Watch this space: Yashima & Gerstein

Watch this space: Kirill Gerstein & Friends

Watch This Space: BRSO Academy

Watch This Space: Instant Compositions

Watch This Space: Tabea Zimmermann & friends

Watch This Space: Hanna-Elisabeth Müller & friends

Watch This Space | Kirill Gerstein & HK Gruber

The Austrian composer, conductor, and singer HK Gruber and the Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein combine their wonderfully free-spirited forces for a program that harks back to Berlin in the 1920s, when the First World War was over, the lights were dim, and cabaret was all the rage. Gruber (who, incidentally, is a descendant of Franz Xaver Gruber, the composer of Silent Night) is undisputedly one of the greatest living interpreters of this style. His artistic role models are Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, whom he credits for making his career as a composer possible. As for Gerstein, he illuminates Bertolt Brecht’s infectious melodies and sometimes caustic texts with his lively, dance-like piano playing.

Watch This Space | Kaleidoskop

The Academy has chosen compositions that demand quite special ways of approaching their instruments. Stephen Montague, in Thule Ultima, has the wind quintet play mainly on their mouthpieces, like a concert of exotic birds. George Crumb likewise calls for special timbres in his string quartet Black Angels: written to commemorate the victims of the Vietnam War, this pacifist composer asks the strings to play a quotation from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden using the wood of their bows (col legno), producing a bleak, oppressive tone. Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, written shortly after his emigration from Hungary, reflect his immersion in Western culture. Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin as funeral music for the great French claveciniste. The movements originated during the First World War, and Ravel soon dedicated each one to a fallen French soldier from his circle of friends – a musical memorial spanning the centuries. His Sonata for Violin and Violoncello is likewise a funeral piece for a deceased composer, Claude Debussy.

Watch This Space | Klaus Mäkelä

Watch this space | Viola, Viola

Spotlight on the viola(s)! The composer and viola player Klaus-Peter Werani has assembled an all-viola programme with his BRSO colleagues Tobias Reifland, Anja Kreynacke, Giovanni Menna and German Tcakulov. It consists entirely of works from the modern era to the present day, all devoted to the deep and rich tone of the viola in combinations ranging from duo to string quintet. Founded during the covid pandemic, Watch This Space has evolved into a chamber music series that focuses not only on the new performance arena in Munich’s Werksviertel-Mitte district, but also on rarely heard works in smaller formats.

Watch This Space | Stefanie Irányi

Unusual duo formats resound in the Werksviertel Complex: a work by Ravi Shankar for flute and harp, Beethoven’s tongue-in-cheek Duet for Two Obligato Eyeglasses (i.e. viola and cello), Scelsi’s microtonal Ko-Lho for flute and clarinet (1966) and Lauro’s Venezuelan waltz Natalia for marimba. Then the instruments from the duos join forces in a small multi-hued ensemble to accompany the mezzo-soprano Stefanie Iranyi. They will perform Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, a gathering of songs from Armenia, France, Azerbaijan, Italy (Sardinia and Sicily) and the USA that this Italian composer, much like Bartók, united into a cycle in a plea for international understanding.