Sir Antonio Pappano: The 2023/24 Season

Sir Antonio Pappano, who becomes Chief Conductor Designate in September 2023, introduces his programmes in the LSO’s 2023/24 season.

‘I feel enormously privileged to be starting the 2023/24 season as Chief Conductor Designate with the LSO. For a conductor, this is a dream position.

I was born in England, grew up here until I was 13, moved to the States, have Italian heritage, studied French, learned German, and I was in the opera field for many, many years. I have a lot of threads that are pulling at me, whether they be dramaturgical or musical or cultural, and I think that you have to tap into these things. I want to do things that I really, really love – and, the hope is, of course, that the orchestra will really love, with me.

The idea of music that, by its very nature, dances, has been in my mind, and how this can be pushed to the extreme. I think that’s the thread that pulls everything together in my concerts this season. How Ravel pushes La valse to the extreme of decadence, intoxication and danger. And how, in the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, you feel like you’re going to go over the cliff any second. It’s that kind of risk that I find so exciting in music.

Ravel, Fazıl Say, Rachmaninoff

There’s a concert in October that starts with Ravel’s La valse, and is followed by a piece by Fazıl Say, who’s a wonderful Turkish pianist and composer, called 1001 Nights in the Harem. It’s a Violin Concerto, full of rhythm, full of heart, full of evocation of a place. It’s sultry, it’s sexy, and I think very beautiful. We finish the programme with Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and this is the idea – to have stuff that’s slightly off the beaten path, but very much anchored by pieces that are strongly a part of the repertoire.

‘This is the idea – to have stuff that’s slightly off the beaten path, but very much anchored by pieces that are strongly a part of the repertoire.’

Info & Tickets: Sunday 8 October 2023 7pm, Barbican

Bartók, Adès, Beethoven

The rustic quality of Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings tells you everything you need to know. It has an earthiness. It’s music that comes from beneath our feet; it’s virtuosic and yet grounded. After that comes Thomas Adès’ Piano Concerto performed by Kirill Gerstein, which we’ve performed together before. This piece is incredible because it jumps off the page: somehow it dances, it moves. It has an amazing funeral march type of second movement, which has a tread that somehow provokes the inner rhythm of us all. And then, the ‘apotheosis of dance’, as Wagner called Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, to finish the programme.

For me it’s very important that music has a communicative side. I think music needs to move people. I think that after listening to something, we should be enlightened somehow, shown different emotional corners in the human experience. Thomas Adès does this in a virtuosic way.

Info & Tickets: Thursday 12 October 2023 7pm, Barbican

Marsalis and Ravel

I’m conducting another new piece, a Trumpet Concerto written for Alison Balsom – who is a splendid, virtuoso musician – by the composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Wynton is a friend, and I haven’t performed any of his music yet, so I’m really looking forward to this.

The second half of the concert features the complete ballet of Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel, which is a piece full of colour and full of pastoral visions, but also full of also potential violence and danger. Juxtaposing these pieces will be interested, and I’m curious about how they will go together; we’re going to discover it together.

Info & Tickets: Thursday 11 April 2024 7pm, Barbican

Elijah

We’ve got a wonderful chorus in the London Symphony Chorus, and I love Mendelssohn’s Elijah. We’ll be performing it in English, the language of its premiere, with an incredible line-up of soloists. Elijah is like an opera. It comes right at you, and the chorus are overwhelming, and yet it also has lyrical moments, the oases of calm that make this piece just so beautiful.

‘Elijah is like an opera. It comes right at you.’

Info & Tickets: Sunday 28 January 2024 7pm, Barbican

Info & Tickets: Wednesday 31 January 2024 7pm, Barbican

Hannah Kendall, Liszt, Strauss

One of the new pieces that I’m really excited about is by Hannah Kendall. Her music has an amazing ability to really grip the listener, to draw the listener in. It’s percussive, it’s lyrical, it’s very atmospheric, with the use of really beautiful chords, and an amazing use of silence, which makes you really want to listen to her music.

For a conductor, to learn a new score is challenging. But it is an opportunity to be in the present. To interact with a living composer is so important for the composer, conductor and orchestra – to be able to hear how things work, to be able to suggest and take suggestions from either side.

We also have Franz Liszt’s Totentanz. It’s a piece for piano and orchestra, with Alice Sara Ott as the soloist, and it’s one of Liszt’s greatest creations. It’s quite short, very disturbing, very virtuosic and really devilish, as you would expect a dance of death to be!

And we round off the programme with Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra. This is, of course, a piece that’s known for its first few bars and for being used Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But actually, the piece is very rich, trying to capture the spirit of Nietzsche’s writings, human aspiration and the possibility of the human against all obstacles. This was an obsession of Strauss’. What can the hero achieve? What does the hero survive? And what does he not survive? There are all these philosophical ideas, but the music is just sensational.

Info & Tickets: Wednesday 4 October 2023 7pm, Barbican

Info & Tickets: Thursday 5 October 2023 7pm, Barbican

Working with the LSO

I worked with the LSO for the first time in 1996, at Abbey Road Studios, to record an opera. I’ll never forget the first down beat, when the orchestra just exploded with activity and panache and derring-do. It felt like I’d gotten into a Ferrari and pushed the gas pedal down!

But it’s more than that. There’s an emotional intelligence that the Orchestra has. Two words from the conductor of guidance, explanation and they’re off, they know exactly what the job is. It’s this combination of virtuosity, intuitiveness and, of course, incredible musicality from each Member. Put those ingredients together and you have something very special.

I’ve had a close relationship since then with the Orchestra, but I want that relationship to deepen. They know me very well, but I hope they get to know different parts of me, and I hope I surprise them. I know they’ll surprise me, because they have that ability to do anything.

Through our concerts in London and on tour throughout the world, I hope that we can forge something that is really recognised as a personality, not just a decent conductor conducting a great orchestra.’