Sofi Jeannin conducts Stravinsky,
Ravel & Boulanger

Maurice Ravel   
L’aurore * (9’) 

Igor Stravinsky  
Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1947 version) (12’) 

Lili Boulanger  
Vieille prière bouddhique ** (9’) 

INTERVAL  (20’) 

Maurice Ravel   
Le tombeau de Couperin (17’) 

Igor Stravinsky  
Symphony of Psalms (21’) 

Sofi Jeannin Conductor
BBC National Chorus of Wales
Roland GeorgeTenor*
Deryck WebbTenor ** 

The concert is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast in Afternoon Concert and filmed for future release in the BBC NOW Digital Concert Series. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds, where you can also find podcasts and music mixes. Visit bbc.co.uk/now for more information on future performances.

Roland George tenor
BBC National Chorus of Wales 

Ravel’s L’aurore (‘Dawn’) is a rarity indeed. It was composed in 1905 during a difficult time for the Ravel family, as in that year a ‘Whirlwind of Death’ ride invented by the composer’s father was launched at the Casino de Paris but was soon shut down following a fatal accident.

This short piece for solo tenor, mixed choir and orchestra was composed for the preliminary round of the Prix de Rome, the most prestigious competition at the Paris Conservatoire. Ravel transcends the dull poem by an anonymous author with imaginative instrumental touches and shimmering textures; it builds up to a dramatic climax and ends suddenly.

Despite his confident handling of the large forces, Ravel was not selected as a finalist for the competition. In fact, unlike Ravel, all six of the successful competitors were students of Charles Lenepveu, who just happened to be on the jury. Ravel would also have been aware that he was occasionally breaking the rules of traditional harmonic part-writing, and he was even criticised for using trombones in a quiet passage: Lenepveu believed the heavy brass should only be used at loud volume. Nevertheless, L’aurore can now be considered characteristic of French music of the turn of the 20th century and an intriguing addition to Ravel’s worklist.

<sup>Programme note © Caroline Potter

Further Listening: Mathys Lagier; Choeur & Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS BIS2582)
Further Reading: Ravel Roger Nichols (Yale UP)</sup>

Stravinsky would sometimes use the word ‘symphony’ in the Ancient Greek sense, meaning simply ‘sounding together’, rather than a traditional developing form. The Symphonies of Wind Instruments is the most extreme example of this, akin to a compositional treatise on how to layer the orchestral woodwind and brass in striking and colourful ways. It is constructed from highly contrasted blocks of sound, which are often quite static and austere in effect.

Stravinsky wrote Symphonies a few years after The Rite of Spring, and concurrently with his initial attempts to complete Les noces, for which he struggled to decide on an instrumentation (he eventually settled on a solution with no wind instruments, and in fact no sustaining instruments at all – the complete inverse of Symphonies). 

Like those two great ballets, Symphonies is interlaced with folk tunes (or rather authentic-sounding forgeries that Stravinsky wrote himself). These mimic the playful stress patterns of Russian speech, and create unpredictable rhythms and changes in metre. While this technique conjures up chaos and brutality in The Rite and a wild celebratory atmosphere in Les noces, here these melodies are melancholic and eerie, meandering between the denser textures.

Symphonies ends with a reworking of Stravinsky’s recent piano piece in memory of Debussy, who had died in 1918, giving this otherwise abstract piece an elegiac profundity and, perhaps more importantly for Stravinsky, the sense of a ritual or, better still, a rite.

<sup>Programme note © Tom Owen

Further Listening: Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle (Warner Classics  7236112)
Further Reading: Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France 1882–1934 Stephen Walsh (Pimlico)</sup>

Deryck Webbtenor
BBC National Chorus of Wales 

Started in Rome in 1914 and completed in Arcachon in 1917, Vieille prière bouddhique sets a French translation of an old Buddhist prayer. Lili Boulanger’s friend Suzanne Karpelès, who was reading Oriental Studies at the Sorbonne, introduced the composer to the text and was also responsible for the translation from Pali, the Buddhist sacred language. Its subtitle ‘Prière quotidienne pour tout l’univers’ (Daily prayer for the whole universe) is an apt introduction to the flavour of the work. The theme of universal fellowship is conveyed through choral writing that is simple, direct and often in octaves, with everyone singing the same line. Modal touches, for instance in the main melody, move the musical language away from something specifically Western classical in style to something less time- and place-bound. 

The most obviously ‘exotic’ element of Vieille prière bouddhique is the long flute solo that is both an elaboration of previously heard choral material and an evocation of an imagined alien culture in its incantatory style and rhythmic flexibility. The work was premiered on 9 June 1921 under the misleading title ‘Prière hindoue’ at Paris’s Salle Pleyel, conducted by Henri Busser; the performers on this occasion included Lili’s sister Nadia Boulanger at the piano.

Lili Boulanger loved word games, ciphers and musical puns, and at the start of her 1912 diary she noted fragments of a private language, some of which is based on musical notes. One cipher represents the name ‘Lili’: do–sol–do–sol (C–G–C–G), a set of four notes which is prominent in Vieille prière bouddhique. This suggests that this choral piece is not only a universal prayer, but also an intensely personal work.

^{Programme note © Caroline Potter}

^{Further Listening: Martial Defontaine; Namur Symphonic Choir; Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Mark Stringer (Timpani 1C1148)
Further Reading: Nadia and Lili Boulanger Caroline Potter (Routledge)}

INTERVAL: 20 minutes 

1 Prélude 
2 Forlane 
3 Menuet 
4 Rigaudon 

Le tombeau de Couperin began life as a suite for piano. Ravel started work on it in 1914, but the First World War interrupted his progress and the piece was not completed until 1917. Six movements – Prélude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata – were modelled on French Baroque dances and dedicated collectively to the memory of his friends killed in the war. In 1919, the composer scored four of these movements for a small orchestra. 

How can musical works best commemorate loved ones? Ravel’s Tombeau is not a series of elegies. Nor is it intended as a series of personal portraits. Instead, there is the intangible sense of nostalgia, of lost worlds and things ethereal. Ravel’s sophisticated tributes honour the memories of people without encasing them in amber, and the result is often moving in both senses of the word. 

In the Prélude, the constant flow of notes resembles a perpetual motion. The Forlane was a lively, quick-paced folk dance associated with Venice but Ravel’s version is distinguished by a moderate tempo, lilting rhythms and slightly slurred articulation. The Menuet is both affectionate and stately. Notwithstanding a pastoral middle section, the Rigaudon is characterised by bright sonorities and high-stepping gestures, which bring the work to an exuberant conclusion.

^{Programme note © Lucía Camacho Acevedo}

^{Further Listening: Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi HMM905281)}

1 Exaudi orationem meam, Domine –
2 Expectans expectavi Dominum –
3 Alleluia. Laudate Dominum 

BBC National Chorus of Wales 

The Symphony of Psalms was written during the most productive years of what is often referred to as Stravinsky’s Neoclassical period – although the term is a loose one here, as the composer pilfered from such a wide range of antiquated styles and forms, and found so many inventive ways to transform them. Indeed, the string of works from Oedipus rex (1927) to Perséphone (1933) – via Apollo and the Violin Concerto – features an extraordinary range of compositional approaches. The Symphony of Psalms comes in the middle of this sequence and is perhaps the most stylistically enigmatic.

Stravinsky’s constantly shifting idiom was sometimes met with confusion during this period, with critics accusing him of relying too much on musical masks and disguises. But there’s no doubting the sincerity of this work: an attempt to declare his faith as something personal and inspiring. While his earlier pieces for the Ballets Russes had been closer to pageantry, in which Russian tropes were exaggerated for the Parisian audience, the Symphony of Psalms dates from more than 15 years into his time as a cosmopolitan exiled in France, and is a more heartfelt, serious assertion of his Russian Orthodox heritage. It may not be the festive piece Serge Koussevitzky hoped for when he commissioned it (to celebrate the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary), but it has a life-affirming grandeur simmering just below the surface.

The orchestration lacks clarinets, violins and violas, and at times creates a haunting, hollow sound. Elsewhere, Stravinsky makes percussive use of two orchestral pianos, energising the passages where the vocal lines sound like ritualistic chant.

While psalm settings are often exercises in direct, obvious word-painting, Stravinsky avoids such clichés, refraining in the third movement from depicting the instruments mentioned in Psalm 150. Here it becomes clear that, for this composer, praise and worship are in fact very calm and reflective states. At the beginning of the second movement, Psalm 40 proclaims that the Lord ‘hath put a new song in my mouth’, but this is sung while a most archaic device, a stunning double fugue, is unfolding. The first movement is the most reminiscent of Stravinsky’s ‘Russian phase’, with its syncopations and obsessive repetitions of just one or two notes.

Like the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, it is a monumental work rather than a symphony in the traditional sense – a huge framing device for the sounds made by the singing of the psalms.

^{Programme note © Tom Owen}

^{Further Listening: Rundfunkchor Berlin; Berliner Philharmoniker/Pierre Boulez (DG E4576162)}

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Biographies

Sofi Jeannin conductor

Swedish-born Sofi Jeannin is renowned for her clear and succinct technique and formidable repertoire knowledge. She has established herself as one of the most respected choral specialists around today.

She is currently Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers (since 2018) and Music Director of La Maîtrise de Radio France (since 2008), having previously been Music Director of the Choeur de Radio France. Through her association with the latter, she has worked with leading figures such as Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink and Christoph Eschenbach.

During her time with La Maîtrise de Radio France she has commissioned many new works, collaborating with composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Peter Eötvös, John Adams and Thierry Escaich, and has given regular broadcasts on France Musique. She has also conducted regularly at the St Denis Festival.

Recent and forthcoming highlights with the BBC Singers include appearances at the BBC Proms; a collaboration with the Academy of Ancient Music and South Asian dance company Akademi juxtaposing the dances of Rameau with classical and contemporary Indian dance; Poulenc’s Figure humaine with jazz interpolations and Fauré’s Requiem alongside music by Bach, Isabella Leonarda and Reena Esmail at Milton Court Concert Hall in London; and Betsy Jolas’s Concerto-Fantaisie (with the pianist Nicolas Hodges) and Schnittke’s Choir Concerto.

She is also in demand as a guest conductor, with recent and future highlights including appearances with the Hallé, New Japan and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, Norrköping and Singapore Symphony orchestras and Auckland Philharmonia. 

Sofi Jeannin studied conducting and singing at the Stockholm Royal College of Music, the Nice Conservatoire and then at London’s Royal College of Music with Paul Spicer. 

Her education and outreach work has taken her to Kinshasa, Congo, and she has been involved in Greece’s El Sistema since 2017. In addition, she regularly gives workshops and masterclasses around the world.

Deryck Webb tenor

Deryck Webb was born in West Wales. His earliest experiences as a young adult singer were with the John S. Davies Singers and Côr Dyfed (with which he made his BBC radio debut as the Messenger in a performance of Handel’s Samson conducted by Roger Norrington). He studied at what is now the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, where he was a member of the Opera School, which led him to become a member of the English National Opera. There he made his solo operatic debut as the Rooster in David Pountney’s production of Janáček’s TheCunning Little Vixen, conducted by Charles Mackerras.

He left the company in 1992 to continue his career in Europe, working with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants and pursuing a varied career as singer, teacher and conductor. He returned to the UK in 2013 and now serves as a lay clerk at Gloucester Cathedral under the direction of Adrian Partington.

Roland George tenor

Roland George was raised in the Rhondda and began singing at an early age with his sister, the folk singer Siwsann George. He studied singing with Paul Deegan at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and was a member of the RTÉ Chamber Choir. 

On stage he has sung principal roles in works such as Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, The Mikado and The Gondoliers; Wallace’s Maritana; Sondheim’s Follies; and Bock’s Fiddler on the Roof. His concert performances include Messiah, Haydn’s Theresienmesse and Bach’s St John Passion and Magnificat. He has also broadcast on radio and television.

He sings regularly with a number of choral groups, including BBC National Chorus of Wales, the John S. Davies Singers and CÔR, recently appearing with the last of these in a performance of Tosca at the Abu Dhabi Festival with Sir Bryn Terfel.