Concert PulseFeldman!
Date & Time
Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 19:30Keywords: Contemporary
Musicians
| Ralf Mielke | Flute |
| Stefan Stopora | Drums |
| Steffen Schleiermacher | Piano, Moderator |
Program
| Morton Feldman | Crippled Symmetry |
Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 11:44
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Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
The Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolski is certainly no stranger to contemporary music. His works have been performed at many major festivals over recent decades. He has received various prizes and released many of his works on CD. As a professor of composition at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he has also passed on his knowledge to a whole generation of young composers. »Im Dunkel vor der Dämmerung« (»In the Dark before Dawn«) is the title of a new work commissioned by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and premiered in this concert. »Sinfonia Eroica« was the title Ludwig van Beethoven gave his third symphony in 1804, a »heroic symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man«. Whether or not this »great man« was to be little Napoleon? At first it was, in all likelihood. But Beethoven probably decided to leave out any corresponding dedication, since the Corsican’s personal coronation as emperor was, in the composer’s eyes, a bitter betrayal of the republican ideas of the French Enlightenment. Was Beethoven himself perhaps the hero? An innovator in the context of music history? Whatever the answer, he certainly breaks new ground with his »Eroica«.
Finished
Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
The Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolski is certainly no stranger to contemporary music. His works have been performed at many major festivals over recent decades. He has received various prizes and released many of his works on CD. As a professor of composition at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he has also passed on his knowledge to a whole generation of young composers. »Im Dunkel vor der Dämmerung« (»In the Dark before Dawn«) is the title of a new work commissioned by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and premiered in this concert. »Sinfonia Eroica« was the title Ludwig van Beethoven gave his third symphony in 1804, a »heroic symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man«. Whether or not this »great man« was to be little Napoleon? At first it was, in all likelihood. But Beethoven probably decided to leave out any corresponding dedication, since the Corsican’s personal coronation as emperor was, in the composer’s eyes, a bitter betrayal of the republican ideas of the French Enlightenment. Was Beethoven himself perhaps the hero? An innovator in the context of music history? Whatever the answer, he certainly breaks new ground with his »Eroica«.
Finished
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Stefan Asbury
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
Born in Teheran, Sara Abazari is one of today’s leading voices in her country’s contemporary music. Her two latest compositions, which were recently premiered in the Berlin Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, are directly connected with the movement »Woman, Life, Freedom« and the prominent role of women in Iran. »in solidum« is a piece that was premiered in its first version in autumn 2023; the new, large-scale orchestral work by the composer, who studied in Cologne and Vienna, is now being performed by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. With Galina Ustwolskaja (1919-2006), the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra preesents one of the 20th century’s most uncompromising composers after the interval. Ms Ustwolskaja gained a reputation for her visionary and always highly unusual combinations of instruments: »Dies irae« is scored for eight double basses, piano and a large, resonant wooden block, which the percussionist beats with enigmatic hammer blows. Performances of the work produce the picture, precisely calculated by the composer, of an archaic ritual that evokes a set of metaphors between death, protest and apotheosis: this is a »breakthrough piece«, a musical onslaught on all conventional boundaries, and indisputably Ustwolskaja’s most famous work. The evening opens with Edgar Varèse’s virtuoso piece »Intégrales« for wind instruments and percussion, one of the founding documents of 20th century music. Written for the avant-garde »International Composers’ Guild«, which was founded in 1921 by Carlos Salzedo and Varèse himself, »Intégrales« was given its first performance in March 1925 in New York’s Aeolian Hall.
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NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Ingo Metzmacher
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
Ingo Metzmacher is one of the great explorers among conductors. He tirelessly explores new and little-known areas of the repertoire. His curiosity already characterised him during his time as General Music Director in Hamburg between 1997 and 2005. And this also characterises the vocal symphonic programme with which he returns to the podium of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in November. One day before his 67th birthday, Metzmacher conducts two rarely performed works by two jubilarians from the Romantic and modern eras with a round birthday in 2024 – and fills the stage in the Grand Hall with an opulent line-up that, alongside the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, includes the MDR-Rundfunkchor and nine vocal soloists.
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Julian Rachlin / Klaus Mäkelä
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä doesn’t take up his post as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra until 2027, but he is already working closely with the orchestra. At this concert, they perform Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony and Sofia Gubaidulina’s First Violin Concerto. The concert opens with a new piece by South Korean composer Seung Won-Oh. In 2023 Gubaidulina (*1931) was named the most frequently performed composer in the world by the online magazine Bachtrack. She experienced her international breakthrough in the 1980s with her Violin Concerto No. 1 »Offertorium«, in which she echoes Johann Sebastian Bach’s »Musical Offering«, her choice of title already pointing to a deep religious sense. Once premiered by master violinist Gidon Kremer, the renowned Austrian violinist Julian Rachlin has now been recruited for the solo part. Schumann’s Fourth Symphony was a birthday present for his beloved Clara and an affair of the heart for the composer. The recipient, herself a pianist and composer, was deeply moved by the symphony: »This is another work produced from the depths of the soul«.
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NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Steven Isserlis / Elim Chan
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
»I want interaction. I want people to feel something. I want them to ask questions,« explained Elim Chan in an interview. The Hong Kong-born conductor is currently one of the most sought-after musicians of her generation. The Vienna Musikverein dedicated a three-part portrait series to her in the 2022/23 season. And after Elim Chan’s debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2022, the press wrote euphorically of a »miracle of control and understanding«. In this concert, Elim Chan has a musician at her side who is one of only two living cellists to have been inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame and who continues to captivate audiences with his unique musicianship: Steven Isserlis. He plays Joseph Haydn’s long-lost Cello Concerto in C major, in which late Baroque solemnity is combined with the virtuosity of Viennese Classicism. The elegant lightness of the concerto conceals highly demanding passages that require a great deal of dexterity from the soloist.
In a few days
In Hamburg
In Hamburg
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Steven Isserlis / Elim Chan
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
»I want interaction. I want people to feel something. I want them to ask questions,« explained Elim Chan in an interview. The Hong Kong-born conductor is currently one of the most sought-after musicians of her generation. The Vienna Musikverein dedicated a three-part portrait series to her in the 2022/23 season. And after Elim Chan’s debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2022, the press wrote euphorically of a »miracle of control and understanding«. In this concert, Elim Chan has a musician at her side who is one of only two living cellists to have been inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame and who continues to captivate audiences with his unique musicianship: Steven Isserlis. He plays Joseph Haydn’s long-lost Cello Concerto in C major, in which late Baroque solemnity is combined with the virtuosity of Viennese Classicism. The elegant lightness of the concerto conceals highly demanding passages that require a great deal of dexterity from the soloist.
Finished
Les Métaboles / SWR Experimentalstudio
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
In his late work, Luigi Nono always also transformed the music into moving ambient sound. To achieve that, he regularly worked with the legendary SWR Experimentalstudio. One example is his vocal and instrumental work »Diario polacco No. 2«, in which electronic sounds permeate the hall. His work »›Hay que caminar‹ sognando«, in contrast, features two violinists wandering from one music desk to the next. Under conductor Léo Warynski, the Les Métaboles vocal ensemble and the SWR Experimentalstudio remember Nono the political man. When martial law was introduced in Poland in 1981 he wrote »Quando stanno morendo / Diario polacco No. 2« and dedicated it to persecuted Polish friends and comrades. Nono composed »›Hay que caminar‹ sognando« in 1989, one year before his death. With its »choreographic« arrangement, it epitomises an inscription, seen on a monastery wall, that had fascinated Nono: »Wanderer, there is no path. All that matters is the walking.«
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Ensemble Resonanz / Saerom Park / Dirk Rothbrust
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
Therapy for the restless and the overstimulated – that’s one way to describe Rebecca Saunders’s music. »She focuses the ear on minute gradations of timbre and intonation, and turns her performers into Zen masters of attention and focus«, writes the Guardian. How fortunate, then, that no less than five Elbphilharmonie concerts are dedicated to Saunders this season. Bringing this spotlight to a close is the award-winning Ensemble Resonanz – with a full-length Saunders programme, of course. Characteristically of Saunders, the Concerto for Violoncello, Strings and Percussion explores a minute musical ornament, the trill. In the hands of the cellist Saerom Park, it is transformed, says Saunders, into an »unpredictable sound fragment«. A backdrop of shimmering overtones and glissandi animates the piece »Unbreathed« with an eerie magic. And to close, »All that dust« is an opportunity for the percussion to shine, brilliantly performed by Dirk Rothbrust. As one critic brilliantly summarised, »Saunders is looking to create moments of such intensity that music ceases to simply be sound, but becomes an all-consuming synaesthetic experience.«
Finished
Steve Reich
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
At the time when he established minimal music, he was in his late twenties. Now, he is 87 years old: Steve Reich, according to the New York Times »one of the greatest living composers« and according to the New Yorker the »most original musical thinker of our time«. The ensemble unitedberlin led by Austrian conductor and composer Christoph Breidler presents no less than three of his works, which emerged between 2007 and 2019 – for one of them, there is a film which plays with colours and shapes. For his five-movement piece »Radio Rewrite«, Reich was inspired by two songs by the rock band Radiohead: from »Everything in Its Right Place« and »Jigsaw Falling into Place«, he made avant-garde music and wrote a new piece »for an ensemble of musicians who play non-rock instruments« with harmonious and melodic fragments. His colourful »Double Sextet« follows, for which Reich received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2009. It can be performed with two identical sextets or with six musicians who play along with their own recording. Inspired by Gerhard Richter’s famous strip paintings, the old master of minimal music returns in »Reich/Richter« to play with small motif cells. You can experience this piece in combination with the film »Moving Picture« by video artist Corinna Belz, who created a whirring world of shapes and colours in moving image from photos of Richter’s cropped pictures.