Matthias Kirschnereit / Hamburger Kammerorchester / Christian Kunert

Matthias Kirschnereit / Hamburger Kammerorchester / Christian Kunert

»Music is the universal language of mankind« – this quote from the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reflects the power and importance of music. Music connects people from different cultures and backgrounds and creates a common language. The Hamburg Chamber Orchestra’s innovative concert series »Music of the World« begins with a cycle of Mozart’s 23 piano concertos in several concerts.

Matthias Kirschnereit / Hamburger Kammerorchester / Christian Kunert

»Music is the universal language of mankind« – this quote from the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reflects the power and importance of music. Music connects people from different cultures and backgrounds and creates a common language. The Hamburg Chamber Orchestra’s innovative concert series »Music of the World« begins with a cycle of Mozart’s 23 piano concertos in several concerts.

Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn / Matthias Kirschnereit / Case Scaglione

Together with its principal conductor Case Scaglione and the Hamburg pianist Matthias Kirschnereit, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn is heading to the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In addition to the early symphonic works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and one of Edvard Grieg’s most popular string pieces, Joseph Haydn will be at the centre of the programme. With Matthias Kirschnereit, an expert pianist is on board who has been a valued solo partner of the WKO not only since the highly praised joint album with all of Haydn’s piano concertos (»wit and great drive«, Rondo magazine).

Matthias Pintscher

Christian Thielemann

Giuseppe Verdi is the only composer featured on the program of this year’s Open Air at Odeonsplatz with the BRSO conducted by Christian Thielemann – and yet, this is a program rich in contrasts. First, there is ballet music that Verdi added in some of his operas in order to please the dance-obsessed Parisian audience: the Witches’ Dance from Macbeth, a dance interlude during the coronation festivities in Don Carlo, and the ballet music in Otello. The orchestra will then join forces with the BR-Choir and perform Verdi’s musical testament: the Quattro pezzi sacri. The four movements comprising the work are Verdi’s last sacred compositions. While Verdi was not religious, he nevertheless wanted to take this work with him in afterlife: “With this hymn of praise I will go before God and beg him for mercy.”

Altonaer Singakademie / Hamburger Camerata

Antonín Dvorák wrote his Mass in D major op. 86 for the consecration of a village castle chapel in 1887, so it can be seen as a kind of occasional composition, with the occasion acting as a most welcome trigger of ready forces. Sacred compositions had always played a role in Dvořák’s oeuvre, even if they seem to have taken a back seat to his symphonic works. Nevertheless, it was the Stabat Mater of 1877 that laid the foundation for the international reception of his music. The Mass in D major is much more modestly conceived, in keeping with the village setting and the possibilities of the chapel. Nevertheless, even in the original organ version, Dvorák shows his full mastery. In the compositional simplicity, the proximity to classical music, especially to Schubert as a role model, can be felt at all times. At the same time, Dvořák succeeds in capturing the cheerful, carefree atmosphere of the lovely Bohemian countryside and the simplicity of a deeply religiously rooted country folk with his own folkloristic originality of melody. Dvorák created the rarely performed orchestral version heard in this concerto in 1892, in which he remains very close to the original conception, but skilfully uses the possibilities of the orchestra to differentiate the dynamics more finely and realise a richer harmony. The »Mass of the Children«, written by John Rutter in 2002 in memory of his son Christopher, who died at the age of 19, is much more than a mass with an obbligato children’s choir part. Rutter counterpoints the mass text of the Latin Missa brevis with poetic texts in English, including verses from the pen of Bishop Thomas Ken (1637–1711), who wrote them for the scholars of Winchester College. They set the Mass in the context of a daily routine, from waking (»Awake, my soul...«) to going to sleep (»Glory to thee, my God, this night...«) and are mainly sung by the children’s choir. In this way, Rutter focuses on the Mass text from a child’s perspective, while the large choir illuminates the adult perspective. The »Mass of the Children« also sheds light on different musical perspectives. Coming from the English choral tradition himself, Rutter enriches his style in general and the Mass in particular with elements from jazz and pop by integrating them into a multi-layered harmony and rhythm. Rutter’s melodic inventiveness in the Kyrie may evoke musical associations for some, while the unusual rhythms in the Gloria are reminiscent of South American dances. In Dona nobis, Rutter quotes a canon by Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585) and thus draws a line back to his own musical roots.

Hamburger Konzertchor: Frühlings-Gala

HansePhilharmonie Hamburg

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).

CHRISTIAN IMMLER & ANDREAS FRESE

In 2013, Jörg Widmann composed his first—and to date his only—song cycle. Das heiße Herz (“The Hot Heart”) is based on the works of a wide range of authors, including Clemens Brentano, Heinrich Heine, Klabund, and Peter Härtling, as well as lesser known poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Christian Immler and Andreas Frese, who have won acclaim for their collaboration on the cycle’s premiere recording, perform Widmann’s songs opposite works by Schumann and Mahler.

120 years of Hamburger Orchestergemeinschaft

As Hamburg’s oldest amateur symphony orchestra, the Hamburger Orchestergemeinschaft from 1904 organises at least two concerts a year. Time and again, the orchestra gives young, very talented conductors and soloists the opportunity to gain experience with public performances in large concert halls. For the anniversary concert, the orchestra under the direction of Wolf Tobias M. Müller showcases its musical breadth with a colourful bouquet of overtures and arias from Mozart to Puccini as well as Schubert’s »Unfinished« Symphony. To celebrate the anniversiary, a new percussion concerto by Fredrik Schwenk will be premiered.