Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe conducts Dvořák

Bach: St Matthew Passion / Philippe Herreweghe

Thank goodness for Mendelssohn! If the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn had not brought Bach’s »St Matthew Passion« back to light in 1829, after it had lain forgotten in some archive since the first performance a century earlier, an incomparable masterpiece would be missing from the concert and church music repertoire. More than that, in fact: with his revival of the »St Matthew Passion«, the young composer kicked off a massive renaissance of Bach’s music that has lost none of its momentum to this day. One of the core works in this Bach revival is the »St Matthew Passion«, whose dramatic density and brilliant musical structure cast a spell over audiences 300 years ago, as they still do today. The Easter masterpiece is performed tonight at the Elbphilharmonie by a team of experienced Bach specialists: Philippe Herreweghe conducts the Collegium Vocale Gent together with a hand-picked line-up of soloists. A musical experience that will certainly stay with the audience long after the concert is over.

Orchestre des Champs-Élysées / Collegium Vocale Gent / Philippe Herreweghe

200 years of Ode To Joy. 200 years of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. A convincing reason for Philippe Herreweghe and his excellent ensembles from Paris and Ghent to look at the 1824 masterpiece from a completely new perspective. To mark the anniversary of the monumental symphony with its brilliant choral finale, whose »sparkle of the gods« seems to have become ever more radiant over the centuries, he juxtaposes it with an eminently pacifist work: Hanns Eisler’s 1936 choral composition »Gegen den Krieg« (Against the War) based on a text by Bertolt Brecht. The expressive work is characterised by Eisler’s own traumatic experiences from the First World War and the looming disaster of the next war. Both a warning and a glimmer of hope speak from this programme, which ultimately sends out a »Seid umschlungen Millionen!« (Be embraced millions!) into the world.

Philippe Jordan

In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.

Philippe Jordan

In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.