Welcome to this afternoon’s performance.

Anna Clyne
This Midnight Hour 12’

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No.2, opus 16, in g minor 31’

Interval

Jean Sibelius
Symphony No.2, opus 43, in D Major 43’

Mark Heron, conductor
Andy Deng, piano
Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra, Clare Bhabra leader

The opening to This Midnight Hour is inspired by the character and power of the lower strings of L'Orchestre national d'Île de France. From here, it draws inspiration from two poems – one by Charles Baudelaire and another by Juan Ramón Jiménez. Whilst it is not intended to depict a specific narrative, my intention is that it will evoke a visual journey for the listener.

La musica - by Juan Ramón Jiménez

iLa musica;
-mujer desnuda,
corriendo loca por la noche pura! -

Jiménez’s poem is very short and concise (translated by Robert Bly):

Music –
a naked woman
running mad through the pure night

This immediately struck me as a strong image and one that I chose to interpret with outbursts of frenetic energy – for example, dividing the strings into sub-groups that play fortissimo staggered descending cascade figures from left to right in stereo effect. This stems from my early explorations of electroacoustic music.

There is also a lot of evocative sensory imagery in Baudelaire’s Harmonie du Soir, the first stanza of which reads as follows (translated by William Aggeler):

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

I riffed on the idea of the melancholic waltz about halfway into This Midnight Hour - I split the viola section in two and have one half playing at written pitch and the other half playing 1/4 tone sharp to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz.

— Anna Clyne

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Mark Heron is a Scottish conductor known for dynamic and well-rehearsed performances across an unusually wide range of repertoire, and his expertise as an orchestral trainer.

As guest conductor he has appeared with the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Concert, Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Psappha, Meininger Hofkapelle, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Pori Sinfonietta, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra and many more. He is the Music Director of the Nottingham Philharmonic and Professor and Head of Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music. At the RNCM he works regularly with all the College’s orchestras and ensembles and runs their world-renowned conducting programmes. Mark is the conductor laureate of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and for ten years was Director of Orchestras at the University of Manchester.

Dedicated to working with young musicians, in addition to his role at the RNCM, Mark has conducted ensembles from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Tilburg & Maastricht Conservatories, the National Youth Wind Orchestras of Great Britain, Wales and Israel, Slovenian National Youth Orchestra, and many more.

Mark has a keen interest in contemporary music and has given world premieres of many important works. He has collaborated with leading composers such as Kalevi Aho, Sir George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Unsuk Chin, Tansy Davies, Detlev Glanert, Heiner Goebbels, Anders Hillborg, Giya Kancheli, Magnus Lindberg, Sir James McMillan, Colin Matthews, Christopher Rouse, Kaija Saariaho, and Mark Anthony Turnage. In 2018 he gave the the world premiere of Adam Gorb’s opera The Path to Heaven, and in 2006 the European premiere of American composer Daron Hagen’s opera, Bandanna. He has recorded dozens of CDs with the RNCM Wind Orchestra featuring contemporary wind repertoire on labels such as Chandos, Naxos, NMC, ASC and Polyphonic. Other recording projects have included CDs with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Seckou Keita, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and numerous Radio 3 broadcasts with BBC orchestras.

Mark studied at the RSAMD and the RNCM. Following a successful chamber music career and freelance work with many of the UK’s professional symphony orchestras, he undertook conducting studies at the RNCM and in master classes with Neeme & Paavo Järvi, Jorma Panula, and Sir Mark Elder. He worked with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on their mentoring programme for young conductors.

Alongside his conducting engagements, Mark is recognised as one of the world’s foremost conducting teachers, and students of his have achieved notable success internationally. As well as his work across all of the RNCM’s renowned conducting programmes, he developed an elite undergraduate conducting programme at the University of Manchester, is a visiting professor to the Royal Air Force and appears often as a guest at conducting courses and master classes all over the world.

Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra

The NPO was founded in 1974 as the Nottingham Sinfonietta: an invitation-only chamber orchestra that aimed to provide the opportunity for high-quality music-making to the most talented musicians in the region.  Many of the founding members made their living from music, and this remains a prominent feature of today's Orchestra.  Over the years the NPO has grown in size and changed its name to the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra to reflect a change in focus to full size symphonic repertoire. Whilst occasionally returning to those chamber orchestra roots for specific projects, the core of the Orchestra’s repertoire today include the symphonies of Elgar, Mahler, Nielsen, Shostakovich and Sibelius and other iconic large orchestral works of the 20th Century such as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

The NPO’s extremely high standards of performance enable them to take on projects that would be beyond the reach of most non-professional orchestras. Recent seasons have included concert performances of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, Puccini’s Tosca, a complete cycle of Brahms symphonies performed in chronological order over 2 days, and Stravinsky's The Firebird ballet in our 50th anniversary concert. In November 2024 the orchestra recorded Dvorak’s 8th Symphony in the BBC Philharmonic Studio at MediCityUK - release news coming soon!

Membership of the orchestra is based on an annual invitation and prospective new members are subject to a rehearsal audition for string players, and trial concert(s) for wind & brass positions. Mark Heron has been Music Director of the NPO since 2007. As well as guest conducting internationally, he is Professor of Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester: one of the world’s premier conducting programmes. This has resulted in a growing partnership between the NPO and the RNCM  which affords opportunities to student conductors and soloists to work with the Orchestra in masterclasses and concerts.

The NPO season is based in and around venues in Nottingham, principally the Royal Concert Hall, Albert Hall and Southwell Minster.  The annual Family Concert in the RCH regularly attracts an audience of around 2,000 and has featured celebrity presenters such as Alan Titchmarsh, Robert Powell, Matt Baker, Anton Du Beke and Ken Bruce, among others. Noted soloists to appear with the Orchestra include Joanna McGregor, Paul Tortelier, Philip Fowke, Ben Goldscheider, & Callum Smart.  Chloe Hanslip was the soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto for the 40th anniversary concert in March 2014 and Alexandra Dariescu was the soloist for Tchikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1 in the 50th anniversary concert in June 2024.

Although members pay a nominal subscription, the NPO relies principally on ticket revenue and commercial sponsorship to fund their music-making activities.  If you are interested in supporting the Orchestra please have a look at the sponsorship page.

The NPO is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity.  

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