Chamber Music: Horn players of the Wiener Symphoniker

Prater Picnic of the Wiener Symphoniker

Wiener Symphoniker

Marie Jacquot, former Principal Conductor of Deutsche Oper am Rhein, returns to Cologne with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, featuring rising star violinist María Dueñas performing Max Bruch's Violin Concerto and concluding with Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

Philharmonic chamber music: the fascination of the clarinet

The music world owes a great debt of gratitude to clarinettist Anton Stadler. After all, he inspired Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to write a clarinet quintet which, with its yearning melodies, is one of the most beautiful works of chamber music. In turn, our Composer in Residence Wolfgang Rihm, who died in July , wrote his Four Studies for a clarinet quintet for the clarinettist and composer Jörg Widmann. According to Widmann, Rihm “understood and sensed the essence of our marvellous instrument like very few others”. Andraž Golob, bass clarinettist with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2021, will present the two works together with colleagues.

Chamber Music Concert by the Graduates of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music

Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall

Chamber concert: Strings Horn Piano

Chamber concerts are very popular with our orchestra musicians, allowing them to showcase new flavours and put individual instruments in the spotlight. Now, there is a wonderful rendezvous with the horn – about which the »Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst« (»Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music«) as early as 1784 stated that it was »humanly conceived as a sensitive soul for almost all societies«. Many composers were inspired by the instrument with its snail shape and distinctive sound to create music – including Mozart, whose horn pieces were all written for the virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb. He first played in the Salzburg court orchestra, but soon moved back to his hometown of Vienna. Due to his somewhat simple-minded character, however, he was often the target of Mozart’s witty remarks, who sometimes notated the pieces he wrote for him in different colours or added mocking remarks to the score. One result of this humorous friendship was the horn quintet from 1782, a work with lots of inventive humour and thematic imagination. The second composition was written by Brahms, who once disparaged the horn as a »brass viola« – yet he probably only meant this tongue-in-cheek, as it was his favourite instrument, especially in his youth. This may be why he wrote the poignant horn trio in 1865 as a mourning piece, shortly after his mother's death. It is characterised by a romantic sense of nature and hunting scenes, but also by mournful lamentations. His close friend Clara Schumann raved about the »extremely interesting work« with its opening movement, which is »very rich in engaging melodies«, its »beautiful« Adagio and its finale, which »is full of life«.

Symphoniker Hamburg / Chamber Music Concert

Hovhannes Baghdasaryan violin

Symphoniker Hamburg / Chamber Music Concert

Fabian Ludwig plays the clarinet.

Symphoniker Hamburg / Chamber Concert

In Garmisch, August 1941, Richard Strauss completed his last opera "Capriccio", a one-act opera described as intellectual and witty, a stark contrast to the horrific events of its time. The opera features beautiful music. Bohuslav Martinů, a prolific Czech composer, left behind nearly 100 chamber music works. His String Sextet, composed in Paris in 1932, won the Coolidge Prize. Brahms' String Sextet No. 1, initially conceived as a septet, received widespread acclaim.

Symphoniker Hamburg / Chamber Concert

Jordi Savall commissioned Arvo Pärt to compose a setting of the Gregorian antiphon "Da pacem Domine" for a peace concert. Completed after the 2004 Madrid bombings, the piece is performed annually in Spain to commemorate the victims. Pärt based the work on the antiphon's melody. The other voices follow Pärt's tintinnabuli style but are treated like a Renaissance motet. "Da pacem Domine" exists in various instrumental settings. Haydn opened concert halls for string quartets, influencing Beethoven who surpassed him with symphonic chamber music. The Armat Quartet performs a work born from the idea of infinite songs. In 1824, Schubert composed his large octet and two major string quartets, including "Death and the Maiden," whose variations movement reflects Matthias Claudius's poem.