Katowice Culture Nature Festival / The Gardens of Goodbyes / NOSPR / Alsop / Mahler

Date & Time

Thu, May 8, 2025, 19:30

Venue

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Having composed his gigantic Symphony No. 8 – crowned with the Goethean vision of the afterworld, in which Faust’s soul, seeking salvation, is wandering among other spiritual beings – in his next work, Mahler reached for texts by classical Chinese poets translated by Hans Bethge. These present a diametrically different perspective: instead of the heavens, their gaze is directed towards the Earth.The Song of the Earth is, in a way, a symphony of songs performed by, alternatively, a tenor and... Read full text

Keywords: Festival Katowice Culture Nature, Subscription Concert, Vocal Music

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Musicians

Marin Alsop	Conductor
NOSPR
Stuart Skelton	Tenor
Rinat Shaham	Alto

Program

To be updated...

Give feedback

Last update: Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 18:52

Similar events

These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Oriental Dreams and Polish Springs / NOSPR / Kuan

Fri, May 16, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Carolyn Kuan (Conductor), Sasha Cooke (Mezzo-Soprano)

Ferde Grofé, the American composer known for his orchestration of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, spent much time in the Grand Canyon, observing changes of the seasons and the weather. His impressions proved inspirational for the composition of the 1929-1931 five-movement Grand Canyon Suite. Thanks to the suggestive musical imaging, the composition quickly gained popularity in the United States and appeared in a 1958 Walt Disney animation. Its last movement, Cloudburst, which will open the final concert of the Katowice Culture Nature Festival, shows a picturesque idyll interrupted by the eponymous violent phenomenon.In 1904, Maurice Ravel, inspired by Arabian Nights and Rimski-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, completed a cycle of three songs for soprano and orchestra, setting to music poems by Tristan Klingsor. In order to present the oriental dreams of a European fascinated with the magic of the East, the composer attempted to translate the scents, colours, characters and sounds of the Orient into music. Thus, he created an impressionistic vision of an idealised realm of subtle beauty and sensual love.A year prior to Ravel’s Scheherazade, Zygmunt Noskowski composes the Symphony No. 3, his last one, intended to “express the moods of the seasons with sounds”. He places each season within the Polish sonic landscape through the use of characteristic dance rhythms and four Polish folk songs. The work is a sonic nod to the tradition of German pastoral symphonies in the Beethovenian spirit, thanks to brilliantly outlined themes, the “pastoral” key of F minor and the illustrative titles of its movements.Wojciech Stępień

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / The Romantic Arcadia / NOSPR Chamber Players / Schubert

Tue, May 13, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Chamber Hall (Katowice)

Piotr Tarcholik (Violin), Oriana Masternak (Violin), Łukasz Syrnicki (Viola), Adam Krzeszowiec (Cello), Janusz Widzyk (Double bass), Bartosz Pacan (Clarinet), Cezary Rembisz (Bassoon), Paweł Cal (French horn)

This year, the programme of the festival’s chamber concert consists in only one piece: Franz Schubert’s Octet in F major for clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet and double bass. What may be lacking in quantity, however, is more than made up for in quality. The work can undoubtedly be described as crowning the tradition of Viennese da camera music in its “lighter” form. This current is marked by numerous divertimenti, serenades, nocturnes and cassations by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (not to mention the lesser composers). Inspiration for the Octet came from count Ferdinand von Troyer, chief steward at the court of archduke Rudolf Habsburg and a remarkable… clarinetist! The aristocrat would frequently perform the clarinet part in Beethoven’s Septetin E-flat major, popular in Vienna at the time, but he dreamt about a new piece to “complement” it. Indeed, Schubert adopted Beethoven’s Septet as a blueprint: he copied its formal framework (only switching the positions of the menuet and the scherzo), added the part of the second violin – and filled the framework with his own, deeply “Schubertian” music. This consists of wonderful melodies, astonishing harmonies, danceable rhythms – and an atmosphere, certainly closer to the then-suburban Grinzing than the imperial city of Vienna. The composer completed his Octet on 1st March 1824 (as noted in the score), and the first performance took place in the same month already, at Troyer’s Viennese palace – with the master of the house in the main role, while the first violin was played by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Beethoven’s “full-time” chamber player. In the early 1824, clearly “on a roll”, in a letter to his friend, the painter Leopold Kupelwieser, writing about the completion of his two quartets (Rosamunde and Death and the maiden, both works of true genius) and the Octet, Schubert added: “In that manner, I wanted to pave my way towards a great symphony.” Indeed, he soon began work on the Symphony in C major, which would become his response to Beethoven’s Ninth. Although he never heard it, it was the one that posterity dubbed Great.Stanisław KoszConcert duration: approximately 60 minutes

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Expulsion from the Paradise of Love / Bostridge / Giorgini / Schubert

Wed, May 14, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Ian Bostridge (Tenor), Saskia Giorgini (Piano)

The German poet Wilhelm Müller – as many a youth of his generation – was fascinated by Romanticism and dreamt about a community of the lyrical and the musical. Indeed, history remembered him predominantly as the lyricist of two famous song cycles by Franz Schubert. While Müller did not show a talent as great as Goethe’s or Schiller’s (even though he influenced Heine’s maturing imagination), the feelings and senses found in his poetry still provided Schubert with images and motives suggestive enough to show the composer new and surprising shades. In the twenty songs that form "The Fair Maid of the Mill" (1823), Müller and Schubert tell us the story of a young apprentice in search of work, who falls in love with a miller’s beautiful daughter; yet he fails in his efforts to win her heart, defeated by his rival – a hunter. He shares both his enthusiasm and his pain with his trusted confidant, the stream. Thus, friendly arcadian nature becomes something more than a mute witness to the protagonist’s drama.It is in the very same year in which The Fair Maid of the Mill was created that Schubert reaches for the text of a ballad by his close friend, Franz von Schober. The image created in Viola makes nature less of a poetic setting and more of an apt metaphor of human fate. The titular lyrical heroine, symbolizing purity and hope, awaits nuptials with her beloved – Spring – in vain. Once more in Schubert’s music, the beauty of life is overshadowed by suffering.Bartłomiej BarwinekConcert duration: approximately 60 minutes

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / The Adventures of a Biblical Hero / Il pomo d’oro / Corti / DiDonato

Sun, May 11, 2025, 18:00

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Francesco Corti (Conductor), Il Pomo d’Oro, Michael Spyres (Bariton), Joyce DiDonato (Mezzo-Soprano), Mélissa Petit (Soprano), Cody Quattlebaum (Bariton), Jasmin White (Contralto)

„Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute” – so begins the biblical story of Jephthah, who freed the people of Israel from the reign of the Ammonites. Before heading into battle, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice the first being that comes to greet him should he return home victorious. The one who greeted him was his only daughter. Jefte “did with her according to his vow that he had made”, but before doing so, he yielded to his only child’s request, which was that she could spend some time in the mountains, where she would weep at her virginity. According to Jewish tradition, Jephthah had to fulfil his vow because he showed hubris in failing to seek advice with jurists, who might have told him that the Torah forbade human sacrifice. However, some rabbis have found that it was not his daughter’s life, but her virginity that was offered as sacrifice – considering this enough of a punishment, as childlessness was considered shameful to Israelites. It was the latter interpretation that was adopted by Thomas Morell, whose collaboration with Händel had started with the Judas Maccabaeus libretto. Jephtha proved to be the last oratorio in the composer’s oeuvre. It was premiered on 26th February 1752 at Covent Garden, conducted by Händel himself and performed by his most famous singers. The work made history as an ambiguous symbol of agony: Jephthah’s pain, written down in the sounds, and the suffering of the composer, who was gradually losing sight and wrote “How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees” at the end of the score. Jephthah ruled over Israel for six years. Händel died seven years after the premiere of Jephtha. Dorota KozińskaConcert duration: approximately 160 minutes

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Nature and Love / Piano Recital: Seong-Jin Cho

Thu, May 15, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Seong Jin Cho (Piano)

And where is Chopin? – one might want to ask, looking into the programme of the festival recital by the winner of the 17th Chopin Competition (2015). Let us answer as follows: and where is Ravel, whose complete piano works Seong-Jin Cho has just recorded? This time, then, there will be neither Chopin nor Ravel, but there will be Liszt, Beethoven, Bartók and Brahms: truly sophisticated pianistics, yet framed within a somewhat disputatious programme. This is because, instead of the Liszt of his virtuosic “transcendental” fireworks, we will hear the later Liszt, the colorist: the impressionising Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este from the third volume of the Years of Pilgrimage, in a way prophesying Maurice Ravel’s “aquatic” textures in Jeux d’eau or Ondine. As for Beethoven, this time he will not be represented by any of the “titanic”, but by one of the most “gentle” sonatas: the Sonata in D major op. 28, dubbed the Pastoral by its publisher, with the wonderful quasi-balladic opening. Bartok’s Out of Doors (Szabadban) is a cycle marked by extremity, in terms of the concentration of sharp and radical dissonances juxtaposed with archetypal elements of Hungarian folk (“peasant” – as Bartók put it) music. The dynamic first and last piece, titled With Drums and Pipes and The Chase are dominated by the lively rhythmic expression, with the fourth piece, The Night’s Music, poles apart from them, evoking an aura of uncanny mysteriousness. The second part of the recital brings Brahms, yet this time it is not the late, intro- and retro-spective Klavierstücke, but the Sonata No. 3 in F minor, full of youthful elan. A huge, five-movement work, in which the composer seems to feel no sense of respect for the great Beethoven. Its most wonderful part remains the poetic (after all, it has a motto coming from a poem by Sternau!) nocturne, the Andante espressivo in the second movement, replete with inspiration. This will be, indeed… big game!Stanisław KoszConcert duration: approximately 90 minutes

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Jazz / Adam Ben Ezra / Heavy Drops (duo)

Sat, May 10, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Adam Ben Ezra (Double bass), Shayan Fathi (Drums)

A phenomenal multi-instrumentalist and true master of the double bass, Adam Ben Ezra is one of the world’s finest bassists. He has given hundreds of solo performances in Europe and in the United States, and collaborated with such stars as Pat Metheny and Snarky Puppy. The titular piece of his 2015 debut Can’t Stop Running amassed over a million views on YouTube and the artist himself has been a favourite with critics and audiences alike for many years now. His playing stands out thanks to the entirely unique sound of the instrument. He seamlessly joins lyrical melodies with chordal accompaniment and energetic percussive beat hit on the sound box. He complements the solo bass timbre with electronics and looped layers of vocals and other live instruments he records himself (such as the flute and the piano), the final effect being closer to the sound of a large jazz ensemble than that of a soloist.During his NOSPR concert, Ben Ezra will present material from his latest, fifth, album Heavy Drops. He made the recording in a duo with the exquisite Spanish drummer Michael Olivera, while on the Katowice stage he will be joined by the drummer Shayan Fathi, originally from Tehran. Similarly to his earlier albums, Ezra once more blends the sound of electric jazz (Cosmic Nomad) with oriental and flamenco influences (Taming the Bull), additionally enchanting listeners with his sensitivity and musicality in purely acoustic pieces (Portrait of Natalie). Magdalena Stochniol

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Next month

In Katowice

Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Return to Paradise? / Orchestra di Santa Cecilia / Harding / Bell

Fri, May 9, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Daniel Harding (Conductor), Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Roma, Joshua Bell (Violin)

The neoclassical balance to be found in the Violin Concerto in A minor is not only due to Antonín Dvořák’s own efforts, but also to the persuasion of its dedicatee, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, whom the composer himself asked for advice. The themes of this three-movement work are full of Slavic intonations, at times lively and at times lyrical. The heart of the Concerto is the middle movement – one of unusual size and creating an idyllic aura: its cloudless skies are only rarely spoiled by passing worries. The main problem troubling Gustav Mahler – the intuition that beauty is but a deceitful escape from the tragic condition of the human being – is already present, with its full force, in his Symphony No. 1. The work opens with one of the most wonderful musical images of spring awakening, which fills the care-free heart of the youthful wanderer (Mahler used a quote from his own song I Went This Morning over the Field). Slowly, however, dramatic tones begin to show – nature is no paradise and the veil of its seductive forms hides suffering. It is not only the human being that is touched by agony, but other creatures as well. This is “told”, in a tone of tragic irony, by the third movement – a grotesque funeral march, inspired by a picture of a hunter seen off to his eternal rest by a procession of animals. The finale begins with an explosion of despair. The protagonist of the symphony, in Mahler’s own words, “triumphs only in death, defeating himself. Then, the miraculous allusion to the days of youth will be heard.”Marcin Trzęsiok Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Finished

NOSPR / Alsop / Sumino / Inauguration of the season 2024/2025

Fri, Oct 4, 2024, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Hayato Sumino (Piano)

We invite you to a live broadcast of the concert on Polish Radio 2.Samuel Barber began composing the Symphony No. 1 in1935, at the age of twenty-five. At the end of 1942 and at the beginning of 1943, he made significant amendments to the score, eventually to dedicate it to Gian Carlo Menotti – his university friend and later life partner. Commenting on this symphonic debut, he admitted that the intention behind it was a polemical dialogue with the classical tradition: „The form of my Symphony in One Movement is a synthetic treatment of the four-movement classical symphony. It is based on three themes of the initial Allegro non troppo, which retain throughout the work their fundamental character.”The concept of the Concertino by the twenty-nine-year-old Władysław Szpilman– that of a single-movement “small concerto” – is similarly untypical. His first and only composition for piano with orchestra was created in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940. Hence the “compactness” of the form. The graceful character, references to jazz and subtle allusions to Chopin permeate the melodies and harmonic language of the Concertino, showing Szpilman as akin to Prometheus, one who brings light into the darkest places of human despair and sorrow.In the case of the forty-year-old Johannes Brahms, one could call his Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a, a “protodebut”. The story of how long Brahms, filled with doubt, was preparing for his Symphony No. 1 (1876), is one of the most frequently discussed aspects of his biography. The 1873 Variations are a significant step in this process. They constitute a prototype of the symphonic idea and texture, and simultaneously a tribute and a token of admiration for the author of TheCreation of the World. „He was quite someone!” was how Brahms wrote about Haydn a year before his own death. “Oh, how pitiful are we against someone like him!”With his Rhapsody in Blue (1924), today, Gershwin is an iconic figure, standing like the Colossus of Rhodes, towering over the borderline between two orders – those of classical music and jazz. However, when the twenty-six-year-old was entering the conservative realm of American concert halls with his slightly nonchalant Broadway gait, he was crossing a line no one had ignored in such an ostentatious manner before. Paul Whiteman organised the Experiment in Modern Music concert in order to prove that the relatively new form of music called jazz deserved being recognised as a serious and sophisticated form of art. The Rhapsody proved that being first and brave is worth the risk!Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes

Info (nospr.org.pl)

Finished

NOSPR / Alsop / Requiem as a tribute

Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, NFM Choir, Lionel Sow (NFM Choir Art Director), Pierre-Louis de Laporte (Choir preparation), Erica Eloff (Soprano), Ben McAteer (Bariton), Szymon Nehring (Piano), Zuzanna Nalewajek (Alto)

“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

Info (nospr.org.pl)

Finished

NOSPR / Alsop / Yang / Polish sonorism and music of the north

Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 19:30

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Inmo Yang (Violin)

Although Sibelius’ Violin Concerto is not programmatic music, it is permeated by the same Northern colour and breadth of breath that can be found in nearly all works by the creator of Finlandia. This is because landscape is not present there merely as a decoration – as it was in 18th-century music – but to reflect the scenery of the soul. Part of the core violinistic repertoire, enclosed within the framework of classical form, for over a hundred years, the piece has not ceased to inspire a sense of wonder, not only with its mysterious atmosphere and richness of sound, but also with its symphonic elan and originality of themes. While the British musicologist Donald Tovey called the final movement of the Concerto a “polonaise for polar bears”, he granted it – and rightly so! – an honourable place among the greatest violin concertos of Romanticism. Another great classic of 20th-century music is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, in which – as Alex Ross put it – the Hungarian composer and folklore researcher “decided to throw away his notebook and began dancing with them [peasants]. From the strings, there rise clouds of dust, setting on the feet of the frenzied dancers.”. While the musical language of this late work of Bartok’s is a softened one, its form is classicising, and the sounds are nearly euphonic, still what is the most important for his style was retained – distinct rhythms, colourful instrumentation, and subtle inspiration drawn from folklore. Piotr MatwiejczukConcert duration: approximately 110 minutes

Info (nospr.org.pl)