Guest at the Beethovenfest Bonn

Guest performance at the Elbphilharmonie

“Complete at last the glorious work!” Something akin to these words from Haydn’s “Creation” surely went through the minds of many musicians and concertgoers when they first set foot in the Elbphilharmonie. We have been regular guests at this stunning concert hall ever since it opened in 2017. This season, our orchestra will perform here on two consecutive nights, playing some of the core repertoire featured on our recent internationally acclaimed recordings – superb symphonies by two musician friends who inspired one another: Johannes Brahms, who was born in Hamburg, and Antonín Dvořák, a native of our Bohemian home.

Guest performance at the Elbphilharmonie

“Complete at last the glorious work!” Something akin to these words from Haydn’s “Creation” surely went through the minds of many musicians and concertgoers when they first set foot in the Elbphilharmonie. We have been regular guests at this stunning concert hall ever since it opened in 2017. This season, our orchestra will perform here on two consecutive nights, playing some of the core repertoire featured on our recent internationally acclaimed recordings – superb symphonies by two musician friends who inspired one another: Johannes Brahms, who was born in Hamburg, and Antonín Dvořák, a native of our Bohemian home.

Guest at the Philharmonie Köln

Ludwig van Beethoven: genius, freethinker and troubled soul – as well as a master of coping with crises through music. In 1809, he lamented: »We have experienced a rather crowded misery. The entire course of events has affected my body and soul. What a destructive, desolate life around me! Nothing but drums, cannons, all kinds of human misery!« At that time, he was greatly distressed by the current situation, as Vienna was occupied by Napoleon's troops. Food shortages, the black market and inflation were making life difficult for the people. Beethoven often sought shelter in the cellar – and put pillows over his head to avoid hearing the noise. But despite these unfavourable conditions, he wrote his great Fifth Piano Concerto: a gigantic work that gives the impression as if he wanted to drown out the chaos of war with the power and splendour of his music. For long segments, it spreads a belligerent sound – but with the Adagio, a very contemplative movement is interwoven: Beethoven is said to have been thinking of the »chants of devout pilgrims«. These fragmented states of mind are already pervasive in his Fifth Symphony, which was premiered a year earlier and can certainly be understood as a statement on the political fate of Europe at that time. With its famous obsessive motif, the work is at first full of anxiety and emotional complexity over long stretches. But an astounding inner force is able to find its way out of the initial darkness and into the ever brightening light. Like Beethoven wrote in one of his conversation books, which he used because of his deafness and in which he also collected essential ideas: »With music I have transformed my suffering into hope«.

Guest at the Isarphilharmonie

»O Beethoven! You are the greatest and best friend of those who suffer, of those who struggle. When the misery of the whole world overpowers us, you move close to us, as you did to a grieving mother, sitting wordlessly at the piano offering comfort to the weeping.« In these words, a contemporary described the effect Beethoven‘s music can have on troubled souls. We play his B-flat major concerto, which earned »the undivided approval of the audience« already in 1795: it has many lively passages – but the heart of the piece is the Adagio, in which an emotional dialogue between solo instrument and orchestra unfolds. We are delighted that the legendary pianist Mitsuko Uchida will once again join us for one of Beethoven‘s famous concertos. Before that, the overture from Cherubini‘s opera »Medea«, first performed in 1797, will be played – a soul drama revolving around a Greek tragedian figure whose ruptured emotional world between love and hate is the main subject. The composition does have lyrical interludes, but is otherwise characterised by unbridled passion. Stravinsky‘s »Le Sacre du printemps« also impressively shows the maelstrom that music can develop and thereby intensively touch the soul: It is a pagan story about the »yearly cycle of forces that are reborn and fall back into the womb of nature« – represented by blessings of the earth, ritual dances and an offering to the gods. At its premiere as a ballet, the composition caused a genuine scandal, but after its first concert performance, the music was quickly recognised for its magic – it captivates with a primal rhythmic power that, according to Stravinsky, »seizes every sensitive spirit«.

Guest performance at the Wiener Musikverein

"Women, you angels of the earth! Heaven's loveliest creation! You are the sole ray that illuminates our lives." (Alphonse de Lamartine) We start with the meaning-laden Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, inspired in 1901 by his blossoming love for his future wife Alma. A musical marriage proposal with strings and harp, it is a beguilingly beautiful work, albeit shot through with hauntingly world-weary and nostalgic tones. Like many great composers, Richard Strauss had a strong woman at his side – the singer Pauline, for whom he composed many of his vocal works. His lush "Four Last Songs" strike a tone of farewell. These settings of texts by Hesse and Eichendorff were written in 1948, when Strauss’ world had been shattered by the war and he was growing “weary of wandering”, to quote the final line of the last song. While profound grief can often stifle creativity, it sometimes can also awaken new creative energies – as proven by our programme’s emotional final piece, a "work of superhuman strength" written by Josef Suk, who had close personal ties with Dvořák. He became not only the latter’s master student, but also his friend and son-in-law as well, falling in love with Dvořák’s daughter Otylka. But this happiness was abruptly destroyed by Dvořák’s demise in 1904 and the tragically early death of Otylka a mere fourteen months later. Suk wrote the moving symphony "Asrael" to overcome this trauma and in memory of his loved ones, saying: "Such misfortune either destroys a person or brings all the forces lying dormant in them to the surface. Music saved me."

Guest at the Alte Oper Frankfurt

»You must offer something good to the body so that the soul wants to live in it.« This quote became famous through Winston Churchill – but it originally originated from a Spanish mystic of the 16th century. Fittingly, we play an exciting violin concerto entitled »Corpo Elettrico« from Italian composer Luca Francesconi, born in 1956. The piece revolves around magical metamorphoses of energy processes: It all starts harmlessly at first, but as it progresses, the violin part, which at some point resembles a machine and becomes very explosive, sounds like a guitar solo by Jimi Hendrix. A tour de force with electronics and megaphones as well as an unbelievable pull – written for Patricia Kopatchinskaja in 2020, who continuously shakes up the classical music business with her uncompromising artistic attitude and once said: »When I play, I have to have something to say. It has to come from my whole body and soul.« The sound fireworks keep going after this – with Beethoven‘s most passionate symphony. His Seventh was given numerous programmatic interpretations in literature, which definitely associated material delights: they range from a wedding celebration and a knight‘s festival to the depiction of an »ancient wine feast«, with the finale heard as a »drinking binge«. Beethoven completed the symphony in 1812 – the year in which he also wrote his desperate letter to the »immortal beloved«, which for him meant the final renunciation of personal happiness in love. Nevertheless, he accomplished an optimistic work with his Seventh, because it was clear to him: »Music should strike fire from the human soul«.

Guest performance at the Mozartfest Würzburg

»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.

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.

Guest performance At the Opera