Orchesterakademie

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Kirill Gerstein / Omer Meir Wellber

Omer Meir Wellber’s conducting is »a miracle of transparency and rigour« according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Israeli conductor has held a number of posts, including chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and he will be assuming the position of general music director at the Hamburg State Opera in 2025. Those who’d like to see the globetrotter in action in the Hanseatic city before then now have their chance. The unconventional conductor – who once inserted a techno interlude into an acclaimed Verdi production at the Bavarian State Opera – gave his debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in 2019. And he is now back on the conductor’s stand here for the third time. As an introduction to the programme, Wellber has chosen a work that was originally conceived as incidental music for a play: Gabriel Fauré’s »Pelléas et Mélisande«. Shortly after composing it, Fauré revised his opulent music for Maeterlinck’s Symbolist fairy-tale to create an independent orchestral work. The suite featuring the famous »Sicilienne« is followed by Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, which »was written in the spirit of Mozart’s and Saint-Saënsʼs concertos,« as the composer himself emphasised. That, however, does not mean that Ravel neglected his own tonal language – he opens the concerto with a spirited lash of the whip and Spanish sounds. Jazz harmonies and rhythms then increasingly come to the foreground. The soloist tasked with performing this virtuosic score is the American pianist Kirill Gerstein – a popular guest with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for many years now. The concert comes to a close with Franz Schubert’s Third Symphony. Schubert composed the masterpiece in just a few days when he was only 18 years old. With that level of productivity, it is no surprise that the composer, despite his early death at the age of 31, still managed to leave behind an impressive oeuvre. The theatre critic Eduard Hanslick described Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 as »a work of youth and of youth’s gleefully raucous zeal «.