Voice Over

her:voice

This year's "her:voice" Composer Festival focuses on Alma Mahler, whose "Five Songs" will be performed in Jorma Panula's orchestral version. While Mahler's husband Gustav allegedly restricted her compositions, Charlotte Sohy published under the male pseudonym Charles. Sohy's late-Romantic symphony, begun during World War I, expresses a desire for peace. The program includes Kaija Saariaho's "Winter Sky" and Anna Clyne's "Color Field," inspired by a Rothko painting.

her:voice

This year's "her:voice" Composer Festival focuses on Alma Mahler, whose "Five Songs" will be performed in Jorma Panula's orchestral version. While Mahler's husband Gustav allegedly restricted her compositions, Charlotte Sohy published under the male pseudonym Charles. Sohy's late-Romantic symphony, begun during World War I, expresses a desire for peace. The program includes Kaija Saariaho's "Winter Sky" and Anna Clyne's "Color Field," inspired by a Rothko painting.

Oboe and the Human Voice

Women's Voice Türkei: Serenad Bagcan & Fazıl Say

Commissioned by the Istanbul Music Festival, pianist and composer Fazıl Say created "Dünya Anne" (Mother Earth), a song cycle based on Turkish women poets, to mark the Turkish Republic's centennial. The cycle reflects on Turkey's past and present and explores themes of inner struggles, peace, kindness, light, and enduring hope. Serenad Bağcan, whose voice Say had "searched for years," performs the songs.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Ingo Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher is one of the great explorers among conductors. He tirelessly explores new and little-known areas of the repertoire. His curiosity already characterised him during his time as General Music Director in Hamburg between 1997 and 2005. And this also characterises the vocal symphonic programme with which he returns to the podium of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in November. One day before his 67th birthday, Metzmacher conducts two rarely performed works by two jubilarians from the Romantic and modern eras with a round birthday in 2024 – and fills the stage in the Grand Hall with an opulent line-up that, alongside the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, includes the MDR-Rundfunkchor and nine vocal soloists.

NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover / Anja Petersen / Pierre Bleuse

As part of the »Elbphilharmonie Visions« festival, the NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Pierre Bleuse present a work by Italian composer Clara Iannotta, who continues to explore the boundaries between noise and composition, as well as Arnulf Herrmann’s »Tour de Trance« for soprano and orchestra. As at the latter’s world premiere, the solo part will be performed by opera singer Anja Petersen.

Bang on a Can All-Stars / Trio Mediaeval

Even for the state of the art, there are legends – such as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who are always in search of very up-to-date, exciting music, regardless of genre categories. Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Ornette Coleman are just a few of the artists who have already collaborated with the New York collective. For their Elbphilharmonie debut, the musicians have chosen a work by founding member and Pulitzer prizewinner Julia Wolfe, which traces the myth surrounding the American folk hero John Henry as an oratorio between minimal music and country. There are hundreds of versions of this story, passed down by word of mouth and already cast in music many times whether by Johnny Cash, Van Morrison or Bruce Springsteen: at the end of the 19th century, a worker is supposed to have competed against a new kind of steam-driven hammer in railway construction with his muscle strength and won – to pay with his life as a result. Julia Wolfe has composed a meta myth with »Steel Hammer«: »The work is inspired by my love of legends and the music of the Appalachian Mountains. I fragmented the many different and somewhat contradictory versions of the ballad and wove it into a completely new format. The music often circles around individual words or phrases to tell the ultimate story and its different paths.« The Appalachian dulcimer (a kind of zither) joins the usual line-up of Bang on a Can with clarinet, a lot of percussion, guitars, piano, cello and double bass and provides for the American country sound. Trio Mediæval, a top-class a-cappella ensemble from Norway, completes the overall sound with its clear soprano and alto voices, which Julia Wolfe particularly appreciates for their great wealth of experience in the vocal tradition of their homeland.

Good Friday Concert: tenebrae

On Good Friday, the acclaimed British vocal ensemble Tenebrae and its founder Nigel Short are heading on a musical pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. In his full-length a-cappella work »Path of Miracles«, Joby Talbot – who was born in Wimbledon in 1971 – has captured the special atmosphere of four spiritual sites along the Camino de Santiago. Based on Bible quotations and medieval sources, 17 independent vocal parts in seven languages and great stylistic diversity depict the legends of saints and miracles associated with this pilgrimage route. The English composer found his inspiration for the 2005 work – a commissioned piece written specially for Tenebrae – »on location«: »Over the course of ten days I watched little clouds of Pyrenean mist wafting through the medieval streets of Roncesvalles, marvelled at the gruesome reliquaries in austere Burgos, saw storks on church spires in León as the evening sun poured through acres of stained glass, and witnessed traditionally clad Galician villagers harvesting their fields with hand scythes in a manner unchanged for a millennium.« Having reached Santiago and touched the hollow in the pillar at the cathedral, he felt a special closeness to the many generations of pilgrims who had followed the same tradition. »The connection to the past seemed palpable, and it was the feeling I experienced at that moment that I resolved to try to express in the music.«

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / NDR Vokalensemble / Matthias Brandt / Jonathan Stockhammer

Luigi Nono always saw himself as a political person and composer. But rather than composing musical manifestos against social injustice, he believed in the power of music to educate and enlighten. As in 1956, when he – in his large-scale cantata »Il canto sospeso« – translated farewell letters by members of the resistance that had been sentenced to death into a stirring and highly poetic tonal language. The German-American conductor and Nono specialist Jonathan Stockhammer now presents this »suspended song« in the Grand Hall. Luigi Nono’s musical credo was to »awaken the ear, the eyes, human thought« with his works. This aspiration is reflected in the »Canto sospeso«, which was premiered in Cologne in 1956 and which – with its orchestra parts, a-cappella chorales and arias – also underlines Nono’s affinity for Italian madrigal and operatic art. Yet in its musical recollection, this »song« exudes a blazing presence.

Kirill Petrenko with Rachmaninov’s “Francesca da Rimini”

Hatred, jealousy and loss: Sergei Rachmaninov creates a dark world with powerful colours in his one-act opera Francesca da Rimini. Against this backdrop, the heroine’s brief happiness in love shines all the more brightly. Kirill Petrenko presents the impassioned score with acclaimed soloists in a concert performance. Sofia Gubaidulina’s work The Wrath of God is almost apocalyptically dramatic. And here, too, it is about the hatred that – says the composer – “grows in this world with such force and intensity that it inevitably touches me.”