London Symphony Orchestra

Being gifted the opportunity to write for a professional orchestra is every young composer’s dream. For Charlie Piper, the chance to write a short orchestral work for the LSO as part of the 2007 LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme was a wish come true. ‘I was like a kid in a sweet shop’, he remembers. ‘My creative process was probably upstaged by wanting to try out a million different ideas in a short space of time and trying to impress with orchestrational panache.’ Personal misgivings aside, Flēotan is an exquisitely shaped work, one that would go on to become a sketch for a larger work, The Twittering Machine, which Piper composed in 2008 and which was premiered by the LSO in the 2008/09 season.

Flēotan takes its title from Old English, a word meaning both ‘to float’ and ‘fleeting’. These double meanings form the building blocks of Piper’s score, which at four minutes long is literally ‘fleeting’. But it is also sinuous enough to suggest that the music itself were floating on tenuous, shifting foundations.

These energetic fluctuations become increasingly volatile, whipping the music into a series of false summits which keep deviating the work from its intended course. Colours and textures flicker and glimmer as they come into view and then subside once more. In spite of these diversions, Piper’s descending harmonic sequence creates a deep and inexorable pull that eventually draws us towards an explosive finish.

^{Note by Jo Kirkbride}

Charlie Piper
^{b 1982}

Charlie Piper was a teenager when he first realised he ‘might have something’ as a composer. He had been learning the piano, violin and percussion for several years, and describes how the act of composing had increasingly become ‘an asylum from the horrors of adolescence’. But it was success in a local composing competition that signalled the start of a burgeoning career – that, and the act of unsettling his violin teacher with his new music. ‘He had very conservative tastes’, he explains, ‘and it made me realise that I was more excited about writing rather than trying to learn traditional violin repertoire.’

Piper was just 24 when he won the RPS Composition Prize in 2006, and went on to win the 13th International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn the following year. Since then, his music has been performed at the Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Gaudeamus, Mizzou, Bang-On-A-Can and Aix-en-Provence Festivals, and by groups including the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Britten Sinfonia and London Sinfonietta. Stylistically, his music is difficult to categorise and he is the first to admit that it has fluctuated dramatically over the years. ‘I get excited by too many things’, he explains. ‘Sometimes I get inspired by an idea, a word, an image or a poem and that can inform the musical content. Sometimes I just begin with musical ideas.’ Despite these oscillations, and although he is reluctant to single out his musical heroes or influences, there is a distinctive vibrancy to his scores, which centre around flares of colour and flickering, pointillist textures.

_{Composer profile by Jo Kirkbride}

Like so much of her music, Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s Fairtrade? has a serious and thought-provoking message at its core. And although she composed it as part of the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme more than ten years ago, its subject matter — the demand for ‘fast fashion’ — remains as much a cause for concern as ever.

Fairtrade? is a hypnotic and compelling work that is as clever as it is instructive. Woven into the fabric of the score, indeed the very fibres of the score itself, are the sounds of the factory. We hear the clatter of the machines, the incessant, monotonous clacking of the repetitive processes, and peering through the gloom, just occasionally, the lone voice of a solo cello or violin rising from the back desks. This in itself is a pointed move, an attempt to shine a light on those who are often left lurking in the background, like the unseen craftsmen who labour tirelessly on our clothing, and never receive the recognition (or care) they deserve. For Witter-Johnson, it was a chance to overturn a few musical norms too: ‘Within an orchestral setting, much like a workforce, there are unspoken rules and a sense of hierarchy – I wanted to subvert that a little to highlight the message.’

^{Note by Jo Kirkbride}

Ayanna Witter-Johnson
^{b 1980s}

Some composers defy succinct definition, and shoehorning Ayanna Witter-Johnson into a tidy profile is no mean feat. Her music blurs boundaries between classical and alternative RnB – two genres that rarely coexist – and you are just as likely to find her singing while playing the cello, as you are to find her poring over an orchestral score. This remarkable confluence of styles stems from a childhood that was saturated with music of every shape and colour. ‘My dad and uncle are DJs and my mum loves to sing,’ says Ayanna, ‘so I embraced a pretty healthy diet of classical piano and cello studies while absorbing pop culture, soul, jazz, reggae, hip-hop and RnB music throughout my childhood and until now.’

Witter-Johnson was just three years old when her mother spotted an aptitude for music and took her to her first piano lesson, and she took up the cello as her second instrument (now very much her first) when she was 13. She went on to graduate with a first from both Trinity Laban and the Manhattan School of Music, and in 2009 was featured as an Emerging Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre. Since then, she has been commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, Kronos Quartet and London Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with Anoushka Shankar and Courtney Pine, and been nominated for a MOBO award. She cites Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder among her greatest influences as readily as she does Bach and Debussy, and while many of her works chronicle her experience as a female artist in the 21st century, she is also no stranger to tackling issues of social oppression and globalisation. Her music is impossible to label (and why should we?) but its guiding principle is one of authenticity and personal truth.

_{Composer profile by Jo Kirkbride}

Betsy Jolas wears her musicality lightly. She is neither tethered to traditions, nor dismissive of them. Indeed, she has said that she views herself as part of a musical continuum, but feels no pressure to conform to the fashions of the time. This is particularly evident in her give-or-take attitude to the serialism movement, but even more so in her theatrical works which play with musical conventions.

An earlier piece from 2004, her Well Met 04 – Pantomime for 12 strings, takes a typical concert rehearsal as its starting point and transforms this everyday occurrence into a farcical pantomime, with a few wry observations about musicians’ habits along the way. We watch as the ensemble is ‘constantly disturbed by the seven violins practicing outside and who are finally made to quiet down’, and later witness a heated argument about the intricacies of baroque ornamentation. The conductor is ‘hardly welcomed’ and eventually has to hand over control to Violin 1, whose own approach to direction is to dismiss the other instruments through multiple cadenzas, each more spectacular than the last. It is a perfectly observed farce, one that would leave even the most robust of musicians squirming in their seat.

But the Well Met Pantomime is also just that – a pantomime. Having received several requests for a new work for string ensemble, in 2016 Jolas transformed four of the Pantomime movements into a suite in their own right, the Well Met Suite we hear today. It incorporates excerpts that Jolas identified as ‘the most developed and least tied to theatrical action’ and the results are remarkable. Instead of being uncomfortable flies on the wall in a fractious rehearsal room, we become listeners to a beautifully crafted set of miniatures, finely drawn and deftly delivered.

^{Note by Jo Kirkbride}

Betsy Jolas
^{b 1926}

Betsy Jolas has had the kind of career that most musicians could only dream about. She studied in Paris with composers Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen, was family friends with Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Henri Matisse, and sang the Verdi Requiem under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. Now 94 years young, she is still composing. ‘I want to remain curious. You should never think that you’ve achieved something. Even at this point of my career, I always feel a bit worried’, she said in 2005 – aged 79.

Jolas’ music seems to defy the era from which it was born. Hers was the time of Stockhausen and serialism, of systems and procedures, and yet although her works are almost unilaterally atonal, they are deeply expressive and rooted in song. She remembers: ‘A while ago, some PhD students were trying to find twelve-tone rows in my music, and they got frustrated when they couldn’t find any. I told them to stop trying! I don’t have a system – I can’t teach how to write music that sounds like mine.’

The human voice has been a preoccupation for as long as Jolas can remember. Her mother was a singer and Jolas sang in choirs throughout her formative years, and this seems to have left an indelible imprint on her music. Her scores sing even when they are purely instrumental, so much so that she has composed sets of ‘Lieder’ (songs) for numerous instruments, while in her piece Mon Ami (1974), she asks the pianist simultaneously to sing and play, the voice melding with the sound of the piano. Her works are as steeped in the contrapuntal traditions of the Baroque and Renaissance periods as they are in the swirling, textural landscapes of French impressionism.

_{Composer profile by Jo Kirkbride}

In 1941, under attack from German bombing raids, the wartime authorities in Leningrad took the unusual step of trying to camouflage the city’s most prominent buildings. Over many cities in World War II, churches and similar buildings were used by pilots to line up their bombing runs: Leningrad’s particular problem was that its largest domes and spires couldn’t be more prominent: they were huge, and painted in glorious gold. To address the issue, a group of four mountain climbers, two men and two women, were drafted in to scale the city’s highest points, and conceal them with paint or canvas. These included the golden dome of St Isaac’s cathedral, the spire of the cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul (considered the tallest Orthodox building in the world), and the golden steeple of the Admiralty, which was stitched into a vast canvas ‘skirt’ weighing half a tonne. Work continued through the first, brutal winter of the siege of Leningrad and by early 1942 the city’s magnificent skyline was completely obscured.

Stevenson’s score is in short, dramatic episodes, with markings such as ‘maestoso’, ‘nervoso’ and ‘misterioso’. It isn’t hard to ascribe to these alterations of orchestral pomp and eerie quietude something of the emotions felt by those four climbers as they braved gunfire, siege conditions and a bitterly cold winter to conceal their proud city’s most iconic buildings. The recurring chimes of tubular bells, glockenspiel and harp both remind us that many of these buildings were sacred, and capture in sound the feeling of grandeur disappearing from view.

^{Note by Tim Rutherford-Johnson}

George Stevenson
^{b 1987}

George Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1987 and grew up performing as a jazz pianist around Scotland. After a Masters in Physics from Imperial College London, he completed postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama followed by Moscow Conservatoire, and spent several years working with Boston Consulting Group. His teachers include Julian Anderson, Joseph Phibbs, Alexander Tchaikovsky and Mary McCarthy.

George’s music is just as likely to take inspiration from his background in science (Trees Made of Air, 2019, and Algol, 2018) as it is to draw from strange imagined worlds (Les Machines de l'île, 2017) or the folksong of Southern Russia (Stavropol, 2016).

In early 2019, his orchestral piece False Summit was performed by the LSO under François-Xavier Roth through the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme, leading to a further commission for the Orchestra, heard tonight. George was recently featured by Psappha Ensemble as recipient of their Peter Maxwell Davies Commission. Later this month his orchestral work Braided Waters will be performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Jonathan Berman as part of the RSNO Composers’ Hub.

George has also worked with musicians of the Russian National Orchestra, Berkeley Ensemble and BCMG NEXT, as well as dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet. Past awards include First Prize in the St Magnus Composers' competition, and the Dvořák Prize at the International Dvořák Competition. George was a 2018 PRS Accelerate Scheme composer and winner of ‘The Night With...’ and ‘Risuonanze’ Calls for Scores.

Interval – 25 minutes
You are welcome to leave your seats during the interval.
Drinks can be purchased from the bars to be enjoyed on the Lakeside terrace, or at your seat in the Hall.

for Nicola Benedetti

1 Lamentoso
2 Dance
3 Andante Amoroso
4 Cadenza
5 Presto con fuoco – Finale

I started my Violin Concerto just before the UK’s first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, and my initial musical ideas were hopeful, singing, full of life. As the pandemic worsened I quickly realised that it was impossible to ‘carry on as normal’ and the work would need to explore a different set of responses.

The concerto begins, quietly, calmly, as if from nowhere, with a statement of B-flat minor in the strings, over which the violin laments, drawing us into a world of stillness and reflection in the first movement. A moment of transition launches us directly into the next movement.

Movement two is a fast, energetic dance that is in essence a response to having a huge amount of pent-up energy that I was unable to release during the period of lockdown restrictions. It hurtles us through various balletic tableaux.

Movement three is an impassioned love song tinged with moments of darkness.

The Cadenza fourth movement provides us with another moment of stillness and revisits material from the second movement.

The fifth movement begins with a devilish A minor tarantella that leads directly to the Finale. This opens with a simple melody in the violin which is then passed through winds, strings and brass, guiding us to a wild, raucous, energy-filled climax that leads to the work’s close.

^{Note by Mark Simpson}

Mark Simpson
^{b 1988}

Composer and clarinettist Mark Simpson (b 1988, Liverpool) became the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year competitions in 2006. He went on to read Music at St Catherine’s College, Oxford and studied composition with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Simpson was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2012 to 2014 and received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2014. In 2015 he was appointed Composer in Association of the BBC Philharmonic for a period of four years.

Simpson’s oratorio The Immortal was premiered by the BBC Philharmonic at the 2015 Manchester International Festival to immediate critical acclaim. Other works with orchestra include Israfel, premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, sparks commissioned for the 2012 Last Night of the Proms and A mirror-fragment… written for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His first opera Pleasure was commissioned by Opera North, the Royal Opera and Aldeburgh Music and premiered in 2016.

Chamber works include Hommage à Kurtág for clarinet, piano and viola, commissioned by the Salzburg and Edinburgh International festivals for premiere in 2016 by Simpson alongside Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Antoine Tamestit, and a solo clarinet work Darkness Moves commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Under his Composer in Association role with the BBC Philharmonic, Simpson composed a Cello Concerto for Leonard Elschenbroich in 2018 and a Clarinet Concerto for himself as soloist in 2019. His most recent work is his Violin Concerto for Nicola Benedetti.

A collection of Simpson's chamber works, entitled Night Music, was released in 2016 by NMC and 2020 brought a recording of wind ensemble music on Orchid Classics combining Simpson's Geysir with Mozart's Gran Partita. Simpson continues to perform widely as a soloist and chamber musician, with recent highlights including Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto at the BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis, and Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps at the Aldeburgh Festival with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras. In 2016 he performed Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, with the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg conducted by HK Gruber and at the 2018 BBC Proms. Recent highlights included a feature as composer and performer at the 2020 Trondheim Chamber Music Festival.

_{Composer profile reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes}

BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert: Mark Simpson & Richard Uttley
Tuesday 22 Jun 1pm, LSO St Luke's

Fresh from this evening’s concert at the Barbican, musician-composer Mark Simpson will take to the stage as clarinettist in a BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert on Tuesday 22 June. Pairing the voices of the clarinet and piano, we’ll hear music by Debussy and Weber alongside Mark's own chamber composition Lov(escape). Yearning and romantic in parts, erratic and fractured in others, the piece displays the extraordinary capabilities of the clarinet.

Click here to find out more and book tickets.