It was great to see the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra play in Berlin during their concert tour through Europe. The video below shows some impressions of this special event!
After the successful start at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele in June 2023, Kent Nagano will go on tour with Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” in historically informed performance practice in August 2023. With musicians from the Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln as well as a renowned cast, there will be guest performances at the Cologne Philharmonie (18 August), the Ravello Festival (20 August) and the Lucerne Festival (22 August).
Premieres, new productions, awards and special concert programs – below you will find an overview of what our artists will be featuring on international concert stages in the coming months.
The State Orchestra is playing in New York, but there is also the opportunity to experience the concert program presented in Carnegie Hall in Germany. On Saturday, April 22, 2023, General Music Director Kent Nagano will lead a concert at Carnegie Hall that brings together cellist Jan Vogler, 90 musicians from the Staatsorchester, and 100 young choral singers between the ages of eleven and 27 from Hamburg, Germany, and New York. The program will be presented again on April 28 and 30, 2023, in the Elbphilharmonie for the opening of the International Music Festival Hamburg, and on May 5, 2023, as part of the Dresden Music Festival.
The program takes up the unifying idea by combining Johannes Brahms from Hamburg (Schicksalslied for choir and orchestra) and Ludwig van Beethoven (8th Symphony), arguably the most important German composer in the world, with a contemporary U.S. composer living in New York: Sean Shepherd’s work “An einem klaren Tag – On a Clear Day,” which will be premiered here, is based on a cycle of poems by the lyricist Ulla Hahn. Shepherd’s composition for cello, choirs and orchestra was commissioned by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester and the Dresden Music Festival.
On Saturday, April 8, 2023, Kent Nagano returns to Berlin to present a special program, matching the Easter days, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and the Audi Jugendchorakademie.
The concert will be broadcast live at 8:03 p.m. on Deutschlandfunk Kultur: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/konzert-100.html
Johannes Brahms: ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’ for soli, choir and orchestra (Bremen version)
Reconstruction of the version Brahms put together for the Bremen performance on April 10, 1868 – still without the fifth movement, but with inserted movements by Bach, Handel, Tartini and Schumann.
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Kent Nagano
Audi Youth Choir Academy
Martin Steidler – choral conducting
Rachael Wilson – mezzo-soprano
Konstantin Krimmel – baritone
Marina Grauman – violin
Jakub Sawicki – organ
ORCHESTRE PHILHARMONIQUE DE RADIO FRANCE
KENT NAGANO
LEONIDAS KAVAKOS violin
JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC NEUBURGER piano
WILHEM LATCHOUMIA piano
LUCILE DOLLAT Organ
Soloists of the CHŒUR DE RADIO FRANCE
Johann Sebastian Bach/Thomas Lacôte: Six-part Ricercar (orchestral version by Thomas Lacôte – commissioned by Radio France, world premiere)
Unsuk Chin: 2nd Violin Concerto “Shards of Silence” (French premiere)
Johann Sebastian Bach: The righteous man perishes
Yann Robin: Requiem Æternam – Monumenta II pour deux pianos, orgue, chœur et orchestre (commissioned by Radio France – world premiere)
On 22 January, Kent Nagano conducts the premiere of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a production by Angelina Nikonova. The story of the opera is based correspondent tale by Nikolaj Leskow. Other performances are 25, 28 and 31 January, and 4 and 8 February. More information can be found here.
“A woman becomes a murderess, but still the 26-year-old composer Shostakovich has sympathy for her. Katerina Ismailova – killer and victim at the same time – frees herself from a business world full of dullness, greed and cruelty by poisoning her Father-in-law in order to be able to live with her lover. This is accompanied by music of radical vitality that vehemently expresses the right to one’s own desire, to recklessly lived freedom. The international success from Leningrad to New York, from Stockholm to Zurich was abruptly ended when Stalin expressed his disapproval. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk also became a work of fate for the composer.” (Hamburg State Opera, 2023)
Musical direction: Kent Nagano
Production: Angelina Nikonova
Stage and costumes: Varvara Timofeeva
Lighting: Igor Fomin
Dramaturgy: Ralf Waldschmidt
Choir: Eberhard Friedrich
Composer and conductor David Philip Hefti will be honored with the Composer Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) in April 2023, and it is precisely the diversity of his works that is the focus. “Hefti’s tonal language captivates with an enormously wide spectrum of expressive means. Luminous timbres and dramatic constructions are as much a part of it as subtle and fragile sonic developments. The spectrum of genres in which the composer expresses himself is also wide, with the result that his music reaches performers as well as a broad audience.” said jury president Remy Franck.
For Hefti, “it is an honor to be given this year’s ICMA Composer Award. After the Corona years of artistic starvation, I’m grateful to ICMA’s distinguished jury for their tireless work in showing us a hopeful perspective through pre-pandemic diversity and abundance, which is important in every sense, especially today.” The award ceremony at the National Forum for Music in Wroclaw will include Hefti’s work con moto – Beziehungsweisen für Orchester, commissioned in 2014 by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor Jonathan Nott. For the composer, this work in particular is very appropriate, since “the title should be understood as a desire to get cultural life moving again.” More information on the work and a short audio preview can be found here.
The 2022/23 season saw the world premiere of Hefti’s Rhapsody for baritone and orchestra, a work based on texts by Sir Salman Rushdie and featuring soloist Benjamin Appl and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn under Case Scaglione. On 4 February at 8:03 p.m. CET, the work can be listened to at the SWR2 evening concert. Furthermore, the world premiere of the saxophone quartet Harmonia with the Kebyart Ensemble at the Tonhalle Zurich on 6 February (further performance on 23 March at the Casino Basel) and the world premiere of the Fünf Concerti for String Orchestra with the Berlin Baroque Soloists at the Kammerkonzerte Laufen on 30 June, after which a CD recording is taking place, will follow this season. In addition, Hefti’s Danse interstellaire, funeral music for basset clarinet and string quartet, will be performed with the Merel Quartet in Lucerne (1 Feb), Zurich (2 Feb) and Triesen (3 Feb).
More information on David Philip Hefti’s works as well as concerts can be found at hefti.net
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Since yesterday, Omer Meir Wellber is on tour with the Wiener Symphoniker – in Warsaw, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona and Amsterdam, among others, he will present works by Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart and Eötvös with the orchestra. Soloists on the tour are Jan Lisiecki, Yulianna Avdeeva and Seong-Jin Cho.
15 November Vienna, Konzerthaus
Wiener Symphoniker
Eötvös: Dialog mit Mozart. Da capo für Orchester
Mozart: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester C-Dur K 467
Mahler: Symphonie Nr. 5
Jan Lisiecki – Piano
16 November Erlangen, Heinrich-Lades-Halle
Wiener Symphoniker
Eötvös: Dialog mit Mozart. Da capo für Orchester
Beethoven: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester Nr. 3 c-moll op. 37
Beethoven : Symphonie Nr. 5 c-moll op. 67
Yulianna Avdeeva – Piano
18 November Warsaw, National Philharmonic
Wiener Symphoniker
Eötvös: Dialog mit Mozart. Da capo für Orchester
Mozart: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester C-Dur K 467
Mahler: Symphonie Nr. 5
Jan Lisiecki – Piano
20 November Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie
21 November Cologne, Philharmonie
Wiener Symphoniker
Mozart: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester C-Dur K 467
Mahler: Symphonie Nr. 5
Jan Lisiecki – Piano
22 November Berlin, Philharmonie
Wiener Symphoniker
Beethoven: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester Nr. 3 c-moll op. 37
Beethoven: Symphonie Nr. 5 c-moll op. 67
Seong-Jin Cho – Piano
24 November Barcelona, Palau de la Musica
25 November Zaragoza, Auditorio
27 November Amsterdam, Concertgebouw
Wiener Symphoniker
Mozart: Konzert für Klavier und Orchester C-Dur K 467
Mahler: Symphonie Nr. 5
Jan Lisiecki – Piano
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.