NDR Barock / Dorothee Oberlinger / Hansjörg Albrecht

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / NDR Barock / Hansjörg Albrecht

Born the son of a violonist, Antonio Vivaldi received violin lessons at an early age. In 1703, at the age of 25, he became a music teacher at the »Ospedale della Pietà«, an orphanage for young girls. There he gave his pupils music lessons every day from an early age. As a result, most of the girls were able to play two or three instruments and were also familiar with solo singing. Vivaldi remained at the school until 1716, where he not only taught, but also composed concertos and oratorios for the weekly performances. The orchestra of the Ospedale soon gained a legendary reputation that extended beyond the country’s borders and attracted numerous travellers to Italy. »The most remarkable music here in Venice is that of the hospitals,« reported the French scholar Charles de Brosses in a letter dated August 1739. »There are four of them, all inhabited by illegitimate daughters or orphan girls, or those whom their parents are unable to bring up. They are brought up at the expense of the state, and are trained to excel in music. They sing like angels and play the violin, flute, organ, oboe, violoncello, in short, no instrument is so big that it would frighten them. They live in seclusion like nuns. About 40 of them take part in every concert. I assure you, there is nothing more attractive than the sight of a pretty young nun, in a white habit and with a bunch of pomegranates behind her ear, conducting an orchestra and beating time with the greatest grace and precision.« The eroticising effect of such women’s concerts can also be seen in the fact that a not inconsiderable number of male concertgoers use these events to look for a bride...

Hansjörg Albrecht

Albrecht Mayer Berliner Barock Solisten

Three generations of the Bach family are featured in a concert with Albrecht Mayer and the Berliner Barock Solisten. Festive Baroque music in historically informed performance practice meets the warm sound of Mayer's oboe. The program spans from Johann Sebastian Bach's great-uncle, Johann Christoph, to his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, framed by works of Johann Sebastian himself.

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / Hansjörg Albrecht

»Jauchzet, frohlocket« – for many people, Christmas would be unthinkable without this familiar cry of joy. Bach knows like no other how to capture the words of Luke’s Gospel surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ in musical images. Originally, the various cantatas were spread over different days and were performed on the corresponding public holidays. Today, they are usually grouped together to create a large, coherent Christmas picture. With Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable music, this third Advent becomes a musical and aesthetic preparation for Christmas.

Dresdner Kapellsolisten / Jan Vogler / Hansjörg Albrecht

Like father, like sons: Johann Sebastian Bach was not the only composer in his family, his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian were also highly successful. Star cellist Jan Vogler and the renowned Dresdner Kapellsolisten dedicate themselves to their music in the grand opening concert of the Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Fest.

Igor Levit / Berliner Barock Solisten

When Igor Levit takes his seat at the keyboard, one thing is for sure: you’ll hear the pieces on the programme as never before. The German-Russian pianist makes his very own mark, often as unexpected as it is brilliant, on every work he plays, whisking even veteran repertoire warhorses into the here and now. In this concert Levit is accompanied by the Berliner Barock Solisten in music by two composers who can be described without exaggeration as pinnacles of music history: Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The most famous of the Bach sons made a no less illustrious career for himself than his father, and was admired by fellow composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. In this cleverly thought-out programme, Levit and the Berlin ensemble create a father-son dialogue along entirely modern lines.

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / Hansjörg Albrecht

The Magnificat by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, in which Mary expresses her love for God, but in which Mary is also celebrated as the epitome of love among mankind, forms the jubilant prelude to the final concert of this year’s International Bach Festival Hamburg with its youthful fire. In this concert, father and son face each other. Can the younger one stand up to the comparison with the older one? Can the son emancipate himself from the father with whom he was trained and learnt? The performers for this musical comparison are the Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Choir Hamburg, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Hansjörg Albrecht.

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / Symphoniker Hamburg / Hansjörg Albrecht

»Could you give your orchestra a little longing for spring when you play it, because I had that with me when I wrote it. I would like the very first trumpet blast to sound as if from on high, like a call to awakening,« wrote Robert Schumann to the conductor Wilhelm Taubert about his First Symphony in B flat major, of which he once proudly proclaimed: »It was born in a fiery hour.« It was written in a true creative frenzy: the 31-year-old composer sketched it in just four days at the end of January 1841 and finished the entire score a good three weeks later, on 20 February. This early spring symphony by Robert Schumann forms the opening of this intoxicating evening, the second half of which features the famous Carmina Burana. Carl Orff became famous overnight in 1937 with the large-scale Carmina Burana. Contemporary harmonies and expressive melodies are combined here with elements of medieval music, powerful rhythms and an artful simplicity. Orff composed this work to Latin, Middle and Old High German songs that were found in 1803 in the Benediktbeuren monastery in Bavaria and are today among the most important literary testimonies of the Middle Ages. In three parts, the songs of Carmina Burana tell of love and courtship, of romance and mysticism, but above all of the cycle of life. To this day, the work is one of the most popular pieces of serious music of the 20th century.

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor / Dresdner Festspielorchester / Hansjörg Albrecht

Bach, Bach, Bach ... Johann Sebastian Bach was a master of pastiche: he loved to reuse his own compositions in new contexts and to copy his pieces in order to demonstrate their flexibility and universality and to give them new expression. With the Lukas-Passion, we hear a work in precisely this pastiche manner. Bach never managed to finish writing this Passion. Now the Bach specialists Lorenz and Christoph Eglhuber, together with the renowned conductor Hansjörg Albrecht, have gone into Bach’s copying and composing room to write this missing Passion from his own compositions. The result is a highly exciting, dramatic work – from pieces written by Bach himself. The Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg brings it to the stage with the finest cast. The soloists are all absolute Bach experts. The Dresdner Festspielorchester is an orchestra made up of members of top-class ensembles of period performance practice. The audience can expect a festive baroque concert in the Passion season!

Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / Concerto Köln / Hansjörg Albrecht

The opening concert of this year’s International Bach Festival Hamburg will feature Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Passion cantata »Die letzten Leiden des Erlösers«, written for Hamburg, performed in the Laeiszhalle by the ensemble Concerto Köln, which specialises in historical performance practice, and the Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Choir. Together with the final concert on Easter Sunday, it forms the thematic arc of this Bach festival centred on the Passion and Resurrection.