President: Raphael Wallfisch

presents

MARTIN ROSCOE PLAYS GERSHWIN

Ely Cathedral Saturday October 22nd 2016

at 7.30pm

Ely Sinfonia

with

Martin Roscoe Piano Conductor Steve Bingham

Programme

Leonard Bernstein Overture to Candide George Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Aaron Copland Quiet City Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring

There will be a 20 minute interval after the Gershwin

By kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Ely Cathedral

Programme £1.50

MUSIC IN ELY: DATES FOR YOUR DIARY Coming up from Ely Sinfonia … Saturday 6 May 2017 A musical tour of western Europe features Hindemith’s Ely Cathedral Symphonic Metamorphosis, Ravel’s Le Tombeau de 7.30pm Couperin and César Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Saturday 15 July 2017 Ely Sinfonia joins forces with Ely Choral Society and Ely Cathedral, 7.30pm Ely Consort to perform Beethoven’s Symphony no 9 in the closing concert of the Isle of Ely Arts Festival. Saturday 30 September 2017 A truly classical concert featuring Mozart’s Symphony Ely Cathedral, 7.30pm no 35 (“Haffner”); Rodrigo’s Concerto d’Aranjuez and Beethoven’s Symphony no.2. Ely Consort Saturday 19 November 2016 There is Sweet Music features a selection of songs Ely Methodist Church including Bob Chilcott’s lyrical Gloria. Ely Choral Society Saturday 3rd December 2016 O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: the annual Christmas St. Mary's Church, Ely concert of Ely Choral Society and Ely Youth Choir . Other events Sunday 11 March 2017 The Cambridge Philharmonic Society performs Kings College Chapel, Cambridge Janáček’s Sinfonietta and Brahms’ A German Requiem Thursday 26 October The Cambridge Concert Orchestra accompanies a centenary Chelmsford Cathedral screening of the 1916 film The Battle of the Somme.

Saturday 26 November The Cambridge Concert Orchestra presents an afternoon Histon Baptist Church concert of music from the films for children and families. Children go free. Sunday 27 November Norfolk Symphony Orchestra plays Ravel’s Symphony for the Kings Lynn Corn Exchange Left Hand in a concert in remembrance of those who fell in the Battle of the Somme.

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WELCOME

From the new world

What is classical music for and where (if anywhere) are its boundaries? In the west-ern tradition the influence of European art and music sometimes seems to dominate everything we listen to. Or at least it used to. But in the twentieth century American music – and perhaps just as importantly, American musicians – revealed a whole new world of bustling cities and wide open plains. The orchestral palette expanded to welcome the influence of jazz and modern dance. While Europeans looked in-wards and became, in some cases, obsessed with alternatives to tonality, America opened up. And classical music remembered to be popular! For, as Aaron Copland himself said, “the composer who is frightened of losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art.” Tonight’s concert showcases three extraordinary American musicians who each, in their individual ways, were pivotal in the development of a new extravagance; a new outward-looking culture; a new and exciting musical landscape. Jeremy Harmer

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Overture to Candide

Almost certainly the composer’s most performed orchestral work, Leonard Bernstein’s Candide overture leaps into life and enchants us with catchy tunes and quirky rhythms for less than five glorious minutes. What a perfect way to start a concert! According to music critic Daniel Hanahan Bernstein was ‘one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history’. He was a great populariser of classical music, equally at home with Beethoven and Mahler, and he was certainly one of the first US born conductors to achieve worldwide acclaim. He was in charge of the New York Philharmonic orchestra for years but also directed other bands all over the world.

But he was not just a conductor. Bernstein was a wonderful pianist and of course the com-poser of West Side Story, Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his extraordinary Mass, three symphonies and a lot of chamber music. Candide is based on a novella by Voltaire and though the famous Lillian Hellman originally wanted a play with music to tell the story, Bernstein persuaded her to turn it into a comic opera. The plot of Candide is…well it’s bonkers. People die in war in Westphalia only to reappear, alive, miraculously. Or they lose their teeth, or they contract syphilis but nevertheless retain their optimism. Candide’s companion Martin gets eaten by a shark and his betrothed, Conėgunde (who is NOT dead, you understand) robs him in Venice while her tutor Pangloss keeps banging on about ‘the best of all possible worlds’. Conėgunde’s aria ‘Glitter and be gay’ (as she festoons herself with jewellery in Paris) is one of the most extraordinary and challenging pieces in the soprano repertoire. Etc! But you don’t need to know any of that to appreciate the overture. It is sheer joy, incorpo-rating, as it does, some of the famous tunes from the opera. It plays mercilessly with time signatures (for readers who like this kind of thing: 6/4, 3/2 often combined with 4/4 and 2/2 to make effective 5/2 and 7/2 switching between them and 3/2) At a memorial concert for Bernstein in 1990 The New York Philharmonic Orchestra paid tribute to their conductor laureate by playing the Candide overture without a conductor. That’s not going to happen tonight but it won’t stop the effervescent charm of this lovely opener from working its magic!

George Gershwin (1898-1937) Piano Concerto in F

George Gershwin was an amazingly successful songwriter, the Lennon and McCartney of his day (or any other pop tunesmith you can think of). Working in Tin Pan Alley his first great hit was the song Swanee – and after that there was no stopping him. He had written twelve Broadway musicals by the age of twenty-five. Steeped in jazz (though he occasionally complained that it was blatant, crude, noisy, boister-ous - even vulgar), he wanted to bridge the gap between the musical vernacular of the streets and the high art of the concert hall. Gershwin was serious about understanding symphonic form. He stud-ied composition. He went to ask Ravel and Stravinsky for lessons – but, according to one report, when Stravinsky learned that Gershwin earned $100,00 a year he suggested that Gershwin gave him lessons instead!

Allegro Adagio – Andante con moto Allegro agitato

About Ely Sinfonia Ely Sinfonia was founded in November 1999 as a millennium project. It was the brainchild of local musicians and launched with the aid of ADeC (Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire) and various leading local organisations and individuals.

Since then it has more than achieved its aim of becoming a beacon of excellence as East Cambridgeshire’s own community orchestra. It is now regarded is one of the region’s best respected orchestras, with players of all ages and backgrounds, from school and college students to business professionals, retired people and local music teachers. Together they play everything from mainstream works to the contemporary, including special commissions.

Ely Sinfonia is particularly keen on promoting youth music and is a strong supporter of the Cam-bridge Young Composer of the Year competition: winners’ pieces have frequently been played at our concerts.

The orchestra also has close links with Ely Cathedral, regularly providing small groups to play at events such as the Easter Day Mass. Other projects include open workshops, when less experi-enced players have the chance to play alongside the orchestra’s regular members and develop their orchestral and ensemble playing techniques. www.elysinfonia.co.uk publicity@elysinfonia.co.uk

The next Ely Sinfonia workshop will be on 8th January 2017

Ely Sinfonia’s next Come and Play workshop takes place on 8th January 2017, when we shall be working on Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D minor. It’s open to all-comers of grade V standard or above. And for people who like to plan ahead, watch out for our 2018 workshop, when the plan is to look at Holst’s The Planets suite, first performed in 1918. For further details or to register for the workshop, check out our website, www.elysinfonia.co.uk, or email Dave McLeish at workshops@elysinfonia.co.uk.

However he came to his knowledge of classical form, he bridged the gap between art music, pop melodies and jazz with the almost symphonic tone poems Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris - and the ever popular opera Porgy and Bess. Concerto in F is Gershwin’s most self-consciously classical work and it had a mixed reception. He was so worried about whether it would work that two weeks before its première in 1925 he hired (at his own expense) a symphony orchestra to play it through, and he himself played the piano at that first performance. Although some people like New York Tribune critic Lawrence Gilman asked his readers to “weep over the lifelessness of its melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive”, history proves Samuel Chotzinoff nearer the mark when he wrote: “he (Gershwin) alone expresses us. He is the present with all its audacity, impertinence, its feverish delight in its motion, its lapses into rhythmically exotic melan-choly. He writes without the smallest hint of self-consciousness, and with unabashed delight in the stridency, the gaucheries, the joy and excite-ment of life as it is lived right here”. And perhaps that is the secret of his enduring popularity. When he died at the absurdly young age of thirty-eight, no less a person than Arnold Schoenberg (the enemy of tonality?) wrote about his friend Gershwin that “music to him was the air he breathed, the food which nourished him, the drink that refreshed him. Music was what made him feel, and music the feeling he expressed. Directness of this kind is given only to great men, and there is no doubt that he was a great composer.” The first movement of the Concerto in F (Allegro) is intended to reflect the young enthusiastic spirit of American life. Based on the rhythms of the Charleston it begins with a blast from the timpani leading to an extended orchestral introduction. The piano enters with a melody which recurs throughout the movement. Alternating passages climax in a Grandioso section with the original melody restated on the piano. A cadenza of tri-plet ostinatos lead to a large run up the keyboard to close the movement. The second movement (Adagio – Andante con moto) has two blues themes which foreshadow movement 3. An elegant melody on solo trum-pet accompanied by a trio of clarinets gets the movement going until the piano enters with a pentatonic variant of the first themes before transi-tioning into a faster upbeat second theme. After a solo from the first violin (echoing the first theme from the beginning of the movement) a piano cadenza leads to the original theme played by the full orchestra. A lovely flute melody leads, finally, to a peaceful introspective cadence on the piano.

Ely Sinfonia Violin 1 Christina Everson, Donna Allum, Ann Clayton, Fiona Dagg, Jonny Gloag, Naomi

Laredo, Chris Moule, Donna Pullen, Issy Swinhoe-Standen, Ashley Thorpe, Richard Williamson Violin 2 Roz Chalmers, Ian Claydon, Jacky Cox, Graham Jones, Esther McLeish, Rob

Millman, Morgaine O’Connor, Melanie Siddall, Jonathan Skerrett, Jane Stevens, Eleanor Wilson

Viola Katy Baker, Alice Clow, Patricia Mathieson, Marlen Moss-Eccardt, Susan Pyke, Hilary Sellars, Brenda Stewart, Yvonne Williamson

‘Cello Dave Mcleish, April Bowman, Charlotte Dean, Jacob Cox, Helen Hills, Nat Johnson, Joan Marchbank, Carol McEvoy, Rachel Mycock, Sally Parnell, Saeko Soya Dijkstra

Double Bass Chris Finch, John Chalmers. Stuart Clow, Rosemary Hughes Flute/Piccolo Ellie Wolmark, Susan Gatell, Jean Swift Oboe Jane Cursiter, Carol London, Amanda Williams Cor Anglais Jane Cursiter Clarinet Michelle Hughes, Peter Fisher, Stella Page, Helen Rollison Bassoon Phil Evans, Julia Hudson, Simon Laughlin Horn Owen Rose, Laurie Friday, Nick Sims-Williams, Clare Stygall Trumpet Graham Berridge, Evert Bokma, Isaac Holt, Chris Parsons Trombone Michael Rickwood, Chris Holt, Matthew Ralph Tuba Brian Partridge Timps Sheri Rutland Percussion Nigel Blazeby, James Andrews, Jack Davis, Catherine Johnson, Sarah Wright Harp Cecily Beer Piano Marion Caldwell Artistic director Steve Bingham

Ste ve B ing ham s t u d i e d v i o l i n w i t h E m a n u e l Hurw itz , S i dn ey G r i l l e r and the Amadeus Quartet at the Royal Academy of Music from 1981 to 1985, winning prizes for orchestral leading and string quartet playing. He is founder and lead violinist of the Bingham String Quartet, inter-nationally known for its performances of both classical and contemporary repertoire. Steve has appeared as guest leader with many orchestras,

including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English National Ballet and English Sinfonia. He has given solo recitals in the UK and America and his concerto performances include works by Bach, Vivaldi, Bruch, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn and Sibelius. Steve is developing a sound reputation as a conductor. As well as Ely Sinfonia, he is musical director of the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, and he is increasingly being invited to appear as guest conductor with groups all over the country. As a violinist, Steve is keenly interested in improvisation, electronics and world music. He has collaborated with several notable musicians in the field of world music, and has also released five solo CDs: Duplicity, Ascension, Third, The Persistence of Vision and Touch.

www.steveb ingham.co.u k

The third movement (Allegro agitato) is a fast-paced rondo with what Gershwin himself called ‘an orgy of rhythms’ including references to ragtime. An original G minor theme from the orchestra is answered by the piano playing in F minor. After some fast piano work and an orches-tral counter melody a piano glissando introduces themes from the first movement. There are blues themes; a piano glissando leads us into more themes from movement 1. There are fast paced octave scales from the piano, a false climax in a repeat of the Grandioso moment from the first movement before a great F major 6 chord brings the work to a close. Perhaps Arnold Schoenberg was envious when he noted that Gershwin was a ‘rare composer whose feelings actually coincide with those of the average man in the street.’ He could have been writing about any of the three composers featured in tonight’s concert.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Quiet City

Born in Brooklyn, New York of Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents, Aaron Copland got the music bug early. He was writing songs before he was nine and realised, as a teenager, that music was his absolute calling. He studied composition in a corre-spondence course before taking formal classes in harmony theory and composition from the great Robin Goldmark who, incidentally, had given George Gershwin a few hours’ tuition on the same subject! As a young man he went over to Paris and had the great and influential Nadia Boulanger as a teacher, a woman who seems to have en-compassed the very essence of developmental education for, as Copland later re-marked, she “could always find the weak spot in a place you suspected was weak.... she could also tell you why it was weak…… " During the depression years, and with some early compositions under his belt, Cop-land travelled in Europe, Africa and México – which latter country provoked El Salón Mėxico, his first big success. But in 1939 he was asked to provide incidental music for a play called Quiet City by the playwright Irving Shaw. After only three performances the play was dropped and now only lives on as a result of Copland’s ten minutes of plaintive city magic scored for trumpet, cor anglais and string orchestra. Copland wanted to portray the troubled character of the play’s protagonist , who, in abandon-ing his Jewishness and his poetic aspirations for material success is constantly haunt-ed by the memory of his brother’s trumpet playing. But as Copland himself observed “Quiet City seems to have become a musical entity, superseding the original reasons for its composition” much as Schubert’s Rosamunde and other pieces of incidental theatre music have transcended the immediate details of their original purpose.

With an extraordinary career spanning more than four decades, Martin Roscoe is unarguably one of the UK’s best loved pianists. Renowned for his versatility at the keyboard, Martin is equally at home in concerto, recital and chamber performances. His enduring popularity and the respect in which he is universally held are built on a deeply thoughtful musicianship allied to an easy rapport with audiences and fellow musicians alike. With a repertoire of over 100 concertos performed or recorded, Martin works regularly with many of the UK’s leading orchestras, having especially close links with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Hallé, Manchester Camerata, Northern Chamber

Orchestra and with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, where he has had more than ninety performances. Martin has worked with many eminent conductors, including performances with Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Mark Elder and Christoph von Dohnányi. An equally prolific recitalist, Martin has also performed regularly across Europe, the Far East, Australasia and South Africa. His chamber music partnerships include long-standing associations with Peter Donohoe, Tasmin Little and the Endellion and Maggini Quartets as well as more recent collaborations with such artists as Jennifer Pike, Ashley Wass, Matthew Trusler and the Brodsky and Vertavo Quartets. One of his most important chamber music collaborations has developed in recent years: the Cropper Welsh Roscoe Trio. Together the trio have performed many times across the UK, most notably with several series of concerts at London’s Kings Place. Recent and future engagements include appearances with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Symphony Orchestra, as well as recital performances at the Bridgewater Hall (where Martin is an Associate Artist), Musée d’Orsay, Wigmore Hall and Festival of the Sound, Parry. Martin is Artistic Director of Ribble Valley International Piano Week, Beverley Chamber Music Festival and the Manchester Chamber Music Society. After more than 500 broadcasts, including seven BBC Prom appearances, Martin is one of the most regularly played pianists on BBC Radio 3. He has also made many commercial recordings for labels such as Hyperion, Chandos and Naxos. He has recorded the complete piano music of Nielsen and Szymanowski, as well as four discs in the Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto series. He is now in the process of recording the complete Beethoven piano sonatas for the Deux-Elles label ad the first three discs have been released to unanimous critical acclaim. Teaching has always been an important part of Martin’s life and the development of young talent helps him to constantly re-examine and re-evaluate his own playing. He is currently a Professor of Piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London and has just been awarded his Fellowship there. Martin lives in the Lake District and is passionate about the countryside and hill-walking.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Appalachian Spring

A major driver of artistic development in the first half of the twentieth century was dance. Key figures such as Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille were changing the idea of what was possible on the stage. Where Duncan had been conscious-ly artless, impulsive and improvised, De Mille had (under the influence of the inspiration-al Martha Graham) followed her creed of what she called the ‘dancers’ delirium’, the idea of ‘wrecking’ her body on the earth in the service of art and with the 1942 produc-tion Rodeo (to a score by Aaron Copland) she did just that, with crotch-hugging cowboys who rode their rearing horses, women sashaying in pinafores and wooing their men down from their horses, and tomboy cowgirls. It was in that same year that Graham – a woman who, in the opinion of many, reshaped dance as Picasso reshaped art and Stravinsky reshaped music - and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge came to Copland to commission music for a ballet, as yet unformed, to do with the pioneering American spirit. Copland got going, referring to his composition as ‘Ballet for Martha’, with no idea of the work’s future Appalachian connections. This caused him wry amusement in later years for as he said “’I gave voice to that region (Appalachia) without knowing I was giving voice to it!” Graham settled on the title Appalachian Spring as the result of reading a Hart Crane po-em called, appropriately, ‘The Dance’ which has the following lines:

O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge; Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends And northward reaches in that violet wedge Of Adirondacks!

Willfully ignoring the fact that the spring in question was the bubbling up of water Gra-ham allowed her ballet to sound and feel like annual rebirth - a different kind of spring – and so the ballet was born as a fable of the simple pioneer life, the wedding of two opti-mistic, decent God-fearing pioneers establishing a homestead in the landscape around them. And in choosing Copland for the score she ensured that the spirit of openness, hope and wide blue skies that encapsulate a certain kind of American optimism would prevail. Originally scored for a 13-piece chamber orchestra, Appalachian Spring was later turned into the orchestral wonder that you will hear this evening.

This is Copland’s own description of the work. 1. Very slowly. Introduction of the characters, one by one, in a suffused light. 2. Fast/Allegro. Sudden burst of unison strings in A major arpeggios starts the ac-

tion. A sentiment both elated and religious gives the keynote to this scene. 3. Moderate/Moderato. Duo for the Bride and her Intended – scene of tenderness

and passion. 4. Quite fast. The Revivalist and his flock. Folksy feeling – suggestions of square

dances and country fiddlers. 5. Still faster/Subito Allegro. Solo dance of the Bride – presentiment of mother-

hood. Extremes of joy and fear and wonder. 6. Very slowly (as at first). Transition scene to music reminiscent of the introduc-

tion. 7. Calm and flowing/Doppio Movimento. Scenes of daily activity for the Bride and

her Farmer husband. There are five variations on a Shaker theme. The theme, sung by a solo clarinet, was taken from a collection of Shaker melodies compiled by Edward D. Andrews, and published under the title "The Gift to Be Simple." The melody borrowed and used almost literally is called "Simple Gifts."

8. Moderate. Coda/Moderato - Coda. The Bride takes her place among her neigh-bors. At the end the couple are left "quiet and strong in their new house." Mut-ed strings intone a hushed prayer-like chorale passage. The close is reminiscent of the opening music.