LSO Discovery

Aside from being a champion fencer and a virtuoso violinist and conductor, Saint-Georges has the distinction of being the first classical composer of African ancestry. His parents were a wealthy slave owner on a plantation in the West Indies and a slave, and many elements of Joseph’s life would make a great movie plot.

So little is known of his musical training, that several myths have grown up around it. We do know that he eventually became the leader of a very good Parisian orchestra and performed his concertos with them, improvising solos at several points and wowing the audience. His appearances with this orchestra led to it being declared the best in France. This string quartet movement is from the early 1770s. It is light, bouncy and completely charming.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Ravel was born in France close to the Spanish border. His Spanish mother was an amateur musician and his father was an inventor of engines and machines. The family moved to Paris when Maurice was only months old and he grew up to be one of the greatest French composers of all time.

To say that this String Quartet from 1904 caused a scandal would be a huge understatement! When the young composer entered the piece for the prestigious Prix de Rome he was expected to win. He didn’t. The head of the Paris Conservatoire resigned and Ravel left the establishment but was catapulted to fame. The piece became instantly famous and remains one of the most performed quartets of the 20th century. And Ravel, one of the most successful composers of all time, also has the distinction of being the only famous French composer not to win the Prix de Rome!

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Scenes of Aden is inspired by Aden Country Park, which is situated in Aberdeenshire. With this piece, I wanted to portray a scene of the park which changes as the piece goes on.

The work is composed in six movements which I had initally envisaged to be played continuously (attaca) but I later decided that as each movement was depicting another scene, it made more sense to allow a short break before the next movement begins, with the exception of the transition between the fifth and sixth movement, as this is a critical moment in the piece where the tension throughout the piece begins to change before the final resolution in the closing bars.

Central to the work's sound is a constant relationship between tension and release of major and minor. The piece is characterised by the shifting back and forth of the two main melodic ideas.

The final movement of the piece was actually the second movement I composed. Having established the first and last movements, I found writing the inner movements relatively simple. In composing the piece in this manner, I found that the material came much faster than with previous work. I feel like there is a great deal of emotion within this piece and the density throughout is finally released once the piece comes to an end.

_{Note by Ewan Mackay}

Today, Borodin’s name is associated with music but in his lifetime he was far better known as an organic chemist – there is a scientific principle named after him and he was very active in promoting science as a career for women. Because of this busy scientific life, Borodin described himself as a ‘Sunday composer’ and he therefore didn’t have the time to complete many pieces.

His second string quartet was written in 1881 and dedicated to his wife as a 20th anniversary gift. The four movements tell the story of their first meeting. This movement, the third, is probably the moment they fell in love. It features a gorgeous, singable theme first heard on the cello and much later, made into a song for the musical Kismet.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Beethoven was in appearance and manner a very unlikely genius. He was often dirty, dishevelled, rude, aggressive, unpredictable and eccentric but his music re-wrote the rulebook. Beethoven radically developed and transformed every genre he wrote in. At age 28 he began to go deaf and soon could only communicate through the use of a notebook. He only heard his greatest works by imagining the sounds in his head.

In the early 1800s Beethoven wrote his three Rasumovsky Quartets, named after the Russian ambassador to Vienna who commissioned them. This finale movement is known as a perpetuum mobile – meaning that it has a continuous flow of fast notes propelling it forward. It is also fugal, this means that all four players play the same idea but start at a different time. Finally, it is known as one of the most difficult of all Beethoven’s string quartet movements, it is extremely exciting to listen to and of course to play!

_{Note by Rachel Leach}