Programme Notes · London Symphony Orchestra · 26 February 2026
Noseda: Debussy, Berg’s Violin Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s First
v3 · updated 30 September 2026 · 10 sources
-
v3 · 30 September 2026 · Further reading added
- Added three recommended books: Debussy: A Painter in Sound, Rachmaninoff (Scott), Berg: Violin Concerto
-
v2 · 30 September 2026 · Sources added; house-style edit
- Added 7 sources
- Removed em dashes
- Debussy Nocturnes: Debussy's descriptions of Nuages and Fêtes re-quoted in the standard translation; the 'decorative sense' remark paraphrased instead of quoted
- Berg: Carinthian tune now tied to where Berg first met Manon (was 'remembered from his youth'); removed unsourced 'introduced by a solo horn'
- Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 1: revival described as a reconstruction from surviving parts, performed in Moscow in 1945; motto no longer said to derive from Orthodox chant; removed unsourced tam-tam stroke and clarinet melody details
- Kopatchinskaja framing: removed an unsourced press quotation
-
v1 · 22 June 2026 · First published
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Nuages and Fêtes from Three Nocturnes14 min
About the Work
Debussy’s Three Nocturnes (1899) are among the founding masterpieces of musical Impressionism: atmospheric orchestral tone-poems that capture light, air and movement rather than telling a story. Debussy was at pains to explain that the title ‘Nocturnes’ was not meant in the manner of Chopin’s piano pieces but in a broader, more decorative sense, borrowing the word from painting: he was thinking of the painter Whistler’s misty, tonal ‘nocturnes.’ Each of the three pieces is a study in a particular play of light and colour. Tonight we hear the first two; the third, ‘Sirènes,’ is omitted because it requires a wordless female chorus, and the first pair is very often performed on its own.
‘Nuages’ (‘Clouds’) is one of Debussy’s most exquisite creations, a slow, hushed evocation of, in his words, ‘the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds.’ Over gently rocking woodwind chords, a solo cor anglais intones a haunting, fragmentary melody that drifts and recurs, while muted strings shift in subtle gradations of grey. It is music of stillness and infinite subtlety. ‘Fêtes’ (‘Festivals’) could hardly be more different: a brilliant, exhilarating burst of energy and light, evoking ‘the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light.’ Its famous central episode is a fantastical procession: a distant band approaching, conjured by muted trumpets and harps in a hypnotic march that swells and then recedes into the night. Together the two make a perfect, contrasting pair, and a ravishing opening to the concert.
What to Listen For
In ‘Nuages,’ listen for the very opening, quiet rocking chords in clarinets and bassoons that set up a sense of slow, aimless drift, and then for the plaintive solo cor anglais (English horn) melody that becomes the piece’s recurring emotional centre. Notice how Debussy avoids strong cadences and clear rhythm, so the music seems to float free of time, all muted colour and half-light; listen, too, for a magical moment when flute and harp trace a delicate, pentatonic shape like a sudden gleam through the greyness.
In ‘Fêtes,’ the change is electric: listen for the scurrying, dancing rhythms and brilliant orchestral flashes that open the piece in a whirl of festivity. Then listen for the celebrated central procession: far-off muted trumpets and pizzicato strings building a strange, exciting march that grows louder as if approaching, reaches a blazing climax, and then fades away into the distance. Throughout both pieces, savour Debussy’s revolutionary orchestration: the emphasis on colour and atmosphere over melody and development, the subtle washes of sound, and the sheer sensuous beauty that changed the course of music.
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Violin Concerto26 min
About the Work
Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto is one of the most moving and beautiful works of the twentieth century, a piece that bridges, as few others do, the worlds of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone modernism and late-Romantic emotion. Berg, a pupil of Schoenberg and a member of the Second Viennese School, wrote it in 1935 on a commission from the American violinist Louis Krasner. He was working on it when tragedy struck: Manon Gropius, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler (Gustav Mahler’s widow) and the architect Walter Gropius, died of polio. Berg, devastated, set aside his opera Lulu and poured his grief into the concerto, dedicating it ‘to the memory of an angel’, meaning Manon. In a further, terrible irony, the concerto became Berg’s own requiem: he died suddenly that December, before he ever heard it performed. It is, in effect, a double memorial.
The concerto is built on a twelve-tone row, but Berg chose one so cunningly constructed that it sounds tonal and consonant, full of major and minor triads, and ending in a rising sequence of whole tones. This lets the music speak with a warmth and lyricism rare in serial works. It falls into two parts. The first evokes the living girl: a gentle, dancing portrait that includes a folk tune from Carinthia, where Berg had first met Manon. The second part depicts her suffering, death and transfiguration: a violent catastrophe followed by extraordinary consolation, for at its heart Berg quotes a Bach chorale, ‘Es ist genug’ (‘It is enough’), whose opening notes happen to coincide with the end of his tone row. The work ends in radiant, heartbreaking peace. It is a profound and accessible masterpiece, and an ideal vehicle for a searching, expressive soloist like Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
What to Listen For
The concerto plays continuously but falls into two large parts. Listen at the very opening for the soloist’s quiet, rising arpeggios over open strings, Berg’s tone row laid out so that it sounds gentle and tonal, not harsh. In the first part, listen for the tender, dancing ‘portrait’ of the girl, and especially for the lilting Carinthian folk song that floats in like a memory, a touch of innocent, rustic charm.
The second part begins with violence: listen for the shattering orchestral outburst and the agitated, anguished solo writing that depict suffering and death. Then comes the work’s miraculous turn: the entry of Bach’s chorale ‘Es ist genug,’ first played by clarinets in Bach’s own harmonisation, then taken up and varied by the soloist. Listen for the way this old Lutheran hymn of acceptance (‘It is enough, Lord’) brings consolation out of grief. The concerto rises to a final transfiguration: listen for the violin ascending, higher and higher, into serene stillness as the music dissolves into radiant calm, the angel’s soul at peace. It is one of the most affecting endings in all music.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 1347 min
About the Work
Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony has one of the most dramatic and painful backstories in all music: the work whose catastrophic premiere nearly destroyed its young composer. Rachmaninoff wrote it in 1895, aged just twenty-two, brimming with ambition and confidence; he produced a bold, dark, fiercely original symphony, prefacing the score with the biblical epigraph ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ But its 1897 St Petersburg premiere was a disaster. The conductor, Alexander Glazunov, by several accounts under-rehearsed and possibly drunk, gave a shambolic performance, butchering the score. Rachmaninoff, listening in torment, fled the hall before the end. The reviews were savage (César Cui notoriously compared it to a depiction of the plagues of Egypt), and the failure plunged Rachmaninoff into a depression so severe that he composed almost nothing for three years, recovering only with the help of hypnotherapy, after which he wrote the beloved Second Piano Concerto.
Rachmaninoff withdrew the symphony and never let it be played again in his lifetime; he believed the score lost. But after his death the surviving orchestral parts were used to reconstruct the score, and the symphony was triumphantly revived in Moscow in 1945. Posterity’s verdict has completely reversed that of 1897. Far from a failure, it is now recognised as a powerful, darkly Romantic and strikingly original work: taut, intense, saturated with the brooding Russian melancholy and the chant-like melodies (including, characteristically, echoes of the Dies irae) that would mark all his music. It makes a thrilling, weighty conclusion to the programme.
What to Listen For
Listen from the very first bars for the symphony’s germinal idea: a terse, brooding motto, a short figure with the contour of chant and a kinship with the Dies irae, that pervades all four movements, binding the whole work together with a dark, obsessive intensity. The first movement grows from it into music of stormy power and surging Romantic sweep.
The second movement is a fleet, shadowy scherzo: listen for its nervous, scurrying energy and the way the motto theme keeps stealing back. The slow movement (Larghetto) offers respite: listen for the tender melodies and the warmer, more lyrical mood, though shadows are never far away. The finale bursts in with a blazing fanfare and a festive, march-like energy; listen for the brilliant orchestration, the recurrence of the motto theme, and the way the music drives through tumultuous climaxes to a dark, fateful close. Throughout, listen for how much of the mature Rachmaninoff is already here: the sweeping melodies, the chant-derived themes, the obsession with the Dies irae, and the deep vein of Russian melancholy, all in a bold symphonic work whose unjust early failure cost music dear.
Tonight's Artists
Patricia Kopatchinskajaviolin
Berg’s Violin Concerto is less a display piece than a profound emotional journey, from a tender portrait of a lost girl, through anguish, to radiant consolation, and it demands a soloist of searching expressivity and fearless commitment. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is exactly such an artist; in this Artist Portrait concert she brings her intense, soul-baring musicianship to one of the repertoire’s most moving works.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, born in Chișinău (then Soviet Moldova) in 1977 into a family of folk musicians, is one of the most individual and electrifying violinists before the public. Her family emigrated to Vienna when she was a child, and she trained there and in Bern. Famous for her fearless, theatrical, intensely physical music-making (she often performs barefoot), she is a passionate champion of new music and an unconventional interpreter of the classics, winning a Grammy in 2018. Her folk-music roots and her wild, characterful energy make her an especially compelling interpreter of Bartók, whose own music is steeped in the folk traditions of Eastern Europe.
Further reading
-
Accessible Debussy: A Painter in Sound
Stephen Walsh, Vintage 2019
Stephen Walsh’s life of Debussy centres on the music, including the Nocturnes.
-
Accessible Rachmaninoff
Michael Scott, The History Press 2011
A readable life of Rachmaninoff, with the story of the First Symphony’s failed premiere in 1897 and the crisis that followed.
-
Deeper Berg: Violin Concerto
Anthony Pople, Cambridge University Press 1991
A Cambridge Music Handbook on Berg’s Violin Concerto, dedicated ‘to the memory of an angel’, covering its composition, structure and use of a Bach chorale.