Set your preferred locations for a better search. You can sign up here.

NOSPR / Alsop / Season finale. A Titan

Date & Time
Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 19:30
It is rare for “first” symphonies to be created in a spontaneous rapture of inspiration. The creative process may last more than a dozen years. Sometimes it is only the “second” that becomes the “first”, and at other times it only takes its final shape after emerging from a formal ambiguity. The one to blame for all this is the author of the “Eroica”, who set the bar so high that it is difficult for his successors to get rid... Read full text

Keywords: Subscription Concert, Symphony Concert

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

Musicians

Marin AlsopConductor
NOSPR

Program

Symphony No. 1Grażyna Bacewicz
Symphony No. 1 in D major TitanGustav Mahler
Give feedback
Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 12:16

Similar events

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

Artistic depiction of the event

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, 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 & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

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)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Alsop / Lewis / Lovers’ adventures in antiquity

Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 19:30
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Paul Lewis (Piano)
From the precision of classical drawing to a blaze of orchestral colours. The concert begins with the Introduction and Capriccio by Grażyna Bacewicz, a post-war neoclassical diptych awarded an honourable mention at the Karol Szymanowski Competition. Later, there comes Beethoven from his Promethean period – that of searching for new routes of formal development and means of musical expression. His Piano Concerto No. 4 is already astonishing at the very beginning, with the lonely meditative piano. It is in the intimate dialogues of the middle Andante, however,that some seek the metaphysical. Romanticists found it in the character of Orpheo, begging the Furies to give his lover back to him. It is worth finding out where today’s interpretations lead us.We are bound not to be disappointed by Richard Strauss in his quasi-slapstick tale of a picaresque folk hero. After a series of bravado-filled adventures, his Till Eulenspiegel will try to dupe death once again. Will his trick work this time as well? The final feast for the senses will be served by Maurice Ravel, illustrating Longus’ idyll with the colours of pastoral love in the second one of the orchestral suites from his Daphnis and Chloé. This will be framed with what is probably the most famous picture of dawn known in the history of music and the final bacchanalia crowning the lovers’ adventures in antiquity.Róża ŚwiatczyńskaConcert duration: approximately 100 minutes
Info (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Todorov / A revolutionary symphony

Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 12:00
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Najden Todorov (Conductor), NOSPR, Tine Thing Helseth (Trumpet)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s career spanned two eras – those of classicism and romanticism. As a child and teenager, he studied with Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Later, he befriended Ludwig van Beethoven, and later still the young Fryderyk Chopin, the Polish composer highly valuing his compositions and finding them inspirational for his own early work. Hummel’s Concerto in E-flat major for the trumpet was composed in 1803, with Anton Weidinger, a Viennese virtuoso of the instrument, in mind. Its premiere in a New Year concert in January 1804 was a celebration of the composer being appointed Konzertmeister to Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy's estate. The soloist is accompanied by a small orchestra consisting of flutes, clarinets, oboes, horns, timpani and strings. The mood is bright, and the virtuosic parts are suggestively combined with lyrical ones.Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major was composed at the same time as Hummel’s work. Its premiere to place in Vienna in 1800 and the strong impression it made helped its creator reinforce his position among the city’s musicians. Commentators pointed out the work’s innovativeness, which lay in surprising key changes, strong and unexpected rhythmical accents, as well as an increased autonomy of woodwind instruments. Paradoxically, later researchers preferred to emphasise the fact that this early work of Beethoven’s still features, quite naturally for a rather young composer, significant influence of Haydn’s and Mozart’s oeuvres. The truth lies in the middle – this is a work in which achievements of previous generations were creatively transformed by a progressively oriented composer.Oskar ŁapetaConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes
Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Bleuse / Mossakowski / A concerto for a thousand pipes

Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 19:30
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Pierre Bleuse (Conductor), NOSPR, Karol Mossakowski (Organ)
The Belgian creator, pedagogue and organ virtuoso, Joseph Jongen, describes his 1926 composition as follows: „The Symphonie c oncertante is not an organ concerto, but rather an orchestral work in which the organ is another orchestra that takes the leading role it rightly deserves. There is no thematic or rhythmic connection between the four movements of this extensive work; the focus is set on the stylistic unity of the different movements.” His friend, Eugène Ysaÿe, also pointed out the richness of the sounds of the organ, which creates an impression of coming into contact with “a second orchestra”. Nevertheless, the beginnings of what became one of the most interesting works in the 20th-century organ repertoire (also recorded by Karol Mossakowski) were not easy: commissioned by Rodman Wanamaker, the owner of a famous department store in Philadelphia, the piece needed to wait two years to be premiered, due to a series of unfortunate events including the death of Jongen’s father.Dramatic in its expression, Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7. in D minor was also a result of a commission, this time one from Royal Philharmonic Society in London which had just awarded him with honorary membership. During the 1885 premiere of the work, Dvořák stood at the conductor’s podium himself. The event was described by leading musical magazines and a critic writing for the „Athenaeum” daily noted the following: “We are inclined on a first hearing to place this new symphony even above those of Brahms, which it equals in masterly treatment and exquisite instrumentation while it surpasses them in spontaneity of invention.”Agnieszka Nowok-ZychConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 60 minutes
Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

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)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Schumann / Zehetmair / A concert the netherworld called for

Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 19:30
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Christian Schumann (Conductor), NOSPR, Thomas Zehetmair (Violin)
Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto was created in the ailing composer’s final years and was later considered lost for a long time. Written for the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, it seems permeated with inner struggle and a sense of resignation. The violinist never performed the piece publicly. After Schumann’s suicidal attempt and his confinement to an asylum, where he died after a short time, Joachim deemed the form of the piece to be an expression of its creator’s madness and put it in his drawer forever to remain there. Legend has it, but witnesses also confirm, that eighty years later Robert Schumann appeared to the participants of a seance held in London by Erik Kule Palmstierna, the Envoy of Sweden to the United Kingdom. The spirit ordered Joachim’s great-nieces, the violinists Jelly d’Arányi and Adila Fachiri, who were present at the table, to find and perform the lost piece. Although it was indeed recovered, the concerto was seized by the Nazis, who entrusted Georg Kulenkampff and the Berliner Philharmoniker with premiering it. The concert in Berlin took place in 1937, when Arnold Schönberg had already been forced to emigrate to the United States. His innovative creativity was not understood there, but the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra led by another emigrant, Otton Klemperer, gladly accepted his orchestral arrangement of an early piece by Johannes Brahms – the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor,Op. 25. Schönberg justified his orchestration of the chamber piece as follows: „1. I like this piece, 2. It is rarely played, 3. It is always played really badly, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, as a result of which the strings cannot be heard. I wanted to hear everything and I have achieved this.” Do we need a better recommendation?Adam SuprynowiczConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes
Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Vanoosten / Traubel / A manifesto of longing. „Eternal Songs"

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 19:30
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Victorien Vanoosten (Conductor), NOSPR, Sarah Traubel (Soprano)
The famous fate motif from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is the musical opening of the philosophical dialogue between a creator and the Creator, fate, or destiny.Nearly all of Richard Strauss’ oeuvre is music meandering among literary texts and pretexts. His songs and operas, but also symphonic poems, clearly reference programs written either in prose or in poems. In the case of instrumental works, those were often merely sources of primary inspiration, impulses that maintained only loose relationships with the final shape of the musical narrative.For Strauss, the final decade of the 19th century is a time of symphonic poems, gradually developed and bringing the idea, initiated by Liszt, towards an apogeum. It was also then that the poem Death and Transfiguration was created (1899). Its program is a vision of a man on his deathbed recalling the happy days of his past. The motto for the composition is a poem by Alexander Ritter, but the composer keeps his distance from it: the piece is „purely a work of imagination, and no fruit of my life’s experience (I only fell ill two years later). No more than a concept, just like any other”. Indeed, the music carries with it such a universally relatable existential message that no detailed explanation is needed: it leads from suffering and agony, through a rebellion against the inevitability of death, towards an ascent to light and salvation, to reach the final transfiguration and harmony.Nearing the end of his life, Strauss such found a form of expression for existential reflection that was new and sophisticated, but at the same time classically restrained. In 1948, he completed a cycle of songs to be dedicated to Kirsten Flagstad shortly before his death. The beauty of the Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) – maintaining the atmosphere of the twilight of poetry proper created by Hermann Hesse – is that of a text perfectly integrated with the sound of the orchestra. Each song is instrumented differently, but always beautifully, adequately for the emotionally eternal messages dressed in the garb of new sound.Amidst those two works by Strauss, there stand the Eternal Songs – a poem by Karłowicz that is not only excellent, but also entirely original on the levels of musical language and aesthetics. These are actually three poems, each cleped a song. They all amount to a manifestation of the composer’s longing for comfort to be found in the universe, a manifestation that evades verbal expression.Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)
Artistic depiction of the event

NOSPR / Zagrosek / Mahler’s happiest symphony

Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 19:30
Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)
Lothar Zagrosek (Conductor), NOSPR, Olga Bezsmertna (Soprano)
The most joyous one among Gustav Mahler’s symphonies does not, by any means, renounce either the grotesque irony that is so typical for the composer or eschatological threads. Yet again, it deals with the subject of death. This time, however, it is first represented by the grotesque Ländler played by the violin in the scherzo, later to introduce us to the realm of paradise in the finale. But is this true paradise, or rather an image, ironical in its effect, that arises from the naive folk poetry of The Boy’s Magic Horn collection, which the composer uses in his symphonies for the last time?Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 will be preceded by a concert overture, beethovenian in its style, by a Dutch colleague of the Bonn genius, one who introduced both Beethoven’s and Mozart’s music to his fatherland’s stages. No wonder, then, that it was that style exactly that Johann Wilhelm Wilms found inspirational not only for his Overture in D major, but for his symphonies as well. The exceptionally graciously led woodwind instruments remind us of the fact that the composer was also… a professional flutist.Jakub PuchalskiConcert duration: approximately 80 minutes
Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)