Domingo Hindoyan
Domingo Hindoyan was born in Caracas in 1980 to a violinist father and a lawyer mother. He started his musical career as a violinist in the ground-breaking Venezuelan musical education programme El Sistema. He studied conducting at Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva, where he gained his masters, and in 2012 was invited to join the Allianz International Conductor’s Academy, through which he worked with the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra and with conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen and Sir Andrew Davis. He was appointed first assistant conductor to Daniel Barenboim at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin in 2013, and in 2019, he took up a position as principal guest conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. In the same year, he made his debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and was appointed as the Orchestra’s new Chief Conductor in 2020, taking up his position in September 2021. He has now extended his contract with the Orchestra to 2028.
Helena Mackie
Helena Mackie became the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Oboe in 2023 after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023 where she studied for her Masters. Mackie grew up in a musical family – her parents are both clarinettists and her cousin is the acclaimed British oboe player Nicholas Daniel. She joined the National Youth Orchestra at the age of 13 and went on to study music at Clare College, Cambridge. Mackie greatly enjoys chamber music, and gives regular performances with her wind quintet, the Ormonde Ensemble. Having started her musical career as a girl chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, she remains a keen singer.
Drake Gritton
Drake Gritton became the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Cor Anglais in July 2023. Originally from London, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Jill Crowther, Jane Marshall and Patrick Flanaghan, being recognised in the RAM Bicentenary Prize and gaining his MA with distinction. He has also appeared as guest principal oboe and cor anglais with many leading orchestras, including the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, and the London Symphony Orchestra. In addition to the oboe and cor anglais, he is also an accomplished pianist and singer.
Carl Maria von Weber
High over the entrance of 103 Great Portland Street in London is a blue plaque which bears the words: “In this house died Carl Maria von Weber 1826”. Now a block of serviced office space in the heart of the capital’s smart Fitzrovia, 200 years ago the address was the home of Sir George Smart – musician, conductor and teacher who would later go on to direct the music for the opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Smart was a friend of the German composer, who died in his sleep at the house on June 5, 1826, after suffering from TB for several years and shortly after premiering his opera Oberon at Covent Garden. He was 39. Weber had been born into a musical and theatrical family in Eutin, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in 1786. His cousin was Mozart’s wife Constanze. After showing early musical promise, he was given lessons by, among others, Haydn’s younger brother Michael. Weber’s ambitious father Franz (who added the baronial ‘von’ to the family’s name) hoped young Carl might be another Mozart in the making. He composed his first opera, The Forest Maiden, when he was 14, and all together would write 10 operas and musical stage works, of which the 1821 work Der Freischütz (or The Marksman) was wildly popular and made him famous across Europe. His final opera, Oberon, was also a great success when it was premiered in London shortly before its composer’s death. But Weber also composed in several different genres including variations, cantatas, concertos for violin, cello, clarinet and bassoon, concertinos, piano sonatas, songs for voice and guitar, and two youthful and energetic symphonies which were written in 1807. Did you know? Weber was originally buried at the Roman Catholic church of St Mary Moorfields, but in 1844, his remains were transferred to the family vault in Dresden in a process overseen by Richard Wagner. Listen to Weber’s Symphony No.2 in C major.
Roxanna Panufnik
Award-winning Roxanna Panufnik is one of the most versatile and beloved British composers working today. Born in London in 1968, she attended Bedales before studying composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where she is now a Fellow, and her works for opera, ballet, choirs, orchestras and chamber music and music for film and television are performed all over the world. Her Coronation Sanctus was commissioned for and performed at the coronation of King Charles III in 2023, while among her most widely performed works is the Westminster Mass, commissioned by the Westminster Cathedral Choir for Cardinal Basil Hume’s 75th birthday in 1998. In 2021, she was awarded the Gloria Artis Merit to Culture Bronze Medal (from the Polish Minister of Culture, National Heritage and Sport) and in 2023 a Coronation Medal by the UK nation for her services to the Coronation. In 2024 she received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection. Panufnik has a great love of world music which has culminated in her Four World Seasons for violinist Tasmin Little, the world premiere of which was picked by BBC Radio 3 to launch its Music Nations weekend, celebrating the London Olympics; her multi-faith Warner Classics CD Love Abide and Dance of Life: Tallinn Mass for the Tallinn Philharmonic, commissioned to celebrate the Estonian capital’s year as European Capital of Culture. She is also interested in building musical bridges between faiths with her violin concerto Abraham, commissioned for Daniel Hope, incorporating Christian, Islamic and Jewish chant to create a musical analogy for the fact that these three faiths believe in the same one God. The work was subsequently converted into overture Three Paths to Peace commissioned by the World Orchestra for Peace and premiered in Jerusalem and London under the baton of Valery Gergiev. Meanwhile in 2018 the BBC Last Night of the Proms commissioned and premiered Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light which brought together Jewish text, modes, Maronite Syriac chant and Sufi rhythm and structure. And 2025 saw the world premiere of her and librettist Jessica Duchen’s multi-faith choral-orchestral Aurora: Faith in Harmony with CBSO and Choruses. Recent premieres have included the reworking of her father Andrzej Panufnik’s Five Polish Folk Songs for the CBSO, her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Ravinia Festival and a BBC Proms and VOCES8 co-commission Floral Tribute (in memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II). Panufnik’s compositions are published by Peters Edition Ltd/Wise Music Classical and recorded on many labels including Signum, Warner Classics, Chandos, and EMI Classics.
Joseph Haydn
The industrious Joseph Haydn was the pre-eminent figure in the development of the Classical style through the 18th Century. He did perhaps more than any other single composer to establish the form and, coupled with his prodigious output, it earned him the titles ‘Father of the Symphony’ (he famously composed 106) and ‘Father of the String Quartet’ (Haydn left 70 to posterity). While perhaps eventually overshadowed by the more flamboyant and mercurial fellow Austrian (and friend) Mozart, Haydn’s importance and legacy cannot be overstated. Coming from a humble home in Rohrau (his father was a wheelwright and his mother a cook), he was a village boy who certainly made good. Diligence and hard work, coupled with talent, good fortune and judicious networking, took him to the Esterházy court where he was given support to develop his art. Joseph Haydn remained in the service of the Esterházy household for more than 40 years, although in the 1790s a change at the head of the family led the aging composer to be somewhat sidelined. He ended up spending four years on and off in London, where on first arriving on New Year’s Day 1791, he was surprised to discover how famous he was. The composer was feted in the capital, where the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) became his main patron. His dozen ‘London’ symphonies (including Symphony No.102, described as one of the greatest works of all time) were composed during this period. But he ended his days at home in Austria, in a besieged Vienna in May 1809. Entering the city, Napoleon reportedly placed a guard of honour at Haydn’s door, and despite the turmoil in the city outside, the great man passed away peacefully in his own bed aged 77. In addition to his symphonies and string quartets, he also left a huge number of sacred works – including cantatas, oratorios (The Creation being one of his masterpieces) and masses – as well as lieder, keyboard pieces, dozens of concertos, many overtures and operas.
About the Music
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) Symphony No. 2 in C major 1. Allegro 2. Adagio ma non troppo 3. Menuetto: Allegro 4. Finale: Scherzo presto Composed: 1807 First Performed: 1807, Stuttgart, Court of Duke of Württemberg, cond. Weber
When Carl Maria von Weber wrote his two symphonies, both in C major, he was just 20, and had such found sanctuary from a period of turmoil, debt and intrigue as director of the Breslau Opera. Alas, he was soon involved in crises again, but this brief period of stability, at Duke Ludwig of Württemberg’s retreat deep in the Black Forest, saw the creation of his two wonderfully light-tempered and inventive symphonies. In the end, Weber wasn’t happy with Symphony No. 1: ‘I am not really very pleased with anything in it except the Minuet, and possibly the Adagio’, he wrote to a friend. But he evidently realised that the Second Symphony was a bit step forward. So why didn’t he return to symphonic form later? Weber felt that a ‘proper’ composer should be able to master symphonic form, as developed so magnificently by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; but in the end, it was in the more theatrical form of the concerto, and especially in opera, that he really showed his genius. You can hear a glimpse of operatic glories to come in the symphony’s slow second movement, in which horns and solo viola open out a truly romantic landscape, in which orchestral colour is an essential ingredient in the magic – prophetic shades of his operatic masterpiece Der Freischütz here. In the first movement he is careful to foreground the Duke’s own instrument, the oboe, at the start, though dialogue within the whole wind section is important later on. The Minuet and Finale are both tiny – no Beethovenian reaching for the stars here. But one can certainly imagine them raising a well-mannered aristocratic smile or two, especially at the ending – best enjoyed without a spoiler!
Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) Lunar, Solar Double Concerto for Oboe and Cor Anglais (world premiere commissioned by RLPS) Composed: 2025
The oboe and the cor anglais may be closely related – the latter slightly longer with the distinctive egg-shaped bell at the end – but their musical characters have evolved very differently over the last three centuries. The oboe’s brightness and dancing agility, celebrated so memorably in the 18th Century by Bach and Mozart, make it the perfect fit for the ‘Solar’ aspect of Roxanna Panufnik’s new Double Concerto. The cor anglais is only a little lower in pitch than the oboe, but especially in the romantic era it became associated with melancholy, prized most for deeper regions of its tonal range – which makes it the ideal voice for Panufnik’s ‘Lunar’ thoughts. Panufnik divides her Double Concerto into two ‘days’. In each day, the sun, then the moon, each describe a huge arc over the world. In Day 1, the sun rises, shimmering and sparkling then waning as the moon begins its ghostly journey into the night sky. The use of a distinctly Polish mode, with sharpened fourth and flattened seventh, suggests that the landscape is the Poland of Panufnik’s father, the composer Andrzej Panufnik. Then in Day 2, as the sun takes over again, we find ourselves in the far more vivid light and heat of Egypt, with flavoursome Egyptian modes and increasingly wild dance rhythms. Suddenly the dancing stops, as the sun searing heat fades, and oboe and cor anglais are at last able to duet as equals.
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 104 in D major, ‘London’ 1. Adagio – Allegro 2. Andante 3. Menuetto: Allegro 4. Finale: Spiritoso Composed: 1795 First Performed: 4 May 1795, London, Kings Theatre, cond./dir. Joseph Haydn
The story of Joseph Haydn’s rise from son of a Croatian village wheelwright, via impoverished freelance musician, through court musician of one of Europe’s richest princes, to becoming the most famous composer in the world, would make a wonderful film or novel. The premiere of his 104th Symphony – his last, as it turned out – in London would be one of the high points. Only recently Haydn had been a uniformed servant (though a very high ranking one), now he was a celebrity, treated almost like royalty, pointed out on London’s streets as a ‘great man’. The 104th Symphony, the culminating work in a set of twelve written for the London-based impresario Johann Peter Salomon, was a sensational success, netting Haydn 4,000 gulden, a sum of which most musicians could only dream. ‘The whole company was delighted’, he wrote in his diary, ‘and so was I.’ Haydn didn’t actually call this symphony ‘London’, but the title is very apt. Alright, the folksy-sounding theme in the finale turns out not to be a street vendor’s cry of ‘Lavender!’ or ‘Hot Cross Buns!’, as legend would have it, but a Croatian melody Haydn almost certainly heard at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy at Eisenstadt, and which he may have known from childhood. But the grandeur, the vitality, the rich variety in tone and texture, the sometimes-stark light-dark contrasts – all of this readily suggests the great capital city, far greater than any metropolis Haydn had ever seen before. ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’, wrote the recently deceased English wit Samuel Johnson, and there are moments in all four movements where that sense of life blossoms as colourfully as any of the displays in London’s Kew Gardens. But for Johnson’s younger contemporary William Blake, the city’s narrow passageways were full of ‘marks of weakness, marks of woe’. Did Haydn too take this in? The symphony’s slow introduction suggests that he did. Initially grand and imposing, it suddenly darkens and quietens, and a sense of anxious probing begins. Is this to be a tragic symphony? But suddenly the scene broadens, and we’re in one of London’s busiest streets, teeming with life of every kind. The second movement reverses the process. The main theme strolls elegantly, as though through one of the city’s great parks, politely greeting everything it encounters. But then comes a stormy minor-key central section, and the prospect changes. Equanimity is restored, but only fully after a thoughtful, questioning passage for woodwinds alone. A robust Minuet frames a gentler, almost coquettish Trio section, then the finale celebrates the dance of life, led – strikingly – not with courtly dignity but by the music of the ordinary people. Haydn knew how to please princely tastes, but there was a democrat in him too.