JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC

Friday 13 January, 7.30pm

Maurice Ravel

Oiseaux tristes (arr. Colin Matthews) (4 mins)

Noctuelles (arr. Steven Stucky) (5 mins)

La vallée des cloches (arr. Colin Matthews)

world premiere (4 mins)

Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (18 mins)

Interval: 20 mins

Dmitry Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 (59 mins)

BBC PhilharmonicJean-Efflam Bavouzet pianoNicholas Collon conductor

ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN YOUR MUSICAL JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY?

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Our Journey Through Music scheme at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall is an affordable and enjoyable introduction to the world of concert-going and classical music. For young people and children from the age of 8, our special scheme is aimed at making our concerts easily accessible for families and anybody who wants to discover orchestral music or to explore it further.

Ready to begin?Join us on this musical journey and discover the unforgettable world of classical music. Three performances will feature a pre-concert session suitable for all ages – but every concert in the 2016/17 season is available at a special family-ticket price. Plus – choose your seat anywhere in the house for the same price:• £7 for children aged 16 and under• £12 for accompanying adults• £35 family ticket, for 4 people (maximum of 2 adults)These prices include a £2 booking fee so you know there’s no extra costs when you book – just be sure to book in advance as these are not available on the day.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ORCHESTRA

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WHAT IS AN ORCHESTRA?An orchestra is a group of instrumental players who perform together, usually led by a conductor.

The modern symphony orchestra usually has somewhere between 60 and 90 players: around 30 violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, eight double basses; two or three each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, a tuba, a harp and an assortment of percussion instruments. You can find out more about the instruments, and where they sit, on the next two pages after this.

THE CONDUCTORThe person in charge is usually the conductor, who stands at the front and directs the orchestra from a podium, keeping time either by waving a short stick, called a baton, or sometimes just with his or her hands. One of the earliest conductors, the Italian-born Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87), kept his orchestra together by banging a big stick on the floor, but one day he accidentally stabbed his foot and soon afterwards died of gangrene. It’s not as dangerous these days!

Part of the conductor’s job is to show the beat (or pulse) of the music so that all the musicians play together in time. He or she also signals when individual musicians or groups have to start or stop playing. All the time conductors are listening to the overall sound-balance, and altering it, to make sure that the important instruments don’t get drowned out by less important ones. Otherwise, like lots of people talking loudly at the same time, the result would be chaos!

But there’s more to it than this. The conductor can also help to reveal the changing moods of the music. If they can create a strong musical image for the listener, the effect can make us feel all sorts of emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, pride and everything in between. The music might energise you, or it might make you feel you’ve fallen into a dream.

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THE ORCHESTRA ON STAGEMost orchestras have a similar seating plan, with the strings at the front, the woodwind behind them and the brass and percussion further back still.

WOODWINDThe woodwind section sits behind the strings, often in two rows. There are four different instruments, usually in pairs, but in bigger orchestras there can be up to three or four players of each instrument. The metal flutes produce a high, bright, silvery sound. The piccolo is like a small flute and plays very high up. Oboes are black wooden instruments with a detachable reed, which gives them a distinctive sharp-edged sound. Before a concert starts, the whole orchestra tunes up to the note ‘A’ sounded by the Principal Oboe. A bigger, lower version of the oboe is the cor anglais, or ‘English horn’. Clarinets have a more hollow, woody sound. The lowest-sounding member of its family is the bass clarinet. The lowest woodwind instrument is the bassoon, which is long and heavy and has to be supported by a sling round the player’s neck. The contra-bassoon is so long that it’s bent double. Occasionally a piece will need extra instruments, such as the saxophone, which is more usually found in a jazz band.

BRASSLike the strings and woodwind, the brass family has four groups. There are French horns (usually four), instruments once associated with hunting, while the trumpets came from military bands, and often have fanfare-like parts. Trombones are played with a movable slide but, in spite of their size, they can play amazingly fast notes; and finally the enormous tuba makes the deepest notes of all.

PERCUSSIONThe percussion section sits at the back of the orchestra and centres around the timpani, or kettledrums – between two and four copper drums. They have pedals, which alter their pitch (or notes). The bass drum is hit with just one stick; while the metal cymbals are clashed together, often when the music gets very loud. The side-drum is a small military drum that can play very quietly or very loudly indeed. Sometimes composers ask for a variety of other percussion instruments, such as the xylophone, the marimba or even whistles, whips and sirens.

STRINGSString players sit at the front in a semi-circle, usually with the violins on the left and the cellos on the right. Each of the string sections (and also the woodwind, brass and percussion sections) has a principal, who leads the section. The strings divide into four sections: violins, violas, cellos and double basses. The violins are subdivided into first violins and second violins, with the Firsts generally having a slightly more difficult and brilliant part. Violas are bigger than violins, with a deeper, mellower sound. The cellos have a rounded, bass sound. The huge double basses (which are played standing up, or perched on a high stool) add depth to the string sound. The harp is played with fingers instead of a bow, and it has a series of complicated pedals that change its pitch (or notes).

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TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)Oiseaux tristes (1904–5), orch. Colin Matthews Noctuelles (1904–5), orch. Steven Stucky La vallée des cloches (1904–5), orch. Colin Matthews world premiere

Music comes in many shapes and sizes. The French composer Maurice Ravel originally wrote these three pieces more than 100 years ago as part of a piano suite called Miroirs (which translates as ‘Mirrors’) and each one is a sort of musical reflection of a particular image.

Although they sound very effective played by just one person at the piano, imagine how they might sound played by a symphony orchestra. That’s where the American composer Steven Stucky (1949–2016) and British composer Colin Matthews (born 1946) come in, as they’ve both taken particular pieces from Miroirs and arranged them so that they can be played by an orchestra. They’ve imagined the sounds that Ravel would have wanted if he’d had an orchestra, and tried to help him tell his musical story.

What to listen forOiseaux tristes• This is French for ‘Sad Birds’. Ravel said he imagined birds

sitting on branches in a deep, dark forest on a hot day. Can you feel the heat: the way the music sounds thick and misty? The woodwind instruments represent the birds.

Noctuelles• ‘Noctuelles’ means ‘moths’ – and it’s easy to imagine them

fluttering around in the darkness. The music is fast paced: listen for the sound of the celesta (it looks like a small piano but makes a shimmering, glistening sound).

La vallée des cloches• In ‘The valley of bells’ Ravel imagines a country scene,

dotted with churches. One by one their different bells start to chime, some close, some far away. Watch the percussion section at the back of the orchestra. Colin Matthews has only just finished making this orchestration and this is the first time it has ever been heard in concert.

What else could I listen to?We’ve got some more Ravel coming right up! But Colin Mathews has also orchestrated the magical Préludes by Ravel’s near-contemporary Debussy, and our friends in the Hallé have recorded them all.

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Maurice RavelPiano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929–30)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano

Like most of us, Maurice Ravel was a wonderful mixture of things. His mother came from the Basque region, near France’s border with Spain, and his father was an engineer. Maurice always loved the music of Spain, and the clear, mechanical sounds of machines. He dressed in the very smartest and most fashionable clothes, and lived alone in a tiny house filled with clockwork toys and ornaments. He spent ages writing his music – he wanted it to sound just right.

This next piece is a concerto – a work for a single instrument with the backing of an orchestra. The idea is to show off just how well a star performer can play. Paul Wittgenstein was an Austrian pianist who lost his right arm while fighting in the First World War. Most people would have given up, but Wittgenstein was determined to play on and he asked the world’s most famous composers to write him pieces that he could play with his one remaining hand! So Ravel wrote this Concerto for the Left Hand for him. It was finished in 1930 but some people think you can hear some of the sounds of the war in the music.

What to listen for• Darkness: the music begins quietly and slowly, played by

the very deepest and gloomiest-sounding instruments in the orchestra – the contrabassoon (deeper-sounding big brother of the standard bassoon) and the double basses (the biggest string instruments). It’s as if the music is in shadows.

• How will the pianist join in? With a big, grand sound, proud and jagged – and all played with just one hand. Don’t believe it? Watch!

• War! Lots of fantastic things happen between the piano and the orchestra, but listen out for the bright-sounding trumpets and the point when the music settles into a stern marching rhythm, with rattling drums. Throughout history, armies have marched to the sound of trumpets – it’s as if Ravel is remembering the reason why his pianist only has one hand in the first place.

• The cadenza: just before the end, the orchestra stops and the pianist simply goes wild, all on his own. When this happens in a concerto, it’s called a ‘cadenza’ – it’s a final chance for the pianist to show what they can do. Just listen to all those notes!

What else could I listen to?Ravel wrote another Piano Concerto, this time for himself to play – with both hands!

Interval: 20 minutes (time for an ice-cream!)

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–75)Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1943)

1 Adagio (Slow)2 Allegretto (Moderately fast)3 Allegro non troppo (Fast but not too much so) – 4 Largo (Very slow) –5 Allegretto (Moderately fast)

All music tells some sort of story – even (maybe especially) if it’s one that can’t be put into words. And it doesn’t always have to be a very happy story. We’ve already heard about a musician who was involved in the First World War, the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who commissioned Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand; our next composer, Dmitry Shostakovich knew all about the Second World War. He lived in Russia, which for nearly 30 years was ruled over by the dictator Joseph Stalin (his surname meant ‘man of steel’). Even when times were peaceful, everyone had to live by Stalin’s rules. Speaking your mind could get you thrown in prison, or even killed.

Then, in 1941, it got even worse: Hitler’s armies invaded Russia. It was one of the most terrible wars in history. Over 27 million Russians died. Shostakovich was one of lucky ones but he was trapped for a while when the Nazi troops surrounded the city of Leningrad (St Petersburg). Food was short, some people were so hungry they ate rats, and many more simply starved in the freezing winter. But Stalin’s officials expected Shostakovich to write music to encourage people, so in 1942 he composed his ‘Leningrad’ Symphony (No. 7). It’s grand, exciting and has a loud, enthusiastic ending – just what people needed to hear.

But Shostakovich was a great artist, and that meant he had to tell the truth. The next summer, he wrote another symphony: his Eighth (he didn’t give it a name). A symphony is a long piece of music, usually for orchestra and usually made up of several separate pieces called movements, which all go together to tell up one big musical story. But it’s a story without words: the tunes (‘themes’) are like the characters. The story of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony … well, hear for yourself. Remember where and when Shostakovich wrote it. After the war, Stalin’s officials thought it told the wrong kind of story, so they banned it and threatened Shostakovich. Sometimes telling the truth can be dangerous …

TONIGHT'S MUSIC

What to listen for1 Adagio (Slow) • The cellos and double basses start the symphony with a

gruff, jagged tune. The music slowly starts to unfold – as if Shostakovich is telling us something very big and very serious. Listen for drums and trumpets, the instruments of war. And after it gets quiet again, listen for a long, sad tune played by the cor anglais, the mournful-sounding woodwind instrument. Does it sound a bit like a human voice sobbing? See what you think.

2 Allegretto (moderately fast) • Many symphonies contain a short, fast movement called a

scherzo (which is Italian for ‘joke’) – but if this is a joke it’s a very angry one! Listen out for where the highest of the woodwind instruments, the piccolo, plays along with the low bassoon. Does it sound ridiculous? Maybe that’s the point.

3 Allegro non troppo (Fast but not too fast)• Thousands of machines – tanks, aircraft and trains – took

part in the Second World War, while deep in Russia, factories worked round the clock building weapons. The string instruments play a bustling rhythm that never quite stops – like a machine. Along the way, listen out for yells from the brass instruments and booming sounds from the percussion section. There’s a long, rattling drum-roll (it sound a bit like gunfire), and the music goes straight on into …

4 Largo (Very slow) • This sounds grand at first, and then quiet – as the music

slowly repeats itself, changing a bit each time (as if Shostakovich is thinking about what he has seen, over and over). It can sound incredibly icy and lonely: listen out for when the flutes take over the tune. They sound gentle at first, but later the players flutter their tongues to make a shivering sound. The smooth-sounding clarinet leads into the last movement.

5 Allegretto (moderately fast) • The bassoon starts things off – and suddenly it all seems

a bit brighter and happier. It’s as if Shostakovich is looking to happier times – whether in the past or the future, who knows? But listen out for the brass instruments and the violent, crashing sound of the cymbals in the percussion section) – who seem to be telling us that the war isn’t over yet. The ending is quiet. Happy, sad – or just relieved that it’s all over?

What else could I listen to?Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies. For a different (and more upbeat) description of the Second World War try the Seventh – the ‘Leningrad Symphony’. The Russians played it at their enemies through huge loudspeakers, to show that they weren’t defeated!

Notes © Richard Bratby

JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC PRE-CONCERT SESSIONS

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We have special pre-concert introductions at two upcoming concerts. Join us a bit earlier on the concert night to discover more about the orchestra and the music being performed.

Saturday 4 February 2017Relishing in Revolution

Music by Beethoven, Saint-Saëns & DebussyPre-concert session, 6.30pm

Friday 26 May 2017Concert Fantastique

Music by Arvo Pärt, Berlioz & Mark SimpsonPre-concert session, 6.30pm