Will Liverman & Daan Boertien: Burleigh, Vaughan Williams & Still

Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams

England’s dreaming: Sakari Oramo rediscovers rare and wonderful British masterpieces by Vaughan Williams, Doreen Carwithen and Malcolm Arnold.

London Symphony Orchestra: Half Six Fix – Vaughan Williams

Kick-start your evening with a Half Six Fix concert. One piece in a 60-minute concert, introduced by the performers, with screens in the hall to bring you closer to the action.

Works by Vaughan Williams, Eötvös and Mendelssohn

Works by Jacob, Purcell, Britten, Vaughan Willams, Bridge and Bax

RODERICK WILLIAMS, JULIUS DRAKE & TOBY JONES

One of the greatest poets of all time, William Shakespeare is at the center of the season’s first Lied und Lyrik program. Roderick Williams and Julius Drake trace the Bard’s musical heritage in English, German, and French settings from three centuries, with Toby Jones returning to read Shakespeare’s original texts.

Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet featuring Julian Lage, Asante Santi Debriano, Will Calhoun

No false modesty: in English, paramount means the top, the ultimate. With Joe Lovano and Julian Lage, two topmost soloists from two generations of jazz truly come together in the Paramount Quartet. They have already known each other for a long time and mutually motivate each other for flights of improvisation. Their accompanists Will Calhoun and Asante Santi Debriano give them the necessary inspiration and ideas every second. Joe Lovano is a giant of the tenor saxophone, admired worldwide and so versatile like no other. With the serene authority of a grandmaster, he puts jazz from all sides in the best light. Julian Lage, who is this brilliant, amiable guitarist who plays completely effortlessly, and, without a break, releases an organic mix of melodic and chordal playing from his guitar. He has been a welcome guest at the Elbphilharmonie since it opened in 2017 and you can now experience him for the sixth time. Will Calhoun is an energetic drummer, who can also arrange very complex rhythms so that they flow. Bassist Asante Santi Debriano, who was born in Panama, is not as well known in Europe as would be appropriate for his status. He played with legends, such as Archie Shepp and Sam Rivers, for a long time, collaborated on more than 100 recordings and leads an exciting nonet in New York with the Arkestra Bembe, which plays many pieces from his output. The Paramount Quartet itself has to date neither made vinyl recordings nor can you find online recordings of any of their live concerts. So, all the greater is the excitement and anticipation for a band, which will certainly play tremendously well.

Ensemble Resonanz & Guests

A story about friendship and betrayal, violence and denunciation, crucifixion and violent death. Ensemble Resonanz dives into the heated events of Bach’s St John Passion and presents its own, intimate version with a chamber-music line-up. The notes remain unchanged, but there is no turba choir. Instead, a guitar and electronic continuo head off together on spheric forays.

Ensemble Resonanz / Véronique Gens / Riccardo Minasi

With his Fourth Symphony, Brahms left posterity an orchestral monolith, austere and monumental, the sum of his ability as a composer and an expression of radical tradition. In this concert, Brahms’s legacy is juxtaposed with dramatic atmosphere from Locatelli and with Berlioz’s unique piece about the death of Cleopatra, with soprano and Berlioz specialist Véronique Gens in the title role. In this programme the Hamburg-based Ensemble Resonanz combines three composers who broke rules and set standards: Pietro Antonio Locatelli, sometimes regarded as the Paganini of the 18th century, was a lover of effects and dramatic atmosphere taken from the wunderkammer of Baroque instrumental music. Hector Berlioz submitted his bold cantata about the death of Cleopatra for the Prix de Rome, but it was rejected as being too daring. The Symphony No. 4 in E minor is the last symphony from the pen of Johannes Brahms, the sum of his own resources as a composer, and of the entire history of Western composition. Picking up where Bach and Beethoven left off, Brahms recycles material from music history, combining tradition with ideas that are thoroughly innovative. Everything flows here from the outset; the music is a fabric where everything is in motion; all certainty is lost: the Fourth is a complex work that breaks through all manner of formal boundaries.

Hathor Consort / Dorothee Mields / Romina Lischka

What traces do wars leave on the music of the time? The Hathor Consort, a viol ensemble of to which harp, organ and cornett are added, joins forces with soprano Dorothee Mields to look for echoes of the Thirty Years’ War in the works of composers who witnessed this catastrophic period in European history. With his »Trostgedichten in Widerwertigkeit deß Kriegs«, the poet Martin Opitz wrote an influential treatise of edification in the midst of this fierce conflict that claimed the lives of around a third of the population. The composers of the age attempted to process the deep trauma of violence, hunger and utter defencelessness through their music. This programme brings together four musical witnesses of the time:Heinrich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt, Andreas Hammerschmidt and Heinrich Albert. The acclaimed Hathor Consort focuses mainly on Renaissance and Baroque music, but it regularly combines this with music from other cultures as well as with contemporary works. Dorothee Mields likewise focuses entirely on Early Music, and her clear and intimate soprano is regarded as one of today’s top voices in the field of historic performing practice.

Matthias Kirschnereit / Hamburger Kammerorchester / Christian Kunert

»Music is the universal language of mankind« – this quote from the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reflects the power and importance of music. Music connects people from different cultures and backgrounds and creates a common language. The Hamburg Chamber Orchestra’s innovative concert series »Music of the World« begins with a cycle of Mozart’s 23 piano concertos in several concerts.