Thank you for all the kind donations towards our Birthday presents that are still arriving. As always we really enjoy reading your birthday messages and wanted to share a few more with you.

Thank you LPO for providing such joy to me, my friends and all the audiences over the last 80 years. Have a great birthday! 

We have loved the FUNharmonic concerts over the last few years and think the LPO is the best orchestra ever!

Your encouragement of young musicians will, I’m sure, ensure the survival of the orchestra for another eighty years.

The LPO gave me some of my earliest experiences of concert going. As a teenager in the 1950s I was able to get tickets through my school – reduced price I think – for the LPO series of concerts at Watford Town Hall every winter. There I saw Adrian Boult, Malcom Sargent, Peter Katin, John Ogdon and many more.

Over 15 years ago my boyfriend gave me two tickets for each of the ‘Silver’ series concerts – I was completely hooked on the LPO sound and have been a total addict since then (no antidote needed)! May you continue to produce such wonderful music for decades (at least) 15 years more! Happy Birthday. 

For more info on the Birthday Appeal and how to donate click here.

On Saturday 26 January, the London Philharmonic Orchestra continued their year-long journey through 20th-century music, The Rest Is Noise festival, at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. Under conductor Sir Mark Elder, with soloists Sarah Connolly, Paul Groves, James Rutherford, the London Philharmonic Choir and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, they performed Elgar’s magnificent oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.

Here are the press reviews:

‘The choral singing – the London Philharmonic Chorus, with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, supplying the semi-chorus – was unstintingly sumptuous and secure … Altogether, this was a performance that underlined what an extraordinary achievement The Dream of Gerontius was.’
Andrew Clements, The Guardian

‘Elder’s performance would not have worked half so well if he had not had a supremely responsive set of musicians in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. From the first notes of the prelude, it was clear that the players were completely in tune to Elder’s way with the piece and they turned in some richly subtle and finely controlled playing.’
Robert Hugill (blog)

‘Groves’ operatic, dramatised wanderer sat well against the warm control of Sarah Connolly. If there’s a better Angel singing today, I have yet to hear them. Church-pure and Wagner-large by turns, Connolly’s “Alleluia” is a prayer that would move the sternest God, thrumming as the emotional pulse of the performance.’
Alexandra Coghlan, The Arts Desk

‘After a slightly bland opening, it blossomed richly, not least thanks to an excellent LPO viola section. Splendidly implacable brass also gave a foretaste of travails to come …There were many details throughout to admire, not least excellent playing from the LPO woodwind. Elgar’s contrapuntal mastery told in Elder’s direction of the Demons’ Chorus; here drive was not at all out of place. The emergence of the ‘great tune’ was carefully prepared in the best sense.’
Mark Berry, Boulezian (blog)

‘Elder’s slow tempo for the opening orchestral summonses initiated the stature of the performance as a whole, and his spacious conducting let all the pictorial detail Elgar lavished on the score to make its mark, matched by the LPO’s luminous playing.’
Peter Reed, Classical Source

‘This conductor works so hard on revelatory textures, gleaming in the hands of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and is a superb chorus master, there with every word for the LPO Chorus and the Clare College Cambridge singers who served as the semichoir.’
David Nice (blog)

The Rest Is Noise continues at Royal Festival Hall this Friday, 1 February, when the London Philharmonic Orchestra performs a programme of Debussy and Sibelius with conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste and violinist Henning Kraggerud. There are still tickets available – more details and online booking here.

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra

On Wednesday 23 January, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Sir Mark Elder continued their year-long journey through 20th-century music, The Rest Is Noise festival, at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. Together with soloists Lilli Paasikivi (soprano) and Paul Groves (tenor), the Orchestra performed Webern’s Im Sommerwind, Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Here’s what the reviewers thought:

‘Lilli Paasikivi was the breathtaking mezzo, beautiful in tone and infinitely noble of utterance. The LPO sound good in this repertoire, and the playing throughout was exceptional in its warmth, finesse and detail.’
Tim Ashley, The Guardian

‘Some of the playing was exceptional – Juliette Bausor’s limpidly expressive solo flute, Ian Hardwick’s plangent oboe – and Paasikivi’s dying farewells – “Ewig…ewig…” (“For ever and ever”) – scented eternity.’
Edward Seckerson (blog)

‘Hallucinatory celesta tones (Catherine Edwards) [in the Schoenberg] almost stole the show, but in reality that instrument was only first amongst equals in a London Philharmonic Orchestra on fine form … Groves contributed a winning, appropriate earnestness to the third movement [of the Mahler], almost as if revisiting the Wunderhorn songs of Mahler’s (relative) youth, now invigoratingly set against orchestral chinoiserie and the LPO’s buoyantly sprung rhythms. Both orchestra and Elder were really at their best here, lilt and colour equally impressive.’
Boulezian (blog)

‘’The Farewell’ [in Das Lied] – Juliette Bausor’s flute-playing was mesmerising in its silken loveliness and magnetism, and Hardwick again shone … [However,] the most completely successful performance of the evening was the Schoenberg, which had been intensively rehearsed to thoroughly musical, expressive and lucid effect.’
Colin Anderson, Classical Source

‘Elder led a performance [of Das Lied] of tender sensitivity rather than heaven-storming bravura. In this he was helped by the American tenor Paul Groves, who was faced with some of the most taxingly heroic passages in the entire tenor repertory. Often one’s more aware here of the singer’s efforts than the music, but Groves’s emotional intelligence and engagement with the words were what seized the attention.’
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph

‘But it wasn’t just the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s programming that made melodious loveliness such a feature. What warmed the Webern, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and that expressionistic bombshell Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces was the caressing baton of Mark Elder.’
Geoff Brown, The Times (subscriber access only)

The concert is available to listen again on BBC iPlayer here until 29 Jan.

Sir Mark Elder and the LPO return to Royal Festival Hall this Saturday to continue The Rest Is Noise with a performance of Elgar’s magnificent oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. There are still tickets available – more details and online booking here.

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra

On Saturday 19 January, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Vladimir Jurowski opened the year-long The Rest Is Noise festival at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. Together with soprano soloist Karita Mattila and baritone Thomas Hampson, the Orchestra performed an all-Strauss programme including the Dance of the Seven Veils and Final Scene from his controversial opera Salome.

Here’s what the reviewers had to say:

‘This may have been the official, lavish fanfare for the Southbank’s The Rest is Noise Festival, which if the hard sell hasn’t hit you yet is a year-long celebration of 20th century music in its cultural context and based around Alex Ross’s bestseller of the same name. For Jurowski and the LPO, though, it was very much through-composed programme planning as usual, though with a sweeping bow towards the festival theme of how modernism evolved as it did.’
David Nice, The Arts Desk

‘The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s conductor Vladimir Jurowski brought clarity without dissipating Strauss’s orchestral richness; the work [Also sprach Zarathustra]‘s tonal palette and harmonic seesawing were both faultlessly laid bare. Jurowski’s fondness for swifter speeds added immensely to the excitement of it all.’
Tim Ashley, The Guardian

‘Also Sprach, in this context, can perhaps be seen as a last hurrah for 19th-century self-indulgence, though Vladimir Jurowski is too intelligent a conductor to give way to such immoderation, and his handling of the tone poem judiciously tempered the sensualism with its Nietzschean underpinning. The latter’s Apollonian and Dionysian principles are central to Strauss’s Four Early Songs, op.33, as Jurowski reminded us in perceptive comments from the side of the stage. All praise to the LPO, on excellent form here, for including these rarely heard songs in its inaugural programme.’
Barry Millington, Evening Standard

‘This first concert showed how big-thinking projects like this can certainly stimulate ear-opening programming, and exceptional artistry … The evening was a traumatic, thrilling and tantalising convulsion from one century to the another: for what happens next, watch this space.’ (5 stars)
Hilary Finch, The Times (subscriber access only)

‘And then Salome danced. And Jurowski opened all our senses, the monster orchestra so light on its feet, the voluptuous waltz so airborne, the feverish xylophone-driven conclusion giving only scant indication of the price this sexy, exuberant dance might exact … It wasn’t pretty but it was hair-raising and it – along with the rest of the concert – set the bar extraordinarily high for the year ahead.’
Edward Seckerson (blog)

‘[Salome] still shocks, and Mattila has a flexibility of voice and an understanding of the music which lets her reach every one of those extremes, bringing her character to life in front of your eyes. She brought the house down.’
David Karlin, Bachtrack

‘[Mattila] was a terrifying display of preening, slobbering, petulant heat, any vocal strain offset by the extraordinary physicality of her performance – you really couldn’t take your eyes off her. Crushed and crouched on the floor, Strauss’s and Oscar Wilde’s heroine had tasted the bitterness of forbidden love, and the audience went mad for her. How very satisfying.’
Peter Reed, Classical Source

‘Unstaged this may have been, but no staged performance could have been more electrifying.’
Michael Church, The Independent

‘From seven rows back, and even with his back to us, the control and precision with which Jurowski directs the orchestra and communicates the musical dynamics were grippingly evident. They played stunningly well throughout.’
Recitative (blog)

‘This performance [of Dance of the Seven Veils] was wonderfully judged by Jurowski I thought, in tempo, gesture and timbre, the players clearly relishing this bonbon and playing as a single machine … this was a performance of blazing power, and it was a wonder to watch Mattila as if possessed give so much of herself, presenting the most complete performance she could muster in that moment. Thrilling and awe inspiring.’
Capriccio (blog)

‘There is only one possible response to what we heard and saw – wow! Mattila looked stunning and sounded stunning, too, producing a range of steadily pitched and secure tone which belied rumours that her singing had become unruly of late. Here she was totally in command of her instrument … Her unforgettable tour de force was preceded by the purely orchestral Dance of the Seven Veils, conducted with rare refinement by Vladimir Jurowski, and graced by some particularly fine wind playing from the LPO.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph

‘Jurowski and the LPO set the scene with an outstandingly delicate performance of the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ before Mattila returned for the final scene … a wild start to what is going to be a long musical journey.’
Richard Fairman, Financial Times (not online)

Blog by Villa Maria guest, The Wine Sleuth

Blog by Richard Lane, audience member

The Rest Is Noise continues this Wednesday, 23 January at Royal Festival Hall, when Sir Mark Elder conducts the LPO in a programme of Webern, Schoenberg and Mahler including Das Lied von der Erde. There are still tickets available – more details and online booking here.

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra

The excitement is building about the opening of the year-long festival The Rest Is Noise, taking place at Southbank Centre throughout 2013. The festival opens tomorrow night (Sat 19 Jan), when the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski presents an all-Strauss programme, including the Dance of the Seven Veils and Final Scene from his controversial opera Salome.

Here’s some press coverage from the last few days …

Time Out London printed a two page festival preview which starts:
‘What do you imagine when you think of modern classical music? Weird dissonance? Impenetrable noise? Silence, even? Some of it is, but the music of the twentieth century, which encompasses everything from the great English romantic Elgar, to minimalist composer Philip Glass, is nothing less than an amazing journey in sound, wrought from a century of exponential technological progress and political cataclysm.’
Jonathan Lennie, 15 January 2013

Preview of the festival in Metro newspaper, with an interview with Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, 17 January:
‘All art forms go through phases. Sometimes they decline in confidence and sometimes regain it,’ says Kelly. ‘So just as there’s been an explosion in the visual arts, the same can be true of classical music. But it won’t happen unless we invest in it and take the risk. When audiences feel there is a passion and excitement surrounding these works, they’ll bring their own passion and excitement.’
The inspiration for the festival, which took two and a half years to plan, sprang from Alex Ross’s wonderfully readable history of 20th-century music, The Rest Is Noise. ‘It’s a truly great book,’ says Kelly. ‘It puts contemporary music into its historical and political context in a way that people who aren’t music lovers will still be excited by. Like showing how the CIA were funding experimental atonal music in the Cold War. Fascinating.’
Read full article

Soprano Karita Mattila, who performs on 19 January, was featured on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, on 17 Jan: listen again on iPlayer here

The Guardian video preview:
‘The first instalment of The Rest is Noise festival looks at what happened to classical music at the turn of the 20th century when the blast of modernity blew across Europe, when old imperial certainties were becoming shaky, when people flew in planes and drove in cars for the first time, Freud looked inside the human mind and Einstein overturned our view of time and the cosmos. In the early 1900s, Austro-German music was still the dominant force and Vienna remained the centre of a tradition which went back to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.’
Gillian Moore, Head of Classical Music at Southbank Centre, writing in The Guardian (18 January 2013)
Read the full article
Watch the preview video

Feature on BBC News website

Feature on Gramophone website

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra

The next in our series of ListenAgain concerts is online – you can listen again free online until 18 January.

Brahms Tragic Overture
Wagner (arr. Henze) Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner Symphony No. 1 (1877 Linz edition)

Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Anna Larsson contralto

You can also download the programme notes free online.

www.lpo.org.uk/listenagain 

Reviews of the concert:

‘The Adagio [of the Bruckner] is built on whiffs of themes forming into a noble, even redemptive utterance, from which Jurowski created a deep spiritual reverie. With an exhilarating scherzo and a related trio, and a finale that grew to a jubilant homecoming – in which, as throughout, Simon Carrington’s timpani-playing was firm and assertive and the LPO as a whole was blazing –, this was a notable reading that (re-)illuminated the work, Jurowski loyal to Bruckner’s characteristic strangeness and delays as well as being contrapuntally exhaustive.’
Colin Anderson, Classical Source

‘To Jurowski’s credit the Scherzo generated some wild excitement and the Finale never got bogged down and maintained its momentum to its exciting closing bars.’
Jim Pritchard, Seen and Heard International

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter/com/LPOrchestra

Last Wednesday at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil with soprano Allison Bell, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The reviewers were full of praise for the performance – here’s what they had to say:

‘Quite apart from the immaculate preparation and the most elegant conducting style in the business, Jurowski programmes with an imagination matched by none of London’s other principal conductors. This stunning event was an excellent demonstration of the art, and introduced with typical eloquence by Jurowski’
David Nice, The Arts Desk

‘The Mahler was as abandoned and emotionally extreme as I’ve heard it. Jurowski took some risks keeping the ferocious energy and tension of the first two movements on the boil, but he and his LPO really delivered … Jurowski’s genius was to enable some sort of connective narrative, which he did with visceral, incandescent brilliance, reflected in the LPO’s thrilling playing. Full of character and insight, this was a gripping performance.’
Peter Reed, Classical Source

‘Jurowski’s Mahler is admirable for the Russian’s desire to achieve similar textual clarity, even in some of the most grandiose music in the canon. He nailed the long, lyrical middle movement, full of fine details and framing a solo spot for David Pyatt’s horn’
Neil Fisher, The Times (not online)

‘Jurowski’s account of the score, with Allison Bell as the superbly controlled and lucid soprano soloist, had a natural, expressive fluency about it; the ensemble of 15 members of the London Philharmonic tackled the microtonally inflected textures with unflappable naturalness. The audience seemed bewitched and beguiled.’
Andrew Clements, The Guardian

‘Bell’s performance across these movements was precise and intelligent: combined with Jurowski’s eloquent direction this made for an exquisite rendition of a modern masterpiece … This was a world-class performance full of imagination and experimentation.’ (5 stars)
Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Bachtrack

The concert was broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 and is still available to listen via BBC iPlayer until Wednesday 19 December.

Jurowski and the LPO return to Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 19 January 2013 with an all-Strauss programme to kick off the year-long festival The Rest Is Noise. Tickets are still available and can be booked via the LPO Box Office on 020 7840 4242, from the LPO website, or bought on the door.

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra

Our September 2012 release on the LPO Label, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 conducted by Vladimir Jurowski (LPO-0064), has been receiving lots of great attention in the press recently.

The Sunday Times chose the CD as one of its Albums of the Year in a roundup published on 9 December, in which they wrote: ‘Jurowski is in his element, taking the London Philharmonic players on an emotional rollercoaster ride.’ It had previously been chosen as CD of the Week on 23 September, with Hugh Canning writing: ‘Tchaikovsky’s genius – and his inner turbulence – are revealed with devastating impact.’

Gramophone magazine also chose the CD as its December Disc of the Month, as well as one of their all-time recommended recordings of Tchaikovsky symphonies. They wrote:

‘Both these performances exemplify what makes Jurowski’s approach to Tchaikovsky so special … The playing throughout this movement (and indeed throughout both these performances) is marked by a oneness with Jurowski’s vision and, it goes without saying, a now well-established empathy between the players of the London Philharmonic and their principal conductor.’
Read the full review

Vladimir Jurowski conducts Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5
£10.99 (2 CDs)
Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on 19 March and 4 May 2011
LPO-0064
Listen to soundclips and buy the CD online here.
It’s also available to download from iTunes.

All LPO Label recordings available from www.lpo.org.uk/shop, the London Philharmonic Orchestra Box Office (020 7840 4242, Monday–Friday 10am–5pm), all good CD outlets, and the Royal Festival Hall shop.

The LPO and Simon (our Principal Timpanist below!) would like to say a huge thank to those of you have already given us a present for our 80th. We really appreciate it! We have had lots of contributions towards the double bass stools and tom-toms, so if you haven’t had the chance to donate yet how about helping us fund a recording for live stream or the animation art work for our children’s concerts? Click here to have a look at our present wish list.

We love to read all your birthday messages and memories of the Orchestra over the years so please keep them coming! Here are a few more we wanted to share:

Congratulations to all the players on your excellent orchestra, especially the soloists, 1^st violin, flute, oboe etc, in recent concert in Eastbourne. Keep on visiting us – & enjoy your birthday!

I recall hearing Andreas Schiff playing three Mozart piano concertos (the whole concert!) with Bernard Haitink conducting; I thought it might become tedious; but the musical experience was sublime and unforgettable. 

Very best wishes to all the players and staff at the LPO. The pleasure they give to their audiences is immense.

Thank you for giving us so much pleasure and thrilling experiences – life without music will be a mistake. Again, a thousand thanks. 

On Wednesday 28 November, Vladimir Jurowski conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture; Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte and A Survivor from Warsaw; Nono’s Julius Fucík; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Annabel Arden was the director, and the solo speakers were Omar Ebrahim, Malcolm Sinclair and Robert Hayward. The concert also featured the Gentlemen of the London Philharmonic Choir.

Here’s what the reviewers had to say…

‘This account of Ode was very persuasive, the strings precise, Catherine Edwards notable at the piano, and Robert Hayward simply superb in his Sprechgesang, enunciating much character and sentiment, living every syllable.’
Colin Anderson, Classical Source

 ‘It was, moreover, a rare pleasure to experience such bold and coherent programming … Obar Ebrahim and Malcolm Sinclair offered excellent performances [in the Nono]. This excellent account, antiphonal drumming and all, exuded brutality, psychoticism, and yet inviting, spellbinding beauty.’
Mark Berry, Boulezian blog

‘Narrated again by Hayward but this time with palpable passion, and bolstered by the male voices of the LPO choir, Schoenberg’s achingly spare symbiosis of voice and orchestra emerged with the most intense expressiveness.’
Michael Church, The Independent

‘This was undeniably remarkable programming, and it’s a thrill to have all these issues presented within a single evening. If only more concerts could be as lucid and provocative as this.’
Paul Kilbey, Bachtrack

Jurowski and the LPO return to Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 1 December to perform Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Ecclesiastical Action and Brahms’s German Requiem.  Tickets are still available and can be booked via the LPO Box Office on 020 7840 4242, from the LPO website, or bought on the door.

lpo.org.uk
facebook.com/londonphilharmonicorchestra
twitter.com/LPOrchestra