Konzertexamen Recital

Master Recital

Lieder von Gustav Mahler, Ralph Vaughan Williams und Franz Schubert

RÉCITAL DE KEIGO MUKAWA ET RYAN ZHU

Sabine Devieilhe / Song Recital

French singer Sabine Devieilhe is currently on a roll. The Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bavarian State Opera, the Salzburg Festival – everyone is clamouring for her clear-as-a-bell soprano. She recently impressed in the Elbphilharmonie as Micaëla in Georges Bizet’s opera »Carmen«. Fortunately, she is not only addicted to opera, but also to song. Together with her long-time piano partner Mathieu Pordoy, she sings her way through a whole cosmos of loving lullabies by Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss and Edvard Grieg at the Elbphilharmonie. In the second half of the concert, she juxtaposes Strauss’ »Mädchenblumen« about four female characters with the female perspective of Lili Boulanger’s songs. With works by Germaine Tailleferre and Cécile Chaminade, Devieilhe brings two other French female composers to the stage who otherwise often lag behind the voices of their male colleagues. Of course, the chanson icon Édith Piaf and her »Hymne à l’amour« should not be missing in such a frenzy of love.

Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

Gustav Mahler’s development and work as a composer focussed mainly on two musical genres: symphony and Lied (song). Again and again, the two very different forms approached each other, but the combination of the monumentality of the symphony and the intimacy of the song reached a hymn-like climax in »Das Lied von der Erde«. A compositional legacy based on texts by Hans Bethge that Mahler left to the world, knowing full well that his own death was already waiting for him at the next corner. Arnold Schönberg arranged Mahler’s final song for a chamber orchestra for the concerts of the »Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen«, a work that was finally completed by Rainer Riehn. The arrangement for chamber orchestra turned Mahler’s composition into a masterpiece of its own kind, in which the essence of the original sound is preserved through careful reduction and transformed into a new quality of characterisation and emotional experience.

Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

The works in this chamber music concert are all about love and connection, in words and through sound: when Johannes Brahms set about composing »Zwei Gesänge«, he had his close friendship with his long-time companion in mind, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Brahms wanted to create a musical memorial to his love and composed the »Geistliches Wiegenlied« for his wedding, based on a text by Emanuel Geibel, but he withdrew the composition and revised it. Together with »Gestillte Sehnsucht« based on a text by Friedrich Rückert, the composer later published both songs on the occasion of another happy event: the christening of Joseph Joachim’s son – and Brahm’s godson.

Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

Richard Strauss’ »Capriccio« seems remote from the world, in the face of the cruelty witnessed in the Second World War. The musical means of the late 19th century are used here in the 20th century to describe the time of the late 18th century. In the string sextet where the action begins, the »rapture« from earth is captured as though in a tableau. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third String Quartet was also thought to not be of its time, in a very different way. Described as the »patchwork of a madman«, this »crazy« music was met with incomprehension by the public. Beethoven though was deliberately seeking to challenge expectations when he took chamber music out of the living room and into the major concert halls of the day.

Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

This concert takes you on a musical voyage through the history of four female composers and one of the most underestimated female figures in opera history. It begins with Louise Farrenc – an exceptional figure of her time: as a pianist, professor, publisher, cultural manager and mother, she stands both as a pivotal figure in French music, and as an icon of creative combativeness.

Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital

This chamber music concert demonstrates how often music finds words for the inexpressible: Hugo Wolf composed his »Italian Serenade« for strings as an homage to the light-heartedness of his youth. If the tone in this work is cheerful, his songs reveal a different facet of the composer. In them, he attempted to unmask the masking of people, full of impressive authenticity and deep emotion. A composer’s life that wavered repeatedly between heaven and the abyss.

Récital de Marcelo Alvarez, ténor