Thursday 11 June

All the time, in different ways, the basic chord sequence is contracting and expanding. When spaced out, it may cease to be heard as a sequence at all; at the other extreme, it may be compacted into a single event. Connections will sometimes be emphatic: there is a massive shivering on the first of the basses’ thirds, with further intensification and release, and much later an outburst of E-flat minor, which comes from the basses’ endpoint. This is by no means the only element of traditional tonality that will be encountered, but estranged now, as if inscribed on the antisphere’s inward curving. It is on this unfamiliar surface, too, that we find motifs expanded and contracted in the work’s central, quasi-fugal passage. Finally, after a long deceleration–acceleration, the music becomes slow, quiet and bare, until the arrival of its chord sequence in one last transformation. Antisphere completes a triptych with other works Howard has based on curvatures: Torus, which was played at the 2016 BBC Proms, and sphere. We might feel, once again, the excitement of hearing geometry, but the excitement, too, of music stretching its limbs – and wrapping itself back up into an instant.

_{Programme note by Paul Griffiths Paul Griffiths has been a critic for nearly 40 years, including for The Times and The New Yorker, and is an authority on 20th and 21st-century music. Among his books are studies of Boulez, Ligeti and Stravinsky. He also writes novels and librettos.}

_{LISTENING GUIDE}

From the opening sound of the first movement we are in a magic garden of high and glistening sonorities – piccolos, harp – in slow descent over brass chords (through most of the work trumpets are replaced by their warmer cousins, flugelhorns). And the solo violin is here, too. This is its home, or its dream home; the marking is ‘sognando’, dreaming. In this decelerated time, it dreams in great breaths that reach up to high notes and slowly, waveringly descend, often echoed by the orchestra. Then it finds another voice, at the bottom of its range, a little more urgent. It will need this voice again, to start the second movement.

Meanwhile, there comes a turning, out of the dream into play. The violin is now spinning down like a sycamore seed, the orchestra bouncing along beside and around. Excitement increases, but the violin is trying to bring back dream time, and eventually it succeeds, leading the music towards a climax. Here, however, it creeps out of its own dream, has to be called back, and returns with a different sort of music, fizzing with little notes in rapid repetition. Racing around as if in search, reclaiming elements of the dream the violin ends as if it has discovered the gateway to the garden again. The question is whether it stands open or is closed.

Remembering its initiatory, low-register idea from before, the violin repeats it as a summons, which sends echoes through the orchestra, fading and changing. From the outdoor space of the first movement we have come inside, into a kind of glowing gloom. The violin, while responsible for this new ambience, appears to want out, and eventually, after some attempts at the dream, it makes its exit, leaving the orchestra to repeat the summons majestically. Then the violin returns, seemingly with new confidence as it runs. The clamour of the orchestral cage, however, comes right forward, and the solo instrument is stopped. It comes back again with new vigour, and recovers its dream. Nobody else, however, is dreaming. The orchestra is, rather, storming on, and the violin can only storm with it, at a peak of virtuosity, towards a stop that is abrupt, enigmatic.

_{Programme note by Paul Griffiths}

William Walton
Symphony No 1 in B-flat minor
_1932–35

1. Allegro assai
2. Scherzo: Presto con malizia
3. Andante con malinconia
4. Maestoso

It was Hamilton Harty, then conductor of the Hallé, who recognised that, after the turning point of the Viola Concerto of 1929, which was Walton’s first big orchestral piece, the young composer should go on to a symphony. Harty offered the invitation in January 1932, and the following month Walton set to work. The task was not, however, to prove easy. Almost four years passed before the score was ready. Meanwhile, Walton had been persuaded against his will to allow a performance in December 1934 of the first three movements, the finale as yet unwritten. That partial performance, given by the LSO, was conducted by Harty, as was the full one with the BBC Symphony Orchestra almost a year later.

Walton’s delay has been ascribed to an understandable wariness in the face of this classic genre, to his general inclination not to hurry, and to complications in his love life (a six-year affair with a German baroness, Imma von Dörnberg, was ending, though he dedicated the work to her). The dates, however, tell their own story. It was in March–April 1932 that Adolf Hitler won more than a third of the vote in the German presidential election, from which he went on to gain supreme power in Germany at the start of the following year. Meanwhile, in October 1932, Oswald Mosley had founded the British Union of Fascists. If there is turbulence and alarm in this symphony, so there was in the world out of which it came. And if the symphony as a form is most typically engaged with progress, resolution, optimism, here may have been some of Walton’s difficulty.

Sir Simon Rattle
^{LSO Music Director}

Sir Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. From 1980 to 1998, he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was appointed Music Director in 1990. In 2002, he took up the position of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic where he remained until the end of the 2017/18 season. He became Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra in September 2017.

Sir Simon regularly tours within Europe, North America and Asia, and has long-standing relationships with the world’s leading orchestras. Initially working closely with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras, Simon has also recently worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera. Sir Simon is also a Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Founding Patron of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Sir Simon Rattle was knighted in 1994. In the New Year’s Honours of 2014 he received the Order of Merit from Her Majesty the Queen.

_{Image: Ranald Mackechnie}

Leila Josefowicz
^violin

Leila Josefowicz’s passionate advocacy of contemporary music for the violin is reflected in her diverse programmes and enthusiasm for performing new works. In recognition of her outstanding achievement and excellence in music, she won the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2008, joining prominent scientists, writers and musicians who have made unique contributions to contemporary life.

A favourite of living composers, Josefowicz has premiered many concertos, including those by Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey and Esa-Pekka Salonen, all written specially for her. Other recent premieres include John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 (Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra) in 2015 with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, and Luca Francesconi’s Duende – The Dark Notes in 2014 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki. Josefowicz enjoyed a close working relationship with the late Oliver Knussen, performing various concertos, including his Violin Concerto, together over 30 times. Alongside pianist John Novacek, with whom she has enjoyed a close collaboration since 1985, Josefowicz has performed recitals at world-renowned venues such as New York’s Zankel Hall, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as in Reykjavik, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

Recent highlights include engagements with the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich and Boston and Finnish Radio symphony orchestras. In summer 2017, Josefowicz appeared at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall and London’s Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

Josefowicz has released several recordings, notably for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips/ Universal and Warner Classics and was featured on Touch Press’s acclaimed iPad app, The Orchestra. She has previously received nominations for Grammy Awards for her recordings of Scheherazade.2 with the St Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson, and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.