Download Report

University of Florida Performing Arts
presents
BBC Concert Orchestra
Keith Lockhart, Principal Conductor
Charlie Albright, Piano
Friday, April 17, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Curtis M. Phillips, M.D. Center for the Performing Arts
Sponsored by
Sam&Connie
Holloway
BBC Concert Orchestra
Keith Lockhart, Principal Conductor
Charlie Albright, Piano
Program
The Wasps Overture
Ralph Vaughan Williams
A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody for Orchestra
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102
Allegro
Andante
Allegro
George Butterworth
Dmitry Shostakovich
Charlie Albright, Piano Soloist
Intermission
Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 Antonín Dvořák
Allegro con brio
Adagio
Allegretto grazioso
Allegro ma non troppo
Program Notes
The Wasps Overture (1909)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
The tradition of staging Greek plays at Cambridge University began in December 1882
when Sophocles’ Ajax was performed by the university’s Amateur Dramatic Society.
The music, specially written for the occasion by George Macfarren, was conducted by
the young Irish-born composer Charles Villiers Stanford. After this much-celebrated
production, which drew many people to Cambridge on specially arranged trains from
London, a younger generation of composers such as Hubert Parry, Stanford and Charles
Wood eagerly wrote music for plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes. In fact,
so important did the plays become in the university’s calendar that commissions for
incidental scores were considered a sign of prestige. Ralph Vaughan Williams, a pupil of
Parry, Stanford and Wood, and a former student of Trinity College, Cambridge, composed
music for the production of Aristophanes’ The Wasps in 1909.
Prior to this, Vaughan Williams had spent time in Paris in 1908 with Maurice Ravel,
gaining an insight into those facets of French technique (and in particular a more
pointillistic method of orchestration) that he thought might be assimilated as an antidote
to the essentially German diet he had absorbed under Parry and Stanford in the 1890s.
On returning to England he completed the song-cycle On Wenlock Edge, a work which
revealed many aspects of French influence, in addition to the powerful flavor of folk song.
The Wasps – an ambitious score of more than an hour-and-a-half’s music – was to
continue the same stylistic trend. Past scores for the Greek plays had included choice
quotations from contemporary musical works (Parry’s scores, for example, had quoted
from Wagner, Richard Strauss and German folk song) as a means of both aiding
Aristophanes’ biting satire and of alluding to contemporaneous political parallels in
modern society. The Wasps, which lampooned the corrupt nature of Athenian juries,
had modern resonances for the early 20th century, and for this Vaughan Williams could
not resist the inclusion of quotations from works by Debussy and Lehár’s The Merry
Widow (which had been a huge success in London in 1907). Though it does not include
any direct quotations, the overture nevertheless makes reference to Debussy, with its
whole-tone scales at the outset and Debussyan harmonies throughout. Besides this
incorporation of a French palette, the other striking feature of The Wasps overture is its
assimilation of folk music. By this time Vaughan Williams had collected hundreds of
tunes from around England and the style of these melodies, with their distinctive modal
patterns, imbues many of the central themes for the play’s characters, though it is also
notable that the ‘big tunes,’ for all their ‘folkiness,’ nevertheless betray that noble, robust
diatonicism inherited from Parry, to whom the composer owed so much of his early
musical development.
— Program note © Jeremy Dibble
Jeremy Dibble is a Professor of Music at Durham University, north-east England. The author of
books on Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, John Stainer, Michele Esposito and Hamilton
Harty, he is a contributor to Gramophone magazine and is a regular consultant to record
companies and the BBC on British music of the 19th and 20th centuries.
A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody for Orchestra (1912)
George Butterworth (1885–1916)
A.E. Housman’s cycle of 63 poems, A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896, cast a spell over
two generations of British readers. Their timeless themes of love, transience and loss, set
in the landscape of the Welsh border country, had a universal appeal – not least because
of the folk-like directness and simplicity of their diction. And they appealed particularly
strongly to the group of British composers who had themselves started to tramp the
English countryside in search of examples of genuine English folk song.
One of the leading ﬁgures in this group, Ralph Vaughan Williams, won great success in
1909 with his cycle On Wenlock Edge, for tenor with piano quintet. In the wake of this,
in 1911 and 1912, Vaughan Williams’ younger friend George Butterworth – his frequent
companion on song-collecting excursions – composed two groups of Housman settings
for voice and piano. At around the same time he also developed one of the songs,
‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,’ into this rhapsody for full orchestra, including English
horn, bass clarinet and harp. This was ﬁrst performed at the Leeds Festival, in the north
of England, in October 1913, under the direction of Arthur Nikisch.
The earliest hints of the song come in the quiet introduction: distantly in the swaying
thirds in violas and clarinets, worked up from a detail of the piano part; more overtly in
expressive phrases for solo woodwind and upper strings. The main section begins with a
statement of the whole of the ﬁrst verse of the song, for full orchestra. Butterworth alters
the rhythms but keeps the triumphant outburst at the end of the verse, which describes
the cherry tree ‘wearing white for Eastertide.’
The song theme is developed, leading to a tranquillo middle section, perhaps derived
from another of Butterworth’s Housman settings, ‘When the lad for longing sighs.’ A
sidestep from the climax of this section leads to a return of the material of the main
song theme: ﬁrst led by strident brass, with the ‘Eastertide’ fanfares to the fore; then,
after a long-held chord, in increasingly fragmentary phrases. Finally, the ideas of the
introduction return, and the work ends quietly.
Lewis Foreman’s anthology From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters, 1900–45
includes a pair of letters written by Butterworth in the summer of 1913 to the critic
Herbert Thompson, who was the author of the program notes for the Leeds Festival.
They reveal that, before he settled on the ﬁnal title, Butterworth planned to call the piece
‘Orchestral Prelude “The Cherry Tree”.’ But he worried that this would make it sound
like ‘a description of orchards,’ when it had ‘no more connection with cherry trees than
with beetles.’
In fact, his ﬁnal choice of title suggests that the work was inspired by Housman’s more
general themes – and perhaps in particular by the idea of (to quote another of the poems)
‘the land of lost content.’ Butterworth described the piece to Thompson as being ‘in the
nature of a meditation of the exiled Shropshire Lad.’ In the light of this, the unusual
tonal scheme – with the introduction and coda in a key far removed from that of the main
section – becomes a potent musical metaphor for separation.
That Housman’s poems struck a deeply personal note for Butterworth is clear from
one last cross-reference (which he did not mention to Thompson): towards the end of
the coda, the ﬂute – marked quasi lontano, ‘as if in the distance’ – plays the ﬁrst line of
another of the Shropshire Lad songs, ‘With rue my heart is laden.’
— Program note © Anthony Burton
Anthony Burton is a former BBC Radio 3 music producer and presenter, now a freelance
writer. He edited the Performer’s Guides of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music,
contributes regularly to BBC Music Magazine and has written notes for CDs and concert
programs on thousands of works.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102 (1956–7)
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–75)
Charlie Albright, piano
Shostakovich’s concertos for his own instrument are among his most sheerly enjoyable,
least demanding works, snappily neo-Classical in manner but with a not-quite-concealed
vein of poetic feeling. The Second Piano Concerto was composed in 1956–7, immediately
before the composer began work on the mammoth 11th Symphony. Intended for his
teenage son Maxim, it was caustically dismissed as having ‘no artistic value’ by the
composer himself in a letter to Edison Denisov, but might more fairly be seen as a
relaxation from more serious artistic preoccupations.
Written not long after Shostakovich had released a number of the highly intense works
he had concealed during the last years of Stalin’s dictatorship, it is tempting to read into
the music the optimism and sense of freedom that followed Stalin’s death. But in fact
these were sad times for Shostakovich: his first wife had recently died and he had got
himself entangled in an unsuitable and short-lived second marriage. With its plentiful
stock of first-rate melodic material, the concerto reflects rather Shostakovich’s closeness
to (and involvement with the musical education of) his son: it was Maxim who premiered
the work in Moscow on May 10, 1957.
There are the usual three movements. The first begins with a pungent idea for bassoon
that sets the scene for the soloist’s entry – a delightfully cheeky theme sparely set as a
single line doubled in the two hands. This octave doubling is a characteristic feature of
Shostakovich’s keyboard-writing, which also exploits the extremities of the instrument.
The texture is always light and airy, with plenty of perky contributions from the wind.
The Andante is again wholly straightforward but affecting too, with a dreamy atmosphere
that taps into a range of archetypes from Grieg to Rachmaninov. Some have dismissed
it as pure kitsch, which is to belittle Shostakovich’s skill, even if he appears here as the
adaptable (and genuinely popular) composer of movie music rather than the granitic
titan of Soviet symphonism.
The finale (which follows the second movement without a break) returns to the sparkling
and brilliant style of the opening. It is in the form of a rondo with the first, dance-like
theme contrasted with a second, more demonstrative idea in 7/8, plus some ironic
allusions to the didactic exercises – all too familiar to countless piano students – of
Charles-Louis Hanon.
— Program note © David Gutman
David Gutman is a prolific writer of CD and program notes who, since 1996, has provided
advice on further listening and further reading for the BBC Proms. His books cover subjects as
wide-ranging as Prokofiev and John Lennon, and he is a regular contributor to Gramophone,
International Record Review and The Stage.
Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 (1889)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
Dvořák was one of the most versatile symphonists of the 19th century. Each of his nine
works in the form has a distinctive profile and sound-world. In 1865, at the start of his
composing career, when the fate of the symphony itself was in doubt with the rise of the
Lisztian symphonic poem, he bucked the trend by producing two large-scale symphonies,
and he composed three more in the 1870s, appreciably before the premiere of Brahms’
First in 1876. Dvořák’s Sixth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies display his formidable skill
as a musical networker. While the Sixth and Seventh show him responding to the tastes
of sophisticated audiences in Austria, Germany and England respectively, the Ninth (the
celebrated ‘New World’), with its rhythmic dynamism, formal simplicity and supreme
melodiousness, shows how successfully he read the musical public of New York and in so
doing produced one of the world’s most popular symphonies.
In many ways, the Eighth Symphony is one of Dvořák’s most personal works; it is also
one of his most experimental. Written in the late 1880s when he was turning away
from abstract instrumental composition, the Eighth breaks new ground in terms of the
development of ideas and the treatment of form. There is also a strong suggestion,
prompted by a contemporary critic writing for The Musical Times (very much the ‘house’
journal of the Novello firm which published the Eighth) that there was a program for the
slow movement. He wrote somewhat enigmatically that:
… there is a story connected with it, which, however, the composer keeps to himself,
and his audience would gladly know, since it is impossible not to feel that the music
tries hard to speak intelligibly of events outside itself.
Dvořák began work on the melodic material of the work late in August 1889, and by
November 8 the symphony was complete. He seems to have intended to premiere
it on a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg in March 1890 – the invitation came from
Tchaikovsky – but in the event he took the Fifth and Sixth symphonies (neither of which
went down well with Russian critics). Much of the symphony was sketched and worked
out at Dvořák’s summer home in south Bohemia. While it would be tempting to see the
composition as an entirely spontaneous response to his rural surroundings during a
particularly happy time in his life, Dvořák’s sketches suggest a rather different story: the
relatively simple main theme of the last movement alone went through some 10 stages
before reaching its final shape.
The score of the Eighth was inscribed with a dedication in gratitude for the composer’s
installation as a member of the Emperor’s Czech Academy of Science, Literature and
Arts, and Dvořák himself conducted the premiere in Prague on February 2, 1890. Further
performances followed quickly with the composer again at the helm in London on April
24, 1890, and in Cambridge on June 15, the eve of his award of a doctorate, honoris causa,
by the university.
Although the critic of The Musical Times opined that the symphony was ‘in the usual
four movements, which are all more or less modelled on the customary form,’ the novelty
of the work is apparent from the very start, in which the cellos play a melody that hovers
between G minor and B-flat major sounding, for all the world, like a slow introduction
(Dvořák often used this device, notably at the start of the last movement of his Seventh
Symphony). The temperature soon rises and the listener is presented with a multiplicity
of themes, many of them linked rhythmically rather than melodically. The magnificent
climax of the movement comes in the exhilarating, Russian-sounding recapitulation;
perhaps a tribute to his friend Tchaikovsky.
The Adagio is one of Dvořák’s most emotionally volatile movements, evoking a wide
range of moods. For the composer’s main biographer, Otakar Šourek, it tells a tale of
medieval chivalry, a lady being serenaded, tumultuous battles succeeded by nostalgic
reminiscence; all colorful suggestions, none of which was ever corroborated by
Dvořák. The sheer variety of the composer’s orchestration in this movement belies the
concentration of the musical material: a number of well-contrasted episodes are wrung
from a single thematic idea.
Relaxed and utterly captivating, the third movement is a long way from the symphonic
scherzo type Dvořák had developed in the Sixth and Seventh symphonies. The charming
Trio bears a passing resemblance to the loveliest aria in his early one-act opera The
Stubborn Lovers.
In some ways, the finale is the most experimental movement of all, combining sonata and
variation styles in pursuit of an uproarious conclusion. Dvořák himself was well aware
of the new departure he was taking with this symphony. It is possible that he considered
he might have gone too far, since his symphony ‘From the New World,’ for all its fine
qualities, seems, where form is concerned, something of a retreat after the freewheeling
adventure carried off with such aplomb in the Eighth.
— Program note © Jan Smaczny
An authority on many aspects of Czech music, Jan Smaczny is Hamilton Harty Professor of
Music at Queen’s University Belfast.
Biographies
BBC Concert Orchestra
The BBC Concert Orchestra is one of the UK’s most versatile ensembles. Since 1952 it
has been the house orchestra for BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night. It gives
regular broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and has performed on such recent BBC soundtracks
as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Paradise.
Keith Lockhart is the BBC CO’s Principal Conductor and Barry Wordsworth is the
orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. Arranger and jazz trumpeter Guy Barker is currently
Associate Composer, a position previously held by Radiohead guitarist Jonny
Greenwood (There Will Be Blood) and the Art of Noise’s Anne Dudley (The Full Monty).
Appearances at the 2014 BBC Proms included the first ever BBC Sport Prom, a late-night
concert with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys, a commemoration of the
First World War centenary in the War Horse Prom, and a celebration of American music
with Keith Lockhart and Time for Three. On the Last Night the orchestra performed in
Hyde Park at Proms in the Park and the following day with Jeff Lynne’s ELO.
Concerts in the 2014-15 season have included an exploration of the ballet music and
culture of 1920s Paris, an all-American program with maverick organist Cameron
Carpenter, a showcase of new British jazz at the EFG London Jazz Festival and three
concerts as an artistic partner in London’s Southbank Centre’s series Changing Britain
1945-2015. The BBC CO also enjoys residencies at Watford Colosseum and Chichester
Festival Theatre.
The orchestra plays a central role in key BBC Music initiatives, including the Ten Pieces
project which introduces children aged 7 to 11 to classical music, the inaugural BBC
Music Awards on national television last December and as the ‘impossible orchestra’
alongside 27 star performers in the film and CD release of God Only Knows.
The BBC CO has released CDs of music by Converse and Chadwick on the Dutton
label conducted by Keith Lockhart, alongside discs for Decca (Joseph Calleja), Chandos
(Simon Keenlyside) and Naxos (complete Leroy Anderson works with Leonard Slatkin).
This is the orchestra’s third tour of the U.S. with Keith Lockhart.
Keith Lockhart
Since Keith Lockhart’s appointment as seventh
Principal Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra
in August of 2010, highlights of his tenure include
critically acclaimed North American tours (2010-11
and 2012-13), conducting annual performances at
The Proms, and celebrating the orchestra’s 60th year
in 2012. In June of that same year, Keith Lockhart
conducted the orchestra during Queen Elizabeth II’s
gala Diamond Jubilee Concert, which was broadcast
around the world. Meanwhile, across the pond, he
celebrates his 20th anniversary season as Conductor
of the Boston Pops, and continues to serve as
Artistic Director of the Brevard Music Center in
North Carolina.
Keith Lockhart has conducted nearly every
major orchestra in North America, as well as the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Deutsches
Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, and the Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra. In October 2012, he made his London Philharmonic debut in
Royal Albert Hall. In the opera pit, Maestro Lockhart has conducted productions with
the Atlanta Opera, Washington Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and Utah Opera. 2014-15
includes a return to the Melbourne Symphony and debut with the Adelaide (Australia)
Symphony, as well as a special residency at Wright State University culminating in
performances of the Britten War Requiem with the Dayton Philharmonic.
In 2009, Keith Lockhart concluded 11 seasons as Music Director of the Utah Symphony.
He led that orchestra through the complete symphonic works of Gustav Mahler and
brought them to Europe on tour for the first time in two decades. He stood at the
front of that organization’s historic merger with the Utah Opera to create the first-ever
joint administrative arts entity of the Utah Symphony and Opera. Since the merger,
arts institutions nationally and internationally have looked to Maestro Lockhart as an
example of an innovative thinker on and off the podium. Maestro Lockhart conducted
three Salute to the Symphony television specials broadcast regionally, one of which
received an Emmy award, and, in December 2001, he conducted the orchestra and the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir in a national PBS broadcast of Vaughan Williams’ oratorio
Hodie. Maestro Lockhart led the Utah Symphony during Opening Ceremonies of the
2002 Olympic Winter Games and conducted two programs for the 2002 Olympic Arts
Festival. Under his baton, the Utah Symphony released its first recording in two decades,
Symphonic Dances, in April 2006.
In February 1995, Lockhart was named the 20th conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra
since its founding in 1885. Over the last 19 years, he has conducted more than 1,600
concerts and made 76 television shows, including 38 new programs for PBS’ Evening
at Pops, and the annual July Fourth spectacular, produced by Boston’s WBZ-TV and
broadcast nationally for many years on the A&E and CBS television networks. The
Boston Pops’ 2002 July Fourth broadcast was Emmy-nominated, and the Evening at
Pops telecast of Fiddlers Three won the 2002 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. The 2015
Very Best of the Boston Pops tour of the southeastern United States is his 40th national
tour with the Pops. In addition, he has led the orchestra on four overseas tours of Japan
and Korea, in performances at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall, and at sports
arenas across the country. In September 2004, they appeared live on national television
with Sir Elton John during the NFL Season Kickoff special. In February 2002, Maestro
Lockhart led the Boston Pops in the pre-game show of Super Bowl XXXVI at the
Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Since November 2004, he and the Boston Pops
have released five self-produced recordings: 2013’s A Boston Pops Christmas—Live from
Symphony Hall, Sleigh Ride, America, Oscar & Tony, and The Red Sox Album, all available
online through www.bostonpops.org. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Orchestra
recorded eight albums with RCA Victor—Runnin’ Wild: Keith Lockhart and The Boston
Pops Orchestra Play Glenn Miller, American Visions, the Grammy-nominated The Celtic
Album, Holiday Pops, A Splash of Pops, Encore!, the Latin Grammy-nominated The Latin
Album, and My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration.
In October 2007, Lockhart succeeded David Effron as Artistic Director of the Brevard
Music Center summer institute and festival. The Brevard Music Center (BMC) has
established itself as one of this nation’s leading summer institutes for gifted young
musicians, preparing them to perform great musical works at a high artistic level.
Lockhart’s appointment solidifies an already special relationship with BMC; having
attended as a teenager for two summers (1974, 1975), Lockhart was first featured as a guest
conductor in 1996 and has since returned numerous times.
Keith Lockhart served as Music Director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra for seven
years, completing his tenure in 1999. During his leadership, the orchestra doubled its
number of performances, released recordings, and developed a reputation for innovative
and accessible programming. Maestro Lockhart also served as Associate Conductor of
both the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra from 1990
to 1995.
Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Maestro Lockhart began
his musical studies on piano at the age of 7, and holds
degrees from Furman University and Carnegie Mellon
University, and also holds honorary doctorates from the
Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Northeastern
University, Furman University, and Carnegie Mellon
University, among others. He was the 2006 recipient
of the Bob Hope Patriot Award from the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society.
Charlie Albright
Winner of the prestigious 2010 Gilmore Young
Artist Award and the 2009 Young Concert Artists
International Auditions, pianist Charlie Albright
won the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant Prize in
2014 as well as the 2014 Ruhr Festival Young Artist
Award, presented by Marc-Andre Hamelin. He made
his Washington, D.C. and New York recital debuts to
critical acclaim. Hailed as “among the most gifted musicians of his generation” by the
Washington Post, he was praised for his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed
with a distinctive musicality” by The New York Times. In 2013, he performed three allSchubert recitals at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and he returns there in
2016 to begin a new cycle of three recitals centered around Theme & Variations. In April
of 2015, he tours the U.S. with the BBC Concert Orchestra of London with Keith Lockhart
conducting, performing in 14 different cities.
In recent seasons, Mr. Albright has made orchestral debuts with the Boston Pops with
conductor Keith Lockhart, the Seattle Symphony with conductor Gerard Schwarz, the
Phoenix and Lansing Symphonies, and with Alondra de la Parra at the San Francisco
Symphony, where he has been re-engaged for their Summer and the Symphony concerts.
Continuing his blazing successes, Mr. Albright appears as soloist with the Fort Smith,
Hilton Head, Great Falls and Whatcom Symphonies; in a three-recital series spanning
two seasons of Schubert works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; and
at the ShortGrass Music Festival. As recipient of the 2013 Arthur W. Foote Award, Mr.
Albright performed a recital at the Harvard Musical Society in April. He made his recital
debuts at Merkin Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in the
Young Concert Artists Series, which featured the premiere of ’Til It Was Dark by YCA
Composer Chris Rogerson. In addition, Mr. Albright has also performed in recital at the
Morgan Library & Museum, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, the Krannert Center
for the Performing Arts, and as part of Gilmore’s Rising Stars Series and the Irving S.
Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.
Albright has collaborated five times with cellist Yo-Yo Ma: at a 10-year anniversary
remembrance of 9/11 attacks concert in a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the
End of Time; at a Harvard University ceremony at which Senator Ted Kennedy received
an honorary degree; in an event commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, honoring Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison; at the Aspen
Institute’s Citizen Artistry conference at the Danny Kaye Playhouse in New York; and
with the Silk Road Project.
Mr. Albright was the youngest artist-in-residence on Performance Today last season,
which included a week of performances and interviews. His debut CD Vivace was
released by CAPC Music in February 2011, featuring works by Haydn, Menotti,
Schumann-Liszt, Janácek, Chopin and Albright himself.
Winner of the 2011 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts from Harvard University, Mr. Albright
was also named artist-in-residence for Harvard University’s Leverett House, a position
once filled by another Harvard-educated musician, cellist Yo-Yo Ma. At the 2009
Vendome Prize Piano Competition in Lisbon, Portugal, he was awarded a Vendome
Virtuoso Prize and the Elizabeth Leonskaya Special Award.
Charlie Albright’s Young Concert Artists honors include the Paul A. Fish First Prize, the
Ronald A. Asherson Prize, the Summis Auspiciis Prize, the John Browning Memorial
Prize, the Sander Buchman Special Prize, the Ruth Laredo Memorial Award, and four
concert prizes: the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Prize, the Friends of Music
Prize, the Embassy Series Prize, and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival Prize.
Born in Centralia, Washington, Mr. Albright began piano lessons at the age of 3. He has
studied with Nancy Adsit and has participated in master classes with Richard Goode,
Leif Ove Andsnes and Abbey Simon. Mr. Albright earned an Associate of Science
degree at Centralia College while he was also in high school, and was the first classical
pianist accepted to the new Harvard College/New England Conservatory joint program,
completing his Bachelor’s degree as a Pre-Med and Economics major at Harvard in 2011
and a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at the New England Conservatory
in 2012 with Wha-Kyung Byun. He graduated from the Artist Diploma program at The
Juilliard School. Mr. Albright is a Steinway Artist.
BBC concert Orchestra
First Violins
Flutes
Bass Trombone
Charles Mutter Ileana Ruhemann David Stewart
Rebecca Turner Lianne Barnard
Peter Bussereau Sophie Johnson
Tuba
Chereene Allen
Adrian Miotti
Lucy Hartley Piccolo
Rustom Pomeroy
Sophie Johnson
Timpani
Cormac Browne
Grahame King
Jamie Hutchinson
Oboes
Hayley Pomfrett
Gareth Hulse
Percussion
Kate Robinson Gwenllian Davies
Alasdair Malloy
Victoria Walpole
Stephen Whibley
Second Violins
Glyn Matthews
Michael Gray Cor Anglais Martin Owens
Matthew Elston Victoria Walpole
Julian Poole
Marcus Broome David Beaman
Clarinets
Harp
Daniel Mullin
Derek Hannigan
Deian Rowlands
Sarah Freestone
Neyire Ashworth
Anna Ritchie
Duncan Ashby
Soloist
Maria Ryan
Charlie Albright
Bass Clarinet
Violas
Duncan Ashby
Principal Conductor
Timothy Welch Keith Lockhart
Nigel Goodwin Bassoons
Helen Knief John McDougall
Conductor Laureate
Ania Ullmann
Jane Sibley
Barry Wordsworth
Philippa Worn
Stephen Wright
Horns
Associate Composer
Mark Johnson Guy Barker
Cellos
Tom Rumsby
Benjamin Hughes Richard Berry
General Manager
Matthew Lee David Wythe
Andrew Connolly
Josephine Abbott Philip Woods
Ben Rogerson
Business Assistant
Emily Isaac
Trumpets
Darren Kimpton
Miriam Lowbury
Catherine Moore
David McCallum
Producer
Double Basses
John Blackshaw
Neil Varley
Anthony Alcock Stacey-Ann Miller Trombones
Artistic Projects Manager
Andrew Wood Mike Lloyd
Louise Allen
Jeremy Watt
Richard Ward
Concerts and Planning
Administrator
Katharine Plows
BBC concert Orchestra
Concerts and Planning Assistant
Ayesha Labrom
Orchestra Assistant
Cath Welsby
Orchestra Manager
Alex Walden
Music and Orchestra Associate
Jenny Ricotti
Assistant Orchestra Manager
Claire Barnes
Orchestral Production Manager
Rob Jordan
Stage and Transport Manager
Scott Jones