RPO Overview 2013

A brand new year and a brand new line-up of concerts from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Hannah Nepil discusses the Orchestra’s upcoming highlights for 2013.

First up, on Wednesday 23rd January, is a visit to Fairfield Halls, Croydon, from the pianist Janina Fialkowska, who will then tour to Cambridge, London’s Cadogan Hall, Northampton and Leeds.  Known for her musical taste and authority, this Polish-Canadian musician is now firmly back in the limelight after her career was abruptly halted by illness eleven years ago. She is particularly renowned for her interpretations of Mozart and Chopin. So it’s fitting that this concert sees her performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2, an intensely lyrical work brimming with elaborate ornamentation and Polish folk influences. Also on the programme are Brahms’ darkly dramatic Tragic Overture and Beethoven’s sunny ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. Fabien Gabel conducts.

Fairfield Halls, Croydon: Wednesday 23rd January 2013, 7.30pm

Another diary date is Tuesday 12th March, when Cadogan Hall hosts a concert devoted to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, one of the foremost British composers and Master of the Queen’s Music. Maxwell Davies, who regularly works with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, helped to choose the programme which features the Sixth Symphony – a work written with members of the RPO in mind and premièred by the RPO in Orkney, where the composer lives – along with two pieces highlighting the composer’s Scottish connections. His First Violin Concerto, performed by Jack Liebeck, is a highly original work heavily influenced by Scottish folk music, while An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise is a tone-painting of an all-night wedding celebration. Martyn Brabbins conducts and Maxwell Davies will introduce each of the pieces himself.

Cadogan Hall, London: Tuesday 12th March 2013, 7.30pm

On Tuesday 30th April, the celebrated bass-baritone Sir Willard White joins a top-drawer cast at the Royal Festival Hall for Berlioz’s masterpiece The Damnation of Faust. Dubbed a ‘légende dramatique’ by its composer, the work was inspired by Goethe’s dramatic poem Faust, with which Berlioz became obsessed. ‘This marvellous book fascinated me from the first’, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘I could not put it down.’ His interpretation channels the poem’s depth and power, scored for four solo voices, full seven-part chorus, large children’s chorus and orchestra. Along with White, tonight’s performance features mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose, tenor Paul Groves and baritone Benedict Nelson. Charles Dutoit brings his years of experience as a renowned Berlioz conductor to the podium.

Royal Festival Hall, London: Tuesday 30th April 2013, 7.30pm

Finally, on 22nd and 29th May, there are two nights of Viennese music at the Hexagon, Reading and London’s Royal Festival Hall respectively, featuring the pre-eminent violinist Pinchas Zukerman. Directing from the violin, he performs Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto, otherwise known as the ‘Strassburg’, a work full of youthful charm whose nickname is inspired by the lively dance tune that appears in the final Rondo. Zukerman then conducts Mahler’s Symphony No.4 – often considered the most traditional of Mahler’s symphonies, but nonetheless full of the contrast and caprice that characterises the composer’s oeuvre. The finale, which describes a child’s view of heaven, showcases the voice of the conductor’s daughter, soprano Arianna Zukerman.

The Hexagon, Reading: Wednesday 22nd May 2013, 7.30pm

Royal Festival Hall, London: Wednesday 29th May 2013, 7.30pm

 

RPO at the Aquarium

© Sea Life London Aquarium

Hannah Nepil reports on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s education project with Sea Life Aquarium London. RPO resound collaborates with the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Joseph Clarke School for blind and partially-sighted children.

I’m surrounded by sea creatures: sea-turtles, stingrays, even penguins. Directly below the transparent surface on which I’m standing, several sharks are patiently waiting for my floor to give way. As I turn the corner, I encounter something similarly sinister: the growl of a bassoon.

Because it’s here – in London’s Sealife Aquarium – that RPO resound, the Orchestra’s education programme, is carrying out its latest project. Over the last month, a group of blind and partially sighted children from Joseph Clarke special school have been creating original music inspired by the movements and characteristics of the creatures in the Aquarium. Using touch as an alternative to sight, the participants began the course by passing around plastic and stuffed models of sea creatures, which then shaped their responses. ‘We’d ask them what does this fish feel like? What do you think it looks like? Then we took that further to describe the personalities of particular types of fish,’ explains Fraser Gordon, one of the RPO’s bassoonists. The results were woven into a narrative involving both words and music that culminated in a fishy court case, featuring a group of Lion Fish magistrates.

Not only did the project allow the participants to express their ideas musically, but the music, in turn, helped to inform their impressions of marine life. ‘When the music was loud, I assumed the fish was scary. But when it was quiet, I thought it was probably friendly,’ says eighteen-year-old Maharun. Some of her reactions were quite violent: ‘If you talk about fish it makes your stomach come up to your chin – like going on a ride at a fair.’

Members of the RPO were on hand to lend support, along with James Risdon, a recorder player from the Royal National Institute of Blind People. During a break, he shows me his score: it is written in musical Braille, which he learnt as a child, while attending a special school for the blind. ‘Music written in Braille uses a system of cells which are combinations of six dots,’ he explains, ‘each combination could represent both pitch and rhythm.’ Although, he says, it’s a ‘very concise system,’ it does present some complications: reading the music, for example, is a problem when both hands are used to play the instrument, meaning that scores need to be memorised quickly.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, many children on the course have remarkably good memories. ‘Some of them have been coaching us,’ says Gordon with a smile. Their imaginations, he tells me, are also well-developed. ‘On meeting the sharks and rays, my group came up with a very nervous sound world that crescendo-ed into a massive surprise, while some of the other groups were much more mellow and floaty.’ I wonder aloud if a group of sighted children – who could see the grim reality of a shark with their own eyes – would have such a varied response. Gordon doesn’t think so: ‘I think it would all end up sounding like Jaws’.

Click here to view our YouTube video of the project.

Nicola Benedetti on fame, image and practice

Hannah Nepil interviews superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti, who plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday 1st November at Royal Festival Hall, London.

It’s hard to remember that Nicola Benedetti is still only twenty-five. By now the Scottish violinist has come so far. She has played with so many orchestras in so many concert halls – not least the Royal Albert Hall at this year’s Last Night of the Proms – that it feels like an age since she first rose to fame as 2004’s BBC Young Musician of the Year.

Unsurprisingly, performing no longer makes her feel too nervous. ‘From a distance,  stepping on stage in front of thousands of people seems something extreme, unnatural and very nerve wracking,’ she says, ‘but when you do it all the time it becomes less all of those things and more a normal part of your day.’ In fact, she admits, ‘I find it more nerve-wracking watching my colleagues perform because you know what they’re going through but you’re not in control.’

Control is something of which she has plenty. Ever since she started playing the violin at the age of four, she and her sister (also a violinist) ‘had to practise every day. There was no question about that. My sister and I were always grateful to our mum for installing that sense of discipline and routine.’ The solitude that comes hand-in-hand with intense practice didn’t bother her: ‘I don’t mind the feeling of being alone. I never have really and I still don’t.’

At the moment, however, she has little time to herself. ‘There are so many channels of equal importance to me, such as the music education work I do, and then the regular performances: the juggling act seems never ending,’ Benedetti says. ‘I’m not unhappy about it. I’m just a little tired sometimes.’ She has, it transpires, been doing interviews since early this morning, and when I call, although she is warm, courteous and self-possessed, I can hear signs of fatigue in her voice. ‘I’m actually a little under the weather today,’ she admits. ‘After the interview with you, I’ll probably close my eyes for ten minutes, and then start practising. And I’ll be relieved to actually get to my violin.’

Nevertheless, the work has paid off, and today is she probably Britain’s most popular violinist. She also happens to be one of classical music’s most glamorous ambassadors. But when I bring this up, I can hear the blush in her response: ‘Oh God.’ Her image, she maintains, is not a priority: ‘I’m not purposefully going to try to look terrible in photos, but I don’t focus on it too much; don’t talk about it; don’t think about it at all.’ As she says, ‘Anything that is detrimental to how seriously you’re taken is terrible. But then,’ she admits, ‘there are worse things in life than someone saying you look ok.’

Natasha Paremski on Tchaikovsky

Hannah Nepil interviews talented young pianist Natasha Paremski, who will be performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Tuesday 16th October and at Fairfield Halls, Croydon, on Wednesday 17th October.

‘As a little girl I dreamt about playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto,’ says Natasha Paremski. She has been performing it since she was fifteen and now, ten years on, she will play it again for her Southbank début with the RPO. But while admitting that the concerto is still one of her favourite pieces, Paremski’s approach to it has matured over time: ‘the music is so thrilling that often we can get selfish about the way we play it, and not actually connect with the audience. So I find it rewarding to go back to the score and see what this piece is all about.’

At only twenty-five, this pianist speaks from experience. By now her CV includes gigs with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and, of course, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she has been playing since 2010. Born in Moscow, she first crawled to the piano at the age of two. ‘I started playing on it almost every day,’ she says, ‘so eventually my parents said “We’re not listening to this any more, she’s going to start playing some real music.”’

Though talented, she stopped playing when she was eight years old, after her family moved to California. ‘In Russia [lessons] were paid for by the government. In the USA it’s out of your own pocket and it’s very expensive,’ she says, ‘so my parents had no money even for a piano, and no money for lessons.’ Nevertheless, she soon resumed. ‘After a year I started to feel incredibly sad. And I thought, “I can’t live without it. It’s really killing me.”’

Not that she was always an obedient student. ‘If my teachers’ expectations had nothing to do with what I felt about the score, I challenged them. And there were times when, if they insisted, I’d storm out of the room. I’d call my mother and say, “I’m done with the lesson. I want to go home.”’

Paremski spent a lot of time discovering the piano for herself without a teacher, so it’s just as well that she was self-motivated. ‘My parents were not stage-parents. If I was being lazy my mom made sure I knew it but I had the option of dropping the piano,’ she tells me, ‘I just loved practising.’ And she still does. ‘It’s like I’m only half awake or half alive when I don’t play the piano,’ she tells me. ‘Playing is like a drug. A new kind of reality. It’s a total hallucinogen.’

Every Child a Musician

Hannah Nepil speaks to RPO musicians who worked with children from across Newham in preparation for their ever-popular Under the Stars concert, organised by RPO resound and Every Child a Musician

The Olympic flame was already dying down when I found myself by the Stratford stadium a few weeks ago. But just around the corner, an ensemble of twenty-eight school pupils were re-enacting the season’s highlights for themselves – in musical form. ‘We orchestrated the hundred metre sprint,’ says Brian Thomson, principal trumpet of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, ‘which resulted in the children going mental on their instruments for 9.63 seconds. We’ve also done synchronised swimming, diving, dressage and trampolining.’

As a key figure in the Orchestra’s education programme, RPO Resound, Thomson had spent the week guiding the group of Year 6 instrumentalists through Under the Stars, an annual composition workshop that culminated, on Sunday 26^th August, in a large-scale performance.

And he’d clearly done a good job. When I arrived at the rehearsal, I was struck by the air of rapt attention. Small wonder: for one thing each participant had been handpicked from Every Child a Musician, a scheme which gives all Year 5 children in Newham the opportunity to learn an instrument for two years at no cost to themselves. For another, Thomson knew how to hold his audience’s attention. Faced with an assortment of instruments ranging from guitars to flutes, he encouraged the children to devise their own riffs, taking inspiration from the Olympics. Each orchestral section chose an athlete and used the name as a rhythmic cue, ‘so we had Bradley Wiggins in the strings and Victoria Pendleton in the brass,’ Thomson explains. Then they played the result, accompanied by members of the RPO and the RPCO. Although disagreements could have arisen, according to Thomson, the process was democratic: ‘I haven’t seen any fights yet,’ he assures me.

The benefits? For many, the workshop was a chance to explore their instrument in an informal environment: ‘When you cover a new piece of technique in a lesson it can be more intimidating,’ says RPO viola player Laura Holt, ‘but if you just chuck it in when there‘s no pressure, then you really grasp it.’ What’s more, they had fun. ‘One of them came up to me in the break and said, “Miss, it’s mayhem time for fifteen minutes!”’ says Holt. ‘Being creative keeps them going.’