Guildhall Symphony Orchestra
Adrian Leaper - Conductor
Kryštof Kohout - Violin
Berg was orchestrating his opera Lulu when, early in 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned him to write a violin concerto. In need of the $1,500 commission fee, given that performances of his works had dwindled since Hitler had come to power, Berg interrupted work on the opera.
The emotional impetus for the concerto came with the death from polio, in April, of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler (Mahler’s widow) and the architect Walter Gropius. Berg decided to dedicate his concerto ‘To the memory of an angel’ and in the last movement incorporated the funeral chorale ‘Es ist genug! So nimm, Herr, meinen Geist’ (‘It is enough! Take then my spirit, Lord’) from Bach’s Cantata No. 60.
The concerto is based on a 12-tone row, but one that is, unusually, rich in harmonic associations. The first nine notes of the series (G–B flat–D–F sharp–A–C–E–G sharp–B) form an overlapping sequence of minor and major triads; the final three notes rise in whole-tones (C sharp–E flat–F), echoing the beginning of the chorale melody. Furthermore, taking alternate pitches at the start of the row, G–D–A–E, gives the notes of the violin’s open strings, the ‘tuning-up’ sound with which the soloist first enters.
Symmetry is a key feature: the concerto’s four movements are arranged in two pairs. presenting a symmetrical slow–quick– quick–slow sequence. Beyond this, each movement is in itself also strongly palindromic in shape.
According to Berg’s biographer Willi Reich, the first part represents the ‘vision of the lovely girl in a graceful dance that alternates between a delicate and dreamy character and the rustic character
of a Carinthian folk tune’. Part 2 opens with ‘a wild orchestral cry’. The last movement begins with the chorale and brings a return of the earlier folk tune as a distant memory of Manon.
Kryštof Kohout made his solo debut with the Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of eleven in his home town of Pilsen, Czech Republic, and has since performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe and in the US, at festivals such as the International Chamber Music Festival Plovdiv, Smetana Days, JAM on the Marsh and Young Euro Classic. He studied with
Olga Kinzlova, then at the Conservatory of Pilsen with Radka Beranova and in 2017 he won the Whitgift International Music Competition, receiving the Headmaster’s Scholarship to study at Whitgift School and a scholarship to Junior Guildhall, where he studied with Ivo Stankov. Two years later he was accepted directly into the second year of the undergraduate course at Guildhall School, where he now studies with professor David Takeno and is generously supported by the Brian George Coker Scholarship and the Huddersfield 1980 Scholarship.
Kryštof is a prize-winner of the Kocian Violin Competition, the Art-Duo International Music Festival in Vienna and the Muse International Music Competition among others. He is also a UK ‘Talent Unlimited’ artist, and is grateful to have been awarded the Hattori Foundation Junior Award in 2021. He has recently joined the award-winning string ensemble LGT Young Soloists, with whom he has already toured widely, performing for the Princely Family of Liechtenstein and at Konzerthaus Berlin and Musikverein Vienna.
Kryštof plays an Italian violin by G.B. Guadagnini, generously on loan from the Florian Leonhard Fellowship.
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra:
Violin I
Eliette Harris*
Jacqueline Monteiro
Giulia Lussoso
Imogen Brewer
Fiona Cheung
Susie Griffin
Abbie Davis
Elise Sheurer
Amy Le-Mar
Lara Caister
Pedro Marques Rodrigues
Nia Lecheva
Sofía Muñiz Mejuto
Wei Ling Thong
Anna Kosinska Zalubska
Violin II
Joana Praça*
Camille Said
Anna Mollà Aliaga
Maris Pilgrim
Cathryn Cowell
Emma McNeely
Madeleine Dawson
Anna Holmes
Ross Hume
Yeva Volkava
Maria Jimenez
Valles Aleksandra Lenkiewicz
Vanessa White
Viola
Charles Whittaker*
Elena Sanchez
Hannah Roberts
Iina Marja-Aho
James Flannery
Benedict Baily
Ami-Louise Johnsson
Josh Law
Dom Stokes
Sirma Baramova
Jake Montgomery-Smith
Cello
Benedict Swindells*
Yishang Sheng
Kathryn Monteiro
Harry Everitt
Rosie Spinks
Anna White
Nathanael Horton
Natalie Alfille-Cook
Double Bass
Yat Hei Lee*
Chiu Yung Chan
Fabián Galeana
Georgia Lloyd
David Dominguez Vargas
Elena Calvo Bravo
Flute
Isobel Doughty* (piccolo)
Anna Ryan (piccolo)
Oboe
Richard Lines-Davies*
Charis Lai (cor anglais)
Clarinet
José Hita García*
Jonathan Willett (A clarinet)
Fresca David (bass clarinet)
Alto Saxophone
Kathryn McGuinness (clarinet)
Bassoon
Hazalen Tang*
Verity Burcombe
Lucy Gibson (contra)
Horn
Tabitha Bolter*
Frederike Schroeder-Rossell
Alex Harris
Cathryn Nuta
Jack Reilly
Trumpet
Lucas Houldcroft*
Darcie Jago
Trombone
Adam Quilter
Bass Trombone
James Greer
Tuba
Nick Smith
Timpani
Tom Hodgson
Percussion
John Rousseau*
Jonny Akerman
Francisco Negreiros
Harp
Heather Brooks
