LSO Discovery

Performed by Bridget Esler and Luke Lally-Maguire. Thanks to both for stepping in to perform at short notice.

Performed by Miku Yasukawa and Mo Suet Ng.

1 To a Toy Bamboo Helicopter
2 One Day's Journey

Makiko Kinoshita is an award-winning Japanese composer best known for her choral music. Born in Tokyo in 1956, Makiko studied composition at the Tokyo University of the Arts and went on to win Japan’s premier music competition. Today we will hear To a Toy Bamboo Helicopter and One Day’s Journey from the song cycle 'Counting The Flowers'. Both songs feature text from Japanese poet Eriko Kishida (1929 to 2011).

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

To a Toy Bamboo Helicopter

‘As high as possible’,
‘As far as possible’,
I have wished it so.
But actually I am worried that you may truly go far away.

I am worried that you may like the sky
even better than dragonflies or airplanes.
If you go to see the stars at noon beyond the horizon please come back to me secretly.

As high as possible,
as far as possible,
but don’t forget me here.

One Day's Journey

One day I take a train, not deciding on the destination.
Getting off the train,
I walk to the cape,
I walk without asking directions from anyone
until I see fields of rapeseed, bean flowers and the reflection of the sea.

One day, when I get tired from walking,
I will see clouds,
I will even forget the names of birds or mountains.
Truly, I will wait alone, seeing clouds get together and separate again
til night comes from the western sky.

Performed by Theano Papadaki and Spencer Klymyshyn.

Greek pianist and hugely influential composer Lena Platonos was a leader in the avant garde electronic music scene of the 1980s. She also worked on a popular children’s radio show called Lilipoupoli which meant that her music was heard in every Greek household and her name was very well known. Born in Crete, Lena’s father was a famous composer and pianist who gave his daughter her first lessons before she sought wider study in Athens and then across Europe. This short but beautiful song Mono is featured on the 2015 album Spyros Manesis – 9 Portraits of Lena Platonos.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Agh, everything had to turn out the way it did!
The hopes and the roses had to wilt.
The years, like small boats, had to slip away from me,
to slip away, to disappear.

The hopes to vanish forever, as naturally as close
friends like us used to part in the evenings.
On some afternoon I would have to leave
the place where I grew up.

Like a round of dancing, life had to take from me
those pretty and uncomplicated girls – O infatuations!
In bygone days when I was doing well, that sterile
pain still had to weigh on me.

Everything had to happen. Only the night
didn’t have to be sweet the way it is now.
The starts didn’t have to sparkle there
like eyes laughing at me.

Performed by Theano Papadaki and Spencer Klymyshyn.

Greek-born, Chicago-based composer Niki Harlafti is interested in the physicality of sound and often uses electronics and improvisation in her works. She describes her work as ‘[being] interested in the absurd, the interplay of contradiction, surprise, continuity and transformation’. All of which can be heard in this song from 2017. When I Too Long talks of looking at a beloved's (or not) face and the often ambiguous effect it provokes. The song is a setting of a poem by American poet, playwright and feminist Edna St Vincent Millay (1892 to 1950).

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.

Performed by Grace O’Malley and Lucy Colquhoun.

Rebecca Clarke was an English composer and violist. She is now regarded as one of the most important British composers of the interwar years and a true pioneer. Clarke wrote this, the first setting of William Blake’s iconic poem The Tyger, in 1933. It took her five years to complete and the process was difficult and troubled. She was coming to the end of a tumultuous relationship with a married singer and her feelings are clearly evident in the dark, brooding sounds she creates here. After completing it, she didn’t write another song for nearly 20 years.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Performed by Grace O’Malley and Lucy Colquhoun.

Liza Lehmann was a singer and performer who, like many others, quit her public role after marriage. She then concentrated on composing and became quite famous for her light and witty art songs. In later life she was a professor of singing at the Guildhall School and wrote an influential book on the subject. This is a 1917 setting of a poem of the same name by children’s author Rose Fyleman. It is told from the viewpoint of a little girl and is funny, magical, and whimsical. It immediately transports the listener back to a simpler time.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead
I do so hope they've come to stay.

There's a little wood with moss in it and beetles,
And a little stream that quietly runs through;
You wouldn't think they'd dare to come merrymaking there,
Well, they do!

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
They often have a dance on summer nights;
The butterflies and bees
Make a lovely little breeze,
And the rabbits stand about and hold the lights.

Did you know that they could sit upon the
moonbeams
And pick a little star to make a fan,
And dance away up there
In the middle of the air
Well, they can!

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
You cannot think how beautiful they are; They all stand up and sing
When the fairy queen and king
Come gently floating down upon their car.

The king is very proud and handsome;
The queen, now can you guess who that would be?
She's a little girl all day
But at night she steals away.
Well, it's me!

Friday 20 January 2023 12.30pm

Robert Schumann Märchenbilder arr for viola and piano
Clara Schumann Selections from 6 Lieder Op 13 arr for viola and piano

Steve Doman viola
Catherine Edwards piano
Rachel Leach presenter