Proms at ... City Halls, Glasgow
Saturday 5 September, 7.30pm–c9.00pm
George Walker
Lyric for Strings 6’
Luwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major 28’
Jay Capperauld
Circadian Refrains (172 Days Until Dawn) c8’
麻豆社 commission: world premiere
Richard Strauss
Metamorphosen 26’
Stephen Hough piano
麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Alpesh Chauhan conductor
Thomas Dausgaard, the advertised conductor, has had to withdraw from tonight's performance. The 麻豆社 Proms is grateful to Alpesh Chauhan for taking his place at short notice
This concert is broadcast live by 麻豆社 Radio 3 at 7.30pm and live-streamed on 麻豆社 iPlayer. You can listen to any of the 2020 Proms concerts on 麻豆社 Sounds or watch on 麻豆社 iPlayer until Monday 12 October.
Welcome to tonight’s Prom
The venue for tonight’s concert is the Grand Hall of Glasgow’s iconic City Halls. Designed by George Murray in 1840 (and therefore predating London's Royal Albert Hall), it is the home of the 麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which performs tonight under the baton of its Associate Conductor, Alpesh Chauhan.
Joining them is British pianist Stephen Hough, one of the first UK artists to be broadcast live during lockdown at Radio 3's lunchtime series at London's Wigmore Hall. He plays Beethoven’s youthful Second Piano Concerto, a work that, with its light scoring and deft touch, looks back to the composer's teacher Joseph Haydn.
George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, also written for smaller forces, bookend a programme curated for minimum space and maximum impact. These elegiac works were written in response to painful episodes in the lives of each composer: the death of Walker's grandmother and the destruction, through Allied bombing, of three great German opera houses.
Tonight is the first time the Grand Hall has played host to a Prom. To mark the occasion, local composer Jay Capperauld presents a new 麻豆社 commission, Circadian Refrains (172 Days Until Dawn), written as a response to the cyclical nature of lockdown.
Welcome to tonight’s Prom
The venue for tonight’s concert is the Grand Hall of Glasgow’s iconic City Halls. Designed by George Murray in 1840 (and therefore predating London's Royal Albert Hall), it is the home of the 麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which performs tonight under the baton of its Associate Conductor, Alpesh Chauhan.
Joining them is British pianist Stephen Hough, one of the first UK artists to be broadcast live during lockdown at Radio 3's lunchtime series at London's Wigmore Hall. He plays Beethoven’s youthful Second Piano Concerto, a work that, with its light scoring and deft touch, looks back to the composer's teacher Joseph Haydn.
George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, also written for smaller forces, bookend a programme curated for minimum space and maximum impact. These elegiac works were written in response to painful episodes in the lives of each composer: the death of Walker's grandmother and the destruction, through Allied bombing, of three great German opera houses.
Tonight is the first time the Grand Hall has played host to a Prom. To mark the occasion, local composer Jay Capperauld presents a new 麻豆社 commission, Circadian Refrains (172 Days Until Dawn), written as a response to the cyclical nature of lockdown.
George Walker (1922–2018)
Lyric for Strings
(1946)
Walker’s hauntingly beautiful Lyric for Strings is an arrangement of the Molto adagio second movement of his First String Quartet (1946) and was premiered that year under the title Lament by the student orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music, where Walker was a graduate student. The work carries the dedication ‘To my grandmother’ and its poignancy possibly stems from the emotions that Walker felt following her death. She talked to him about her punishing life of enslavement and this was likely to have had a profound effect on her grandson.
Lyric for Strings encapsulates Walker’s approach to composition. In a 2011 interview he described a compositional process that was derived from his first assignment as a student composer. Here he suggested that the ‘lyrical line’ was paramount; and, after ‘discovering’ this, he manipulated the material so that the lyricism sings through the texture. This style of composition may have been entirely out of step with the bombastic dissonance and complexity of the prevailing modes in contemporary classical music of the post-war period, but the understated intricacy of this piece marks Walker out as one of the outstanding American composers of his generation.
Programme note © Shirley J. Thompson
Shirley J. Thompson is a British composer of Jamaican parentage, as well as an artistic director, film-maker and academic. She has composed extensively for the stage and screen, including ‘New Nation Rising: A 21st Century Symphony’, recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Her co-score for the contemporary ballet ‘PUSH’ has toured to more than 40 opera houses worldwide.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Piano Concerto No. 2
in B flat major, Op. 19
(c1788–1801)
1 Allegro con brio (cadenza: Stephen Hough)
2 Adagio
3 Rondo: Molto allegro
Stephen Hough piano
An ambitious, teenaged Beethoven began writing this concerto (confusingly named No. 2 but pre-dating No. 1) in the late 1780s while still living in his native Bonn. The piece was revised several times up to 1795, the year of its premiere at his public debut in Vienna (although it wasn’t published until several years later, after another set of revisions).
Now 25, Beethoven was honing his craft. He had studied with Haydn for about a year and was still working through the intricacies of counterpoint (the simultaneous combining of different melodic lines) with the Austrian composer Johann Georg Albrechtsberger.
However, his priority was to establish himself as a virtuoso. A concerto was a crucial work to showcase a musician’s performing-composing ability in the fiercely competitive musical centre that was 18th-century Vienna. Before the first public performance, Beethoven had likely used the work as a calling card in private aristocratic salons. Here he could attract the artistic and financial patronage so essential to musicians at the time.
Although not as polished as his later concertos, the work evinces characteristic dramatic force. The small orchestra consists of a flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings (but no clarinets). The first movement begins with a straightforward orchestral presentation of the opening theme, while the soloist’s entries are designed to take the audience on a rollercoaster ride of impressive passagework, much of which would have been improvised in Beethoven’s day.
The dignified second movement not only allows the soloist to show their embellishment of a singing melody, but also lays out a dramatic journey through a wide range of harmonies. The closing Rondo (which brings back the same musical material repeatedly, but in different keys) is one of Beethoven’s most charming movements, a lilting romp with an irresistible, off-beat theme.
Programme note © Natasha Loges Natasha Loges is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music. Married to baritone Stephan Loges, she is author of ‘Brahms and His Poets’ (Boydell, 2017) and co-editor of ‘Brahms in Context’ (CUP, 2019) and ‘German Song Onstage’ (Indiana, 2020). She is also a pianist, critic and broadcaster.
Jay Capperauld (born 1989)
Circadian Refrains
(172 Days Until Dawn)
(2020)
麻豆社 commission: world premiere
‘Circadian Refrains’ refers to the biological processes that naturally recur in a 24-hour period. These cyclic processes are governed by our internal circadian clock, which reacts and adapts to sensory changes in our environment, such as the transition from night to day (or darkness to light). In this context, the piece has been written in direct response to the recent global lockdown implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, in an attempt to articulate the day-to-day experiences of lockdown through a musical setting.
The Ayrshire countryside in South-West Scotland; this bucolic setting was the backdrop to Capperauld's lockdown (Jay Capperauld)
The Ayrshire countryside in South-West Scotland; this bucolic setting was the backdrop to Capperauld's lockdown (Jay Capperauld)
The notion of refrains is suggestive of the repetitive, restricted and constrained lifestyles adopted by many during this time, while also referencing the very literal musical refrains and ritualistic utterances in the piece itself. Despite this relentless daily process, the work’s subtitle, ‘172 Days Until Dawn’, attempts to capture a more hopeful perspective as the piece slowly transitions (through its own cyclic processes) from a place of darkness to a place of light by mapping 172 chords, each of which represents one day in the period between the start of my personal lockdown and the work's first performance tonight. Therefore, Circadian Refrains attempts to portray an individual journey from stillness/darkness towards a reviving, metaphorical ‘dawn’.
Programme note © Jay Capperauld
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Metamorphosen
(1944–45)
Strauss wrote this one-movement, extended lament for 23 solo strings as a battered Europe limped towards the end of the Second World War. The ageing composer had recently withdrawn from public life, haunted by the destruction of beloved cultural landmarks, including the opera houses of Dresden, Munich and Vienna. He was also torn between his undeniable fame and status, and a personal fear for his family (his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice was under house arrest in Garmisch).
Metamorphosen (‘Transformations’) may capture some of this heartbreak, although scholars have convincingly argued that the work was actually inspired by Goethe’s poem ‘Niemand wird sich selber kennen’ (‘No one can really know himself’), which declares resignedly that no-one may escape the fate of being themselves – of expressing their base human nature – though they may try.
The plangent, falling motifs of the opening develop into elaborate, ascending solo lines which try to escape from the texture in search of an ever-elusive stability. These lines gather and build to a brief, ecstatic climax, followed by a rare moment of unison – but this is almost immediately undermined. We revert to the opening, heart-breaking lament in the lower strings. The work is steeped with yearning and, with its vast arc shape, denies us any healing or optimism at its close.
Strauss, a consummate composer of opera, a professional who, through sheer ability, had managed to avoid the political pitfalls that plagued so many of his contemporaries, turned in this work to singing without words. His anachronistic style may be stubbornly rooted in traditional harmony, but it is no less moving for that.
Programme note © Natasha Loges
Biographies
Alpesh Chauhan conductor
Alpesh Chauhan (Patrick Allen/Opera Omnia)
Alpesh Chauhan (Patrick Allen/Opera Omnia)
Born in Birmingham, Alpesh Chauhan studied the cello, and later conducting, at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He also studied with Stanisław Skrowaczewski and has been mentored by both Andris Nelsons and Edward Gardner. He is currently Music Director of Birmingham Opera Company and Associate Conductor of the 麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
He appears frequently as a guest with orchestras such as the 麻豆社 and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, 麻豆社 National Orchestra of Wales, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestre National d’Île-de-France. Plans for the 2020–21 season include his debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in Strauss’s Don Juan, as well as works by Korngold and Mozart. The season also sees planned engagements with the Düsseldorf and Malmö Symphony orchestras and Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra Milan.
A keen advocate for music education, he is a patron of Awards for Young Musicians and has worked with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and the symphony orchestras of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the RNCM. He was also on the judging panels for the 2016 and 2018 editions of 麻豆社 Young Musician.
Stephen Hough piano
Stephen Hough (Jiyang Chen)
Stephen Hough (Jiyang Chen)
Stephen Hough is a British-born pianist, composer and author. Recent performing highlights include concerts with the City of Birmingham, Finnish Radio, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto and Vienna Symphony orchestras.
He is a regular guest at the Edinburgh International, Mostly Mozart and Salzburg festivals, as well as the 麻豆社 Proms, where he has made more than 25 appearances. In the 2019–20 season he gave recitals at the National Concert Hall, Taiwan, and The Cliburn, Texas, and opened the live lockdown recital series at the Wigmore Hall in June.
Scheduled concerto engagements in the 2020–21 season include performances with the London and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and NDR Radio Philharmonic.
He has made over 60 recordings and received eight Gramophone Awards. As a composer he has been commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, Genesis Foundation, Louvre Museum, Westminster Abbey and Wigmore Hall. His books, The Final Retreat and Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, were published in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society, Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and International Chair of Piano Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music. He was made CBE in 2014.
麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Formed in 1935 and based at Glasgow’s City Halls since 2006, the 麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra is Scotland’s national broadcasting orchestra and leading champion of new music.
It maintains a busy schedule of performances across Scotland, the UK and abroad, broadcasts for 麻豆社 Radio 3, 麻豆社 Radio Scotland, 麻豆社 Television and online, has close associations with Sistema Scotland and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and appears annually at both the 麻豆社 Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Highlights with its Chief Conductor, Thomas Dausgaard, include groundbreaking programming (including a focus on ‘Roots’, where classical masterpieces are placed in context through collaborations with folk musicians, music students and choirs) and new 麻豆社 commissions for the Scottish Inspirations series.
An ambitious programme of touring has also seen two successful European tours and the inaugural 麻豆社 Proms Japan, while recordings include works by Sibelius and Elgar, as well as a continuing series of Bartók’s complete orchestral works.
First Violins
Laura Samuel
Kanako Ito
David Routledge
Jane Mackenzie
Elita Poulter
Gent Kocho
Amy Cardigan
Second Violins
Lise Aferiat
Jamie Campbell
Liza Johnson
Julia Carpenter
Ana do Vale
Barbara Downie
Violas
Scott Dickinson
Andrew Berridge
Mark Braithwaite
Rhoslyn Lawton
Morag Robertson
Cellos
Rudi de Groote
Alison Lawrance
Tom Rathbone
Sarah Oliver
Sharon Molloy
Double Basses
Iain Crawford
Derek Hill
Paul Speirs
Flute
Charlotte Ashton
Oboes
Stella McCracken
Alexandra Hilton
Bassoons
Graeme Brown
Peter Wesley
Horns
Patrick Broderick
Hector Salgueiro
Timpani
Gordon Rigby
We hope you enjoyed tonight’s performance
For full details of 麻豆社 Proms 2020 concerts and broadcasts, visit bbc.co.uk/proms
Online programme produced by 麻豆社 Proms Publications
