The Kaiserrequiem live on Teatro Massimo TV on 8 November at 20:15 CET – the joint creation by Music Director of Teatro Massimo Omer Meir Wellber and director Marco Gandini combines Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis with Mozart’s Requiem. More information here.
As the new music director of the Volksoper Wien, Omer Meir Wellber leads the new production of Jolanthe und der Nussknacker, a musical theater based on the opera and ballet by Tchaikovsky in a production by Volksoper director Lotte de Beer. The premiere will take place on 9 October.
In Jolanthe und der Nussknacker, the Volksoper combines Tchaikovsky’s opera Jolanthe with the ballet Der Nussknacker to create a story about a blind princess who might be cured, but only after she is told about her blindness. The result is a story about learning, life and growing up.
Please find more information about the play here.
With his debut CD Whispers of Tradition on GENUIN, recorder player Max Volbers presents “a stylistically varied program with two concertos, a world premiere, music with variable continuo instruments, and consort music. These are either paraphrases, series of variations, arrangements, pasticcios, etc. of my own – or, as in the case of the Dieupart suite, they are arranged by the composer himself for the recorder. Thanos Sakellaridis wrote the piece “Please enter the Underground” for Elisabeth and myself. What unites all the pieces is the joy of discovery and the desire to create new repertoire for the recorder.”
Along with 11 musicians and with a total of 26 different instruments, including various recorders, archlute, harpsichord, violin, viola da gamba, the winner of the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb 2021 Max Volbers, who studied with Dorothee Oberlinger among others, explores the wide range of the recorder repertoire and shows “in how many different types of ensembles the recorder can be used, and also the roles that it plays in them“.
Omer Meir Wellber’s novel was published in French by Éditions du sous-sol in August, Les Absences de Haïm Birkner tells the story of Chaim Birkner, a tired and broken man who is forced by his daughter to face life one last time. The novel was also published in German (BerlinVerlag) and in Italian (Sellerio Editore).
For more information, click here: http://www.editions-du-sous-sol.com/publication/absences-de-haim-birkner/
As part of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Kent Nagano will conduct the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Il Viaggio, Dante tonight. The libretto by French author Frédéric Boyer is based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, one of the greatest works of world literature. For the production, directed by Claus Guth, Kent Nagano leads the chorus and orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon (where he was music director from 1989 to 1998). Three more performances will take place on July 13, 15 and 17.
Last Sunday, Kent Nagano conducted another orchestra long associated with him – the concert at the Kissinger Sommer with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester (Nagano was artistic director and principal conductor from 2000 to 2006, and in 2006 the orchestra named him honorary conductor) is available here:
The piece “Noam – a fantasy for flute and orchestra” by Ella Milch-Sheriff (composed in 2018) will be performed at the Tel-Aviv Museum on June 22 and 23, 2022. Flutist Christiane Peterseim will perform with the Israel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Bar Avni.
Further information about the concert: https://www.ico.co.il/en/Sturm_und_Drang
Further information about the composer: https://www.ellamilchsheriff.com/
The »MAGIC« of the Dresden Music Festival has unfolded its full charm in the past four and a half weeks. Musical highlights, standing ovations, and dancing guests in the concert halls: With the first full-scale edition since the start of the pandemic, director Jan Vogler and his team managed to send audiences home in a euphoric mood. Since May 11, around 42,000 guests have flocked to 65 concerts in 25 venues in Dresden. Despite a late start to the ticket pre-sales and the decision to open venues to full capacity at short notice, seat utilization reached 85 percent. The success of the Dresden Music Festival is also reflected in ticket revenue, which amounted to near 1,4 million Euros.
… read more here.
The Paul Ben-Haim ACUM Award 2022 for Lifetime Achievement is given to composer Ella Milch-Sheriff.
“She is one of the most significant and exciting composers in Israeli music. She composes wonderful works and does not refrain from coping with complicated and thrilling subjects. Ella’s collaboration with great poets and authors as well as her extraordinary fruitfulness led to musical masterpieces and tremendous success in Israel and around the world.“, says the statement of the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel ACUM.
More information can be found here: https://acum.org.il/
With the CD release The Mandolin Seasons, Omer Meir Wellber and mandolinist Jacob Reuven fulfill a long-held wish.
Jacob Reuven and Omer Meir Wellber grew up together in the Israeli desert city of Be’er Sheva – Reuven with Iraqi Jewish roots and Wellber coming from a western Jewish community. United since childhood by an irrepressible joie de vivre, they have a shared passion for music and, more specifically, for the instruments of their homeland, learned as schoolboys: mandolin and accordion… (more in the booklet)
And it is with these instruments that the two musicians together with the Sinfonietta Leipzig (musicians of the Gewandhausorchester) completely rediscover the seasons of Vivaldi and Piazzolla in The Mandolin Seasons.
With Omer Meir Wellber in the role of conductor and continuo player on harpsichord and accordion – meaning he is improvising in both “Seasons” – and Jacob Reuven’s desire to reshape the works for mandolin, both explore and create a new exotic sound world with it.
The recording will be released by Hyperion on 6 May.
Jacob Reuven– mandolin Omer Meir Wellber – accordion, harpsichord, conductor Sinfonietta Leipzig Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in F minor “Winter” RV297 Piazzolla: Invierno porteño (No. 2, “Winter for the people of Buenos Aires” from Las cuatro estaciones porteñas) Vivaldi: Violin concerto in E major “Spring” RV269 Piazzolla: Primavera porteña (No. 3, “Springtime for the people of Buenos Aires“) Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in G minor “Summer” RV315 Piazzolla: Verano porteño (No. 4, “Summer for the people of Buenos Aires“) Vivaldi: Violin concerto in F major “Autumn” RV293 Piazzolla: Otoño porteño (No. 1, “Autumn for the people of Buenos Aires“)