Senior Orchestra

Programme notes

Join us for our final concert of the orchestral year as we celebrate the return of our senior orchestra from their music tour to Edinburgh.

Narrator - Robin Reece - Crawford

Robin has been involved in educational and touring theatre for over 40 years in the UK and abroad. He moved from Scotland to Nottingham in 1981 to join Footprints Theatre Trust. This saw him performing for three years as a storyteller around the country in schools, churches and community settings. Robin was then invited to set up a theatre company for Saltmine Trust based in the West Midlands. One highlight during his 10 years with Saltmine was the world première of CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters which he directed at the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.

In 1996, Robin  moved to Beirut to found and direct Just For Kids, a bilingual schools theatre company for a local charity, Grain de Blé - Liban. Four exciting years culminated in the amazing experience of directing an Arabic version of Murray Watts’ retelling of the Gospel of John. This had a sellout run in one of Beirut’s local theatres.

On his return to the UK in 2000, Robin was invited to become the development manager for Footprints. Alongside this he was approached by Workplace Innovation, a local business consultancy to be their theatre animateur. ThIs involved an innovative approach using theatre to help organisations to develop their workforces to their highest potential. 

A keen singer, Robin joined the chamber choir of Music for Everyone, the East of England Singers (now the Nottingham Chamber Singers). This led to him conducting MFE’s Boys Choir for a few seasons and then being invited to become the Adult Programme Coordinator in 2015.

Robin has compéred many concerts and events for MFE over the years and is delighted to be the narrator for NYO’s concert this evening.

An Imaginary Orchestral Suite

Ritournelle from Act 3 of Hippolyte et Aricie, Version 1741
Entrée de Polymnie from Les Boreades
Gavottes I & II from Les Boreades
Contredanse from Acante et Cephise
Chaconne from Les Indes Galantes

One of the towering figures of musical history as a teacher on harmony, Jean-Phillipe Rameau is a well known figure throughout Europe, though his large catalogue of operatic compositions are scarcely played outside of France. His music is often technically demanding and extremely harmonically adventurous, in stark contrast to his German and Italian contemporaries. This obscurity surely arose in part due to the rather sickly nature of French cultural exceptionalism which was an important arm of nationalism for France in the 18th century as it was taking its place on the world stage as an international power, and as a result of the general Europe-wide disdain which corrupted French arts following the events of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a result, Rameau, Lully and many other French composers’ works all but disappeared. It seemed the works of an age of god-like kings with their disgusting wealth and extravagance was becoming old fashioned and redundant - a sentiment which pervaded until the late 19th century.

​Saint-Saens was in large part responsible for the rediscovery of Rameau’s music during this period and set about producing new editions, bringing him back into the spotlight. For Saint-Saens, Rameau was quite simply ‘the greatest musical genius that France had ever produced’. It was not however until the mid sixties and the advent of the Historically Informed Performance movement did Britain get the opportunity to hear this genius for the first time. Opera goers have since fallen in love with Rameau’s music and have placed him alongside Handel as one of the greats of 18th century opera.

​The suite we will be performing this evening provides a whistle-stop tour of some of Rameau’s best instrumental-only works from his operas, including some from his first and last tragédies en musique. The Ritournelle from Hippolyte was an addition to the third version Rameau performed and follows Theseus’ descent into Hell where he is told a grim omen by Hades. The Entrée is perhaps Rameau’s most beautiful slow movement. It comes from one of his last operas, Les Boreades, and is used here as the entrance music for Apollo’s muse Polyhymnia (Polymnie) who accompanies Abaris in his attempt to rescue the kidnapped Alphise, his love. Also from Les Boreades are these delightful gavottes with some very quirky instrumentation! The Contredanse from Acante et Cephise comes from the Ballet which takes place during the opera. Most grand French operas featured a large amount of dancing accompanied by music as an extended intermezzo. Most French operas, including those by English composers concluded with a Chaconne which was a dance that brought the whole cast together and features a repeating ground bass. Rameau concludes his opera Les Indes Galantes with such a Chaconne, utilising the trumpet and the percussion.

Programme notes provided by Alex Robinson, July 2023

Music for the Royal Fireworks

Overture
Bourrée
La Paix
La Rejouissance
Minuet and Trio

Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks was written to accompany the pyrotechnic display held in Green Park, London, to celebrate the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle. The treaty had been signed in October 1748 and the peace came into effect the following February. Handel had wanted to score the music for strings and wind, but was commanded by the King to employ wind alone. The King clearly wanted a large band performing martial music suitable for the occasion. Handel appears to have complied with this command, but his autograph shows evidence that strings were catered for initially and then cancelled, though some movements seem to bear the instruction that they should double the oboes. He later performed the work with full orchestra. Hence there are two authentic ways of playing this grand and joyful work.

The wind band employed for the performance at the firework display reportedly numbered 100. Handel in fact scored the work for nine trumpets, nine horns, 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, and three pairs of timpani (he later deleted the addition of a contrabassoon and serpent). The rehearsal of the music took place in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on 21 April and reportedly attracted a crowd of about 12,000 people. It occasioned the 18th-century equivalent of a three-hour traffic jam on London Bridge. The actual display itself did not live up to expectation: it was affected by rain, part of the grand structure set up for the pyrotechnics caught fire and burned down, and the designer of the show drew his sword on the luckless official who had had the job of supervising it. In all the confusion, Handel's Musick for the Royal Fireworks seems to have been forgotten.

Programme notes provided by Hillingdon Philharmonic Orchestra, October 1985.

Peter and the Wolf (A Musical Tale for Children)

Narrator - Robin Reece - Crawford

Peter and the Wolf was written in 1936 for the Moscow Theatre for Children, which Prokofiev had visited several times before agreeing to compose a work for it. He was interested to observe how intrigued the children were by the musical instruments lying about before a performance. It had been planned to hold a concert in which the instruments would be explained to them, and thus the idea came to Natalie Satz, an administrator of the Theatre, to ask Prokofiev for a work that would be a guide to the instruments. Satz and Nadezhda Sakonskaya, the poet, worked on the scenario, which formed the basis for Prokofiev's music. The first performance, on 5 May 1936, was enthusiastically received.

Only a small orchestra is used. Each character is impersonated by an instrument or a combination of them. The flute becomes the fluttering bird, the clarinet impersonates the lithe cat, the oboe the quacking duck, the grumpy grandfather is heard on the bassoon, and the rifle shots of the hunters are represented by the timpani. The menacing wolf is represented by the horns, while Peter himself is characterized by a string quartet.

The work is in the more popular style that Prokofiev often used on his return to his native Russia in 1933 and displays his gifts as a miniaturist. The tale, told by a narrator and aided by the pictorial illustrations of the various instruments, recounts how a wolf has been ravaging the countryside, devouring a duck, and how young Peter captures the wolf and drags it off to the zoo. Inevitably, since Prokofiev was composing during the Stalinist regime, various underlying political themes have been spotted in the work, but such issues are not relevant today to the innocent enjoyment of this symphonic fairy tale.

Programme notes provided by Ben Brickman, July 1987