Concerts with works by

Benjamin Britten

Concert de midi et demi avec Cristo HARIJAN, Timothée MOSER et Benjamin BRUNET

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’

Concertgebouw Orchestra Annual Gala with Klaus Mäkelä

The Concertgebouw Orchestra presents its festive Annual Gala concert for loyal audience members, friends, and donors. The Annual Gala starts with a reception at 19.30, and the fashionable after-party goes on until midnight.Dress code: black tie.Guests are welcomed to a reception at 19.30, after which they will be ushered into the Main Hall for a uniquely memorable conducted by our artistic partner and future chief conductor, Klaus Mäkelä. Leading violinist Janine Jansen performs as soloist in Britten’s deeply moving Violin Concerto, the work with which she made her Concertgebouw Orchestra debut twenty years ago.The Concerto is preceded on the programme by the royal funeral march by Britten’s predecessor Purcell. Another well-known English lament from long ago opens Schumann’s deceptively sunny Second Symphony. Like Britten’s music, Schumann’s is also in dialogue with the past. Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘A concert is a journey. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’After the concert, you are invited to partake in the tantalising follow-up programmes in the foyers of the Concertgebouw. There will be ample opportunity to mingle with other guests, the conductor, soloists, and choir and orchestra members until midnight.

Märchenerzählungen

The hr-Sinfonieorchester's chamber concerts will stop at the Lauterbacher Hohhaus-Konzerte, featuring a program that sparks imagination. It includes Schumann's "Märchenerzählungen," Britten's "Phantasy Quartet," Mahler's early piano quartet movement, and miniatures by Klughardt and Juon, all contributing to a magical atmosphere.

Elbphilharmonie Audience Orchestra

In the Audience Orchestra, dedicated amateurs rehearse with great enthusiasm and at a very high artistic level under conductor Michael Petermann, the director of the Hamburger Konservatorium. Each year the orchestra gives two performances in the Grand Hall and further concerts in Hamburg districts, in which they play the pieces they’ve been practicing so intensively.

Verborgene Tiefe unter der scheinbaren Einfachheit

Oslo Philharmonic's Chamber Series Benjamin Britten Heinrich Sutermeister Stephen Sondheim

"All we need is one knight who is so strong he can pull that sword from the stone. Then we will have a king again, at last!" Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) composed The Sword in the Stone as a score for a BBC Radio play for children. This piece tells the story of the orphan Wart, an awkward and clumsy boy. He dreams of becoming a knight who embarks on grand adventures, battling dragons, griffins, and giants. However, his destiny takes an unexpected turn, and he becomes the legendary King Arthur. The Sword in the Stone explores Arthur's boyhood, his friendship with his foster brother Kay, his training under the wizard Merlin, and the life-changing realization that he is the rightful king of England.The medieval ballad Sven Svane recounts the tale of the giant Sven Vondved. Unlike Arthur, Sven dreams not of slaying giants but of playing the harp. His mother, unimpressed, insists he should be out fighting giants instead of plucking strings. Sven obeys, going on a rampage that includes killing giants, witches—and even his own mother. He eventually encounters a wanderer, challenging him to a riddle contest: “Now hear my questions, wandering man, and tell me if you can answer them.” Known as "life-or-death riddles," the wanderer’s survival depends on his correct answers. He answers every riddle correctly, and in many versions of the story, Sven rewards him with a gold ring.Heinrich Sutermeister's (1910–1995) Serenade No. 1 is derived from his opera The Red Shoe, based on Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tale The Cold Heart. The story follows Peter Marmot, a coal miner who inherits his father’s trade. Dissatisfied with his hard life, Peter seeks quick wealth and recognition. He meets a glass-imp who grants him three wishes. Peter wishes for riches and a glass factory, but his lack of knowledge leads to bankruptcy. Desperate, he makes a deal with the evil spirit Dutch-Mike, trading his heart for success. With his new stone heart, Peter becomes wealthy but finds no joy. He loses everything, including his wife, whom he kills in anger. Regretful, Peter seeks the glass-imp’s help, outwits Mike, and regains his beating heart.In Eric Ewazen’s (b. 1954) God’s World, the narrator experiences something entirely new. She feels a passion, love, and heightened appreciation for the world so intense that it feels as if she might burst, as if her body cannot contain the overwhelming beauty of the world. The text is drawn from the poem collection Three Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Ewazen himself arranged the three songs for trumpet and piano or marimba.Solfager, from the Norwegian medieval ballad Solfager and the Serpent King, must have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman, as her name suggests. She is engaged to King David, but the Serpent King falls in love with her and devises a cunning plan to claim her. He gives her a sedative drink, causing everyone to believe she has died, and she is buried. While she lies in her grave, the Serpent King visits her and offers her a grim choice: remain in the grave and die or go with him.In 1960, Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) composed music for his friend and collaborator Arthur Laurents’ play, Invitation to a March, a sort of reverse Sleeping Beauty story. The play introduces us to the beauty Norma and her mother Lily, who plans for her daughter to marry a handsome and successful but dull lawyer. Norma falls asleep at the most inopportune times, especially when her fiancé talks about their safe and predictable future. It is only when she is kissed by Adam, a relatively poor and unambitious yet free-spirited man, that she begins to awaken. From that point, the story becomes a battle of wills between three mothers—Adam’s mother on one side and the two mothers of the prospective bride and groom on the other.

Benjamin Kruithof, violoncello

Each year, the European Concert Hall Organisation selects six Rising Stars and sends them on a journey through its member concert halls. The young stars of 2024/25 also include cellist Benjamin Kruithof, who thanks to his »classy, cantabile and lovely tone« (bachtrack.com) emerged as the winner of the George Enescu Cello Competition in 2022. He can wholeheartedly display this beautiful tone at the Elbphilharmonie. After all, the programme culminates in the almost infinite melodies of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s cello sonata. However, first of all, Kruithof gives the evening a poetic start with the »Trois Pièces« by Nadia Boulanger and then presents his Rising Star commissioned work by British composer Sally Beamish. It continues with music by Benjamin Britten, who always knew how to produce a superb balance of modernity and sensuality in his works. In the five movements of his cello sonata, a real kaleidoscope of moods and textures evolves in which the melodic flair of the cello already appears several times. Rachmaninoff propelled this unrivalled ability to span the broadest arcs in his large-scale sonata to a glittering climax and lets the cello paint sensually over the edge – a fitting end!

Concert de midi et demi avec Cristo HARIJAN, Timothée MOSER et Benjamin BRUNET

Timothy Ridout – Récital solo : Bach, Britten, Shaw

Lied concert with Sarah Connolly

The highly acclaimed English mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly has held the title of Dame Sarah since 2017. Her opera career has been long and successful, spanning from the Baroque to contemporary repertoire. Among the many celebrated productions she has been involved in are Mozart's Titus at the English National Opera, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at La Scala in Milan, and Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.Alongside her opera career worldwide, art song has always been a central part of her artistry. Here we hear her in songs that truly showcase her versatility, by composers including Robert Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Barber, Eisler, and Britten.Magnus Svensson is the artistic director of the lied concert series. Alongside concert activities in the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe, he has also performed in Russia and the USA. Since 2012, he has also worked at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music on the re-publishing of older Swedish music.

My Bloody Valentine

From a recital by an Aphrodite on the eve of Valentine’s Day, one might expect a classic ode to romantic love, but singer Aphrodite Patoulidou has something else in mind.

NOSPR / Webster / The Fun-Fair and the Moonrise Kingdom

If Dvořák, Kisielewski and Britten could meet – would they find a common language? Certainly so, only that would be neither Czech, nor Polish, nor English, but the language of humour and classical proportions.The Carnival Overture is its composer’s declaration of faith in the vital power of ethnic music. Remarkably, it is the central part of the “Nature – Life – Love” trilogy. Dvořák did not approach folk themes with a scholarly studiosity. Instead, seeking inspiration in their rhythms and melodies, he created an exuberant vision of his homeland’s folklore. The Slavic pulse in Dvořák’s work was so strong that it forced its way into scores, even when, having crossed the Atlantic, the composer decided to write national music for the Americans – this might be the reason why the Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” seems to resonate with Prague nostalgia more than with echoes of the prairies. Humour is probably the most important aesthetic value in music composed by the erudite, author and politician, Stefan Kisielewski. Similarly to Dvořák, while drawing from ethnic traditions, the Polish composer also carefully listened to town life: both the sounds of its fairs and its everyday rhythm. The Fun-Fair, self-identifying in its subtitle as a single-act ballet with prologue, paints a sonic cityscape within a neoclassical framework.Benjamin Britten’s works also show an unshakable faith in the power of musical tradition. There is no dearth of tributes to the Englishman’s excellent predecessors in his oeuvre, one of the most beautiful testimonies to his faith in the heritage of British culture being The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The piece is a cycle of variations on a very short theme from Abdelazer by the Baroque master Henry Purcell. The promise made in the title of the work is fulfilled in a pedantic presentation of each section of the orchestra and every family of instruments. The whole is intricate enough to have proven worthy of a prologue to one of Wes Anderson’s films (Moonrise Kingdom, 2012).Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 60 minutes

Britten: War Requiem

»My subject is War, and the pity of War, The Poetry is in the pity… All a poet can do today is warn.«

Symphonie Fantastique

Berlioz claimed that his Symphonie fantastique depicted an opium dream, but really he was just high on the sound of a supersized orchestra going for broke.Sex and drugs and symphony orchestras: Hector Berlioz claimed that his Symphonie fantastique depicted an opium dream, but really he was just high on the sound of a supersized orchestra going for broke. Love, witchcraft, severed heads – it’s all here, in psychedelic colours, and you’d better believe that it’s a hard act to follow. That’s why Edward Gardner and the superb violinist Augustin Hadelich are setting the scene with Britten’s powerful Violin Concerto, and with the world premiere of Sphinx by David Sawer – a British composer whose raw imagination can give even Berlioz a run for his money.

Chan conducts Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony

Conductor Elim Chan and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor: a dream-team joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Shostakovich, Britten and the UK premiere of Elizabeth Ogonek’s ravishing Moondog.

Festival Élite 2025 – Quatuor Métamorphoses

Vasily Petrenko conducts Britten, Ravel & Rimski-Korsakow

Guildhall Symphony Orchestra: An Alpine Symphony

Join Guildhall Symphony Orchestra for an awe-inspiring evening of music in Barbican Hall, conducted by alumnus Roberto González-Monjas.

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.

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.

Chor-Familienkonzert

Think classical concerts are just for grandparents? Think again! Join our moderated concerts for all ages. Malte Arkona guides you through the program with wit, exploring fascinating works with the audience and artists. Discover something new with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Choirs, suitable for ages six and up. Arrive an hour early to meet the musicians, try instruments, and get creative at the Instrument Street.

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.

Danish String Quartet: Schubert's last string quartet

For lovers of chamber music the Recital Hall is the venue of choice. You can hear the musicians breathe and you can practically touch them. This hall is also cherished by musicians for its beautiful acoustics and direct contact with the audience. In the Recital Hall you can hear the best musicians of our time. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Recital Hall for yourself!

Danish String Quartet: Schubert's last string quartet

For lovers of chamber music the Recital Hall is the venue of choice. You can hear the musicians breathe and you can practically touch them. This hall is also cherished by musicians for its beautiful acoustics and direct contact with the audience. In the Recital Hall you can hear the best musicians of our time. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Recital Hall for yourself!

Orchestre Lamoureux – DANS LE STYLE ANCIEN

Music as light as a feather

Paul Hindemith is among the most underrated artists of the 20th century. Anyone who listens to his Kammermusik, op. 24 no. 1, a genuinely sparkling with ideas and light as a feather piece of music, will come to this conclusion. This architect of the cornerstone of historical performance and founding father of the famous Donaueschingen Contemporary Music Festival embodied the dominant ideals of the New Objectivity in German art of the 1920s, namely simplicity of means and communicativeness, in his Chamber Music series. It is a peculiar variety of neo-classicism, unjustly overshadowed by French or Russian music. The third movement in Kammermusik (op. 36 no. 3) is essentially a chamber cello concerto with explicit references to Baroque music. It is not without reason, after all, that this entire series has been compared to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Surprisingly similar in its spirit tone, although referring to the classical form and not devoid of stronger emotional accents, is the Sinfonietta of the then-only 18-year-old Benjamin Britten, already heralding his extraordinary talent. Adam SuprynowiczConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes

Belcea Quartet

Belcea Quartet

Britten's Canticles

Three outstanding young singers unite in a programme of love, loss, and remembrance, where Schubert and Errollyn Wallen are entwined in Britten’s five haunting canticles.