PROGRAMME
Wednesday 7th May 2008,7.30pm - Shrewsbury Music Hall, Shrewsbury
BRITTEN SINFONIA
Jacqueline Shave (director/violin)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
Vivaldi -- Oboe Concerto in C RV447
Piazzolla -- Spring ‘Primavera Portena’ and Oblivion
Osvaldo Golijov -- Last Round
Purcell arr. Britten -- Chacony
Stravinsky -- Concerto in D for String Orchestra
J S Bach -- Concerto in D minor for Oboe, Violin
J S Bach -- String Orchestra BWV 1060
In association with the Shrewsbury Music Hall
BRITTEN SINFONIA
Violin 1: Jacqueline Shave, Gillon Cameron, Magnus Johnston, Julia McCarthy
Violin 2: Katherine Shave, Marcus Broome, Judith Kelly
Viola: Clare Finnimore, Chian Lim
Cello: Caroline Deamley, Ben Chappell
Double Bass: Stephen Williams
Oboe: Nicholas Daniel
Harpsichord: Terence Charlston
PROGRAMME NOTES
Although Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) composed over 500 concertos over the course of his career, it was not until long after his death that he became a well-known musical figure. He published just a fraction of his works during his lifetime, most of which went largely unnoticed by musicians outside his own circle. Amazingly, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century, almost 200 years after his death, that the public interest in Vivaldi was revived. Today, he is widely celebrated for his transformation of the concerto genre, where his use of bold harmonic contrasts, new melodic ideas and innovative formal digressions have made him a popular figure both in academic circles and with the wider public. It is unclear in which year Vivaldi wrote his Oboe Concerto in C major, although it seems most likely to date from his early years at the Ospedale della Pieto, where he worked as master of the violin from 1703-1740.
In the same year as his own appointment, the Ospedale appointed their first oboe teacher, and Vivaldi was to work closely with him and his successors. The Concerto in C major is a bold and technically demanding work, opening with a series of flourishes interspersed with silence, that herald the start of a dramatic and exciting concerto, one of his most popular works for the oboe to this day. While most people might associate The Four Seasons with Vivaldi, in fact he is not the only composer to have written a work based upon the world’s seasonal change. During the years 1964-70 Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) wrote a set of four distinct works that together would become his own incarnation of Vivaldi’s celebrated masterpiece: Cuatro estaciones portenas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’).
Like Vivaldi, Piazzolla sets a virtuosic violin against an intricate orchestral backdrop, but while elements of the Baroque style are still audible in Piaz-zola’s modern musical language, these influences are entangled with the luscious harmonies, striking rhythms and jazz-like sounds of the tango from his Latin American homeland. What’s more, the Buenos Aires climate is mild, without the drastic seasonal fluctuations of Venice, hence the four movements of Piazzolla’s suite focus more keenly on the changing emotions of its people than the weather per se. Spring, however, is full of excitement and the promise of things to come, propelling the music onwards with a rhythmic electricity and vigour unique to Piazzolla. By contrast, his haunting work Oblivion takes the listener on a journey into a hushed, melancholic sound-scape, where long musical lines twist and turn against the gentle ebb and flow of the musical backdrop. The piece was originally written for one of Piazzolla’s many film soundtracks and has become one of his most famous and oft-performed works.
In 1992, at the peak of his creativity, Piazzolla suffered a stroke and died, leaving the musical scene of Buenos Aires distinctly fractured. Immediately on hearing the news Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) put pen to paper and began a commemorative work in Piazzolla’s honour. He writes: “The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortazar, the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life). The piece is conceived as an idealized bandoneon (a small accordion-like instrument without keyboard that is at the heart of a tango ensemble). The first movement represents the act of a violent compression of the instrument and the second a final, seemingly endless opening sigh.
But Last Round is also a sublimated tango dance. Two quartets confront each other, separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bows fly in the air as inverted legs hi crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.”
Many composers, like Golijov, have written works in homage to their predecessors, but Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) often found just as much worth hi re-orchestrating and reinterpreting works by his forefathers in an effort bring new life to the music. In 1964, he made an arrangement of Henry Purcell’s Chacony for string orchestra. The chaconne is a Baroque exercise in harmonic transformation. Unlike the theme and variation principle, the chaconne places harmony, rather than a theme, as the subject for variation. While the genre began life as a wild, sensuous Mexican dance in triple metre, it has since lost its fervour and has become a sedate form used for expressing tragic emotion.
Purcell’s Chacony was written when the composer was only 19, perhaps as a piece of incidental theatre music from a collection that is now lost. Although scored here by Britten for string orchestra, the layout of its four parts on the original manuscript suggests that it was intended for a single violin, two violas and bass. The piece is built upon an eighttheme that is first presented hi the bass as the basis of the chordal accompaniment. Britten’s arrangement, made in 1964, keeps Purcell’s musical text intact but adds dynamic colouring and equalises the distribution of parts.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) also devoted much of his musical life to the study and reinvention of antiquated formal procedures, culminating in his works from the 1930s onwards, which are typically referred to as part of his Neoclassicist phase. For Stravinsky, this period was characterised by delicate, stripped-down forms and procedures, with the abandonment of the large orchestras that his previous ballets had demanded.
The Concerto in D for String Orchestra was written in 1946 and is at the centre of his neoclassical style. It was commissioned by Paul Sacher, conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland and is a true concerto
in every sense of the word. It both employs the traditional classical three-movement structure of fast-slow-fast and is an exercise in virtuosity. It is technically demanding for every member of the orchestra and is unparalleled in its virtuosity in all of the string orchestra repertoire. The work’s undercurrent is an exploration of the music’s tonal centre - D - whose major and minor polarities are explored in an almost bitonal manner. Alternating between high-spirited humour and lyrical nostalgia, elegant dances and hard-edged counterpoint, it shows Stravinsky at his most neoclassical without relinquishing the mechanical energy that characterises his unique style, hi its combination of raw-edged modernism and classical formal design, it is a true synthesis of old and new.
It is fair to say that there are few composers in the history of western music who have not taken inspiration from the music of their heritage or of their contemporaries. Even Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), widely regarded as one of the most important musical figures of all time, looked to other composers for inspiration and new ideas.
Bach’s most important influence in the realm of the concerto was, of course, Antonio Vivaldi, whose works were considered by many to be: ‘the very embodiment of the new Italianate concerto and of a new language of instrumental music for the whole of musical Europe’. Vivaldi’s models provided Bach with an indispensable prototype, which he was then able to fuse with more Germanic practices and mould the concerto in his own manner. Vivaldi’s principles of alternation and harmonic exploration were combined with the altogether more Austro-Germanic formal characteristics of rigour and regularity. Bach also expanded the central, slow movement of the concerto to hitherto un-witnessed proportions, doing away with the short, intermezzo-like interludes of Vivaldi and moving towards a longer, more elaborate structure more befitting of the newly-contemplative concerto design.
Bach’s absorption of Vivaldian principles is clearly audible his Concerto for Oboe, Violin and Strings in D minor. Here, Bach uses Vivaldi’s ritonello design to magnificent effect, creating an intricate dialogue between the two soloists and between the soloists and strings. Unlike Vivaldi, however, this dialogue takes precedence over the concerto’s virtuosity, which is dispensed with in favour of a more meaningful, intricate and contemplative musical language.
BRITTEN SINFONIA
One of the UK’s most celebrated and innovative groups, Britten Sinfonia features some of the country’s finest chamber musicians. The orchestra is widely praised for the quality of its performance and intelligent approach to concert programming which is centred around the development of its players. Uniquely it does not have a principal conductor or Artistic Director but chooses to work with a range of the finest international guest artists from across the musical spectrum as suited to each particular project.
Recent seasons have included projects with Thomas Ades, Angela Hewitt, Imogen Cooper, Nitin Sawhney, James MacMillan, lan Bostridge and Joanna MacGregor.
In 2007/08 guest artists include Pierre Laurent-Aimard, Masaaki Suzuki, Alina Ibragimova, Gil Goldstein and the Michael Clark Dance company.Britten Sinfonia performs in many of Europe’s finest concert halls and has residencies in Cambridge, Norwich, Birmingham and Krakow with a concert series at London’s Southbank Centre and a lunch-tune concert series at London’s Wigmore Hall.
The ensemble enjoys a blossoming international profile, a recent highlight being an acclaimed tour of South America, and is frequently heard on disc, BBC Radio 3 and commercial radio.
Last year Britten Sinfonia won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award in recognition for its work in 2006.
Nicholas Daniel
Nicholas Daniel’s long and distinguished career began when, at the age of 18, he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and went on to win further competitions in Europe. At his debut at the BBC Proms in 1992 the Sunday Times described him as one of the greatest exponents of the oboe in the world. Today one of the UK’s most distinguished soloists as well as an increasingly successful conductor, he has become an important ambassador for music and musicians in many different fields.
Nicholas has been heard on every continent, and has been a concerto soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, working under conductors such as Sir Roger Norrington, Oliver Knussen, Richard Hickox and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He is an important force in the creation and performance of new repertoire for oboe, and has premiered works by composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Henri Dutilleux, Thea Musgrave, Nigel Osborne, John Tavener and Sir Michael Tippett.
Since his debut at the Promenade Concerts, he has appeared in this series on several occasions including the world premiere of John Woolrich’s Oboe Concerto, which was commissioned by the BBC. In 2003 he played Thea Musgrave’s Helios, written especially for him, and made his conducting debut at the Proms in 2004 in the Chamber series with Britten Sinfonia.
Nicholas is a founding member of Britten Sinfonia and remains the ensemble’s Principal Oboe. An active chamber musician, Nicholas is a founder member of the Haffner Wind Ensemble and enjoys a long history of collaboration with the pianist Julius Drake and the Maggini and Lind-say string quartets.
As a conductor, Nicholas has worked with orchestras in the UK and abroad. He is also Artistic Director of the Leicester International Festival, and teaches in the UK and in Germany.
Jacqueline Shave
Although Jacqueline received her formal training at the Royal Academy of Music in London it was at the Britten-Pears School at Snape in Suffolk where she developed her love of chamber music and performance inspiration. Over the years, in beautiful surroundings, she worked closely with many great artists including the Beaux Arts Trio, Prague, La Salle and Vermeer Quartets, and led the orchestra under Rostropovich, Lutoslawski and Murray Perhia.
Since then Jacqueline has dedicated most of her time to chamber music, leading the Brindisi Quartet for fifteen years and the Schubert Ensemble from 1989-94. With these groups she performed the core repertoire and many new commissions worldwide as well as producing CDs and broadcasting frequently on BBC Radio 3.
Jacqueline has appeared as guest leader of the Fibonacci Sequence, Nash Ensemble, London Sinfonietta and was appointed leader of Britten Sinfonia in 2005.
She plays an Italian Dalla Costa violin dated 1752 and lives in Godalming with her husband and three sons.
Last Updated : 15/05/2008