Keywords: Subscription Concert, Symphony Concert, Vocal Music
| Tarmo Peltokoski | Conductor |
| Asmik Grigorian | Soprano |
| Matthias Goerne | Bariton |
| Chamber Symphony op. 110a | Dmitri Shostakovich |
| Symphony No. 14 in G minor op.135 | Dmitri Shostakovich |
These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.
There are fascinating masterpieces that are still waiting to be discovered. Even if they have become classics in their genre. Such has been the fate of compositions by Charles Ives, which are still virtually absent from Poland. This might not be so surprising when we remember that it had also been half a century or more before it was premiered in his native country. As we have just celebrated the American genius’ 150th birth anniversary, it is high time we changed this! Eventually, the NOSPR concert hall will resound with the Symphony No. 2, a piece that is not only masterful, but also gripping – and at the same time, one the most unusual works in the history of music. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the German Symphonic tradition still remained the basic form of expression, particularly for the Americans, educated with European models. The young composer from New England, however, enhanced it with themes drawn from the local tradition, the developments and unexpected clashes of which presented in the consecutive movements blew up the conventional style, leading everything up to the spectacular final explosion. All that a decade ahead of Stravinsky and Bartók! The world premiere of the Symphony No.2, which presented Ives’ symphonic oeuvre to the world, was only prepared in 1959 by Leonard Bernstein. Three decades later, John Axelrod, the conductor of today’s concert, studied the piece with him.Axelrod also frequently works with the outstanding Turkish composer and pianist Fazıl Say. The very choice of solo instruments for his Concerto indicates an opportunity for showcasing the oriental exoticism and richness of the dynamic timbres of the percussion. The spectacular piece will be preceded by the famous Lullaby by George Gershwin.Jakub PuchalskiConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes
„Manuscripts don’t burn” – claimed a character of Bulgakov’s. Could Andrzej Panufnik feel that when composing his Tragic Overture in the occupied Warsaw? He intended to escape from the circumstances of the day, heading towards the sphere of sonic abstraction. And yet, in the imitative instrumental parts, dramatic to the point of feeling obsessive, echoes of the war can be heard on and on. The score survived the occupation, though it almost fell prey to the tenants who took over the composer’s Warsaw apartment and had a penchant for using sheet music as fuel for their stove. The Tragic Overture is one of those works that history itself uses as a medium to speak through. Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is also a priceless treasure. If we converted the time it took to compose it into its duration time, we would learn that the master of Romantic melodics was writing at a pace of less than a minute per year! This time-consuming process bridged youthful emotionality and a clear outlook on the form – crystallising over 26 years. The Weimar premiere of the piece was conducted by none other than Hector Berlioz, who called himself „Beethoven’s crescendo”, with audiences’ idol – Franz Liszt – on the piano. In the Katowice concert, the solo part will be performed by Sergio Tiempo, whose pianistic fame guarantees experiences of not only emotional, but also intellectual nature. The orchestra will be led by Néstor Bayona, NOSPR’s conductor in residence. Morton Gould’s music undoubtedly belongs to the world of Dionysian values. Spirituals for orchestra is a hymn celebrating the American roots. Composed in mid-twentieth century, the music beams with unpretentious joy, flowing straight from its ethnic sources. Gould’s inspiration was not only Baptist church music, but also the “carnival” joy of music-making, which lends the piece a mood of musical celebration. Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 60 minutes
For most of the 19th century, the French romanticism was seeking a way of its own, trying not to fall within the orbit of German influence – César Franck, however, eventually preferred to yield to the inspiration to be found in those, simultaneously finding a voice of his own in the Symphony in D minor. It was, of course, characterised by a high density of harmony, but also by refined and gripping themes, as well as a specific melancholy and an unusual multiplicity of timbres in a sonically opulent orchestra. Thus, he created a work perceived as one of the most excellent symphonies of the century.Gabriel Fauré belongs to the next generation already, one turning towards the French clarity. This is not yet impressionism, but it is already a music shining with its inner brilliance, esoteric and ethereal, and at the same time infinitely subtle and elegant. There is also a gentle glow, that of the soft and warm autumn sun, to be found in his Requiem, exceptional in the whole history of music. This mass for the dead originated as a mass indeed: for the liturgies in the church that Fauré played the organ and gave concerts in. The terror of death turns into what is more like nostalgic reflection, looking into the netherworld with bright eyes, not expecting any shock whatsoever.Jakub PuchalskiConcert duration: approximately 100 minutes
Although Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would compose music in virtually all the genres popular in his lifetime, it was opera that he was most enthusiastic about. The concert will begin with Chaconne and Pas seul – ballet fragments from the opera seria (i.e. a serious one) Idomeneus, King of Crete, emanating pomp and circumstance, commissioned by the Munich opera theatre. Then, Ilse Eerens will perform three fragments from another one of Mozart’s works for theatre. The recitative Crudele! and the subsequent dramatic-lyrical aria Non mi dir belong to Donna Anna’s part in Don Giovanni, a work its composer curiously dubbed „a joyous drama”. Further, we are going to hear the good-humoured recitative Giuns’alfin il momento and the lyrical aria Deh vieni non tardar, which maintains its mood. Both come from the fourth act of the opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro, in which they are sung by Susanna during the night-time garden scene. The final link in Eerens’ performance will be the aria Fra l’oscure ombre funeste, from the Old Testament-inspired cantata Davide penitente – solemn in its mood, to the extent of seeming ceremonious. The concert will be crowned with a performance of a work that constitutes the embodiment of the classical style, namely the Symphony in D major, also known as the Haffner Symphony. The symphony’s subtitle is the surname of a Salzburg family the composer was friends with, the occasion for its commission being the ennoblement of Sigmund Haffner. In his letters, Mozart emphasised that the first movement is fiery, while the finale ought to be played “as fast as possible!”Oskar ŁapetaConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes
The famous fate motif from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is the musical opening of the philosophical dialogue between a creator and the Creator, fate, or destiny.Nearly all of Richard Strauss’ oeuvre is music meandering among literary texts and pretexts. His songs and operas, but also symphonic poems, clearly reference programs written either in prose or in poems. In the case of instrumental works, those were often merely sources of primary inspiration, impulses that maintained only loose relationships with the final shape of the musical narrative.For Strauss, the final decade of the 19th century is a time of symphonic poems, gradually developed and bringing the idea, initiated by Liszt, towards an apogeum. It was also then that the poem Death and Transfiguration was created (1899). Its program is a vision of a man on his deathbed recalling the happy days of his past. The motto for the composition is a poem by Alexander Ritter, but the composer keeps his distance from it: the piece is „purely a work of imagination, and no fruit of my life’s experience (I only fell ill two years later). No more than a concept, just like any other”. Indeed, the music carries with it such a universally relatable existential message that no detailed explanation is needed: it leads from suffering and agony, through a rebellion against the inevitability of death, towards an ascent to light and salvation, to reach the final transfiguration and harmony.Nearing the end of his life, Strauss such found a form of expression for existential reflection that was new and sophisticated, but at the same time classically restrained. In 1948, he completed a cycle of songs to be dedicated to Kirsten Flagstad shortly before his death. The beauty of the Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) – maintaining the atmosphere of the twilight of poetry proper created by Hermann Hesse – is that of a text perfectly integrated with the sound of the orchestra. Each song is instrumented differently, but always beautifully, adequately for the emotionally eternal messages dressed in the garb of new sound.Amidst those two works by Strauss, there stand the Eternal Songs – a poem by Karłowicz that is not only excellent, but also entirely original on the levels of musical language and aesthetics. These are actually three poems, each cleped a song. They all amount to a manifestation of the composer’s longing for comfort to be found in the universe, a manifestation that evades verbal expression.Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
“It is with greatest ease and willingness that I am working on this Concerto and, nota bene, I feel that this is going to be a first-class trick” – these words from a letter by Karol Szymanowski are proof of how important the Symphony No. 4 was for the composer. It was his unfulfilled dream of a “true” piano concerto. One of a pianistic tour de force, the first sketches of which he dropped to focus on the Stabat Mater he was working on back then. The moving „Peasant Requiem” (such was the title Szymanowski had originally intended for the work), born out of the pain he experienced after his niece’s death, it brings together religious ecstasy and a note of the Polish folklore to be heard in a recollection of the popular Bitter Lamentations resonating in the composer’s memory.How different was that world from the instrumental Chaconne by Krzysztof Penderecki! The latter is an expressive musical tribute to the memory of the late Polish Pope. It was this piece that provided a symbolic closure for the Polish Requiem, which Penderecki had been working on for a quarter of a century – a monumental chronicle of Poland’s modern history, the melancholic finale of which contains both a nostalgia for the baroque tradition and emotions of a surprisingly romantic nature.Róża ŚwiatczyńskaConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes
The most joyous one among Gustav Mahler’s symphonies does not, by any means, renounce either the grotesque irony that is so typical for the composer or eschatological threads. Yet again, it deals with the subject of death. This time, however, it is first represented by the grotesque Ländler played by the violin in the scherzo, later to introduce us to the realm of paradise in the finale. But is this true paradise, or rather an image, ironical in its effect, that arises from the naive folk poetry of The Boy’s Magic Horn collection, which the composer uses in his symphonies for the last time?Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 will be preceded by a concert overture, beethovenian in its style, by a Dutch colleague of the Bonn genius, one who introduced both Beethoven’s and Mozart’s music to his fatherland’s stages. No wonder, then, that it was that style exactly that Johann Wilhelm Wilms found inspirational not only for his Overture in D major, but for his symphonies as well. The exceptionally graciously led woodwind instruments remind us of the fact that the composer was also… a professional flutist.Jakub PuchalskiConcert duration: approximately 80 minutes
A Beethoven festival with Iván Fischer! This Hungarian conductor has acquired international fame for his readings of the classical-romantic repertoire and makes guest appearances with all the great orchestras. His BRSO programme features the Eighth Symphony, full of merriment and understated humour, and the Fifth, where Fate knocks at the door and the almost martial finale seems to find the composer “grabbing destiny by the throat”. Between these two mutually contradictory masterpieces is the revenge aria Ah! Perfido!, to words by Pietro Metastasio. The soprano is Christiane Karg.
A Beethoven festival with Iván Fischer! This Hungarian conductor has acquired international fame for his readings of the classical-romantic repertoire and makes guest appearances with all the great orchestras. His BRSO programme features the Eighth Symphony, full of merriment and understated humour, and the Fifth, where Fate knocks at the door and the almost martial finale seems to find the composer “grabbing destiny by the throat”. Between these two mutually contradictory masterpieces is the revenge aria Ah! Perfido!, to words by Pietro Metastasio. The soprano is Christiane Karg.
ConcertPulse