STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN & FINNEGAN DOWNIE DEAR

Festtage­konzert Staatskapelle Berlin

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Boulez, an influential composer and conductor closely associated with the Staatskapelle Berlin. The FESTTAGE concert will feature music by Alban Berg and Gustav Mahler, composers with whom Boulez had a special relationship, and Boulez's own "Notations" for large orchestra, a piece familiar to the Staatskapelle.

Staatskapelle Berlin: Gastspiel in Wien

Staatskapelle Berlin: Gastspiel in Wien

Staatskapelle Berlin and Susanna Mälkki

In this programme the Staatskapelle Berlin under Susanna Mälkki present music that is conscious of death while attempting to grasp the value of life. Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde was written immediately after the death of his daughter. Hush is the final work of composer Kaija Saariaho, that could only be premiered after her death in 2023 – yet movingly resonates with life.

BERLIN STAATSKAPELLE STRING QUARTET

British composer Thomas Adès’s Arcadiana combines musical and non­musical influences—from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte to the paintings of Poussin and Watteau, to Greek mythology—to evoke paradisiacal scenes. In its second concert of the season, the Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet performs the piece, written in 1994 and already considered a contemporary classic, alongside 19th­century quartets by Schubert and Beethoven.

BERLIN STAATSKAPELLE STRING QUARTET & MOJCA ERDMANN

When Felix Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny died unexpectedly in 1847, the composer confessed to feeling “the greatest emptiness and barrenness in my mind and heart.” He poured his grief into his F-minor String Quartet, which was to remain the last quartet he completed before passing away himself just a few months later. The Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet combines this instrumental requiem with Gustav Mahler’s Rückert Songs—works that also talk about love and leave-taking—in an arrangement by Swiss composer David Philip Hefti, with Mojca Erdmann as the soloist. The songs will be interspersed with the individual movements of Hefti’s Sixth String Quartet, Fünf Szenen für Gustav. Schubert’s youthful G-minor Quartet, written when the composer was just 18 years old, completes the program.

BOULEZ ENSEMBLE & MICHAEL WENDEBERG

“Fold by fold”—pli selon pli—Pierre Boulez reveals a portrait of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, arguably the most important literary influence on his music, in his eponymous work for soprano and orchestra. Michael Wendeberg, who worked closely with Boulez as pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain, conducts excerpts from the composer’s most expansive score, in the piece’s Pierre Boulez Saal premiere. The program also includes the 1965 ensemble work Éclat as well as compositions by Maurice Ravel and Austrian composer Thomas Wally, born in 1981.

Musikfest Berlin: Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Joana Mallwitz

For the second time in a row, the Konzerthausorchester and chief conductor Joana Mallwitz will be guests at the Musikfest. The solo parts in both works on the programme will be sung by the French-Cypriot soprano Sarah Aristidou, who has made a name for herself particularly in the field of contemporary music. In 1971, composer Luigi Nono met with artists and politicians in Chile, including Luciano Cruz Aguayo, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Left. Back in Italy, he learnt of the young man's accidental death. Nono then composed a kind of ‘secular requiem’ for the activist, which was intended not only to convey grief but also the motivation to continue his social struggle. To this end, the composer set a memorial poem by Julio Huasi to Luciano, which was also given the title ‘Como una ola de fuerza y luz’ (Like a wave of strength and light). Among Mahler's symphonies, No. 4 is comparatively straightforward in terms of instrumentation and length. There is ‘much laughter’ in it, the composer assured us in a letter after its completion in 1901. However, the feeling that hilarity and horror exist side by side and that the idyll is not to be trusted creeps in as soon as the retuned solo violin plays in the second movement. And if you listen very carefully to the text of the ambiguous Wunderhorn song ‘Das himmlische Leben’, you will learn that, at least for the ox and lamb, heaven in the land of milk and honey is not full of violins, as a German saying goes.

Musikfest Berlin 2024

Many people consider Julian Prégardien a Frenchman, but in fact he comes from a clan of tenors from Frankfurt. He first sang to praise the Lord as a choirboy; as a teenager, he was crazy about the rock band Nirvana. But he ultimately could not escape the family genes: a Berliner by choice, he has become a modern singer with a melts-in-your-mouth tenor voice. At the Musikfest Berlin he will transform into Mahler’s wayfarer in love, yearning for the »blue eyes of my beloved«, as it says in one of the songs.

Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic »Berlin ‒ Berlin«

In homage to a city where so much is possible: All three ensembles in this concert have their artistic home in Berlin – and also enjoy successful international careers. Singer Lucia Cadotsch and her trio ‘Speak Low’ captivate with their gentle, feather-light, unpretentious music, while the quartet of pianist and composer Julia Hülsmann is characterised by a style that is both intense and subtle. Kurt Rosenwinkel, who has worked with musicians such as Eric Clapton, Gary Burton and Brad Mehldau, is one of the most important voices on the Berlin and global jazz scene as a guitarist, composer and producer.