ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Main Auditorium (Berlin)
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A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
Bruckner was not only a fantastic organist—some of his habits were also quite strange. He loved to count: rocks, leaves on trees, beads, windows on house fronts ... But his symphonies were a different thing: though he composed eleven, he acknowledged only nine of them. And even with those, he was not initially successful; the Seventh from 1884 was the first to take off. Robin Ticciati has conducted many of them, and has continued to programme them since his DSO debut with the Fourth. For Ticciati, Bruckner is a »real person with a beating heart«.
She resembles a Nordic pixie: fresh-faced, fair complexion, flaxen hair, dark eyes. For good measure, the Norwegian violinist answers to the name Vilde, derived from »alfr« (elf) and »hildr«(battle). And in fact she’ll have both within her when she tackles Elgar’s Violin Concerto. After all, the work is neither for the faint-hearted nor for those afraid of heights. Extremely high notes, gruelling arabesques and arpeggios … a sensational experience in the Berliner Philharmonie.