Keywords: Symphony Concert
| Matthias Pintscher | Conductor |
| Cédric Tiberghien | Piano |
| Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin |
| “Twill by Twilight” in memory of Morton Feldman for orchestra | Toru Takemitsu |
| Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 | Béla Bartók |
| “neharot” for orchestra | Matthias Pintscher |
| “La valse” – Poème chorégraphique for orchestra | Maurice Ravel |
These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.
The concert will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur on 27 February 2024 at 8.03 pm.
A few days before Pierre Boulez’s 100th birthday, Matthias Pintscher and the Boulez Ensemble celebrate the composer, who passed away in 2016, with a perfor mance of sur Incises, his last major ensemble work. The program also includes Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp as well as Pintscher’s own beyond II (bridge over troubled water). Scored for the same combina tion of three instruments, it received its premiere as part of the digital Festival of New Music in the summer of 2020 and is now heard live at the Pierre Boulez Saal for the first time.
A gentle trill from the clarinet, a lascivious glissando, and one of the most famous pieces for piano and orchestra picks up speed: George Gershwin’s »Rhapsody in Blue«. Presented to the public slightly awkwardly in 1924 as an »experiment in modern music«, it has since become something of a signature tune for the Broadway composer. Catchy jazz and blues melodies together with a casual orchestral sound and a highly virtuoso piano part bring the Roaring Twenties vividly to life. The Kansas City Symphony is celebrating its 100th anniversary under the direction of its new chief conductor Matthias Pintscher together with 30-year-old pianist Conrad Tao, whom the New York Times sees as the »future of classical music«. This highlight of the piano repertoire is framed by two further classics by famous American composers: Charles Ives’s »Three Places in New England« with a marvellously whimsical march in the middle section, and Aaron Copland’s powerful Third Symphony. Welcome to the United States of America!
German Matthias Pintscher conducts Camille Saint-Saëns “Egyptian” piano concerto, Claude Debussy’s tribute to Spain and England, and his own orchestral piece neharot, which he wrote at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) had his international breakthrough as a composer in his 20s with symphonies, opera and ballet. He has since established himself as a conductor at the highest level. Pintscher wrote the orchestral work neharot in 2020 and has himself described the work as follows:“Neharot means rivers in Hebrew, but also tears. It also describes lamentation. This music was written during the worst period of the many daily deaths in the spring of 2020...and is a clear echo of the desolation and fear, but also the hope for light that so emotionally characterized this time in our lives.”Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris and lived there his whole life. But he loved to travel, and preferred to spend the winter in warmer climates. Egypt was one of his favorite travel destinations, and in the winter of 1896, he wrote his Piano Concerto No. 5, which was nicknamed “The Egyptian”, in the historic city of Luxor.The music in Piano Concerto No. 5 has clear exotic undertones, perhaps inspired as much by Javanese and Spanish music as by the Middle East. Saint-Saëns was a brilliant pianist, and like in his previous piano concertos, he combines brilliant piano playing with catchy melodies.Claude Debussy (1862–1918) also came from and lived in Paris. Unlike Saint-Saëns, it did not travel outside of Europe’s borders. In the orchestral work Images pour orchestra, he conjures up musical paintings of his three favorite countries: England, Spain, and France.In the first movement, Gigues, the enigmatic atmosphere of the opening is broken by a famous English folk tune. Ibéria describes Spain in three colorful parts: “Along the streets and along the paths”, “The scents of the night” and “The morning of a festive day”. The third movement, “Round dances of spring”, is a jubilant tribute to spring and May.
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).
When Verdi’s »Patria oppressa« meets Kendlinger’s »Höre Mensch«, musical forces unite for human rights. There is an essential point of contact in the work of the maestro of Italian opera and the contemporary Austrian composer Matthias Georg Kendlinger – it is always people who take centre stage.
Francis Poulenc had a mischievous streak in his neck. Contemporaries accused him of lacking seriousness in his Gloria – and indeed, movements two and four are quite jokey. He was called a »monk and rascal« because he was also capable of serious inner reflection. He considered his music to be as cheerful and pious as monks playing soccer, which he had once observed. The other movements of the Gloria show other typical characteristics of Francis Poulenc’s music: heroic sound with timpani and trumpets at the beginning, intimate sounds with woodwinds, solo singing and choir in the third movement and a large, softer sound in the finale. Poulenc himself said: »I believe I have brought the best and most credible aspect of myself into my choral music.«
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