Visions of Italy

FerruccioBusoni
Eine Lustspiel-Ouvertüre 8’

Grace Williams
Violin Concerto 21’

INTERVAL: 20 minutes

Vincenzo Bellini
Norma – overture 6’

Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony No. 4 in A major, ‘Italian’ 27’

Geneva Lewis violin
Nil Venditticonductor

The concert in Newport is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast inAfternoon Concert.

Ferruccio Busoni was best known in his lifetime as a brilliant pianist, and he is primarily remembered today for his magnificent piano transcriptions of works by other composers, especially J. S. Bach, whom he revered. But Busoni’s original compositions have always had their devoted advocates, and in recent years they’ve become more widely known and admired, especially the adventurous, at times innovative works of his last two decades, which can open doors on strange new worlds.

A very different kind of world is opened up in Busoni’sEine Lustspiel-Ouvertüre, which was written in 1897 and revised in 1904. Busoni doesn’t seem to have had any particular comedy drama in mind when he composed it; instead, he looks back with late Romantic eyes on the wonderful, irresistibly vital overtures of Mozart, particularly the overture to The Marriage of Figaro. Eine Lustspiel-Ouvertüre shares some of the bustling excitement of its Mozartian model, along with its feeling of anticipation – fun as it is, this is only a prelude to something even better. But, unlike the Mozart, Busoni’s overture takes a turn into more shadowy territory at its heart. The opening themes return, and with them something of the exuberance of the first section, but it’s clear that this comedy isn’t one that turns its back completely on the darker side of life.

^{Programme note © Stephen Johnson}

1  Liricamente
2  Andante sostenuto –
3  Allegro con spirito

Geneva Lewis violin

Grace Williams’s Violin Concerto was premiered on 30 March 1950 by the Welsh violinist Granville Jones and the BBC Welsh Orchestra, conducted by Mansel Thomas, in a concert broadcast live on the BBC’s Welsh Home Service.

Williams had been based in London during the war but in 1947 she took the decision to return home to Barry. She took on a number of different musical jobs and became the first British female composer to write music for a feature film when she provided the score for Blue Scar in1949.  

In the same year Williams told her friend Enid Parry that she longed to compose a Violin Concerto that could express the ‘lyricism’ that had been building up within her during previous months. That powerful impulse determined the shape of the piece. In contrast to the usual quick–slow–quick movement pattern, her concerto opens with a slow movement, which is followed by a central slow movement and a quick finale.

The opening Liricamente (lyrically) movement takes the form of an extended rhapsody. There are episodes of yearning intensity – including the soloist’s cadenza – the lyrical and romantic impetus of this movement always remaining clear.

In contrast, the Andante sostenuto is serene and contemplative. A phrase from the Welsh hymn-tune Yr Hen Dderby  (‘The Old Derby’) is used as the movement’s point of departure, a tune Williams had used in her score for Blue Scar, although this particular sequence was edited out in the film’s final version. Soloist and orchestra incant, elaborate and develop aspects of the tune, creating an enchanting musical landscape. 

The spell is broken by the concluding Allegro movement, which follows without a break. Dramatic in tone, it contains witty exchanges between soloist and orchestra, and a brilliant solo cadenza. Even in this brisk finale, however, the overall lyrical ethos of the concerto is not entirely dispelled.

^{Programme note © Rhiannon Mathias}

INTERVAL: 20 minutes

Bellini’s opera Norma got off to a shaky start at its premiere at Milan’s La Scala opera house in 1831. ‘Fiasco! Fiasco! Solemn fiasco!’ Bellini wrote in anguish to his composer friend Francesco Florimo. But then came one of the most surprising reversals in all opera history. For the second night, the theatre was full, and Norma seemed to go down much better. Before long it was a roaring success, delighting audiences all over Europe. Today, the beautiful Act 1 aria ‘Casta diva’ (‘Chaste goddess’), which had left the singer Giuditta Pasta deeply unimpressed during rehearsal, is one of the most famous of all Italian opera arias, known and loved even by people who’ve never set foot in an opera house.

The plot of Norma is a classic grand opera tale of a love triangle, set in Roman-occupied Gaul, that goes horribly wrong and ends with the self-sacrificial death of both the heroine and her lover on a blazing pyre. It’s the job of the overture to set the scene and get the audience in the mood for what is to come. Bellini’s concise, gripping example does this brilliantly, as well as anticipating some of the opera’s leading melodies. As it rushes to its exhilarating conclusion, it’s easy to imagine the curtain going up, and the deliciously tragic drama beginning to unfold.

^{Programme note © Stephen Johnson}

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1  Allegro vivace
2  Andante con moto
3  Con moto moderato
4 Saltarello: Presto

Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony came about from his travels through Europe between 1829 and 1831, in the tradition of a Grand Tour, in which a wealthy young man completed his education by ticking off the cultural highlights of Europe. He began – unconventionally – with a three-week visit to Scotland in 1829, which inspired both his Hebrides Overture (also known as Fingal’s Cave) and his ‘Scottish’ Symphony (No. 3). But, encouraged by the eminent writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom Mendelssohn counted as a friend, and his composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, he set off for the more traditional destination of Italy in October 1830. He spent 10 months in the country, making his way from Venice to Naples via Bologna, Florence and Rome, then back home again through Genoa and Milan.

If his Scottish trip had been about brooding landscapes, swirling mists and blood-soaked history, his Italian trip, as he wrote home to his parents, was about light, sunshine and happiness: ‘This is Italy! And now has begun what I have always thought to be the supreme joy in life. And I love it.’

He devoted time during his travels to planning what he called, in a letter to his sister Fanny, ‘the jolliest piece I have ever done’, completing his ‘Italian’ Symphony back home in Berlin on 13 March 1833. It was an immediate success at its premiere in London two months later.

Mendelssohn described the symphony as ‘blue sky in A major’, and optimism is certainly encapsulated in the first movement’s bounding opening theme, though its central development section brings in somewhat darker, more unpredictable material.

The slow second movement was inspired by religious processions that Mendelssohn watched in Rome: it contrasts a noble melody in the woodwind and violas with a plodding bass line, fading away at its conclusion as if the procession has moved into the distance.

Following an elegant third-movement minuet (complete with distant horn calls in its gently martial trio section), Mendelssohn closes with a finale that blends two breathless Italian dances: the Roman saltarello and the Neapolitan tarantella.

The ‘Italian’ is one of very few symphonies in the repertoire that begins in the bright positivity of the major and ends in the more serious minor. The finale’s whirling energy, however, alongside a melancholy memory of the symphony’s opening melody just before the end, ensures a propulsive, somewhat delirious conclusion to the piece.

^{Programme note © David Kettle}

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Biographies

Nil Venditticonductor

Italian-Turkish conductor Nil Venditti is fast establishing relationships with leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. Highlights from recent seasons include collaborations with the Paris Opera Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Dresden Philharmonic, Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Irish National Opera, as well as Orchestra della Toscana, of which she was Principal Guest Conductor from June 2020 to May 2022. 

This season she makes debuts with the Konzerthaus Berlin, BBC, Hiroshima, Lahti and Tyrolean Symphony orchestras, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Royal Swedish Opera and Nagoya and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. She continues her relationships with tonight’s orchestra, as well as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia, and returns to Stuttgart Opera.

She has a strong affinity for Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and is expanding into Romantic repertoire. Her interest in contemporary programming has seen her focus on the works of Fazil Say, Fabien Waksman, Lepo Sumera and Caroline Shaw. In the opera house her repertoire ranges from Mozart to Peter Maxwell Davies.

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Nil Venditti trained in conducting at the Zurich Univerrsity of the Arts under the guidance of Johannes Schlaefli, as well as attending the Conducting Academy associated with the Pärnu Music Festival under Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi and Leonid Grin. This followed studies in Italy in cello and conducting.

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New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis has forged a reputation as a musician whose performances speak from and to the heart. She is a current BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and is also the recipient of a 2022 Borletti–Buitoni Trust Award and a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, among other awards.

Since her solo debut aged 11 with the Pasadena POPS, she has performed with orchestras including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, North Carolina Symphony and Sarasota Orchestra. Last month she made her BBC Proms debut with BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Jaime Martín. Highlights of this season include further performances with BBC NOW and debuts with the BBC and BBC Scottish Symphony orchestras, Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine and Kremerata Baltica, with which she performs Schnittke’s Concerto grosso No.1 with Gidon Kremer. 

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She studied with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory and, before that, with Aimée Kreston at the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

Geneva Lewis currently performs on a composite violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, c.1776 generously on loan from a charitable trust.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

For over 90 years, BBC National Orchestra of Wales has played an integral part in the cultural landscape of Wales, occupying a distinctive role as both broadcast and national symphony orchestra.
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For all information please visit the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales's website:
bbc.co.uk/now 

Patron
HM King Charles III ^{KG KT PC GCB}
Principal Conductor
Ryan Bancroft
Conductor Laureate
Tadaaki Otaka ^CBE
Composer-in-Association
Gavin Higgins
Composer Affiliate
Sarah Lianne Lewis

First Violins
Nick Whiting leader  
Martin Gwilym-Jones sub-leader
Fiona McCapra
Terry Porteus
Suzanne Casey
Anna Cleworth
Juan Gonzalez
Zanete Uskane
Ruth Heney
Alejandro Trigo
Emilie Godden
Carmel Barber

SecondViolins
Emma Parker ‡
Ros Butler
Sheila Smith
Roussanka Karatchivieva
Vickie Ringguth
Joseph Williams
Ilze Abola
Michael Topping
Lydia Caines
Katherine Miller

Violas
Rebecca Jones *
Tetsuumi Nagata
Catherine Palmer
Robert Gibbons
Laura Sinnerton
Ania Leadbeater
Natalia Solis Paredes
Annie-May Page

Cellos
Hannah Sloane‡
Keith Hewitt #
Jessica Feaver
Rachel Ford
Carolyn Hewitt
Alistair Howes

DoubleBasses
David Stark *
Alexander Jones #
Christopher Wescott
Richard Gibbons

Flutes
Matthew Featherstone *
John Hall †
Lindsey Ellis

Piccolo
Lindsey Ellis †

Oboes
Catriona MacKinnon ‡
Amy McKean †
Sarah-Jayne Porsmoguer

Cor anglais
Sarah-Jayne Porsmoguer †

Clarinets
Robert Plane ‡
Lenny Sayers

Bassoons
Jarosław Augustyniak *
Jo Shewan

Horns
Neil Shewan †
Meilyr Hughes
John Davy 
Tom Findlay
Ed Lockwood

Trumpets
Philippe Schartz *
Robert Samuel

Trombones
Donal Bannister*
Stephen Turton

Bass Trombone
Darren Smith †

Tuba
Oliver Browne

Timpani
Christina Slominska ‡

Percussion
Phil Hughes ‡
Phil Girling

Harp
Valerie Aldrich-Smith †

* Section Principal
† Principal
‡ Guest Principal
# Assistant String Principal



The list of players was correct at the time of publication

Director Lisa Tregale
Orchestra Manager Vicky James
Assistant Orchestra Manager Nick Olsen
Orchestra Coordinator, Operations Kevin Myers
Business Coordinator Caryl Evans
Orchestra Administrator Eleanor Hall
Head of Artistic Production Matthew Wood
Artists and Projects Manager Eleanor Phillips
Orchestra Librarian Eugene Monteith **
Producer Mike Sims
Broadcast Assistant Jacob Perkins
Head of Marketing and Audiences Sassy Hicks
Marketing Coordinator Amy Campbell +
Digital Producer Yusef Bastawy
Social Media Coordinator Harriet Baugh
Education Producers Beatrice Carey, Rhonwen Jones **
Audio Supervisors Simon Smith, Andrew Smillie
Production Business Manager Lisa Blofeld
Stage and Technical Manager Steven Brown +
Assistant Stage and Technical Manager Josh Mead
BBC Wales Apprentices Analese Thomas-Strachan, Jordan Woodley

+ Green Team member
** Diversity & Inclusion Forum