sara Övinge

Patricia Haitink

Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle

Mr & Mrs Philip Kan

Neil Westreich

Principal Associates

An anonymous donor

Richard Buxton

Gill & Garf Collins

In memory of Brenda Lyndoe

Casbon

In memory of Ann Marguerite Collins

Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave

George Ramishvili

The Tsukanov Family

Mr Florian Wunderlich

Associates

Mrs Irina Andreeva

In memory of Len & Edna Beech

Steven M. Berzin

Sir Nigel Boardman & Prof. Lynda Gratton

The Candide Trust

John & Sam Dawson

HSH Dr Donatus, Prince of Hohenzollern

Stuart & Bianca Roden

In memory of Hazel Amy Smith

Gold Patrons

David & Yi Buckley

In memory of Allner Mavis Channing

Sonja Drexler

Peter & Fiona Espenhahn

Mr B C Fairhall

Hamish & Sophie Forsyth

Virginia Gabbertas MBE

Jenny & Duncan Goldie-Scot

Mr Roger Greenwood

Malcolm Herring

Julian & Gill Simmonds

Eric Tomsett

The Viney Family

Guy & Utti Whittaker

Silver Patrons

Dame Colette Bowe

David Burke & Valerie Graham

Clive & Helena Butler

Cameron & Kathryn Doley

Ulrike & Benno Engelmann

Dmitry & Ekaterina Gursky

The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris

Charitable Trust

John & Angela Kessler

Mrs Elena & Mr Oleg Kolobova

Mrs Elizabeth Meshkvicheva

Mikhail Noskov & Vasilina

Bindley

Tom & Phillis Sharpe

Mr Joe Topley & Ms Tracey Countryman

Andrew & Rosemary Tusa

Jenny Watson CBE

Laurence Watt

Bronze Patrons

Anonymous donors

Chris Aldren

Michael Allen

Mrs A Beare

Mr Anthony Blaiklock

Lorna & Christopher Bown

Mr Bernard Bradbury

Simon Burke & Rupert King

Desmond & Ruth Cecil

Mr John H Cook

Deborah Dolce

Ms Elena Dubinets

David Ellen

Cristina & Malcolm Fallen

Christopher Fraser OBE

Mr Daniel Goldstein

David & Jane Gosman

Mr Gavin Graham

Lord & Lady Hall

Mrs Dorothy Hambleton

Iain & Alicia Hasnip

Eugene & Allison Hayes

J Douglas Home

Molly Jackson

Mrs Farrah Jamal

Mr & Mrs Jan

Mr & Mrs Ralph Kanza

Mr Peter King

Jamie & Julia Korner

Rose & Dudley Leigh

Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE

JP RAF

Drs Frank & Gek Lim

Mr & Mrs Makharinsky

Mr Gordon McNair

Andrew T Mills

Denis & Yulia Nagy

Andrew Neill

Jamie Njoku-Goodwin

Peter & Lucy Noble

Oliver & Josie Ogg

Mr Stephen Olton

Simon & Lucy Owen-Johnstone

Andrew & Cindy Peck

Mr Roger Phillimore

Mr Michael Posen

Saskia Roberts

John Romeo

Priscylla Shaw

Mr & Mrs John C Tucker

Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood

Karina Varivoda

Grenville & Krysia Williams

Joanna Williams

Principal Supporters

Anonymous donors

Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle

Mr John D Barnard

Roger & Clare Barron

Dr Anthony Buckland

Dr Simona Cicero & Mr Mario Altieri

Mr Alistair Corbett

Guy Davies

David Devons

Igor & Lyuba Galkin

Prof. Erol & Mrs Deniz Gelenbe

In memory of Enid Gofton

Alexander Greaves

Prof. Emeritus John Gruzelier

Michael & Christine Henry

Mrs Maureen Hooft-Graafland

Per Jonsson

Mr Ian Kapur

Ms Elena Lojevsky

Dr Peter Mace

Pippa Mistry-Norman

Miss Rebecca Murray

Mrs Terry Neale

John Nickson & Simon Rew

Mr James Pickford

Filippo Poli

Mr Robert Ross

Martin & Cheryl Southgate

Mr & Mrs G Stein

Mr Rodney Whittaker

Christopher Williams

Supporters

Anonymous donors

Mr Francesco Andronio

Julian & Annette Armstrong

Mr Philip Bathard-Smith

Emily Benn

Mr Julien Chilcott-Monk

Alison Clarke & Leo Pilkington

Mr Peter Coe

Mr Joshua Coger

Miss Tessa Cowie

Caroline Cox-Johnson

Mr Simon Edelsten

Will Gold

Mr Stephen Goldring

Mr & Mrs Graham & Jean Pugh

In memory of Derek Gray

Mr Geordie Greig

Mr Peter Imhof

The Jackman Family

Mr David MacFarlane

Paul & Suzanne McKeown

Nick Merrifield

Simon & Fiona Mortimore

Dame Jane Newell DBE

Mr David Peters

Nicky Small

Mr Brian Smith

Mr Michael Timinis

Mr & Mrs Anthony Trahar

Tony & Hilary Vines

Dr June Wakefield

Mr John Weekes

Mr Roger Woodhouse

Mr C D Yates

Hon. Benefactor

Elliott Bernerd

Hon. Life Members

Alfonso Aijón

Kenneth Goode

Carol Colburn Grigor CBE

Pehr G Gyllenhammar

Robert Hill

Keith Millar

Victoria Robey CBE

Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE

Timothy Walker CBE AM

Laurence Watt

London

Thank you

Thomas Beecham Group Members

David & Yi Buckley

Gill & Garf Collins

William & Alex de Winton

Sonja Drexler

Mr B C Fairhall

The Friends of the LPO

Roger Greenwood

Dr Barry Grimaldi

Mr & Mrs Philip Kan

John & Angela Kessler

Sir Simon Robey

Victoria Robey CBE

Bianca & Stuart Roden

Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp

Julian & Gill Simmonds

Eric Tomsett

Neil Westreich

Guy & Utti Whittaker

Corporate Donor

Barclays

LPO Corporate Circle

Principal

Bloomberg

Carter-Ruck Solicitors

French Chamber of Commerce

Ryze Power

Tutti

German-British Chamber of Industry & Commerce

Lazard

Natixis Corporate Investment Banking

Walpole

Preferred Partners

Jeroboams

Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd

Neal’s Yard

OneWelbeck

Sipsmith

Steinway

In-kind Sponsor

Google Inc

Trusts and Foundations

ABO Trust

The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust

BlueSpark Foundation

The Boltini Trust

Borrows Charitable Trust

Cockayne – Grants for the Arts

The London Community Foundation

Dunard Fund

Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

Foyle Foundation

Garrick Charitable Trust

The Golsoncott Foundation

Idlewild Trust

Institute Adam Mickiewicz

John Coates Charitable Trust

John Horniman’s Children’s Trust

John Thaw Foundation

Kirby Laing Foundation

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

The Lennox Hannay Charitable Trust

Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust

Lucille Graham Trust

The Marchus Trust

PRS Foundation

The R K Charitable Trust

The Radcliffe Trust

Rivers Foundation

Rothschild Foundation

Scops Arts Trust

TIOC Foundation

The Thriplow Charitable Trust

Vaughan Williams Foundation

The Victoria Wood Foundation

The Viney Family

and all others who wish to remain anonymous.

Board of the American Friends of the LPO

We are grateful to the Board of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who assist with fundraising for our activities in the United States of America:

Simon Freakley Chairman

Kara Boyle

Jon Carter

Jay Goffman

Alexandra Jupin

Natalie Pray MBE

Damien Vanderwilt

Marc Wassermann

Elizabeth Winter

Catherine Høgel Hon. Director

Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP

LPO International Board of Governors

Natasha Tsukanova Co-Chair

Martin Höhmann Co-Chair

Mrs Irina Andreeva

Steven M. Berzin

Shashank Bhagat

HSH Dr Donatus, Prince of Hohenzollern

Aline Foriel-Destezet

Irina Gofman

Olivia Ma

George Ramishvili

Sophie Schÿler-Thierry

Florian Wunderlich

London Philharmonic Orchestra Administration

Board of Directors

Dr Catherine C. Høgel Chair

Nigel Boardman Vice-Chair

Martin Höhmann* President

Mark Vines* Vice-President

Emily Benn

Kate Birchall*

David Burke

Michelle Crowe Hernandez

Deborah Dolce

Elena Dubinets

Tanya Joseph

Hugh Kluger*

Katherine Leek*

Minn Majoe*

Tania Mazzetti*

Jamie Njoku-Goodwin

Neil Westreich

Simon Freakley (Ex officio –Chairman of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra)

*Player-Director

Advisory Council

Roger Barron Chairman

Christopher Aldren

Richard Brass

Helen Brocklebank

YolanDa Brown OBE

David Buckley

Simon Burke

Simon Callow CBE

Desmond Cecil CMG

Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG

Andrew Davenport

Guillaume Descottes

Cameron Doley

Lena Fankhauser

Christopher Fraser OBE

Jenny Goldie-Scot

Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS

Marianna Hay MBE

Nicholas Hely-Hutchinson DL

Amanda Hill

Dr Catherine C. Høgel

Martin Höhmann

Rehmet Kassim-Lakha

Jamie Korner

Geoff Mann

Andrew Neill

Nadya Powell

Sir Bernard Rix

Victoria Robey CBE

Baroness Shackleton

Thomas Sharpe KC

Julian Simmonds

Barry Smith

Martin Southgate

Chris Viney

Laurence Watt

Elizabeth Winter

General Administration

Elena Dubinets

Artistic Director

David Burke Chief Executive

Chantelle Vircavs

PA to the Executive and Employee Relations Manager

Concert Management

Roanna Gibson

Concerts and Planning Director

Graham Wood

Concerts and Recordings Manager

Maddy Clarke

Tours Manager

Madeleine Ridout

Glyndebourne and Projects Manager

Alison Jones

Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator

Robert Winup

Concerts and Tours Assistant

Matthew Freeman

Recordings Consultant

Andrew Chenery

Orchestra Personnel Manager

Sarah Thomas

Martin Sargeson Librarians

Laura Kitson

Stage and Operations Manager

Stephen O’Flaherty

Deputy Operations Manager

Benjamin Wakley

Assistant Stage Manager

Felix Lo

Orchestra and Auditions Manager

Finance

Frances Slack

Finance Director

Dayse Guilherme Finance Manager

Jean-Paul Ramotar

Finance and IT Officer

Education and Community

Talia Lash

Education and Community Director

Lowri Davies

Eleanor Jones

Education and Community Project Managers

Hannah Smith

Education and Community Co-ordinator

Claudia Clarkson Regional Partnerships Manager

Development

Laura Willis

Development Director

Rosie Morden

Individual Giving Manager

Siân Jenkins

Corporate Relations Manager

Anna Quillin

Trusts and Foundations Manager

Katurah Morrish

Development Events Manager

Eleanor Conroy

Al Levin

Development Co-ordinators

Nick Jackman

Campaigns and Projects Director

Kirstin Peltonen Development Associate

Marketing

Kath Trout

Marketing and Communications Director

Sophie Harvey Marketing Manager

Rachel Williams

Publications Manager

Gavin Miller

Sales and Ticketing Manager

Ruth Haines

Press and PR Manager

Hayley Kim

Residencies and Projects Marketing Manager

Greg Felton

Digital Creative

Alicia Hartley

Digital and Marketing Co-ordinator

Isobel Jones

Marketing Assistant

Archives

Philip Stuart Discographer

Gillian Pole Recordings Archive

Professional Services

Charles Russell Speechlys Solicitors

Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors

Dr Barry Grimaldi Honorary Doctor

Mr Chris Aldren Honorary ENT Surgeon

Mr Simon Owen-Johnstone

Hon. Orthopaedic Surgeon

London Philharmonic Orchestra

89 Albert Embankment

London SE1 7TP

Tel: 020 7840 4200

Box Office: 020 7840 4242

Email: admin@lpo.org.uk lpo.org.uk

The Music in You design & 2023/24 season identity

JMG Studio

Printer John Good Ltd