Franck Ollu & Krassimir Sterev

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano

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«.

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano

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«.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Stefan Asbury

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.

Eisler!

Pablo Heras-Casado & Anja Petersen

Jüri Reinvere is the third leading composer of his native Estonia, alongside Arvo Pärt and Erkki-Sven Tüür. He is also an accomplished concert pianist, lyric poet, journalist and essayist for newspapers in Estonia, Finland, Great Britain and Germany, where he has been living since 2005. Given this cosmopolitan life, it comes as no surprise that his music focuses on theological themes as well as touching on politics, history, and episodes from daily life. Arnulf Herrmann’s newly commissioned Tour de Trance draws inspiration from the verses of poetess and essayist Monika Rinck. His interest in language in all its guises has long stood in the foreground of his music. His special way of handling melody, rhythm and diction poses extraordinary challenges for the singer – challenges that soprano Anja Petersen is happy to confront.

For Wolfgang Rihm – I

musica viva is celebrating Wolfgang Rihm’s 70th birthday with a week of concerts. Since the 1970s, when he burst upon Germany’s music scene as an enfant terrible, Rihm has embodied the unconditionality of the creative act. It is thus no accident that his 1978 essay on pain and pleasure bore the title Ins eigene Fleisch (“mortifying the flesh”) and dealt with the close bond between mind and body. The same applies to the quintet studies he wrote for composer-clarinettist Jörg Widmann, his former student and perhaps even his soul-mate, who will present them with soloists from the BRSO in Munich’s recital hall.

Johannes Kalitzke & Ilya Gringolts

As can only be expected, Nicolaus Richter de Vroe is fully au fait with the violin. After all, this Halle-born composer is a trained violinist and played in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for more than 30 years. He wrote his new violin concerto for Ilya Gringolts, a violinist celebrated in the concert hall for his uncompromising and expressive style. No less uncompromising and expressive is Iannis Xenakis’s Jalons (Milestones), a work frequently reminiscent of electro-acoustic music that was written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain. After the interval we will be treated to Mit o ptici (The Myth of the Birds) by the Serbian composer Milica Djordjević. This large-scale work for chorus and orchestra is a setting of the eponymous ballad by Miroslav Antić, a poet born in what was then Yugoslavia. “This wonderful poem has haunted me for 20 years”, the composer explains. “It tells a very multi-layered, forthright and truly courageous story that reverberates strongly within me.”

Vimbayi Kaziboni & Tabea Zimmermann

musica viva: Matthias Hermann

A feast of sound for Helmut Lachenmann: The horn section and the BRSO, conducted by Matthias Hermann, will present the world premiere of the final version of My Melodies. The composition opens up an enormous range of performing possibilities and reveals new dimensions of sound, transforming the music to an “object of observation” and the concert hall to a “place of adventure” (Lachenmann). Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Yuko Kakuta will perform Lachenmann’s Got Lost: a highly virtuosic piece in which verses by Friedrich Nietzsche and Fernando Pessoa are juxtaposed with a short note about a lost laundry basket. The three texts are “stripped of their emotive, poetic, mundane diction […], and sent into a constantly changing intervallic field of sound, resonance, and movement” (Lachenmann).

musica viva: Sir Simon Rattle

Simon Rattle’s conducting career is characterized by openness and renewal – and modern music has also played an important role in this. No surprise, then, that when Rattle takes up his post as Chief Conductor of the Chor and Symphonieorchester des BR, he will also conduct a musica viva concert. On the programme: the world premiere of Automatones, written by Vito Žuraj and commissioned by Bavarian Radio’s musica viva series. Extraordinary things are to be expected, since the Rihm student, born in Maribor, Slovenia, in 1979, is always causing a stir: “Contemporary music can be a lot of fun.” (Offenbach-Post) After the intermission, Rattle will conduct Coro for Choir and Orchestra by Luciano Berio: a confessional work in a “tragic mood” (Berio) that has lost none of its relevance today.