London Symphony Orchestra
concert for
Music Academy of the West

Steve Reich (b. 1936)
Quartet for 2 pianos
and 2 vibraphones
²⁰¹³

LSO Percussion Ensemble

The American composer Steve Reich says that the quartet combination of keyboards and percussion has played a central role in many of his larger pieces, but this piece, composed in 2013, was his first for the stand-alone combination of two vibraphones and two pianos. It's dedicated to the British percussionist Colin Currie, who gave the premiere with the Colin Currie Ensemble (including LSO percussionist Sam Walton) at the Southbank Centre in December 2014. Reich says that the piece, which demands a high level of ensemble virtuosity, is one of the most complex he has composed, as 'it frequently changes key and often breaks off continuity to pause or take up new material'. Upbeat, jazz-influenced outer sections enclose a more reflective, nocturnal core.

Poulenc (1899 – 1963) 
Sonata for oboe and piano
¹⁹²⁵

1. Elégie (Paisiblement, sans presser) 
2. Scherzo (Très animé) 
3. Déploration (Très calme) 

Juliana Koch oboe
Simon Lepper piano

This is the last of three solo wind sonatas which Poulenc composed in the last decade of his life, beginning with the popular Flute Sonata (1956) and ending with sonatas for clarinet and oboe (both 1962). The Oboe Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Poulenc’s friend Sergei Prokofiev, who had died nine years earlier. It opens with a resigned lament, marked 'Peacefully, not fast', in which a high D on the oboe introduces a four-note turning phrase which inflects the gentle first theme over steadily pulsing harmony. Two further themes are explored before the opening elegy returns. The animated central scherzo pays homage to a form much favoured by Prokofiev, while the calm and sorrowful final Déploration –  a poetic and musical lament for the dead favoured by French composers since the Renaissance – explores the oboe's extremes of range and dynamics, requiring precise control. Probably Poulenc's final composition, this movement stands as his own epitaph.

Dutilleux (1916 – 2013)  
Three stanzas on the name Sacher, for solo cello 
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1. Un poco indeciso 
2. Andante sostenuto 
3. Vivace 

Rebecca Gilliver cello

In 1976 the French composer Henri Dutilleux was one of 12 international composers commissioned by Mstislav Rostropovich to write a short cello piece in honour of the 70th birthday of the conductor Paul Sacher, the great international champion of contemporary music and founder of the Basle Chamber Orchestra. Rostropovich stipulated that the homages should be based on musical cryptograms derived from the letters of Sacher's name. Dutilleux accepted the commission with alacrity, as the cello was one of his favourite instruments. In 1982 he added two more movements  – respectively slow and fast – to his original contribution, forming a short suite of three 'strophes' or stanzas, which was premiered in Basle in April that year by Rostropovich.  

Dutilleux requires the cellist to tune the two lowest strings differently, to add extra weight and depth to the instrument's lowest register. The movements, which require a range of virtuosic string-playing techniques, from extensive double-stopping, pizzicato and harmonics to striking the strings with the wood of the bow, are constructed not only on the German musical equivalents of Sacher's name – E-flat (=S), A, C, B (=H), E, D (=R, or re in tonic sol-fa) – but according to intrinsic elements of the poetic stanza, featuring the sense of rhyme and return, with contrapuntal passages mirroring each other, and incisive phrases often concluding with brief, cadenza-like passages. The final bars of the original strophe incorporate a ghostly quotation from one of Sacher's most famous commissions for the Basle Chamber Orchestra, Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste.

The remainder of today's programme is based around works for brass quintet, played by members of the
LSO Brass Ensemble.

Lutosławski (1913 –1994) 
Mini Overture for brass quintet 
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This entertaining piece also dates from 1982, and belongs to a series of chamber works that Lutosławski composed in the period following his own Sacher Variation for solo cello, another contribution to Rostropovich's homage to the Swiss conductor. The Mini Overture was also a birthday tribute – for Ursula Jones, wife of the leader of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, which gave the piece its premiere in Lucerne in March 1982. Lutosławski called it 'a small caricature of an overture', and apparently intended it to form the first movement of a suite. It resembles a 'grotesque' scherzo, played in three continuous sections creating a vaguely sonata-form outline. The idiom is largely neo-classical pastiche, and the musical material is based on two twelve-note rows, integrated with a light touch. 

JS Bach (1685 – 1750),
arr Dudley Bright 
Goldberg Variations, for brass quintet 
¹⁷⁴¹

Bach's Goldberg Variations, a colossal set of 30 variations on a simple sarabande-like theme, written during Bach's Leipzig years and 'intended to delight the souls of music-lovers', was the largest single piece of keyboard music published in the 18th century. Dudley Bright, the LSO's former Principal Trombone, has arranged the grave and beautiful Aria and the eight variations performed today (Nos 1, 2, 4, 16, 7, 21, 24 and 20) to produce a satisfying suite of contrasting movements. He says that he has drawn inspiration from Canadian pianist Glenn Gould's iconic early recording of the Variations to produce contrasts of phrasing, dynamics and tone colour. Variation 1 is lively, in the style of a polonaise, while Variation 2 is a simple piece in three-part counterpoint over a constantly moving bass. Variations 4 and 7 are in Baroque dance styles, the first a passepied, the second a gigue-like 'Canary'. Variation 16 is a miniature French overture with an opening slow section featuring dotted rhythms followed by a faster fugue. No 21, in G minor, is in the style of a lament over a chromatic descending bass, No 24 is a canon at the octave, while Variation 20 is a lively and brilliant toccata. 

Ewald (1860 – 1935) 
Brass Quintet No 1 in B flat minor Op 5 
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1. Moderato – Più mosso 
2. Adagio non troppo lento – Allegro vivace – Tempo I: Adagio 
3. Allegro moderato 

Victor Ewald, like many of his Russian contemporaries, was not a professional musician. Although he trained at the St Petersburg Conservatory from the age of 12, learning harmony and composition as well as cornet, piano, horn and cello, he became a distinguished civil engineer. At the same time he worked alongside members of the so-called 'Mighty Handful' – all amateur composers who pursued a variety of other professions. Ewald is chiefly remembered today for four brass quintets, originally scored for two cornets (now played on trumpets), alto horn (now French horn), tenor horn (now trombone), and tuba, which Ewald originally played himself. The first of these, which was composed around 1890 and published over 20 years later, was actually the second to be written. Its three short movements are predominantly lyrical, tinged with Russian Romantic melancholy. 

Now a shift in style and mood, moving from the Old World to the New.  First come two virtuosic party-pieces, respectively for trumpet and trombone. 

Traditional Mexican,
arr Canadian Brass 
La Virgen de la Macarena

La Virgen de la Macarena is a Mexican folksong in which a lovesick girl prays to the Virgin. In this Canadian Brass arrangement, Philip Cobb tackles the dazzling arabesques and cadenzas for solo trumpet that ornament the plaintive strophes of the song, underpinned by a lugubrious bass line from the depths of the tuba. 

Pryor (1869 – 1942), arr Amos Miller 
Blue Bells

The astonishing virtuosity of the American trombonist and bandleader Arthur Pryor earned him the sobriquet 'the Paganini of the trombone'. Some disbelieving German listeners once took his instrument apart, convinced it must conceal a trick mechanism. This arrangement of Pryor’s most famous showpiece, the folksong Blue Bells of Scotland, was made by trombonist Amos Miller for an Onyx Brass tour of Scotland. He describes these mind-blowingly virtuosic variations – played here by the LSO's brilliant Principal Trombone, Peter Moore – as 'a thoroughly charming examination of all aspects of trombone technique'. 

Enrique Crespo (b.1941)
Suite Americana
¹⁹⁷⁷

1. Ragtime 
2. Bossa Nova  
3. Vals Peruano 
4. Son de México

Enrique Crespo is also a virtuoso trombonist, both in the classical and jazz fields. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he played for many years in German symphony orchestras and founded the German Brass Ensemble. His Suite Americana for brass quintet, of which four of the five movements are being played today, is a set of colourful musical impressions from the Americas. It opens with Ragtime, a homage to the syncopated style developed by black musicians in the American Deep South. Then comes Bossa Nova, a Brazilian samba refined through the influence of jazz, Vals Peruana – a Peruvian waltz, and finally Son de México, which combines two Mexican dances, a slow Huapango from the Gulf of Mexico region, and a faster dance from the central Jalisco region, featuring brilliant trumpets. 

^{Programme notes by Wendy Thompson}