1st October 1991
Southampton University Orchestra Course
Turner Sims
Conductor: Antony Dennant
Leader: Gemma Collins
Schubert – Symphony No.5
Albinoni – Adagio for strings and organ (Organ: Andrew Daldorph)
Bartok – Romanian Folk Dances
Beethoven – Symphony No.3
LF 789.5T9
7th December 1991
Southampton University Symphony Orchestra
Turner Sims
Conductor: Antony Dennant
Leader: Sharone Ross
Soloist: Amanda Kelly
James Cook – Symphony in Yellow
Grieg – Piano Concerto in A minor
Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6
Friday 13th and Saturday 14th March 1992
Southampton University Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Antony Dennant
Leader: Joanna Mackenzie
Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 (Gustav Mahler score)
In an email from Antony Dennant, he stated that the last performance of Beethoven Symphony No.9 with the Gustav Mahler score was in 1915 under Schoenberg:
“In, I think, 1991, we did a performance of Mahler’s reworking of Beethoven 9. You may know the university has a thing called The Anna Mahler Collection in the library archives. It’s basically a number of Mahler’s own conducting scores, including 2 versions of the Beethoven. At the time, I was a bit Mahler mad & got excited about the idea of performing it again – as far as we knew, the last performance had been conducted by Schoenberg in 1915!
So, with the library’s permission & over several months, we transcribed all the alterations into a new Breitkopf score (the closest we could find to the edition Mahler had used) & then transcribed these alterations into a new set of parts. It was a very special experience, working on the pages Mahler had himself worked on (all his alterations in different colour inks!) & actually conducted from.
Of course, today, we have period performance orchestras to give Beethoven’s music its original clarity, but Mahler was approaching essentially the same issue – that the sound of the orchestra had changed – from the other end. He changed the orchestration to get the projection he wanted. The orchestra is big, with 2 timpanists & loads more brass, but it’s used relatively elegantly – it certainly doesn’t sound like the Mantovani orchestra doing Bach Toccatas, though you do sometimes get peculiarly Mahlerian moments with a high, doubled w/wind sound that doesn’t sound much like Beethoven. Still, it’s fascinating – I imagine the parts we put together are probably around somewhere in the orchestral library (which I seem to remember had a disproportionately large number of scores by Alan Rawsthorne – can’t imagine why – it never got played when I was there, but perhaps there’s some Peter Evans connection).”
Saturday 27th June 1992
University of Southampton Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Antony Dennant
Leader: Joanna Mackenzie
Tchaikovsky – Romeo and Juliet
Elgar- Sospiri
Sibelius – Symphony No. 1