Sir Antonio Pappano’s golden first year with the LSO

‘One has to be absolutely faithful to the history of the orchestra: the archive, the original energy, the original spark’. Sir Antonio Pappano’s words paraphrase part of the introduction to his first season as the London Symphony Orchestra’s (LSO) chief conductor that he wrote for the orchestra’s website last September. They bring to mind one special element of the highly-charged chemistry between him and the players that within his inspirational leadership has produced some of the most incandescent music-making in the Orchestra’s 43-year Barbican Centre residency. This element of panache has long been an essential part of the LSO’s make-up, going all the way back to its origins in 1904 as an independent self-managed ensemble formed of players breaking away from their previous employ in Sir Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra – an audacious new move at the time.

 ‘Panache was exactly what I felt in my very first experience with the LSO in 1996 when they played for the recording of Puccini’s La rondine that I was conducting’, Sir Antonio tells me. ‘From the get-go on the first session there was this daring-do and incredible combustible energy that they are so famous for – but not just flash and loud: it was a desire to make the music jump off the page. They have had that throughout their history, and it has been a key ingredient in their premiering of countless new works, especially British compositions.

‘That sentiment is particularly strong for me right now as this season I am programming so much British music with them, and many of the pieces are associated with the orchestra’s heritage. It means a lot to me that the LSO gave world premieres of works by, for instance, Holst, Bax, Elgar, Walton, Vaughan Williams, and Britten that I have been conducting, and of course other music by these composers has featured so strongly in its history. That legacy sparked my curiosity to look more deeply into this repertoire during this season as well as while I was their designate conductor, and the LSO’s tradition of adventure and excitement has basically been my mantra with them as I have been discovering a lot of music that – so to speak – belongs to them. Of course, that can only be a point of departure if you are also commissioning new compositions for the future. Breaking new ground is central to the LSO’s history, and it needs to continue along that road.’

© Mark Allan

The orchestra has certainly broken new ground when performing Sir Antonio’s imaginative programming. Repertoire under the LSO’s new chief conductor combines innovation with ancestry, such as in the very first concert last September when Sir James MacMillan’s Concerto for Orchestra, Ghosts, was premiered after Carl Nielsen’s rarely heard Helios Overture and followed by Jean Sibelius’ First Symphony (the LSO having pioneered renowned recordings of the complete Sibelius Symphonies under Robert Kajanus in the 1930s, Anthony Collins in the 1950s and Sir Colin Davis in the 1990s and 2000s).

‘This was a trip to the North, of course – Scotland (MacMillan), Denmark (Nielsen), and Finland (Sibelius), and it held a personal fascination for me,’ says Sir Antonio. ‘Though my roots are in the South of Italy and I was born and lived in England before spending my teens and early 20s in America, I spent much time in the beginning of my conducting career in Scandinavia so I am acquainted with these sounds, with the specific light of the nature there. So, to put together two Scandinavians with an artist from the most Northern realm of Britain was a kind of springboard for one of my principal aims with the LSO: to present British music in a wide international context.

‘This is now the first time in my career when I have been able to focus to such a degree on British music, including the thrill of conducting some works I have not done before, and there is such a wealth of repertoire that it can richly continue for several years – however, as I say in an international perspective. Many of the great British composers had strong European influences, so into the mix have gone Beethoven, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Mahler, Puccini, Ravel, Szymanowski, to name a few. I crazily put together Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Tippett’s A Child of our Time in one concert: you could say it was a political programme – the struggles of people being oppressed in Tippett’s oratorio and the clamour for freedom and liberty and brotherhood in Beethoven’s symphony. It was an evening of Wagnerian dimensions, but it was a beautiful combination.

© Frances Marshall

‘On an especially personal note, I am gleeful to share my British/Italian/American heterogeneity with all these marvellous artists in music from all three domains. In December, we did a concert performance of Puccini’s La rondine – 28 years after my LSO debut in that very music – and at the Proms in August we have a concert performance of his Suor Angelica. It requires the greatest refinement, but it also has one of the hardest-hitting confrontation scenes in opera, between Angelica and her cruel old aunt the Princess: though it’s so totally Italian it’s a buttoned up Italianata, extremely tense in its concision. And then, in the very greatest contrast we have done two large jazz-inflected events that link me to my American connection, including a collaboration with the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra when we performed Wynton Marsalis’s Jungle Symphony (Symphony No 4), and that’s been fantastic for the Orchestra and me to let our hair down and feel rhythm in a different way – it does everybody good.’

American music is also a strong programming theme in Maestro Pappano’s upcoming LSO season when, together with continuing focuses on British composers as well as Shostakovich, he will be conducting symphonies by Bernstein (No’s 2 and 3) and Copland (No 3). The panoramic range of music and inventive programming reflect Sir Antonio’s celebrated eclecticism, mirrored in part by his own multicultural background. Not only has he an exceptional breadth of diverse repertoire both in the concert hall and the opera house, but also a profound understanding and empathetic affinity with the vastly differing worlds of the music that he conducts. Followers of his television and YouTube appearances and readers of his autobiography (My Life In Music) greatly relish the magnetic way he transmits this, as do the orchestras, choruses, solo singers, and solo instrumentalists who perform with him under his commanding leadership, when he so dynamically infuses them with his visions, and inspires them to electrifying results. Sir Antonio is meticulously demanding of them, but in an exhilarating way that they love.

‘Working with Antonio Pappano is so inspiring’, LSO principal double bass Rodrigo Moro Martin explains. ‘The depth of detail in the way that he works in all the repertoire we prepare with him is just incredible’.

© Mark Allan

‘He’s such an amazing communicator’ LSO principal bassoon Dan Jemison adds. ‘He’s a true and brilliant story-teller in all that he does: whatever we are playing with him; he always paints a vivid picture and brings the music alive in a dramatic way. I marvel at how he puts everything together: he makes a player aware when, to quote a favourite phrase of his, “you’re the protagonist”, while he is at the same time being meticulously attentive to the overall texture and colour in the orchestra. Another great quality I love in him is his combination of being a thoughtful, or if you prefer thinking, musician and an instinctive musician all at the same time – and that’s rare. In rehearsal there’s such a painstaking attention to detail and characterisation and he articulates this so animatedly that we all play with a special unity of expression. But in performance, it’s as though that’s all in the background because it’s been built in and absorbed by us, and his actual conducting then is all about connection and emotion, which is where his instinctive musicianship comes into play in such a very special spontaneous way. He has the great gift – and not many do – of giving you space and freedom to play individually while he is drawing all the strands together to form a unified whole. Everything he does with his gestures shapes the phrase or the thrust of the music – and he has such a beautiful, natural way of phrasing anything. He also has a remarkable gift of communicating the arching span of a large-scale work, such as Mahler’s First Symphony: we have played that a lot with him this season, and yet on every occasion, although the structure has always been so consistently strong there’s been an impromptu freshness each time – no two performances were the same.’

One of these performances has been captured on film by Marquee TV, and it’s as riveting to watch as it is to listen to, with the cameras vividly transmitting the creative rapport between the LSO and Maestro Pappano, whose balance of control and freedom with the players is grippingly exhilarating.

‘I’m happy as a clam’ he rejoices. ‘I feel the relationship with the orchestra is so positive because it’s natural: I talk to them, they talk to me; nothing is forced.’

(Image courtesy of the LSO)

The virtuoso playing of the LSO under Sir Antonio Pappano and the palpable frisson in their Barbican Centre concerts continue to be preserved for posterity in their LSO Live CDs. The recent issue of Ravel’s complete ballet Daphnis et Chloé, with the wordless voices of the Tenebrae choir, is a sublime, incandescent realisation of Ravel’s great vision of genius, and future releases are set to include further Vaughan Williams symphonies in the evolving cycle following the already issued Fourth and Sixth, commencing first of all with numbers Five and Nine on one CD taken at performances this season, on which Sir Antonio comments:

‘Such a contrast: the Fifth a glowing benediction, the Ninth so opaque and belligerent yet not emotional in the same degree as the Fifth: there’s a more brooding type of melancholy and a deep vein of bitterness in it. I think all his symphonies are reinventions of the composer’s self, as surely all Beethoven’s are. His First Symphony, the Sea Symphony, was also recorded for future LSO Live release when we performed it in February, and that was my first time conducting it: imagine the thrill I had of hearing the LSO and also the splendid LSO Chorus conjure up the ebullience, the crashing waves, and the solemnity of the deep! Well, everyone can share that when the CD is released. Additionally in the can from this season are Holst’s The Planets, Walton’s Symphony No 1, and Bax’s Tintagel. These will come out in stages. We’ll also be doing in the coming season Vaughan Williams’ Flos Campi and Dona Nobis Pacem, which is such an unusual setting of this text: you might expect a meditative piece from beginning to end, but there are such stormy outbursts actually inspired by Verdi’s Requiem Mass.’

For Sir Antonio Pappano, the LSO and Barbican Centre audiences, a particularly prized highlight each season is the inclusion of at least one opera in a concert presentation. In addition to Puccini’s La rondine last December, this season includes Strauss’s Salome, on the 11^th and 13^th of July, with Asmik Grigorian in the title role.

‘I conducted it so many, many times back in my days at La Monnaie Opera in Brussels,’ he tells me. ‘But I have never done it in London. When I was the Music Director of the Royal Opera House, I always gave it away to other conductors, as I felt I needed a respite from it. The lurid musical images Strauss conjures up of this young, very disturbed girl, in counterpoint with music reflecting the rock-solid faith of Jokanaan, John the Baptist, make such a wonderful contrast, but after I last conducted it in Chicago back in 1996 I resolved to stay away from it as it’s so emotionally draining and I had done it too often. Well, after staying away from it now for nearly thirty years, I thought it would be an incredible vehicle for the LSO and I am enormously looking forward to doing it. My interest has piqued again. I am in the process of restudying it right now: I know this piece so well and I can’t wait to share it with the Orchestra. Theatre is so incredibly contagious, and so for the LSO to play this extraordinary music with such a fantastically imaginative text by Oscar Wilde and such kaleidoscopically evocative orchestration – it’s made for them!’

(Image courtesy of the LSO)

As has always been the case in all Sir Antonio’s chief conductor and music director posts, each year he makes a large commitment of time to the season’s operations. And with the LSO this includes wide-scale touring: ‘The LSO tours a great deal, and are fabulous ambassadors for Britain because of the top-notch high standards they maintain throughout all the gruelling touring schedules. I constantly marvel at their work ethic in these conditions. The tours take no prisoners: we often do as many as six concerts in a row playing in a different city each night, and yet the LSO’s quality and response are unfailingly magnificent. We are passing our message on to a lot of different people in very many countries, and the players take this as deeply seriously as I do.’

No matter how strenuous the tours are, with Maestro Pappano at the helm they are unfailingly as inspirational for the LSO as the concerts back home, as the Orchestra’s chair of the board of directors and sub-principal second violin Sarah Quinn tells us: ‘In the way that he presents the music we do together, he reaches people all around the world on a very remarkable level – there’s an extra special added dimension. On our tours he even speaks to the audiences in their language. He has a truly extraordinary ability to connect engagingly and informatively on everyone’s wavelength: equally on the Orchestra’s and the audience’s. Some people can talk a lot, and it doesn’t have an effect, but as a communicator and a story-teller, Sir Antonio is astonishing: I think he’s a one-off. This and of course his wonderful conducting talent all leads to memorable performances. When we tour together, you can see how thrilled the audiences in all the countries are by the results we achieve with him, just as they are at the Barbican Centre. Playing with him on tour is every bit as exciting an exploration each time as it is in London’.

Where, for the first time, Sir Antonio will also be bringing his galvanising inspiration with the LSO to the Orchestra’s annual series of BMW Classics free open-air concerts in Trafalgar Square, for its 13^th season on 15 June. The programme of Italian music by Rossini, Puccini, Victor de Sabata and Isabella Gellis – a world premiere LSO commission, Opera for Orchestra by the latter – is another ingeniously inventive menu devised by the great Maestro in the first golden year of his era as the LSO’s chief conductor. Together they have been garnering both at home and abroad some of the most extolling accolades in the Orchestra’s illustrious history. A glorious new epoch is flourishing.