Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Genoveva: Overture, Op.81 “Believe me: peace will return. Love and faith will triumph!”. Stirring words: the beautiful and courageous heroine of Schumann’s Genoveva (1849) endures loneliness, imprisonment and the advances of the distinctly creepy Golo before truth, virtue and love finally conquer all. Schumann’s only opera is a tale of courage, treachery and romance, set in the middle ages. But its words, and its spirit, belong to a more modern era, and Genoveva’s great proclamation could have served as a motto for the citizens of Birmingham who – in the aſtermath of the “war to end war” – decided to put the city’s faith in music, and founded the UK’s first ever civic orchestra in September 1920. Schumann, like his great friend Mendelssohn, was a real favourite with Birmingham audiences in the early days of the City of Birmingham Orchestra (the “Symphony” bit came later, in 1948), and the overture to Genoveva was the first of his orchestral works to be performed by the orchestra (under the baton of the CBO’s founding conductor, Appleby Matthews) in March 1924. From a sombre opening, through passionate action to a jubilant finish, its overture conjures up the world Schumann wanted to create. The strings create an atmosphere of melancholy, and then drama. The woodwinds evoke the tenderness and strength of Genoveva herself. And listen out for the horns: mellow and heroic, the sound of deep forests, distant mountains, and long-forgotten chivalry. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Serenade for Strings, Op.20 Allegro piacevole Larghetto Allegretto – come prima Edward Elgar was a Midlander to the tips of his moustache. Born and bred in Worcestershire, he learned his craſt as a violinist in the Three Choirs and Birmingham Triennial Festivals, and became the first professor of music at the University of Birmingham. He even supported Wolverhampton Wanderers. And as early as 1905, he had called upon the City of Birmingham to launch its own orchestra. “Something must be done in Birmingham to make the orchestral concerts a permanent institution”, he declared. Fiſteen years later, his vision became reality, and when the City of Birmingham Orchestra gave its first symphonic concert – at Birmingham Town Hall on 10 November 1920 – they invited Elgar to conduct. Even before that, Elgar’s Serenade for Strings had featured in the orchestra’s very first concert, at the Theatre Royal, New Street, on 5 September 1920. By then, Elgar was world famous as Britain’s greatest living composer, but he had started out as an unknown violin teacher, cycling from lesson to lesson through rural Worcestershire. On 7 May 1888, in Worcester, he conducted an amateur orchestra in his Three Pieces: Spring Song, Elegy and Finale. The score has vanished, but in the summer of 1893 he published a work for strings in three movements with a first movement that breathes the freshness of spring, and a Larghetto that has all the qualities of an elegy – almost certainly the piece we know today as the Serenade. It sounds as spontaneous and as natural as if it had flowed straight from his pen, and to the end of his life, Elgar would insist that the three short movements of the Serenade were his favourite of all his works: “I like ’em, the first thing I ever did”. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op.33 Allegro non troppo – Menuet: Allegretto con moto – Allegro non troppo Camille Saint-Saëns visited Birmingham in August 1879. He had been invited by the organisers of the Triennial Musical Festival – the city’s great three- yearly choral celebration, which was replaced by the City of Birmingham Orchestra aſter World War One – and he was in no doubt that this was one of Europe’s great musical cities. His French friends had warned him that the British were not a musical nation. “If people like this are not musicians, they do exactly what they would do if they were the best musicians in the world”, he retorted, aſter hearing the chorus and orchestra in Birmingham. Saint-Saëns had written his First Cello Concerto seven years previously, as a giſt for the Belgian cellist Auguste Tolbecque, and he doesn’t stand on ceremony. Aſter a single brusque chord, the cello leaps straight in with a passionate melody that swirls from the top of the cello’s range, to the bottom, in a single flourish. The mood is first urgent and darkly romantic; then delicate, as cello and orchestra dance a graceful minuet. The action resumes: sometimes tender, sometimes stormy, though the orchestra always gives the cello room to do what it does best – to sing. The CBSO first played this concerto in 1922, but it was a special favourite of the orchestra’s great French Principal Conductor Louis Frémaux, who conducted the CBSO from 1969 to 1978 and made the CBSO sound (according to Simon Rattle) like “the best French orchestra in the world”. CBSO’S 100 TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION Saturday 5 September, 7pm Sir Simon Rattle – Conductor Sheku Kanneh-Mason – Cello Roopa Panesar – Sitar Adrian Lester – Presenter Schumann Genoveva: Overture 8’ Elgar Serenade for Strings 12’ Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor 19’ Kendall The Spark Catchers 10’ Rahman Slumdog Millionaire: Suite 8’ Stravinsky The Firebird (1919 Suite) 21’ On 5 September 1920, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra gave its very first concert. It was a gamble: in unprecedented times, a city recovering from war and pandemic had put its faith in the power of live music to enrich the lives of all its citizens. 100 years later (to the very hour), the CBSO celebrates its 100th birthday with a spectacular online celebration. STAY TUNED... Stay connected to our Orchestra whilst we can’t play for you live. Listen, watch, read and do at cbso.co.uk/ cbsostaytuned