Johannes Kalitzke & Ilya Gringolts

musica viva: Johannes Kalitzke

The Swedish composer Lisa Streich, winner of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, has an avowed “interest in the beauty of the imperfect.” Her Jubelhemd, which blends together diverse sonic layers, is named after the work of the same name by Austrian artist Markus Schinwald: a shirt that, with its arms stretched upwards, can only be worn in a gesture of jubilation. After this “Concerto Grosso,” Johannes Kalitzke appears in a double role as conductor and composer in the premiere of his Zeitkapsel, a dance of death for large orchestra, commissioned by musica viva. The concert will conclude with Luc Ferrari’s Histoire du plaisir et de la désolation, a sonic search for “new sensuality” which brilliantly fails in the final Ronde de la désolation with the “rupture of all logic” (Ferrari).

Johanna Vargas / Ilya Gringolts

»Once I broke my leg, it was the best experience of my life« – such sentences that make you smile and are yet extremely serious are to be found in the heaps of diaries and letters left behind by Franz Kafka. The Hungarian composer György Kurtág set 40 of such fragments to music in 1985 for a cycle for soprano and violin – a really intimate line-up, which has found two acclaimed interpreters of contemporary music in Johanna Vargas and Ilya Gringolts in this concert. »It is a fantastic economy: singing with a single violin and how this instrument is used technically and expressively,« this is how Kurtág’s friend and composer colleague György Ligeti once described it. Simply poignant to your ears, the »Kafka Fragments« are nevertheless a heavyweight of music’s modern age, an immense challenge to the musicians which demands everything of them – in expression, virtuosity and sensitivity.

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«.

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).

Johannes S. Leung / Daniel Gaede / Sebastian Gaede

A fascinating journey through chamber music – from classical sounds to contemporary compositions. The three renowned musicians, Daniel Gaede, former concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Sebastian Gaede (NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra) on cello and internationally acclaimed Johannes Sum-Yee Leung on piano, invite you to a concert evening that will delight music lovers. Franz Schubert’s trio movement D 28 from 1812 takes centre stage, representing the classical chamber music tradition with dignity. Brahms and Rachmaninov add romantic colours. As a highlight, the audience can look forward to the world premiere of a contemporary piano trio composed by Johannes S. Leung especially for this evening.

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.