COME AND PLAY WITH THE HALLÉ

Transcription

1 COME AND PLAY WITH THE HALLÉ CONCERTS FOR SCHOOLS STRICTLY HALLÉ CONDUCTED BY JONATHON HEYWARD PRESENTED BY TOM REDMOND SUMMER 2018 THE BRIDGEWATER HALL, MANCHESTER RESOURCE PACK FOR TEACHERS Supported by: Hallé Concerts Society 2018

2 COME AND PLAY WITH THE HALLÉ 2018 STRICTLY HALLÉ CONDUCTED BY JONATHON HEYWARD PRESENTED BY TOM REDMOND TCHAIKOVSKY Swan Lake: Prelude to Act II TCHAIKOVSKY The Nutcracker: Waltz of the Flowers * Audience Participation {Instrumental} COPLAND Rodeo: Hoedown * MARY GREEN & JULIE STANLEY Ai Caramba Samba Audience Participation {Song} SAINT-SAENS Danse Macabre PICKETT/BENNISON Charleston Champions Audience Participation {Song} DVORAK Slavonic Dance: (Audience choice) Op 46, No 8 in G minor Op 72, No 2 in E minor PRADO Mambo No. 5 Audience Participation {Instrumental} arr. PICKETT British Folk Dance Suite Audience Participation MARQUEZ Danzón No. 2 *BBC 10 Pieces

3 JONATHON HEYWARD (conductor) Jonathon Heyward is forging a career as one of the most exciting conductors of his generation. Currently Assistant Conductor of the Hallé, alongside Music Director Sir Mark Elder, and also Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra, the young American has also been selected to be part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic s Dudamel Conducting Fellowship programme. In addition to conducting his first subscription series concerts with the Hallé in Manchester, this season also sees him embark on a number of eclectic projects: five performances premiering Giorgio Battistelli s new opera, Lazarus, for the Birmingham Opera Company with stage director Graham Vick; a tour of France with the Orchestre de l Opéra de Rouen, including performances at the festivals in Besançon and La Chaise-Dieu; a series of concerts with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra at the best halls across Belgium; debuts with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne; and a return invitation to Japan. In 2015 Jonathon Heyward won the 54th International Competition for Young Conductors in Besançon, taking the Grand Prize at the age of only 23. Since then he has conducted the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Panda Wind Orchestra (Japan), Philharmonie Zuidnederland, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Chineke! Orchestra in the UK and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (in a production of Kurt Weill s Lost in the Stars, as part of his Dudamel Conducting Fellowship, supported by the Kurt Weill Foundation). Originally a cellist, Jonathon Heyward commenced his conducting studies at the Boston Conservatory in the class of Andrew Altenbach. He went on to occupy the position of Assistant Conductor for both the Conservatory s opera department and the Boston Opera Collaborative, where he worked from 2012 to 2014 on productions including La bohème, Die Zauberflöte and The Rape of Lucretia. In 2013 he became the youngest ever semi-finalist at the Blue Danube International Opera Conducting Competition and furthered his education with postgraduate studies with Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy of Music in London, from where he graduated in June TOM REDMOND (presenter) Tom Redmond is a broadcaster, presenter, horn player and animateur based in Manchester. He was a member of the Hallé for 13 years before relinquishing his position in 2016 to allow him more time to work in music education and broadcasting. As a horn player he has performed throughout Europe, Japan, Russia, South East Asia and the USA with orchestras including the City of Birmingham and London Symphony orchestras, Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Philharmonia. He is involved with the BBC's Ten Pieces project, leading creative workshops with its celebrity ambassadors, and he was the orchestra consultant for the project's ebook. He has introduced classical music to over 150,000 young people and their families in interactive concerts for schools with the Hallé, CBSO, RTÉ NSO, SCO and Ulster Orchestra. As an animateur he has led creative sessions in a variety of musical environments, from prisons to music hubs and state and public schools. He has recently devised and delivered a series of corporate training workshops to highlight the effects of inspirational leadership in the workplace, using the orchestra as an example of a high performance team. He is also the horn tutor at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music and has a close relationship with the National Youth Orchestra of Great

4 Britain. He works as a consultant with many orchestras, providing resources and training for outreach and creative programmes. Tom is in demand as a presenter of pops concerts and has worked alongside conductors including Stephen Bell, Andrew Gourlay, James Lowe, Jamie Phillips, Timothy Redmond and Neil Thomson. As part of the recent Britten centenary celebrations he narrated The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra at the closing concert of the 2013 Aldeburgh Festival with the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder. This led to a commission from the Hallé to re-write the text, which received its first performances in Manchester and Nottingham in 2015 and which pupils heard in this year s Hallé for Youth concerts. Recent and future presenting highlights include debuts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival, Insights at the Royal Opera House, the premier of a new work, Dinosaurumpus, with the Hallé and return visits to the CBSO, RTENSO and Ulster Orchestra. At the Royal Albert Hall he hosts a concert for young people with Lang Lang and in October 2016 presented My First Orchestral Adventure with the RPCO. PROGRAMME NOTES PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Swan Lake: Prelude to Act II Swan Lake, the first of Tchaikovsky s ballet scores, is based on various Russian folk tales and tells the tragic story of Odette, a princess who is transformed into a swan by an evil sorcerer. It initially met with failure but after various revivals and revisions rapidly became one of the best-loved ballets of them all. At the opening of the Prelude to Act II, an oboe sings out the yearning Swan theme, the ballet s central leitmotif. As the theme is taken up by other instruments and eventually the entire orchestra, the mood becomes first impassioned, then tragic. PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY The Nutcracker: Waltz of the Flowers After the success of Tchaikovsky s The Sleeping Beauty in 1890, St Petersburg s Imperial Theatres commissioned from Tchaikovsky an ambitious double-bill programme that was to contain both an opera and a ballet. Tchaikovsky s response was the one-act lyric opera Iolanta and the two-act ballet The Nutcracker. For the latter Tchaikovsky joined up with the renowned choreographer Marius Petipa. The source chosen by Petipa was an adaptation of E.T.A Hoffmann s story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by Alexandre Dumas (father of the famous French novelist of the same name) called The Tale of the Nutcracker. With its swirling harp introduction, the gently swaying Waltz of the Flowers is one of the most elegant and touching highlights of Tchaikovsky s great ballet score. AARON COPLAND Rodeo: Hoedown After the United States entered the war in 1941, Copland felt strongly that his music must be socially useful. As a result he wrote a series of works that were highly patriotic to help raise the morale of the American people. Hoedown from Rodeo is a classic example of Copland s outdoor American style and became the blueprint for numerous Western film scores.

5 MARY GREEN AND JULIE STANLEY Ai Caramba Samba The Samba originated in Bahia, Brazil and has its roots in Africa. In fact, it was the African slave trade that brought the dance to South America. Since then Samba has become nothing less than an emblem of Brazilian national identity (even Brazil s beloved football team are known as The Samba Boys ) and plays a huge part in the annual Rio Carnival, a period of unbridled merry-making and red meat consumption before the more sober and abstemious days of Lent. Mary Green and Julie Stanley s Ai Caramba Samba, a mass participation piece, was specially devised to celebrate the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Danse Macabre (solo violin: Sarah Ewins) As its title suggests, French composer Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre is full of devilment and ghoulish goings-on. A French legend has it that at midnight every Halloween, the devil summons the dead from their graves who then dance until daybreak to the sounds of his fiddle (represented here by a solo violin). Accordingly, in bell-like fashion a harp begins the piece by repeating the same note twelve times it is midnight. Then the devil appears (the violin specially tuned so it can easily play a dissonant musical interval called a tritone or the devil in music as it was once called). With the fiend the master of ceremonies, the uncanny dancing begins, gradually building to a great climax. After a short silence, dawn breaks (the cockerel s crow is imitated by an oboe) and the skeletons return to their graves for another year. During the dance section listen and watch out for the xylophone as it evokes the dry bones of the skeletons. When Saint-Saëns composed Danse Macabre in 1874 the xylophone was a new invention. In the published score Saint-Saëns therefore included details of where orchestras could buy one! CHARLESTON CHAMPIONS Neil Bennison/Steve Pickett Named after the South Carolina harbour city of Charleston, the Charleston was a dance phenomenon of the 1920s, the era of jazz, speakeasies and Flappers. It was a physical expression of youthful rebellion that was banned from some dance halls because of its supposed indecency. The Charleston lives on however, and here s Steve Pickett and Neil Bennison s new take on the dance form. It joyfully references the Charleston competitions so keenly-contested back in the day. ANTONÍN DVORÁK Slavonic Dance (choice of either Op 46, No 8 in G minor OR Op 72, No 2 in E minor) In 1877, after the considerable commercial success of the first volume of his Hungarian Dances, nolesser figure than Johannes Brahms suggested to his Berlin-based publishers Simrock that they ask a little-known, talented but poor Czech composer called Dvorák to compose further short pieces with a similarly eastern European flavour. The rest, as they say, is history. In the words of one contemporary, the resulting Slavonic Dances (Opus 46) led to a veritable run on music shops and the collection instantly gave Dvorák international recognition. Some eight years later the nowfamous (and considerably less poor) Dvorák produced a further set of Slavonic Dances (Opus 72) to meet the public s insatiable appetite for eastern European exotica. That public was once again effusive. Here s one reason why.

6 PRADO Mambo No. 5 The Cuban pianist and dance bandleader Pérez Prado specialised in composing mambos: upbeat versions of the Cuban danzón. With their sizzling bass riffs and sturdy saxophone counterpoints, Prado s mambos are real toe-tappers. No. 5 is the most instantly recognisable of them all and became a chart hit for both Lou Bega in 1999 (which was used by Channel 4 as the signature tune for their Test cricket coverage) and, in 2001, the multi-talented Bob the Builder! TRADITIONAL arr. STEVE PICKETT British Folk Dance Suite In keeping with an emphasis on audience participation, this year we have decided to provide a folk dance element to our concert. To that end I have selected four folk dances from the four countries of the British Isles: IRELAND: The Lark in the Morning SCOTLAND: Miss Garden of Troop s Reel WALES: Pant Coran yr Wyn (The Lambs Fold Vale) ENGLAND: Manchester Hornpipe (Rickett s Hornpipe) MARQUEZ Danzón No. 2 Arturo Márquez was born in the remote Mexican town of Alamos. His father, by trade a carpenter, was also a violinist and introduced his son to music, particularly the traditional dance music of Mexico. When Arturo was twelve the family moved to Los Angeles where he began to study violin and several other instruments at high school. Soon he began composing too, influenced by a wide range of musical styles and genres. Until the early 1990s Márquez s music was largely unknown outside his native Mexico, though an introduction to Latin ballroom dancing was to greatly enhance his international profile. As a result of his newfound interest he composed a series of vibrant Danzónes, a genre that fuses dance music from Cuba with that of the Veracruz region of Mexico. The second of these was inspired by a visit to a ballroom in Veracruz. A soulful clarinet solo opens the work. Then, as the tempo and rhythmic excitement gradually build, along the way are further solos for oboe, piano, violin, trumpet and piccolo. Various percussion instruments are also suitably prominent, though the piece as a whole presents every single instrument with interest and challenges. The work simply thrills with its pulsating rhythms, colourful orchestration and spicy melodic lines. No wonder it s regarded as Mexico s second national anthem. Programme Notes 2018 Anthony Bateman

7 The Hallé's Award Winning Education Programme was established in 1989 and has now grown to the point where it generates more than 60 projects a year in various parts of the community from schools, special needs centres and prisons to youth clubs and work with the elderly. The aim of Hallé Education is to firmly establish the Hallé Orchestra as a valuable and highly responsive resource for all members of the community in and around Manchester. We do this principally by placing musicians into the wider community to compose and perform music alongside project participants. The Education Programme complements the Hallé's annual schedule of more than 120 concerts and is central to the Orchestra's artistic strategy. Schools' work remains our main focus where, in partnership with teachers, we aim to enhance the National Curriculum for music. To complete the experience we encourage those involved to share with us the passion and quality of live music in the concert hall. For those unable to attend concerts for whatever reason, we have a programme which develops the many positive benefits of arts work through the creative process of music-making. Since its inception, the quality of Hallé Education has been recognised by several prestigious awards including: a Royal Anniversary Challenge Gold Medal for its Gamelan project; a Sainsbury's Arts Education Award for Powerful Percussion; a PRS Composers in Education Award for Bridging the Gap; and a Regional National Training Award for its training programme for Hallé musicians which was generously sponsored by the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust. Two other factors have been vitally important to our success. They are the support and dedication to the Programme of over half the Orchestra's players and the overwhelmingly positive response from schools and other participants. Although much of Hallé Education's work is based in Greater Manchester, it also serves the wider geographical area covered by the Orchestra's touring programme throughout the north of England. Without doubt, one of the most exciting and successful initiatives developed since Hallé Education's inception is Hallé for Youth. Each year this specially devised series of concerts for schools provides an introduction to live classical music for thousands of schoolchildren throughout Greater Manchester and the North West. Another highlight of Hallé Education s programme is the series of Come and Play with the Hallé concerts, which involves the orchestra performing with thousands of primary-aged children who are engaged with the Whole Class Ensemble Teaching Programme, and provides children from within a local authority with an opportunity to take part in a musical performance with a live symphony orchestra. Teachers from the local music services tutor the children attending the concerts, with all the materials designed by Hallé Education. The programme is designed so that the children are involved in an interactive experience throughout the whole concert. Original and arranged material, specially composed by Steve Pickett for the professional players and young people to share, is presented alongside orchestral blockbusters ranging from film scores to famous classics. The children, therefore, experience the power of a symphony orchestra at first hand, and are then part of it.

8 The Hallé is one of the top orchestras in the UK. It is currently in its 160 th concert season, having been founded in Manchester by Sir Charles Hallé (right) and given its first concert in the city s Free Trade Hall on 30 January Following the death of Sir Charles, the orchestra continued to develop under the guidance of such distinguished figures as Dr Hans Richter, Sir Hamilton Harty and Sir John Barbirolli. Mark Elder CBE became the Hallé s Music Director in He was knighted by the Queen in 2008 for services to music and appointed a Companion of Honour in He has worked at the world s top opera houses and concert halls, with many of the world s leading orchestras, and he continues to perform internationally as a guest conductor. Sir Charles Hallé The Hallé has received many awards for its work in the concert hall and celebrated collaborations with other orchestras and Manchester organisations. As well as taking to the stage for around 70 concerts a year at The Bridgewater Hall, its Manchester home, the Hallé places great pride in giving over 40 concerts annually throughout the rest of Britain. Its distinguished history of acclaimed performances also includes televised concerts, frequent radio broadcasts and international tours. The Hallé Choir has over 160 members and often joins the orchestra for large choral works throughout the year. In addition, the Hallé has a youth orchestra, two youth choirs and a children s choir that work alongside the musicians and conductors, performing and touring in the UK and Europe. Sir Mark Elder CH CBE Last season over a quarter of a million people heard the Hallé, of whom more than 71,000 were inspired by the Hallé s pioneering education programme. Generating approximately 65 projects a year, the programme exists to create a wider enjoyment and understanding of music throughout the whole community. Facebook - Twitter - YouTube - Instagram:

9 Here are a few facts about the hall: The Bridgewater Hall took exactly 3½ years to build, from digging the foundations in March 1993, to the opening concert in September The centre of a lively, noisy city isn t the ideal place to build a new concert hall because orchestras and audiences need perfect silence and microphones are now so sensitive that they can hear things that ordinary people can t, for example: heavy traffic, the trams running opposite the hall, aeroplanes etc. The solutions to these problems were: o Lift the auditorium off the ground and stand it on hundreds of large steel springs. This is because vibrations (sound) are absorbed by the coiled springs. o Make the building itself very heavy and solid so it cannot move easily. o Make the doors, windows and carpets very thick. o Put facilities such as air conditioning, water supply and things that hum and buzz in a separate tower at the back of the building. It took a team of 20 architects, an interior designer, a team of acoustic designers with lots of computers and a team of expert engineers to design The Bridgewater Hall. Every single design choice is for acoustic purposes! Inside the foyer a sculpture ripples through all four floors. It represents billowing lengths of Manchester cotton and waves of sound, light, water and music. Although it looks as though it could be made of fabric or cardboard, it is actually made of great strips of steel, carefully bent into shape and painted only on the back so that the colours are reflected off the wall behind. Inside the auditorium everything has been designed to make the sound perfect. The most important feature is the ceiling which is a heavy, ribbed structure of steelwork coated in concrete. It is kept in place by a spider s web of delicate steelwork underneath, which acts like an upside-down suspension bridge the flat concrete is being kept up by the steel wires, rather than hanging down from it. The auditorium can seat 2,400 people, which includes a choir of nearly 300. Every seat has been specially designed so that even if it is not a full house, all the sound bounces as though every chair was taken. The Bridgewater Hall organ is the largest mechanical organ to be installed in Britain this century. It has over 5,500 pipes the largest is on the front and is 32 feet long, the smallest is less than two inches. The whole organ is the size of a four-storey house with stairs and passageways inside. The organ weighs 22 tons and cost 120,000 to build.

10 The Bridgewater Hall. Notice the funny angles formed by the Circle and Gallery seats? The organ at The Bridgewater Hall above the choir seats. Some of the Spring Boxes that hold up the auditorium.

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