Symphony Concert

Works by von Weber, Beethoven and Brahms

Works by von Weber and Tchaikovsky

London Symphony Orchestra/Barbara Hannigan

Albert Roussel and Maurice Ravel paint vivid portraits of the animal kingdom, Benjamin Britten conjures up a savage parade, and Joseph Haydn takes a trip to London for his final symphony.

Demons, Sorrow and a Duel

The concert begins with Demon by the British-American composer Freya Waley-Cohen (born 1989) – a co-commissioned work by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra premiered in 2023 by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. She found inspiration in old folk tales from the British Isles, chilling stories where a demon can manifest anywhere - here as both menacing and playful orchestral music.Menacing indeed. Mahler's heartbreaking Kindertotenlieder – Songs on the Death of Children – has tragic points of connection with Mahler's own life, and the composition would also come to seem like a premonition: a few years later, Mahler's eldest daughter Maria died. The poems by Friedrich Rückert that Mahler chose deal with the parents' grieving process and the slow reconciliation with a painful reality.The world-renowned Nina Stemme is the soloist in this poignant music. ”Nina Stemme has probably never sounded better”, wrote Svenska Dagbladet about a concert with her earlier this year.Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra's chief conductor Ryan Bancroft leads the orchestra in this program, which concludes with Carl Nielsen. Nielsen's Fourth Symphony is subtitled "Det uudslukkelige" (The Inextinguishable). It's dramatic music written in the midst of the First World War, famous in part for its duel between two timpanists.Read more about chief conductor Ryan Bancroft

Fischer, Nylund · Fauré, Wagner, Beethoven

Concertgebouw Orchestra plays Rachmaninoff and Sibelius

Pianist Kirill Gerstein can do it all, having already demonstrated as much with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in works by Rachmaninoff – the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – as well as Liszt, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich and Adès. Now he tackles the Mount Everest of piano concertos – Rachmaninoff’s Third. Rachmaninoff’s characteristic melancholy always culminates in exuberant finales. The Third Piano Concerto is an uncontested high point of his œuvre: it is not only a virtuoso work, but also a compelling dialogue between piano and orchestra. And the more you hear it, the more it reveals. This also applies to Anna Clyne’s turbulent Fractured Time, the second work on the orchestra’s repertoire by this successful and fascinating composer.And speaking of exuberant finales – the orchestra is performing Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony after the interval. This well-loved symphony is sombre in character, the composer having suffered from deep depression. But during the compositional process, the sun gradually broke through, and the music culminates in a radiant and sublime ending. Sibelius’s symphonies fit Santtu-Matias Rouvali like a glove, and he has been a welcome guest with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since his first appearance in 2020. Like a passionate sculptor, the Finnish conductor moulds the orchestra in changeable shapes and colours – just what Sibelius’s epic music calls for.

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

From the Thames to Lake Wörthersee

Symphonic Concert

Mathew Halls, photo: Benjamin Ealovega The final bar of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major has been compared by conductor Colin Davis to the closing of a coffin lid. Although the great Finn still had more than 30 years to live after it was written, it is one of his last completed works. The unusual one-movement form of the work, which was originally to be titled ‘Fantasia Sinfonica’, has become an interpretative challenge for critics and analysts. While unanimously describing the work as revolutionary, scholars have differed in the justifications for their judgement. Benjamin Britten’s dark opera Peter Grimes, which tells the story of a fisherman suspected of murdering a young journeyman, contains highly successful orchestral interludes which, in a slightly altered order and with minor alterations, were successfully published separately as Four Sea Interludes shortly after the opera’s premiere in 1945. They consist of ‘Dawn’, an illustration of a calm sea, ‘Sunday Morning’, with the sound of tolling church bells imitated by horn, the majestic nocturne ‘Moonlight’ and the deathly terrifying ‘Tempest’. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony was received less warmly than the Seventh, because, as the offended composer was to comment, ‘the Eighth is better’. Beethoven undoubtedly put more work into it than into its predecessor, as the surviving sketches testify. Performed for the first time under the baton of its increasingly hard-of-hearing composer in Vienna in 1814, it was not dedicated to anyone, perhaps due to its cool reception.

John Storgårds, Lucas & Arthur Jussen

We are delighted that John Storgårds will be our guest again this season, as he is a highly valued member of our orchestra family. In addition to his regular appearances in Bamberg as a conductor, he was active in other roles last summer: as part of the jury in our Mahler Competition. As a conductor, he is known for his creative instinct in arranging programmes and will guide us through his rich selection of works with a keen sense of rhythm: We start with a waltz from a rarely heard gem – Shostakovich’s operetta, first performed in 1959, which revolves around everyday life in a Plattenbau housing estate. Poulenc could be a real »rascal« – as evidenced by his concerto written in 1932, despite some of its elegiac tones. We are pleased to welcome two young pianists, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, for their debut in Bamberg. The concert will also feature the Symphony No. 3 by Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevá: this haunting piece was written in 2003 and at times creates powerful sonic massifs, but is otherwise characterised by a melancholy tone. This austere mood suits our guest conductor wonderfully as a transition to the initially very pensive nature of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 – which, however, then ends in a sarcastic circus frenzy. This is sure to be a moving experience, as the press raved about our cordial collaboration with the likeable Finn on the podium: »John Storgårds allowed for highly emotional, exuberant, free and joyful music-making, which the superb Bambergers savoured to the full. Everything was just right – a great moment!«

Im Fluss - Liszt & Die Rheinische + Livestream

Alexandre Kantorow, winner of the 2019 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, performs a grand romantic repertoire in Cologne. Featuring Liszt's virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 2 alongside Schumann's "Rhenish" Symphony and Wagner's rarely-heard Faust Overture.

Concertgebouw Orchestra plays Rachmaninoff and Sibelius

Pianist Kirill Gerstein can do it all, having already demonstrated as much with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in works by Rachmaninoff – the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – as well as Liszt, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich and Adès. Now he tackles the Mount Everest of piano concertos – Rachmaninoff’s Third. Rachmaninoff’s characteristic melancholy always culminates in exuberant finales. The Third Piano Concerto is an uncontested high point of his œuvre: it is not only a virtuoso work, but also a compelling dialogue between piano and orchestra. And the more you hear it, the more it reveals. This also applies to Anna Clyne’s turbulent Fractured Time, the second work on the orchestra’s repertoire by this successful and fascinating composer.And speaking of exuberant finales – the orchestra is performing Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony after the interval. This well-loved symphony is sombre in character, the composer having suffered from deep depression. But during the compositional process, the sun gradually broke through, and the music culminates in a radiant and sublime ending. Sibelius’s symphonies fit Santtu-Matias Rouvali like a glove, and he has been a welcome guest with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since his first appearance in 2020. Like a passionate sculptor, the Finnish conductor moulds the orchestra in changeable shapes and colours – just what Sibelius’s epic music calls for.

Chanson d'Ours

Symphonic Concert

Mathew Halls, photo: Benjamin Ealovega The final bar of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major has been compared by conductor Colin Davis to the closing of a coffin lid. Although the great Finn still had more than 30 years to live after it was written, it is one of his last completed works. The unusual one-movement form of the work, which was originally to be titled ‘Fantasia Sinfonica’, has become an interpretative challenge for critics and analysts. While unanimously describing the work as revolutionary, scholars have differed in the justifications for their judgement. Benjamin Britten’s dark opera Peter Grimes, which tells the story of a fisherman suspected of murdering a young journeyman, contains highly successful orchestral interludes which, in a slightly altered order and with minor alterations, were successfully published separately as Four Sea Interludes shortly after the opera’s premiere in 1945. They consist of ‘Dawn’, an illustration of a calm sea, ‘Sunday Morning’, with the sound of tolling church bells imitated by horn, the majestic nocturne ‘Moonlight’ and the deathly terrifying ‘Tempest’. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony was received less warmly than the Seventh, because, as the offended composer was to comment, ‘the Eighth is better’. Beethoven undoubtedly put more work into it than into its predecessor, as the surviving sketches testify. Performed for the first time under the baton of its increasingly hard-of-hearing composer in Vienna in 1814, it was not dedicated to anyone, perhaps due to its cool reception.

Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra, LSO & Sir Antonio Pappano

Wynton Marsalis and Sir Antonio Pappano blend jazz, blues and classical music in the crossover collaboration with the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, LSO & Sir Antonio Pappano

Wynton Marsalis and Sir Antonio Pappano blend jazz, blues and classical music in the crossover collaboration with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Robin Ticciati presents Mahler’s blockbuster journey from darkness to light. A trumpet sounds a fanfare, the orchestra cries out, and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony judders into life. But a symphony, said Mahler, must be like the world; and 70 minutes later the whole orchestra is storming the heavens in triumph. It’s a blockbuster journey from darkness to light, told in funeral marches, Viennese waltzes and of course, music’s sweetest love-letter – the rapturous Adagietto. But Robert Schumann knew a thing or two about love, too, and Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati is joined by pianist Francesco Piemontesi in Schumann’s heartfelt Piano Concerto – music in which these two artists share a very special rapport.

From the Thames to Lake Wörthersee

John Storgårds, Lucas & Arthur Jussen

We are delighted that John Storgårds will be our guest again this season, as he is a highly valued member of our orchestra family. In addition to his regular appearances in Bamberg as a conductor, he was active in other roles last summer: as part of the jury in our Mahler Competition. As a conductor, he is known for his creative instinct in arranging programmes and will guide us through his rich selection of works with a keen sense of rhythm: We start with a waltz from a rarely heard gem – Shostakovich’s operetta, first performed in 1959, which revolves around everyday life in a Plattenbau housing estate. Poulenc could be a real »rascal« – as evidenced by his concerto written in 1932, despite some of its elegiac tones. We are pleased to welcome two young pianists, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, for their debut in Bamberg. The concert will also feature the Symphony No. 3 by Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevá: this haunting piece was written in 2003 and at times creates powerful sonic massifs, but is otherwise characterised by a melancholy tone. This austere mood suits our guest conductor wonderfully as a transition to the initially very pensive nature of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 – which, however, then ends in a sarcastic circus frenzy. This is sure to be a moving experience, as the press raved about our cordial collaboration with the likeable Finn on the podium: »John Storgårds allowed for highly emotional, exuberant, free and joyful music-making, which the superb Bambergers savoured to the full. Everything was just right – a great moment!«

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, William Christie

„It's the sound in particular. Nobody else has it in this way [...] . And I think it's also the way you present the music to the audience. For me, it's very important that you have very quick access to the audience.“ This is how the renowned American baroque specialist, conductor and harpsichordist William Christie describes the French ensemble Les Arts Florissants, which he has led since 1979. The Konzerthausorchester is hosting them for the first time to perform Mozart and Haydn together - the latter fits in perfectly with the orchestra's focus on Haydn's works over several seasons. The „Litaniae Lauretanae“ KV 195 from 1774 is one of four litanies or supplications that Mozart composed in Salzburg during the course of his life. The name „Lauretana“ refers to the Marian devotion reflected in it. Due to its large orchestration and virtuoso solo parts, the work is one of the „Litaniae solemnes“ that were performed in Salzburg Cathedral. Joseph Haydn's Missa in B flat major or „Harmoniemesse“ was composed in 1802 and is the last of the six great mass compositions that - alongside The Creation and The Seasons - brought his vocal works to a crowning conclusion and his last completed composition. It was given its name because of the important „harmony-filling“ role of the obbligato wind parts.

Gastspiel Antwerpen

Alexandre Kantorow, winner of the 2019 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, performs a grand romantic repertoire in Cologne. Featuring Liszt's virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 2 alongside Schumann's "Rhenish" Symphony and Wagner's rarely-heard Faust Overture.

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich / Víkingur Ólafsson / Paavo Järvi

Víkingur Ólafsson’s thing is to engage intensively with a work or a composer. After his fascinating world tour with Bach’s Goldberg Variations last season, the Icelandic pianist returns as soloist with Schumann’s Piano Concerto. As a lively addition, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich contributes his »Rhenish« Symphony – a showpiece for the Swiss orchestra and its energetic chief conductor Paavo Järvi. You can hear in the cheerfully flowing sounds of this symphony the motivational boost that the move from Leipzig to Düsseldorf on the Rhine meant for the composer.

Concertgebouw Orchestra Essentials: Sibelius

The Essentials series introduces you to the masterpieces you will be happy to know, performed by the world-famous Concertgebouw Orchestra and complete with a lively introduction by the incomparable Thomas Vanderveken. At Essentials we welcome a new generation of music lovers, and the concerts typically have a pleasant informal atmosphere.Grand, epic, mysterious: Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony is an enigma. ‘It was as if God the Father was throwing pieces of mosaic from the edge of heaven and asking me to figure out what the pattern was,’ wrote Sibelius of composing the symphony, inspired by the vast natural landscapes of Finland. The Fifth is sombre in character, the composer having suffered from deep depression. But the sun gradually broke through, and the music culminates in a radiant and sublime ending.Sibelius’s symphonies fit Santtu-Matias Rouvali like a glove, and he has been a welcome guest with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since his first appearance in 2020. Like a passionate sculptor, the Finnish conductor moulds the orchestra in changeable shapes and colours – just what Sibelius’s epic music calls for.Essentials starts at 9 p.m. with an imaginative introduction to the programme (in Dutch).

NDR Jugendsinfonieorchester / Stefan Geiger

Johannes Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and Stravinsky’s suite from »The Firebird« are among the masterpieces of the orchestral literature – and also among the favourites of the members of the NDR Jugendsinfonieorchester (NDR Youth Symphony Orchestra). The enchanting story of »The Firebird« utilises all of the orchestra’s sound-painting possibilities; Brahms’ Fourth Symphony sank »deeper and deeper into the soul« of the orchestra at the Berlin premiere, as the violinist Joseph Joachim wrote to his musician friend Johannes Brahms. We cordially invite you to an encounter with these two »orchestra favourites«.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6

The Sunday Morning Concert brings you wonderful and much-loved compositions, performed by top musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. Enjoy the most beautiful music in the morning! You can make your Sunday complete by enjoying a delicious post-concert lunch in restaurant LIER.The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the best concert halls in the world, famous for its exceptional acoustics and varied programme. Attend a concert and have an experience you will never forget. Come and enjoy inspiring music in the beautiful surroundings of the Main Hall or the intimate Recital Hall.

Mozart-Matinee

The Konzerthausorchester invites families to the Great Hall on Sundays at 11.00 - croissants and hot chocolate included! A musician always leads through the program. They reveal secrets from everyday life in the orchestra and invite you to join in. Meanwhile, younger siblings between the ages of 3 and 6 are very welcome at the “Musical childcare”.

Eye and ear

On a single whiplash, the door opens to a world of colours and light: Maurice Ravel’s piano concerto in G Major is fascinating from the very first note. Basque folklore, sounds from Spain and southern France, crystalline sparkle, and elegant jazz – musical notes become images, some tender and fluffy, others rich and bright. Ravel’s compatriot, French pianist Bertrand Chamayou, seems completely in his element in this dazzling bravura piece. The other two works are equally sensual to the eye and the ear: In his Ballet Gayaneh, Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian lets the sparks fly, including a fiery sabre dance. Modest Mussorgsky invites us to a vernissage where he paces from painting to painting, creatively turning each of them into sounds.

Joyeux anniversaire, Monsieur Ravel!

The 8th Philharmonic Concert celebrates French composer Maurice Ravel's 150th birthday with his Piano Concerto in G major and the famous Boléro. Ravel's concerto is a virtuoso piece, while the Boléro builds from a simple musical idea to an overwhelming sonic feast. The concert opens with Schumann's Symphony No. 2, written during a period of depression yet a testament to his creative power. In contrast, Ravel's creative flow was abruptly ended by a degenerative brain disease.

The Glasshouse, Gateshead

Robin Ticciati presents Mahler’s blockbuster journey from darkness to light. A trumpet sounds a fanfare, the orchestra cries out, and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony judders into life. But a symphony, said Mahler, must be like the world; and 70 minutes later the whole orchestra is storming the heavens in triumph. It’s a blockbuster journey from darkness to light, told in funeral marches, Viennese waltzes and of course, music’s sweetest love-letter – the rapturous Adagietto. But Robert Schumann knew a thing or two about love, too, and Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati is joined by pianist Francesco Piemontesi in Schumann’s heartfelt Piano Concerto – music in which these two artists share a very special rapport.

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, William Christie

„It's the sound in particular. Nobody else has it in this way [...] . And I think it's also the way you present the music to the audience. For me, it's very important that you have very quick access to the audience.“ This is how the renowned American baroque specialist, conductor and harpsichordist William Christie describes the French ensemble Les Arts Florissants, which he has led since 1979. The Konzerthausorchester is hosting them for the first time to perform Mozart and Haydn together - the latter fits in perfectly with the orchestra's focus on Haydn's works over several seasons. The „Litaniae Lauretanae“ KV 195 from 1774 is one of four litanies or supplications that Mozart composed in Salzburg during the course of his life. The name „Lauretana“ refers to the Marian devotion reflected in it. Due to its large orchestration and virtuoso solo parts, the work is one of the „Litaniae solemnes“ that were performed in Salzburg Cathedral. Joseph Haydn's Missa in B flat major or „Harmoniemesse“ was composed in 1802 and is the last of the six great mass compositions that - alongside The Creation and The Seasons - brought his vocal works to a crowning conclusion and his last completed composition. It was given its name because of the important „harmony-filling“ role of the obbligato wind parts.

Mozarts Zauber

As a young student, Joseph Moog was offered a contract by a renowned record company but declined. Wanting to take his time, today he is considered one of the most interesting performers of his generation. He impresses not only with his virtuosity but also with his courageous and individual program designs and pianistic rarities. He's known for his passion for classics, like Mozart's popular Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, which will be featured with the brilliant Cassation and the g-minor Symphony.