‘Looking back is as important as looking forward’: Jonathan Bloxham on recreating Mozart’s past for LMP’s future

British chamber orchestra London Mozart Players (LMP) is set to celebrate its 75^th birthday with an anniversary concert at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on Saturday (10 February). Joining forces with soprano Anna Prohaska and pianists Imogen Cooper and Martin James Bartlett, the ensemble will present an almost exact replica of the 1783 concert in which Mozart premiered his ‘Haffner’ Symphony – alongside a top-secret performance combining Ligeti’s Poème symphonique with LMP’s 100 Faces of Croydon community project.

I caught up with LMP’s resident conductor and artistic advisor Jonathan Bloxham to find out more about his relationship with the orchestra and why he decided to look to the past when programming this milestone concert.

'LMP has a tradition of collaboration while staying true to its roots' © Kaupo Kikkas

How has your relationship with LMP grown since your debut with the group in November 2019?

The first concert I did with LMP was in King's Place on limited rehearsal time, and it was so exciting how the connection and the chemistry seemed to just work. One of my greatest pleasures over the last couple of years has been getting to know the players better and discovering that they're willing to really go to the edge in concerts, to take risks. It’s not like that everywhere, so when you find an ensemble who's willing put everything on the line for a concert it’s so exciting.

You will be conducting LMP’s 75^th birthday concert next month, what are your feelings as you approach this milestone with the orchestra?

Looking back at what the orchestra has achieved over the last 75 years is incredible. Not only because of its amazing recording history and huge tapestry of incredible collaborators, but because it's also been an incredibly resilient orchestra. I think this new chapter with LMP is even more special because this orchestra saved itself, the players saved the orchestra.

What was your thought process when programming this anniversary concert?

To choose how to programme such an important event was weighing on my mind as the anniversary approached. Of course, we're always thinking about the future, but our motto is not to be afraid to look back and celebrate what's happened. For me, it's about finding a place where those two things can marry so it feels organic. I've been really obsessed and fanatical about historical programmes and how concerts were presented in the past, how audiences behaved, how musicians behaved, what types of programming people chose. So I thought, ‘There's no better person to programme a concert for the London Mozart players than Mozart himself.’

The anniversary seemed like the perfect chance to replicate Mozart’s 1783 concert, which I've really wanted to do for a long time. It also gives us a chance to collaborate with some wonderful artists: the wonderful Imogen Cooper, who has a history with the orchestra going back many years, Martin James Bartlett, who is a great friend and someone from the younger generation whose Mozart I really believe in, and Anna Prohaska, who I've had the chance to collaborate with and have wanted to bring to LMP for some time.

Another special element is a project which I really wanted to include as a nod to the work that LMP have done in the community. Estonian photographer Kaupo Kikkas and I ​created the 100 Faces initiative together and I suggested bringing it to Croydon, where the orchestra has had its home for the last 30 years. It’s a celebration of humanity. The idea is to show the diversity in Croydon through music and through 100 portraits taken by Kaupo and by 30 local photographers he has trained.

We decided to find a way of bringing the people we photographed – who don't normally come into a concert hall – to the concert not only to listen, but to take part in a performance of Ligeti’s Poème symphonique. How exactly that happens is a secret until the concert.

In this upcoming concert LMP seeks to transport audiences back to 1783 Vienna, but the orchestra is also very firmly rooted in present-day Croydon. How do you walk that line between LMP’s connections to Mozart’s past and its links to its current community?

Mozart lived in the past and the pieces in the concert were written in the past, but music is a living organism. I think the stories being told in the ‘Haffner’ Symphony, in the piano concertos, in the arias are still relevant now. Combining this historical programme with the Ligeti is the perfect marriage going forwards. Once people come into the concert hall they get hooked, so by bringing the people from the 100 Faces project to the concert we aim to build on our audience base for the next 75 years and ignite this next chapter with our anniversary performance.

I was asked the other day, “How do you make an opera house or an orchestra relevant in the 21st century?” I think versatility and variety are two really key elements. For an organisation that was founded to perform the core classical works of Mozart and his contemporaries, to be able to do a photography project about local residents in Croydon is fantastic. It's exactly the type of project that's important.

LMP has a tradition of collaboration while staying true to its roots. In the past 12 months we've collaborated with many local music groups, and it shows that Mozart and the core classical repertoire can not only hold its own against those other things, but is suited to be presented alongside them. There is always going to be a place for Mozart and the core classical composers, but we need to always marry it with something which feels more open and brings the community to the concert hall.

'We want to be as open as possible – not existing solely behind this arbitrary fourth wall in front of the stage' © Kaupo Kikkas

The 'mixtape’ programming of this concert is quite a different concept to the traditional concert format – what drew you to this approach for this occasion?

What's exciting is to see Mozart had the ‘mixtape’ idea several hundred years ago. In those days, the idea of breaking up the movements of a symphony across the concert would have upset some purists, but it's fascinating to see how Mozart used the ‘Haffner’ Symphony to bookend the concert. There's still space for your standard concert of overture, concerto and symphony and I think it's really important that we don't lose that. Despite this being a more unusual concert format, this performance is based on tradition and we're honouring Mozart as best we possibly can by recreating his own programme.

Looking back is as important as looking forward. We can't reinvent the wheel every single time we present a concert; there are things that work really well that we can celebrate. This concert is also being recorded for radio which means that we have Petroc Trelawney presenting the concert from the stage. I think that narration element is really important. LMP has many audience members who are well-versed in the history of classical music, but many will also be new. For those people we want to make sure they feel comfortable. I would encourage anybody to applaud between pieces and even to come and find us in the bar afterwards. We want to be as open as possible – not existing solely behind this arbitrary fourth wall in front of the stage.

After next month’s concert, the orchestra embarks on its next 75 years of performance and growth. What can audiences look forward to from LMP across this next year?

Looking ahead, one of the things I'd love to do with LMP as artistic advisor is to go further afield. Although we have our residence in Croydon and we play in central London, with great relationships with promoters in the UK, next season we will tour together to Switzerland. I think touring is a really important element to an orchestra's life. Getting to repeat a programme many times brings us closer together on a musical page and spending time together travelling also brings really important moments in terms of building relationships, not just coming to a rehearsal and leaving. The more we get to know each other in a complete sense, the more fun we can have on stage. LMP deserves a wonderful touring schedule to really celebrate how fantastic the ensemble is, and so that's something I'm keen to work towards.

I also want to continue exploring how we connect with audiences, how we deliver the content, and our mix and match of concerts; combining more standard format concerts with concerts which have explanations from stage and use lighting to create atmosphere. We’re really thinking theatrically. Fairfield Halls has such a great technical team that we can really present music in a more visually visceral way.

Another thing I would love to do is to re-embark on recordings with LMP. We have a wonderful back catalogue of music from Mozart’s contemporaries, and that for me feels like a project we can pick up again. That's again looking back to look forwards, being inspired by the work that LMP has done in the past to bring it towards the future. I think this is a really important journey to go on with the orchestra.