ConcertPulseSpangenberg plays Nirvana // Solopiano
Date & Time
Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 20:00
Musicians
| Christoph Spangenberg | Artist |
Program
Information not provided |
Last update: Sat, Nov 9, 2024, 14:10
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Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is one of the most acclaimed soloists in the classical music world. With his warm touch and passionate musicality, he attracts huge audiences. This season, he is the Artist-in-Residence at the Concert Hall.Here, we get to meet him in Brahms's magnificent first piano concerto. He returns on two more occasions during the season, first in a recital where he plays Beethoven's last three piano sonatas, and then with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Brahms's second piano concerto. For this first visit, it's Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft who conducts.The concert opens with Anders Hillborg's dazzlingly elegant Sound Atlas. The glass harmonica – an instrument where fingers are rubbed on tuned glass bells – plays a significant role in the piece, contributing to the music's crystalline character. Additionally, we hear music by the Welsh pioneer Grace Williams. Her Four Illustrations for the Legend of Rhiannon is based on ancient Welsh tales.Read more about chief conductor Ryan Bancroft
Víkingur plays Brahms
Konserthuset Stockholm, The Main Hall (Stockholm)
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is one of the most acclaimed soloists in the classical music world. With his warm touch and passionate musicality, he attracts huge audiences. This season, he is the Artist-in-Residence at the Concert Hall.Here, we get to meet him in Brahms's magnificent first piano concerto. He returns on two more occasions during the season, first in a recital where he plays Beethoven's last three piano sonatas, and then with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Brahms's second piano concerto. For this first visit, it's Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft who conducts.The concert opens with Anders Hillborg's dazzlingly elegant Sound Atlas. The glass harmonica – an instrument where fingers are rubbed on tuned glass bells – plays a significant role in the piece, contributing to the music's crystalline character. Additionally, we hear music by the Welsh pioneer Grace Williams. Her Four Illustrations for the Legend of Rhiannon is based on ancient Welsh tales.Read more about chief conductor Ryan Bancroft
Spangenberg plays Nirvana
Laeiszhalle, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
The idea of performing the songs of the legendary grunge band Nirvana on just the piano is obvious and unimaginable in equal measure. Two worlds that couldn’t be more different collide, yet they are emotionally far more similar than they may seem. Unlike Nirvana, Christoph Spangenberg will hopefully not be destroying any pianos, but he will be using all means at his disposal to bring classics such as »About a Girl«, »Come as You Are« and »Smells Like Teen Spirit« to the piano in his unique style. Without drums, bass or singing – but with years of experience in various musical fields, from jazz to hip-hop and techno. The music of the globally celebrated early-90s band with distorted guitar and screaming vocals is brimming with punk – and has a very different feel to the grand piano with its classical elegance. Imagine what would have happened had Kurt Cobain not only spat on Elton John’s piano at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, but sat down to play it. Presumably it would have fallen victim, just like all the band’s other instruments, to the musicians’ destructive nature.
Jan Mráček plays Strawinski
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Yefim Bronfman plays Schumann
Konzerthalle Bamberg, Joseph-Keilberth-Saal (Bamberg)
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Yefim Bronfman plays Schumann
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The writer Jean Giono was convinced that “the world is an optimistic creation”, citing as proof the fact that “all birds sing in a major key!" In keeping with springtime, this concert will put some chirruping birds on stage, starting with a composition from our guest conductor's native Finland. Einojuhani Rautavaara, who died in 2016, was a creative free spirit. He wrote his popular "Cantus Arcticus" in 1972 – a neo-romantic, mystical piece that uses tape recordings of bird calls. Our programme also features a masterpiece by Stravinsky, whom Cocteau described in poetic terms: "From a musical point of view, we were all in the midst of impressionism. There, suddenly, in the midst of the magical ruins, a tree grew – Stravinsky." In this fairy-tale score, the glittering firebird flutters through an enchanted garden. Schumann, too, was inspired by feathered beings: according to his wife Clara, he “firmly believed that angels were hovering around him, making the most glorious revelations to him." Yefim Bronfman will dive into the romantic wonderland of Schumann's Piano Concerto, first performed in 1845, which contains an allusion to the aria "In des Lebens Frühlingstagen" (“In the spring of life”) from Beethoven's "Fidelio”. The celebrated South Korean composer Donghoon Shin once said that in his creative workshop he could "hear all the sounds of the universe", and accordingly his work is shaped by a huge range of different influences. His brand-new orchestral piece is inspired by the political poem "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" by the Irish Literature Nobel Prize laureate William Butler Yeats – and challenges the notion of an “optimistic creation”, reflecting our current troubled times.
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Konzerthalle Bamberg, Joseph-Keilberth-Saal (Bamberg)
»Passion is a state of the soul.« Salvator Dali once said this – and Tchaikovsky can arguably be regarded as the embodiment of this state: He was an emotional man through and through, who often struggled with not being what society expected him to be. Even his nanny called him a »porcelain child«. His states of mind left traces, especially in his most individual symphony, which was premiered in 1893 shortly before his unexpected death. He said he had »put his whole soul into the "Pathétique«: The work outlines different stages of his life with passionate melodies as well as an orgy of bass notes – and concludes with a heartbreaking Adagio. Prokofiev, too, was regularly subject to severe hostility and left his Russian homeland after the October Revolution of 1917 – but was never really pleased with having to live in what he saw as an alien »mental climate«. Shortly before he returned, he wrote the Second Violin Concerto in 1935 during his »nomadic existence«: although it is peppered with sarcastic humour, it follows the great Romantic tradition: one biographer characterised »the almost cliché-like enchanting« gesture of the solo violin in the Andante as »soulfulness« – in which Vadim Gluzman will wallow. A contemporary example of an artist who had to leave his beloved fatherland is the eminent composer Valentin Silvestrov: he fled Ukraine for Berlin. At the beginning of our concert, we will play his »Evening Serenade« from 2002 under the baton of Juraj Valčuha – a very melancholic piece which, thanks to its contemplative limbo, seems like a memory of beautiful and fulfilling hours of times gone by.
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Het Concertgebouw, Main Hall (Amsterdam)
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Alina Ibragimova plays Prokofiev
In a time of revolution, Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto wove fairytale magic – and no-one makes it dance like Alina Ibragimova.‘Music is life’, declared Carl Nielsen, ‘and like it, inextinguishable!’ Defiant words from a composer who’d seen a world laid waste by war, but they could serve as motto for this concert from the dynamic Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu. In a time of revolution, Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto wove fairytale magic – and no-one makes it dance like our soloist Alina Ibragimova. There’s a vision of cosmic beauty from the late, great Kaija Saariaho. And finally, Nielsen launches a struggle for the future of existence itself: his shattering Fifth Symphony is one of those pieces that simply has to be experienced live.Please note start time.