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21. August 2014

Jan Vogler – Commemorative event to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (August 2014)

Cellist Jan Vogler will perform a Bach solo piece at a commemorative event to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.
The official event at the St. Symphorien military cemetary in Mons/Belgium on 4 August will be attended by Germany’s president Joachim Gauck, Britain’s prime minister David Cameron, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry of Wales, among others.
The Guardian writes: www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/berlin-philharmonic-lso-first-world-war-centenary

21. August 2014

ECHO Klassik 2014 award for cellist Jan Vogler (August 2014)

Jan Vogler will be awarded this year’s ECHO Klassik in the category “Instrumentalist of the year (cello)” for his recording of J.S. Bach’s six suites for cello solo. The Sony disc was published in March 2013, received great acclaim from both the press and the audience, and remained in the charts for an impressively long time.

The ECHO Klassik has been Germany’s major classical music award in 26 nominations since 1994. The award ceremony will be held on 26 October in Munich’s Gasteig, broadcast on public TV channel ZDF from 10pm CET.

Season 2014/15 sees Jan perform with the Cologne and Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestras and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, among others. He will also present chamber music programs with pianists Hélène Grimaud and Martin Stadtfeld.

His next Sony CD, “Concerti di Venezia”, will be published in November 2014. Together with the La Folia Barockorchester, he recorded early classical Venetian cello concerti. They will also present the program on a concert tour in November.

20. August 2014

Omer Meir Wellber: New season start at the Semperoper Dresden (August 2014)

Omer Meir Wellber starts into the new season 2014/15 with several performances at the Semperoper Dresden. On 17 September he will conduct a symphonic concert at the rostrum of the Sächsische Staatskapelle with works by Dvořák and Haydn.

Shortly before, he leads revival performances of Così fan tutte und Daphne at the opera house. Così fan tutte is the first part of a Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy that Wellber conducts over three consecutive years. The premiere was in March 2014. Daphne was Omer Meir Wellber’s debut production at the Semperoper in 2010 what lead to a profound relationship with the opera house.

All of Omer Meir Wellber conducting dates at the Semperoper Dresden at a glance:

4, 8, 28 September & 25 October, Dresden, Semperoper
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Mozart: Così fan tutte

14 & 16 September, Dresden, Semperoper
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Strauss: Daphne

17 September, Dresden, Semperoper
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Dvořák: Serenade for strings, op.22
Haydn: Cello concerto No. 4
Haydn: Symphony No. 103 „The Drumroll “
Norbert Anger, Cello

11. August 2014

Virée classique in Montréal (August 2014)

Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal will be hosting the third edition of their succesful “Virée classique” from 14 to 16 August: This grand Montréal classical-music festival is a true celebration of classical music and will feature more than 30 concerts taking place in four venues, including the Maison symphonique de Montréal. The opening concert on 14 August presents Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with a chorus of 1,000, a large-scale free concert on the Olympic Park’s Esplanade Financière Sun Life. On 15 and 16 August Kent Nagano and the orchestra welcome artists such as violinist Vadim Repin, pianists Rafał Blechacz, Andreas Haefliger and Marc-André Hamelin, soprano Erin Wall and many others. Together they will present a splendid variety of solo recitals, chamber music and orchestral concerts. As a special concert-event, the festival is staging Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place.

Kent Nagano comments: “Offering musical experiences to a broad and diverse audience is a special role that the OSM takes very much to heart. As musical ambassadors for all Montrealers, we deeply value the opportunity to reach an ever-growing audience of experienced and potential music lovers.”

Please click here for the full programme.

25. July 2014

Midori performs at the United Nations (June 2014)

Midori, named a UN Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2007, visited United Nations headquarters on 3 June 2014. Her chief mission that day was to play a concert for UN dignitaries and staff members, to raise awareness of the important work of the Messengers of Peace program within the UN, and to extend the network of communication and cooperation from the program to other divisions of the organization.

Midori brought with her to the UN three young musicians – GaHyun Cho (violin), William Frampton (viola), and Michael Katz (cello) – who had traveled with her to Myanmar in December 2013 as part of the International Community Engagement Program (ICEP). They were met at the UN that morning by Jeffrey Brez and Jon Herbertsson, two executives of the UN’s Messenger of Peace division, and were escorted to the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium, where they played string quartet music (excerpts) for the assembled dignitaries.

Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, welcomed Midori and the other quartet members and introduced Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who explained the crucial importance of the Messengers of Peace program and expressed his appreciation for Midori’s ongoing commitment to the UN and to her community engagement work worldwide. Midori thanked Secretary-General Ban, spoke of their shared belief in the advancement of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, and introduced the music from the stage. The quartet performed a brief concert.

Next Midori was ushered to the UN’s onsite television studio, where she made two public service announcements – each shot in both English and Japanese – to be used by the UN in multiple contexts at conferences, summits, in social media, and for public broadcast. The first of these “PSAs” was in behalf of the UN’s Every Woman Every Child program, which works to prevent maternal and infant illness and death worldwide. The second PSA was made for UN Women, a division of the UN devoted to abolishing violence against women and girls.

Midori then met with Mr. Brez and Megan Gemmell, Advocacy and Communications Officer of Every Woman Every Child, and Nanette Braun, Chief of Communications and Advocacy for UN Women, to strategize their efforts going forward.

21. July 2014

CD release: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra & Manfred Honeck – Dvořák & Janáček (July 2014)

Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra have recorded a new CD that will be published by Reference Recordings at the beginning of July, featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 and Janáček’s Symphonic Suite from Jenůfa, arranged by Czech composer Tomáš Ille and conceptualised by Manfred Honeck. This release is the second in a series of multi-channel hybrid SACD recordings on the FRESH! label by Reference Recordings with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck.

At the beginning of the 2014-15 season, Manfred Honeck will conduct the NDR-Sinfonieorchester, the Vienna and Bamberg Symphony Orchestras, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In Pittsburgh, he opens the new season on 13 September with a gala concert featuring Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Manfred Honeck’s concert dates at the beginning of the 14-15 season at a glance:

13 September, Pittsburgh, Heinz Hall – Gala
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Bruch: Violin concerto
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violin

19-21 September, Pittsburgh, Heinz Hall
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Bates: Rusty Air in Carolina
Rachmaninoff:  Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini op. 43
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique op. 14a
Valentina Lisitsa, Piano

8-10 October, Prag, Rudolfinum
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Janacek: Suite from Jenůfa
Strauss: Death and Transfiguration
Mahler: Lieder from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”
Matthias Goerne, Bariton

16/19 October, Hamburg, Laeiszhalle
NDR-Sinfonieorchester
MacMillan: Woman of the Apocalypse
Mozart: Piano concerto C Major KV 503
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks
Martin Helmchen, Piano

17 October, Luebeck, Musik- und Kongresshalle
s. 16 October

30/31 October, Vienna, Musikverein
Wiener Symphoniker
Prokofieff: Piano concerto No. 3
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 “Titan”
Yuja Wang, Piano

16 November, Bamberg, Konzerthalle
Bamberger Symphoniker
Widmann: “Con brio” – Concert Overture for orchestra
Weber: Clarinet concerto No. 1
Brahms: Symphony No. 4
Jörg Widmann, Clarinet

17 November, Erlangen, Stadthalle
s. 16 November

28/30 November, Pittsburgh, Heinz Hall
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Thanksgiving
Alexskey Igudesman – Violin, Hyung-Ki Joo – Piano

5-7 December, Pittsburgh, Heinz Hall
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

11/12/13/16 December, Chicago, Symphony Hall
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Haydn: Symphony No. 93
Strauss: Don Juan
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

20. July 2014

Moritzburg Festival 9-24 August 2014 | Composer-in-residence: David Philip Hefti (July 2014)

This summer, for the 21st time, young and established musicians such as Martin Stadtfeld, Lise de la Salle, Iskandar Widjaja, Daniel Ottensamer, Heinrich Schiff and many more will meet for the Moritzburg Festival to rehearse and perform chamber music near Dresden; initiated and directed by cellist Jan Vogler. Venues are the Baroque castle of Moritzburg, the famous Frauenkirche, but also a hangar of the Elbe aircraft factory.

This year’s composer-in-residence is Swiss Siemens Prize winner David Philip Hefti who wrote the Monumentum string sextet for the festival, a joint commission by the Moritzburg Festival, New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Käthe Kollwitz-Haus in Moritzburg.

“The composition ends with an extended Lamento on “Seed Fruit is not to be ground down”, a quote from Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”. Käthe Kollwitz occasionally employed these words as an argument for peace in this world, and furthermore created a litography with that title. I very much look forward to working with the festival artists around cellist Jan Vogler because due to its political and pacifist statement, my string sextet Monumentum is of special significance to me.”, said Hefti. The work will be premiered on 19 August.

You can find the festival program HERE.

10. July 2014

Kent Nagano leads Vorsprung-Festival (July 2014)

Up until 2016 inclusive, conductor Kent Nagano will be leading the “Vorsprung Festival” as part of the Audi Summer Concerts. In its first year, the new series comprises five concerts.

The “Vorsprung Festival” will focus on the Audi Youth Choir Academy with two concerts on 10 and 13 July together with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. Kent Nagano has already worked with the Audi Youth Choir Academy on several occasions in the past.

The “festival within a festival” also provides a platform for renowned musicians such as pianist Rudolf Buchbinder (16 July), tenor Ian Bostridge (11 July) and the ChorWerk Ruhr ensemble (12 July). Following the evening of Lieder by Ian Bostridge, the members of the Youth Choir Academy will have an opportunity to chat with the singer as well as with Kent Nagano. This – along with the performance by the young award-winning cellist Raphaela Gromes in the same concert as Rudolf Buchbinder – reflects Nagano’s desire that the “Vorsprung Festival” should provide a platform for talented young people to meet internationally renowned artists.

More Information on the Audi Sommerkonzerte

24. May 2014

Kent Nagano & the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal: Inauguration of the new organ & Season announcement 2014-15 (May 2014)

Kent Nagano and his Orchestre symphonique de Montréal await with excitement the inauguration of their new Grand Organ Pierre Béique on 28 May 2014. The organ – named after the founder and first manager of the orchestra – was built by the Canadian organ maker Casavant in cooperation with the architects of the concert hall Diamond Schmitt+Ædifica. The concert on 29 May with two world premieres of organ works by composers Kaija Saariaho and Samy Moussa will be broadcast live and for free on Medici.tv (CEST: 30 May, 2.00 am) and will be available online for three months. Please click here for the Webcast.

Kent Nagano – whose contract was recently extended until 2020 – opens the 2014-15 season on 10 and 11 September with Belioz’s dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet. In March 2015, Kent Nagano presents two rarely performed compositions: Amériques by Varèse on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death and the musical drama L’Aiglon – a joint composition by Arthur Honegger (Acts II, III and IV) and Jacques Ibert (Acts I and V) on Napoleon II.

For further details on the season’s programme please have a look at the brochure which you can access as a PDF: http://www.osm.ca/pdf/Brochure_OSM_saison14_15_An.pdf.

Kent Nagano and the OSM just returned from a tremendously successful European tour. The concerts in Zurich, Bern, Geneva, Vienna, Madrid, Oviedo, Cologne, Essen and Munich were received with much acclaim by both, audience and press. The orchestra and Kent Nagano presented an unusually broad repertoire with works by Berlioz, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Vivier, Unsuk Chin, Liszt’s Piano concerto, Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 as well as a world premiere by David Philip Hefti.

You can still watch two of the orchestra’s recent concerts on Medici.tv for free:
Concert from Montréal 5 March 2014
Tour concert from Wiener Konzerthaus 17 March 2014

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