Festival at the Funkhaus in Nalepastraße

Guest performance at the MOZART@AUGSBURG Festival

In our guest appearance in Augsburg conducted by the internationally sought-after conductor Gemma New, we begin with an earworm piece by Rossini, who once remarked: »What love is to the soul, appetite is to the body«. After having written 39 operas, the Italian retired from his musical career at just 37 years of age, choosing to devote himself to indulgent idleness as a hedonist and to the composition of culinary creations. The opera »Wilhelm Tell«, based on the play of the same name by Schiller, was composed in 1829 as his last dramatic work and is a story about love, patriotism and the desire for freedom – together with the legendary apple shot. We then welcome Sebastian Knauer as soloist for the glittering »Rhapsody in Blue« by Gershwin, who put the quintessence of his composing in a nutshell in these words: »In music, only one thing matters: ideas plus feeling!« In 1924, he wrote his popular piano concerto in the style of symphonic jazz: swing themes, sparkling rhythms and blues elements pop up in a loose fitting and paint a picture of his homeland’s soul. Gershwin called it a »musical kaleidoscope of America – our enormous melting pot, our typical quirks«. We conclude with a famous masterpiece by Beethoven, who once said of his inner creative urge: »What’s on my mind must come out, and that's why I compose.« In his Fifth Symphony from 1808, everything revolves around overcoming an almost overpowering fate and the music takes »its listeners into spirit realms«, where Beethoven appears as the »unrestricted sovereign over the spaces of the souls« – that is how the admiring E.T.A. Hoffmann perceived it.

Guest performance at the stARTfestival in Wuppertal

»Music is love‘s soul, for it is the touching of the divine with the human.« These were the thoughts of Bettina von Arnim – and in our concert conducted by Andrew Manze we indulge in such deep soundscapes as Respighi‘s »Concerto Gregoriano« from 1921: it conjures up a religiously solemn world of the middle ages – inspired by his preoccupation with the honorable church modes and meditative melodies of Gregorian chant, which had seized him »like an addiction« at the time. The violin concerto is therefore largely a lyrical-contemplative composition and quotes the Easter sequence »victimae paschali laudes« in the middle movement – but in the end it soars hymn-like with echoes of the famous »Salve Regina« chant like a fervent profession of faith. One critic characterised the violin part as that of »a cantor in an ancient religious ceremony, with the orchestra personifying the choir of the believers«. With us, Frank Peter Zimmermann will assume the role of solo choir leader with his Stradivarius. What follows is a journey into the Bruckner cosmos: his creative work was inseparably intertwined with religious sentiments, which earned him the nickname »Musician of God«. Before he had dared to approach symphonies, he had already made a name for himself as an eminent organist and church composer. After several dissatisfactory attempts, he composed his first definitive symphony in Linz in 1865/66 – which, however, he reworked in Vienna in 1891 on the basis of the experience he had gathered thereafter: it captivates the listener with its natural originality, grandiose themes and climax after climax – and in addition offers deep insights into Bruckner‘s state of mind in the heartfelt Adagio.

Bamberger Symphoniker in Munich

The radioeins storytelling concert – “The Magic Mountain”

In the evening at the bar, someone tells great stories: Adventure, drama, entanglement, love, wisdom, humour. The radioeins storytelling lounge has been creating exactly this situation since 2023. The actress and author Meike Rötzer tells in her own words what she has gleaned from the most productive of all. The radioeins storytelling lounge now becomes a radioeins storytelling concert thanks to the RSB! The literary radio format takes to the live stage, musically enhanced by the large symphony orchestra and suitable works from Gustav Mahler to Maria Herz (!). Thomas Mann’s cult novel “The Magic Mountain” is itself an invitation.The event takes about 3 hours including a break.

Guest at the Kaisersaal der Residenz in Würzburg

Mozartfest Würzburg

Guest at the Kaisersaal der Residenz in Würzburg

Mozartfest Würzburg

Into the Distance

26 years old, and just married to a woman who is an avowed Fennoman (a Finland enthusiast), young Jean Sibelius starts composing his first tone poem. Rather than following a specific musical road map, his En saga is more of a fairy tale of mystic landscapes. It shows vast surfaces of sound, subdued melancholy, and here and there, cheerful trolls pop up for a perky little dance. Incidentally, the first sketches to this piece were made in Austria, where Sibelius, the composer with the Swedish accent, spent his time in Viennese coffee houses, reading the Finnish national epic, the Kalewala. »I never felt more Finnish than in Vienna, Italy and Paris.« In Kaija Saariaho’s case, the musical approach to the five poems by her compatriot Pentti Saarikoski had little to do with Finnish national romanticism but more with the urge to explore the art of composing. Saariaho, who passed away in 2023, had originally set the work for soprano and piano, and the Gürzenich Orchestra now examines the orchestral version. In the very first poem, The Face of Nature, the composer’s musical language builds bridges to Jean Sibelius, while Sumun läpi – Through the mist – explores impenetrable, mysterious worlds of sound. The soloist in this performance is a longtime artistic companion of Saariaho, the singer Anu Komsi. Whoever tries to spot British sounding melodies in Dvořák’s »English« symphony, his 8th, will most certainly be disappointed. The Czech composer merely switched to a British publisher for this buoyant work, hence the misleading title. The symphony is bold, and vigorously joyful. It has an introspective beginning, but after less than a minute, the atmosphere takes a turn for the jubilant, culminating in a finale with festive, beaming fanfares. Antonín Dvořák is on the fast lane to success: »You want to know what I do? My head is full – if only one could write everything down immediately! […] The ease exceeds all expectations and the melodies just keep coming.

Into the Distance

26 years old, and just married to a woman who is an avowed Fennoman (a Finland enthusiast), young Jean Sibelius starts composing his first tone poem. Rather than following a specific musical road map, his En saga is more of a fairy tale of mystic landscapes. It shows vast surfaces of sound, subdued melancholy, and here and there, cheerful trolls pop up for a perky little dance. Incidentally, the first sketches to this piece were made in Austria, where Sibelius, the composer with the Swedish accent, spent his time in Viennese coffee houses, reading the Finnish national epic, the Kalewala. »I never felt more Finnish than in Vienna, Italy and Paris.« In Kaija Saariaho’s case, the musical approach to the five poems by her compatriot Pentti Saarikoski had little to do with Finnish national romanticism but more with the urge to explore the art of composing. Saariaho, who passed away in 2023, had originally set the work for soprano and piano, and the Gürzenich Orchestra now examines the orchestral version. In the very first poem, The Face of Nature, the composer’s musical language builds bridges to Jean Sibelius, while Sumun läpi – Through the mist – explores impenetrable, mysterious worlds of sound. The soloist in this performance is a longtime artistic companion of Saariaho, the singer Anu Komsi. Whoever tries to spot British sounding melodies in Dvořák’s »English« symphony, his 8th, will most certainly be disappointed. The Czech composer merely switched to a British publisher for this buoyant work, hence the misleading title. The symphony is bold, and vigorously joyful. It has an introspective beginning, but after less than a minute, the atmosphere takes a turn for the jubilant, culminating in a finale with festive, beaming fanfares. Antonín Dvořák is on the fast lane to success: »You want to know what I do? My head is full – if only one could write everything down immediately! […] The ease exceeds all expectations and the melodies just keep coming.

Cinema:Sound - James Newton Howard in Concert

Dear to the heart

Supporting the »wir helfen« (we help) campaign by the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger is more than just a tradition upheld by the Gürzenich Orchestra – it is of heartfelt importance. This season, contributing to the initiative for underprivileged children and adolescents in the region, the orchestra will play a passionate concert full of deep emotions. Before giving birth to his second concerto for piano and orchestra, with its endless melodies and sweeping, intense drama, Sergei Rachmaninoff had to fight his way through a deep valley of depression and self-doubt. In the end, hypno-therapy is what helped the Russian composer dissolve his writer’s block. Against all expectations, the concerto was a great success: It offers everything ranging from chamber musical intimacy to symphonic opulence, and demands everything from the soloist, emotionally and technically. No problem for the 24-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, a sensational shooting star who has won countless prizes and travels the world. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky described his last symphony, the »Pathétique,« as his best work, as being dear to his heart. He claimed to have put »all his soul« into it. The fact that he died just a few days after the premiere amplifies the impression of someone who condenses all facets of his artistic identity and symphonic oeuvre, and puts them to paper. Yet the musical approach he chooses is absolutely surprising. One would think he might bring his last symphony to a rejoicing and triumphant end, an emphatic summary of his own highly successful career. Instead, Tchaikovsky chooses a melancholy, introspective ending – not so much a real finale as a touching farewell with many open questions, a musical »good bye« which, still today, goes straight to the heart.