GUILDFORD
CORPORATION
CONCERTS
DIRECTOR OF MUSIC
VERNON HANDLEY
GUILDFORD PHILHARMONIG ORGHESTRA
Leader : WILLIAM ARMON
FESTIVAL GHOIR
FRANK WIBAUT .
Pianoforte
SOO-BEE LEE
.
.
Soprano
JOHN GIBBS
.
.
Baritone
VERNON HANDLEY
.
Conductor
THE TENTH
THE
CONCERT
ENTERPRISING
IN
SERIES
SATURDAY,
I2th NOVEMBER . . 1966
CIVIC HALL
Programme . . . . .
i/-
FRANK WIBAUT — Pianoforte
Frank Wibaut was born in London in 1945, and started his musical studies at
the age of seven. When he was eleven years old, he won a junior scholarship
to the Royal College of Music. In 1961—62 he won the Angela Bull Memorial
Prize, was second in the National Piano Playing Competition, and was awarded
a senior scholarship at the Royal College of Music to study with Cyril Smith.
He won first prize in the Chopin Competition in London in February 1963, and
in 1964 won the much coveted Chappell Gold Medal for pianists at the Royal
College of Music. He has played in many concerts in this country and abroad.
SOO-BEE LEE — Soprano
at
Soo.Bee Lee was born in Singapore and came to London in 1955 to studyshe
the Royal Academy of Music, where she won numerous Prizes. In 1959
was runner-up in the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Kathleen Ferrier Memorial
Scholarship.
Soo-Bee Lee has a wide repertoire covering opera, oratorio and recital. She
is now firmly established as a soloist, having carried out many engagements
throughout the country, including BBC broadcasts and several television appearShe has taken leading roles with Sadler’'s Wells Opera Company,
ances.
Handel Opera Society, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Wexford Festival
Opera.
JOHN GIBBS — Baritone
John Gibbs was born in London and studied singing at the Royal Academy
of Music. On leaving the Academy, he continued studying in Paris, on an
Arts Council Grant. Since returning to England, he has appeared with the
English Opera Group and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, as well as touring
with Opera for All. His 1966 engagements include principal roles with the
Welsh National Opera Company and the English Opera Group.
has
The Musical Director wishes to acknowledge with thanks the help he Mr.
received in training the Festival Choir from the assistant conductor, Hall,
Kenneth Lank, and accompanists Miss Mary Rivers and Miss Maureentime to
and from Mrs. D. W. Wren and Miss G. Hall, who have given much
a seating plan to accommodate the Choir.
There are now a few vacancies in the tenor and bass sections only of the
Festival Choir, and anyone interested should apply to the Director of Music,
155 High Street, Guildford.
PROGRAMME
Symphonic Variations
.
.
.
.
.
Derek Bourgeois
(First Performance)
The work consists of a theme and six variations. The theme is traditional in
character and stylistically removed from the variations. The idea of this is
to allow the listener to assimilate the theme easily so that he may recognise
the theme as it is used in the rest of the work.
The variations are unusual inasmuch as the theme is not treated as a whole,
but is split into fragments which are developed symphonically, and by no means
in the right order. The variations have only the slightest pause between them.
The first variation is boisterous in character with a complicated middle
section with jagged time changes. The second variation still maintains elements
of the first, and is slow and stately, but with fast interjections on the woodwind.
The third variation is very fast indeed and builds up to a massive climax in the
middle. The fourth variation is slow and static, presenting the theme in blocks
of sound. It ends with a mysterious fragment of the theme in the lower strings
accompanied by a celeste which gradually fades to nothing. The fifth variation
is marked "“Grotesco’’ and is a grotesque, lumbering movement in which the
theme has become so transformed as to be scarcely recognisable.
The finale is much longer than any of the preceding variations, and can
be regarded as a complete symphonic movement in itself. The theme is first
presented by the brass who attack it with great vigour. This subsides to a
more relaxed section which gradually builds up to a huge climax which gets
faster and faster until a loud stroke of the gong ushers in a hushed, menacing
reminder of the first variation. Suddenly the brass enter with the theme as
in the opening of the finale and this leads to the final statement of it as a canon
in the brass in the tempo of the theme itself. This statement is in opposition
to a terrific clatter on piano, bells, celeste, glockenspiel, vibrophone, xylophone
and organ.
One of the main features throughout the work has been a clash in
tonalities between D major and B major. The theme itself ends in the “‘wrong
key’, and this ambiguity is carried to the end, and the work finishes with a
loud crash in both keys at once.
DEREK BOURGEOIS.
Pianoforte Concerto No. 3 in Cmajor
.
.
.
Prokofiev
Andante - Allegro
Theme and Variations
Allegro ma non troppo
Prokofiev’'s Third Piano Concerto which was written in 1917 is one of his
earliest mature works. He was twenty-six years old when he wrote it, and
although his two earlier concertos for the instrument had received some attention, they have not held a place in the repertoire. Although it is considerably
more serious in content, this work is a contemporary of his popular Classical
Symphony and, indeed, in the middle movement, shows some resemblance to it.
Some critics have found in this work the example of Prokofiev's contribution
to the neo-classical movement, but the genuine feeling expressed in the first
and last movements would seem to be more a part of a forceful romanticism.
It is like the neo-classicism of the Twenties in that Prokofiev makes the formal
balance very important in the design of the concerto, and, as it was written
in 1917, this would seem to be a reaction against the excessive romanticism
of the late nineteenth century. However, it is unlike neo-classicism in that
many of the works that emanated from that movement were either precious
or self-consciously imitative, whereas this concerto has a genuine simplification
of form, and contains material that is anything if self-conscious.
The first movement begins with a phrase on the clarinet, immediately taken
up over a very warm harmony by the violins. It is the shortest of introductions and leads straight into one of those brilliant toccata-like allegros for
which Prokofiev is famous. The material of this allegro is cleverly exploited
by the pianist and the full orchestra, and in the very midst of the development
section the first theme returns in an inverted form and now staccato rather
than legato as it was in the beginning.
At the climax of the movement, how-
ever, it returns fortissimo and at its original andante. A truncated form of
the toccata leads to a second statement of the tune derived from the first
theme, and the coda is ushered in by a piu mosso version of the opening bars
of the first allegro. The second movement begins with a theme on the clarinet
and flute above gentle short crotchets on the strings. The Variations, which
are five in number, exploit both methods of variation form—that is: actual
structural change, and the presentation of the theme without change against
different backgrounds.
The fifth variation runs sraight into the re-statement
of the theme which closes the movement. The last movement begins with a
long staccato subject bristling with accents.
The soloist comments on the
second bar of it; the three notes of this appear crashed out with different
chords, and interspersed with flourishes and scales. What, in fact, has happened is that Prokofiev has plunged us straight into a development section, and
this extensive allegro lasts some 140 bars before a slower tune, still in threefour time, is introduced by the oboes and clarinets. Now the structure becomes
apparent: this middle section is to treat the tune as a centre set of variations,
with the orchestra supplying the theme which the pianist decorates with the
utmost virtuosity. It is only after several versions that one is really aware that
the tune, although of very different character from the opening allegro, is in
fact an augmented version of the first few bars. When the climax of this
second section is reached, the opening material occurs in something like its
original form, and the concerto finishes with an extended tutti.
INTERVAL
Dona Nobis Pacem
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Vaughan Williams
Dona Nobis Pacem was written in the mid nineteen thirties and the first performance was given by the Huddersfield Choral Society in October 1936.
~
This was a fruitful time in the composer’s life for the Fourth Symphony,
Five Tudor Portraits, and an opera, the gay. fantastic Poisoned Kiss belong
to these years.
These were the last years before the second world war, when the powers
of dictatorship were spreading darkly over Europe, Ralph Vaughan Williams,
who had himself seen active service in both France and Salonika, knew well
the disasters of war. Having been trained as an historian as well as a musician,
he could see all too clearly the direction in which the peoples of Europe were
moving. Those who have taken it upon themselves to interpret his Fourth
Symphony as a political declaration should turn to this cantata rather than to
that fiery statement of pure music to discover the composer’s feelings about war.
He prepared his own text for Dona Nobis Pacem, linking the movements
by the last words of the Agnus Dei section of the Mass. That prayer for peace,
the cry of the soprano voice, is no less passionate for being clothed in the
formality of Latin, the language that still has some claim to being the inter-
national speech of western civilization.
The poems are American; Whitman, too, had seen war from the battlefields and Beat! Beat! Drums! . . . and the Dirge for Two Veterans burn
with the vividness of experience. In Reconciliation, both poet and musician
remind us that the dead enemy was ‘a man divine as myself . . .’
e last
part of the cantata is made from a political speech by John Bright and from
the psalms and words of the prophets, full of hope and full of promise. But
it ends with the unfulfilled prayer for goodwill towards men and for peace,
still remote and still desired. During thirty years of performances, it has never
UrsuLA VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.
ceased to be tragically topical.
I
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis pacem.
I
Beat!
beat!
drums—blow!
bugles!
blow!
Through the windows—through the doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field, or gathering in his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for the sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must
sleep in those beds,
No bargainers bargains by day—would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
WaLT WHITMAN
111
RECONCILIATION
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly, wash again
and ever again this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the cofin—I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
WaLT WHITMAN
v
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And | hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
*Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvey face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! 5 my veterans passing to burial!
Vfl’xat I have | also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
WALT WHITMAN
v
The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost
hear the beating of his wings. There is no one as of old . . . to sprinkle
with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare
and pass on.
JOoHN BRIGHT.
Don nobis pacem.
We looked {)olr peace, but no good came;
trouble!
and for a time of health, and behold
The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan; the whole land trembled at
the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and
have devoured the land . . . . and those that dwell therein . . . .
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved . . . .
Is there no balm in Gilead?; is there no physician there? Why then is not the
health of the daughter of my people recovered?
Jeremiah viii. 15-22.
‘O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong.’
Daniel x. 19.
‘The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former . . . . and
in this place will I give peace.’
Haggai ii. 9.
Vi
‘Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war
any
more.
:
And none shall make them afraid, neither shal]l the sword go through their land.
M}elrcy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each
:
other.
Truth silall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from
heaven.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, | will go into them.
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled; and
let them hear, and say, it is the truth.
And it shall come, that | will gather all nations and tongues.
And they shall come and see my glory.
And I will set a sign among them, and
p
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which 1 will make, shall remain
before me, so shall your seed and your name remain for ever.’
they shall declare my glory among the nations.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.
(Adapted from Micah iv. 3, Leviticus xxvi. 6, Psalms lxxxv. 10, and
cxviii. 19, Isaiah xliii. 9, and lxvi. 18=22, and Luke ii. 14.),
A
U"NOTE"
1IN
YOUR
FRIDAY, 2nd DECEMBER 3466
5
DIARY.
§ pm UNTIL
—
AT THE CIVIC HALL,
1 &m
GUILDFORD.
The Guildford Concertgoers Society
1996
'Fortissimo!
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Obtainable
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FOR YOU 'AND YOUR FRIENDS.
Owing to an unfortunate accident, MRr. Frank
WiBAUT 1s unable to appear as Soloist in the
Prokofiev Piano Concerto.
The Corporation is very grateful to MR. Joun
L, who has taken on the engagement at
extremely short notice.
Vernon