Sunday 7 June

Antonín Dvořák
^1841–1904

Today, Antonín Dvořák is celebrated as one of Europe’s most forward-thinking, idiosyncratic and accomplished composers, but he came from relatively humble origins. Born in 1841 in a small village near Prague, his father was an innkeeper and a butcher who encouraged him to take up the violin at six years old.

Having studied the organ in Prague as a teenager, Dvořák wrote his first symphony at 24, subtitled The Bells of Zlonice after a village he lived in as a child. This love for his home country echoes throughout his work, which often makes use of Slavic rhythms, melodies and folklore. He continued to compose with moderate success until 1875, when he was catapulted to fame by a number of major works he composed that year, including his Symphony No 5 and Serenade for Strings.

Moving to the United States in 1892, he was appointed Director of the National Conservatory, one of the few conservatoires to accept women and students from ethnic minorities at that time. Dvořák wrote a series of newspaper articles during this time advocating African American and Native American music, and these influences can be heard in his Symphony No 9, ‘From the New World’.

Dvořák died aged 62, after an attack of influenza.

_{Profile by Sarah Breeden}

Bushra El-Turk

Bushra El-Turk’s music has been described as ‘ironic’, ‘arresting’ and displaying ‘limitless imagination’. It bears the influence of the composer’s Lebanese roots and rides the continuum between Eastern and Western idioms in sound and ideology, all the while leaning towards the absurd and theatrical.

Named by the BBC as one of the most inspiring 100 women of today, Bushra has written music for the concert hall, dance, theatre and multimedia, for ensembles including the LSO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House, London Sinfonietta, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, Latvian Radio Choir and Atlas Ensemble, amongst others, and in 2018 had her BBC Proms debut. Her music has been performed at the Lincoln Center, Deutsche Oper Haus, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Bridgewater Hall, Southbank Centre and Barbican, and she was a participant on the LSO’s 2012 Panufnik Composers Scheme.

She completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD in Musical Composition at the University of Birmingham, and currently teaches at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. In 2017 excerpts of her opera Woman at Point Zero were performed at LSO St Luke’s. 2019 saw the world premiere of Tmesis for symphony orchestra, performed by the BBCSO at the Dubai Opera House; performances by the London Sinfonietta; her one-woman opera, Silk Moth, at Grimeborn Festival; and a commission by Austria’s Musikprotokol Festival.

Bushra is artistic director and leader of Ensemble Zar, a fresh and fearless cross-genre ensemble, and is published by Composers Edition.

_{Profile by Bushra El-Turk}

Francis Poulenc
^1899–1963

Co-existent strands of religiosity and irreverence pervade the music of Francis Poulenc. He received a deeply held Catholic faith from his father, the Aveyronnais director of a pharmaceutical business, while inheriting a love of music and the arts from his mother, a Parisian native from artistic stock who first taught him to play the piano. Their influence would remain tragically short, however, as both parents had died by the time Poulenc was 18.

In their absence, the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes provided spiritual guidance and helped to solidify Poulenc’s intention to pursue a musical career. His first surviving work (Poulenc destroyed many of his initial compositions) dates from 1917. Rapsodie nègre received its premiere in Paris to modest success. He was conscripted the following year, serving as part of an anti-aircraft unit in Bordeaux. Poulenc continued to compose, producing Trois mouvements perpétuels and his first Mélodies while still in military service. After the war, he studied with Charles Koechlin and was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev to write Les biches, to popular and critical success. Despite his increasing fame and success, throughout the decade that followed Poulenc was troubled, suffering a major bout of depression at the end of the 1920s.

In the 1930s, he formed recital partnerships with baritone Pierre Bernac and soprano Denise Duval, and alternated between periods of touring and periods of secluded composition. During this time, he produced a number of religious works, which sit alongside his oeuvre of music for the stage. He died of a heart attack in Paris in 1963.

_{Profile by Liam Hennebry}

Maurice Ravel
^1875–1937

Born in the rural Basque village of Ciboure, Ravel was raised in Paris and encouraged by his father to develop his obvious musical skills. Piano and music theory lessons ensured that he was accepted as a preparatory piano student at the Paris Conservatoire in 1889. In the decade following his graduation in 1895, Ravel forged his reputation as an innovative composer and scored a notable hit with the Pavane pour une infante défunte for piano, which he later orchestrated. In the early years of the 20th century he completed many outstanding works, including the evocative Miroirs for piano, his first opera L’heure espagnole and the Introduction et allegro for harp and ensemble.

In 1909 Ravel was invited to write a large-scale work for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, completing the score to the ballet Daphnis and Chloe three years later. At this time he also met the Russian composer Stravinsky and first heard the expressionist works of Schoenberg. During World War I he enlisted with the motor transport corps, and returned to composition slowly after 1918, completing La valse and beginning work on his second opera L’enfant et les sortilèges.

From 1932 until his death, he suffered from the progressive effects of Pick’s Disease and was unable to compose. A shy and intensely private man, Ravel reluctantly exposed his emotions almost exclusively through music. His emotional outbursts are most powerful in his imaginative interpretations of the unaffected worlds of childhood and animals, and in the exotic, far-distant tales such as the Greek lovers in Daphnis and Chloe.

_{Profile by Andrew Stewart}

LSO On Track

LSO On Track is a partnership between the LSO and ten East London Music Services, in collaboration with the Barbican and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. This partnership puts the LSO at the heart of the Music Education Hubs in East London, in the boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Greenwich, Hackney, Havering, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest.

Each year the London Symphony Orchestra welcomes 15,000 young people to amazing concerts at the Barbican and LSO St Luke’s. In addition, over 2,000 young East Londoners get together with musicians from the LSO to showcase their incredible musical talent.

Since the launch of LSO On Track in 2008 students and practitioners have accessed LSO musician visits to schools, creative workshops, coaching on written music, schools concerts dedicated to East London schools, opportunities to perform in world-class venues, and much much more.

_{LSO On Track is generously supported by Youth Music, Masonic Charitable Foundation, Henocq Law Trust, UBS, Irving Memorial Trust, Aldgate and Allhallows Foundation, Innholders' Charitable Foundation, Schroder Charity Trust, The Worshipful Company of Barbers, John Horniman's Children's Trust, Pewterers' Seahorse Trust, Kirby Laing Foundation, The Radcliffe Trust, Tallow Chandlers Benevolent Fund and Rainbow Dickinson Trust.}

The London Symphony Orchestra was established in 1904 and has a unique ethos. As a musical collective, it is built on artistic ownership and partnership. With an inimitable signature sound, the LSO’s mission is to bring the greatest music to the greatest number of people.

The LSO has been the only Resident Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in the City of London since it opened in 1982, giving 70 symphonic concerts there every year. The Orchestra works with a family of artists that includes some of the world’s greatest conductors – Sir Simon Rattle as Music Director, Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda and François-Xavier Roth, and Michael Tilson Thomas as Conductor Laureate.

Through LSO Discovery, it is a pioneer of music education, offering musical experiences to 60,000 people every year at its music education centre LSO St Luke’s on Old Street, across East London and further afield.

The LSO strives to embrace new digital technologies in order to broaden its reach, and with the formation of its own record label LSO Live in 1999 it pioneered a revolution in recording live orchestral music. With a discography spanning many genres and including some of the most iconic recordings ever made the LSO is now the most recorded and listened to orchestra in the world, regularly reaching over 3,500,000 people worldwide each month on Spotify and beyond. The Orchestra continues to innovate through partnerships with market-leading tech companies, as well as initiatives such as LSO Play. The LSO is a highly successful creative enterprise, with 80% of all funding self-generated.