Welcome to this afternoon’s performance.

Anna Clyne
This Midnight Hour 12’

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No.2, opus 16, in g minor 31’

Interval

Jean Sibelius
Symphony No.2, opus 43, in D Major 43’

Mark Heron, conductor
Andy Deng, piano
Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra, Clare Bhabra, leader

The opening to This Midnight Hour is inspired by the character and power of the lower strings of L'Orchestre national d'Île de France. From here, it draws inspiration from two poems – one by Charles Baudelaire and another by Juan Ramón Jiménez. Whilst it is not intended to depict a specific narrative, my intention is that it will evoke a visual journey for the listener.

La musica - by Juan Ramón Jiménez

iLa musica;
-mujer desnuda,
corriendo loca por la noche pura! -

Jiménez’s poem is very short and concise (translated by Robert Bly):

Music –
a naked woman
running mad through the pure night

This immediately struck me as a strong image and one that I chose to interpret with outbursts of frenetic energy – for example, dividing the strings into sub-groups that play fortissimo staggered descending cascade figures from left to right in stereo effect. This stems from my early explorations of electroacoustic music.

There is also a lot of evocative sensory imagery in Baudelaire’s Harmonie du Soir, the first stanza of which reads as follows (translated by William Aggeler):

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

I riffed on the idea of the melancholic waltz about halfway into This Midnight Hour - I split the viola section in two and have one half playing at written pitch and the other half playing 1/4 tone sharp to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz.

— Anna Clyne

Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto had the unusual distinction of having two world premiere performances. Prokofiev originally wrote the concerto in the winter and spring of 1913, the year after he completed his First Concerto, and gave the first world premiere in the town of Pavlovsk, outside St. Petersburg on 5 September 1913. Prokofiev’s First Concerto had already established his reputation as an enfant terrible and this reputation was strong enough to encourage a large audience to make the journey to an out-of-the-way location. An anonymous writer in the St. Petersburg Gazette reported later that on the train one heard nothing but “Prokofiev, Prokofiev, Prokofiev”. The First Concerto had been severely criticised by many musicians for superficial bravura and exhibitionist technique, which would in fact be hallmarks of Prokofiev’s composing for much his life. The composer wrote in his Autobiography that “The charges of surface brilliance and a certain football quality in the First [Concerto] led me to strive for greater depth of content in the Second”. 

Maybe the new Concerto has the greater depth Prokofiev sought, but the certain football quality remains, and the concerto is one of the most challenging for any pianist. Prokofiev himself had the most formidable technique and enjoyed writing to the limits of his own technique. 

The critical response in 1913 was almost unanimous. The same critic in the St. Petersburg Gazette reported:

“On the platform appears a youth with the face of a Peterschule student. It is Sergei Prokofiev. He seats himself at the piano and begins to strike the keyboard with a sharp, dry touch. He seems either to be dusting or testing the keys. The audience is bewildered. Some are indignant. One couple stands up and runs toward the exit. Such music is enough to drive you crazy! What is he doing, making fun of us? The most daring members of the audience hiss. Here and there seats become empty. Finally, the young artist ends his concerto with a mercilessly discordant combination of brasses. The audience is scandalized. Most of them hiss. With a mocking bow Prokofiev sits down and plays an encore.... On all sides there are exclamations: To the devil with all this futurist music! We came here to enjoy ourselves. The cats on the roof can make music like this!”

In the wake of the 1917 Revolution Prokofiev left Russia. He was fortunate in obtaining a passport without an expiry date and arrived in Chicago the following year, where Frederick Stock invited him to be the soloist in his First Concerto and conduct his Scythian Suite with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For some unexplained reason when he left Russia, Prokofiev took with him the scores of his First Violin Concerto and First Piano Concerto, but not this Second Concerto, which he left in his St. Petersburg apartment. He later learned that the subsequent tenants had burned it as cooking fuel.

Prokofiev did not settle permanently in the US and remained on the move, completing his Third Piano Concerto in 1921 from material which he had sketched over several previous years, and giving the premiere that year, also with Stock and the Chicago Symphony. By the time he settled in Paris in 1923, the composer decided that he ought to reconstruct the missing lost Second Concerto, which he seems able to have done with little difficulty. At the time he wrote to a friend that “it was so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered No. 4” Yet in his Autobiography he claimed that he had merely made "the contrapuntal development slightly more complicated, the form more graceful, less square," and that he "improved" both the piano and orchestral parts. It is impossible to know how far the new version differed from the old, though the later reminiscences of a few who heard both suggested perhaps not much. Prokofiev was the soloist in the new world premiere of Concerto in Paris on 8 May 1924, with the conductor Serge Koussevitsky. But in a city which regarded itself as the centre of the avant garde, it seems to have passed with little comment. Stock and the Chicago Orchestra duly accompanied the composer in March 1930, and after that Prokofiev seems hardly to have played it. Maria Yudini, rather than the composer, was the soloist in the Soviet premiere in 1938, after which it faded from the repertoire until the late 1960s when Vladimir Ashkenazky took it up.

The Second Piano Concerto unconventionally has four movements and there is no slow movement; the last three are very similar in tempo, though not character. The first movement opens gently with two bars of orchestral scene setting, matched by two bars of piano, before the announcement of the first theme, a melody of surprising extensions, which the composer marked "narrante", literally “speaking”.  The contrasting second theme is distinctly capricious. Prokofiev transforms much of the standard development and recapitulation sections into a monumental, unabashedly virtuosic, cadenza for solo piano the climax marked "colossale". When the orchestra finally re-enters, the movement is almost over.

The Scherzo is a swift perpetuum mobile for the pianist, playing non-stop semi-quavers in unison octaves throughout, to which the orchestra adds terse, colourful comments, but stays out of the soloist's way, Prokofiev certainly didn’t intend anything to obscure his own display. 

An Intermezzo is generally a lighter movement. Prokofiev characteristically goes against the grain, and this is a fierce and sometimes grotesque march over a repeating bass line. The pianist Sviatoslav Richter, a close friend of the composer in later years, said that it suggested to him “a dragon devouring its young”.

The Finale is another large-scale movement to match the first and is set out as a battle between piano and orchestra, the soloist using full-fisted chords to gain the upper hand. After the bravura of the opening, Prokofiev inserts a leisurely interlude with a simple folk-like melody and then enters deftly into another barnstorming cadenza. The harmonic boldness of the final pages, two opposing keys in dissonant conflict, either G minor against A major, or A-flat minor against D minor no doubt left the early listeners transfixed with astonishment. 

Programme note by Dominic Nudd

The predominant image of Sibelius in later life, the recluse whose gaunt, craggy features mirrored the gaunt, craggy music which epitomised the brooding, mist shrouded, forests of his native Finland, belies the fact that in his earlier years he travelled widely. A good deal of his music, whatever its internal associations with his native landscape and culture, was conceived or begun elsewhere. This Symphony, closely linked with Finnish nationalism, took shape on a journey to Italy. 

In Sibelius’s last year at the Helsinki Conservatoire, he met a fellow musician who was to become a great personal influence. Ferrucio Busoni, a year younger than Sibelius, was appointed Professor of Piano and in the course of that year, 1889, struck up a warm friendship with the older student, enhanced by a mutual fondness for late-night cafe culture. This sealed Sibelius’s determination to continue his studies in Berlin where Busoni also taught and lived. Berlin proved to be an overwhelming experience for the sheer amount of live music available to the insatiable young composer, though one of the works which made the greatest impression on him was in fact Finnish. Robert Kajanus’s Aino Symphony fired his enthusiasm for the folklore of his native country, as gathered in the Kalevala, the collection of Finnish folk poetry published in 1835. Berlin also gave Sibelius a taste for travel which lasted for more than twenty years. He visited Leipzig before returning to Finland and the following year he was in Vienna, where he heard and admired the music of Anton Bruckner. Back in Helsinki in the summer of 1890, Sibelius began composing his Kullervo Symphony. The first performance in April 1892 was a great success, but the self-doubts which continually assailed the composer caused him to withdraw the work and it was not heard again until 1958. His next jaunt was the first of many to Italy; he broke his return journey at Bayreuth, which dissuaded him permanently from composing opera.

In 1897 Sibelius was awarded a small state pension by the Finnish Government, intended to allow him the freedom to compose while supporting his new family. As he invariably overspent wildly, this scarcely covered his debts, but was welcome encouragement and recognition. Over the next two years, apart from breaking off to visit Germany again, he worked on his first numbered symphony, premiered to great success in 1899. The following year Sibelius accompanied the Helsinki orchestra to the Paris Exposition, but his music made little impression on the French.

Thoughts for a new symphony were already beginning to germinate in his mind; a close friend, Baron Axel Carpelan, organised a gift of 5000 marks to allow the composer to take another journey to Italy to have peace and quiet to work on this new piece. Sibelius set off in October 1900, delayed to sample the good life in Germany (yet again), and finally reached Rapello in February 1901. Sibelius then worked fairly intensively on the symphony for the next two months and left for Florence at Easter, travelled on to Rome and then set off home, via Prague where he met Suk and Dvorak. By the time he reached Helsinki the symphony was largely in shape and was nearly complete by November that year, Sibelius’s self-doubts set in, and he delayed the premiere twice, until 8 March 1902. The first performance was hugely successful and the work was enthusiastically received. In Finland, this symphony rapidly became associated with the nationalist cause at a time when Finland was still under the control of Tsarist Russia.

Sibelius’s greatest gift as a symphonist was the ability to combine superb melody with a masterly control of taut structure on a large scale, building themes progressively from seemingly isolated fragments. This is particularly evident throughout this Second Symphony. The first movement opens with a simple ostinato figure on cellos and basses, followed by violin, with the notes grouped in threes, over which the oboe unfolds an expressive phrase, followed by solo horn. This is repeated, then developed by the flutes and bassoon, handing over the continuing melody to violins. The music gathers momentum over bass and celli pizzicatos and the opening re-emerges, then fades into silence. The oboe introduces a spiky counter melody, against which violins, joined by basses, elaborate a swinging theme, which is gradually built towards a second climax, out of which the opening unfolds for the third time. 

A brief timpani roll introduces a long pizzicato line, passed between solo basses and cellos, which leads into a lyrical melody alternating among woodwind, especially solo oboe, and then brass. The build in power as the tension increases, underpinned by the basses, is capped by searching brass, before folding into silence. Ghostly whispers in the strings are interspersed with fragments of the brass melody, before the violins begin to reassemble the opening material into a huge arch, which also passes into nothing. Sibelius builds the introspection by intertwining many individual solo lines, separated by expressive silence, with bleak brass declamations, concluding with a last despairing gesture of the whole orchestra.

The Scherzo opens with a rush of quavers propelled on timpani. Woodwind interject fragments of a long melody in the headlong rush, until the quavers vanish leaving spare unsupported timpani strokes to lead into the first trio; a plangent oboe melody unfolds at a slower tempo in a deceptively pastoral mood. The Scherzo breaks abruptly in, dominated by trumpets and surges forward again, then relaxes into the second trio, an even more peaceful contrast than the first. Just as it seems that Sibelius will recall the Scherzo a third time to create a symmetrical structure, the trio accelerates gradually, the oboe melody becoming more urgent in the brass, and as the music broadens majestically, is transformed into the opening of the Finale. The trumpets declaim a jubilant fanfare as the music is borne onward by a motif in the basses. The climax fades leaving woodwind, followed by strings to develop a spacious melody. Over slow undulating lines of quavers in the cello/bass, woodwind play with dance-like fragments of melody, building and releasing the tension until the opening melody reappears. This melody gradually breaks up; the undulating lines support the woodwind as they share snatches of the melody dwindling to the edge of hearing before the music gathers itself for the final time, and builds relentlessly, broadening into an epic, brass-capped final statement.

Programme note by Dominic Nudd

Artists

Andy Deng is a Chinese pianist who studied at Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Dr Paul Rickard-Ford and at the Royal Northern College of Music with Graham Scott. He was offered scholarships for four consecutive years and received high distinction from both conservatoires. In Sydney, Andy won various competitions, including the Sydney Eisteddfod Recital Award, and performed in the Verbrugghen Hall and Sydney Opera House. He also played orchestral piano in the SCM Modern Music Ensemble and Wind Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daryl Pratt and John P Lynch respectively.

In 2024, Andy gave his London Wigmore Hall debut as a collaborative pianist in the Climate Agenda concert. He performed with world-leading percussionist Colin Currie in the Hallé Steve Reich Festival and was invited by Juventudes Musicales de Granada to play a solo recital at Auditorio Manuel de Falla in Spain. Andy won the Concerto Award of Les Foyer Artiste in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he gave his concerto debut at the St Columb’s Hall with conductor Darren Hargan. He has also performed extensively at the RNCM and local churches, in Rush Hour and Lunchtime Recitals, Intercollegiate Beethoven and Gold Medal Competitions, and masterclasses with Emanuel Krasovsky, Kathryn Stott, Ben Powell, Adam Swayne and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

Andy Deng appears by kind permission of the RNCM.

Mark Heron is a Scottish conductor known for dynamic and well-rehearsed performances across an unusually wide range of repertoire, and his expertise as an orchestral trainer.

As guest conductor he has appeared with the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Concert, Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Psappha, Meininger Hofkapelle, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Pori Sinfonietta, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra and many more. He is the Music Director of the Nottingham Philharmonic and Professor and Head of Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music. At the RNCM he works regularly with all the College’s orchestras and ensembles and runs their world-renowned conducting programmes. Mark is the conductor laureate of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and for ten years was Director of Orchestras at the University of Manchester.

Dedicated to working with young musicians, in addition to his role at the RNCM, Mark has conducted ensembles from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Tilburg & Maastricht Conservatories, the National Youth Wind Orchestras of Great Britain, Wales and Israel, Slovenian National Youth Orchestra, and many more.

Mark has a keen interest in contemporary music and has given world premieres of many important works. He has collaborated with leading composers such as Kalevi Aho, Sir George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Unsuk Chin, Tansy Davies, Detlev Glanert, Heiner Goebbels, Anders Hillborg, Giya Kancheli, Magnus Lindberg, Sir James McMillan, Colin Matthews, Christopher Rouse, Kaija Saariaho, and Mark Anthony Turnage. In 2018 he gave the the world premiere of Adam Gorb’s opera The Path to Heaven, and in 2006 the European premiere of American composer Daron Hagen’s opera, Bandanna. He has recorded dozens of CDs with the RNCM Wind Orchestra featuring contemporary wind repertoire on labels such as Chandos, Naxos, NMC, ASC and Polyphonic. Other recording projects have included CDs with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Seckou Keita, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and numerous Radio 3 broadcasts with BBC orchestras.

Mark studied at the RSAMD and the RNCM. Following a successful chamber music career and freelance work with many of the UK’s professional symphony orchestras, he undertook conducting studies at the RNCM and in master classes with Neeme & Paavo Järvi, Jorma Panula, and Sir Mark Elder. He worked with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on their mentoring programme for young conductors.

Alongside his conducting engagements, Mark is recognised as one of the world’s foremost conducting teachers, and students of his have achieved notable success internationally. As well as his work across all of the RNCM’s renowned conducting programmes, he developed an elite undergraduate conducting programme at the University of Manchester, is a visiting professor to the Royal Air Force and appears often as a guest at conducting courses and master classes all over the world.

Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra

The NPO was founded in 1974 as the Nottingham Sinfonietta: an invitation-only chamber orchestra that aimed to provide the opportunity for high-quality music-making to the most talented musicians in the region.  Many of the founding members made their living from music, and this remains a prominent feature of today's Orchestra.  Over the years the NPO has grown in size and changed its name to the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra to reflect a change in focus to full size symphonic repertoire. Whilst occasionally returning to those chamber orchestra roots for specific projects, the core of the Orchestra’s repertoire today include the symphonies of Elgar, Mahler, Nielsen, Shostakovich and Sibelius and other iconic large orchestral works of the 20th Century such as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

The NPO’s extremely high standards of performance enable them to take on projects that would be beyond the reach of most non-professional orchestras. Recent seasons have included concert performances of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, Puccini’s Tosca, a complete cycle of Brahms symphonies performed in chronological order over 2 days, and Stravinsky's The Firebird ballet in our 50th anniversary concert. In November 2024 the orchestra recorded Dvorak’s 8th Symphony in the BBC Philharmonic Studio at MediCityUK - release news coming soon!

Membership of the orchestra is based on an annual invitation and prospective new members are subject to a rehearsal audition for string players, and trial concert(s) for wind & brass positions. Mark Heron has been Music Director of the NPO since 2007. As well as guest conducting internationally, he is Professor of Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester: one of the world’s premier conducting programmes. This has resulted in a growing partnership between the NPO and the RNCM  which affords opportunities to student conductors and soloists to work with the Orchestra in masterclasses and concerts.

The NPO season is based in and around venues in Nottingham, principally the Royal Concert Hall, Albert Hall and Southwell Minster.  The annual Family Concert in the RCH regularly attracts an audience of around 2,000 and has featured celebrity presenters such as Alan Titchmarsh, Robert Powell, Matt Baker, Anton Du Beke and Ken Bruce, among others. Noted soloists to appear with the Orchestra include Joanna McGregor, Paul Tortelier, Philip Fowke, Ben Goldscheider, & Callum Smart.  Chloe Hanslip was the soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto for the 40th anniversary concert in March 2014 and Alexandra Dariescu was the soloist for Tchikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1 in the 50th anniversary concert in June 2024.

Although members pay a nominal subscription, the NPO relies principally on ticket revenue and commercial sponsorship to fund their music-making activities.  If you are interested in supporting the Orchestra please have a look at the sponsorship page.

The NPO is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity.  

Orchestra List

Flutes/Piccolo
Alison Madin
Adam Powell
Nicola Whiting

Oboe
Catherine Underhill
Hannah Crowdy

Clarinets
Gill Henshaw
Gayle Lond

Bassoons
Antonia Nicholson
Lynda Edwards

French Horns
Dave Leeder
Gillian Colley
Julian Haslam
Purple Chau
Jacob Hunt

Trumpets
Trevor Vivian
Andy Terry
Jacob Taylor-Durant

Trombone
Rupert Trippett
Paul Emmett

Bass trombone
Chris Edwards

Tuba
Ethan Bray

Timpani
David Lewis

Percussion
Avi Kwok
Oscar Lond

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Next Concert

Saturday 5th July, 2025 in Southwell Minster

Callum Smart and Ben Goldscheider have been regular visitors to Nottinghamshire, having both performed as soloists with the NPO in Southwell Minster and the Albert Hall.  We are delighted to welcome them back and this time they will be performing together in Ethel Smyth's concerto for Violin and French Horn.

Martin Ellerby will need no introduction to Nottinghamshire, as he was born in nearby Worksop.  His music has been broadcast and recorded all over the world by leading ensembles and performed at prestigious venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Barbican and Wigmore Hall in London.  A 7 year post as civilian composer-in-residence to the Regimental Band of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards resulted in much music for specific State events, Royal occasions and overseas tours.  www.martinellerby.com

Walton's majestic 1st symphony will end our season; a work which shows the influence of Sibelius in its musical structure.

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