ConcertPulse
JAZZIK #2
Where does jazz begin and classical music end? With this new series, the RSB fuses jazz, classical and minimal music.
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Where does jazz begin and classical music end? With this new series, the RSB fuses jazz, classical and minimal music.
»The work of a crazy man.« »A thing made by idiots.« Wild comments for Stravinsky after his ‘Rite of Spring’ premiered in Paris in 1913. People jeered and hissed in the stalls; nothing more could be heard of the music. Respectable listeners clobbered each other. The police reported that 27 people were injured at the »massacre« (Debussy) and Jean Cocteau, who was in attendance, noted that »a countess’s diadem was askew«. What was once a shocker transformed into a classic of modernism. What better recommendation could there be?
Happy Birthday Junge Deutsche Philharmonie! Germany's best music students have been playing together in this orchestra for 50 years – in preparation for a career in a professional orchestra. What characterises its members? A high level of technical proficiency, an irrepressible desire to make music together, and a passion for the music of our time. These qualities are also reflected in this programme – with the spherical tones of Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), the labyrinthine sound structures of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia for eight voices and orchestra and the rhythmic energy of Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps. Roderick Cox conducts.
Audiences of the Danish String Quartet know that the ensemble likes to blur the boundaries between folk music and classical music. In this concert, the four Scandinavians combine traditional melodies by 18th-century Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan with works from different eras to create a sound world that transcends styles and genres. In addition to Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet, which evoke Russian dance rhythms and sacred chants, the program includes Mozart’s delightful F-major Divertimento and Caroline Shaw’s Haydninspired Entr’acte.
Yulia Deyneka, principal violist of the Staatskapelle Berlin, has long been part of the Pierre Boulez Saal’s artistic family as a chamber musician, member of the Boulez Ensemble, and professor at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. Denis Kozhukhin, her partner for this long-delayed duo recital, is himself a regular guest. Together the two artists perform works by Russian composers, including a rarely heard sonata by Prokofiev contemporary Nikolai Roslavets and Dmitri Shostakovich’s final work, completed in July 1975 just weeks before his death.
The one-hour short concerts ‘8Zehn30’ on Thursdays from 18:30 at the Konzerthaus Berlin are always short and sweet: let go of everyday life and simply immerse yourself in 60 minutes of music without a break - regardless of whether the end of the working day is already in sight or another evening shift has to be put in. The orchestra musicians of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin accompany their audience through a short(er) concert evening - from the personal introduction to the after-concert drinks at the bar in the Beethoven Hall. This time, enjoy a chicken and a Russian fair drama among Punch and Judy puppets – aka Haydn's symphony No. 83 and Strawinsky's suite from Petrushka.
The chicken that seems to cluck through the first movement of Haydn's Paris Symphony No. 83 in the second theme was not sighted there by the composer himself but, as is so often the case, by posterity. But with Haydn's numerous symphonies, epithets are certainly helpful. With ‘La Poule’ from 1785, Joana Mallwitz continues her Haydn focus at the Konzerthausorchester, which spans several seasons. This is followed by a leap into the 20th century: Béla Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, interpreted by Igor Levit, touchingly demonstrates that shortly before his death in exile in the US in 1945, the seriously ill composer managed to free himself from the gloom of his final years and write a cheerful, luminous work for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory. He was only unable to orchestrate the last 17 bars himself. The suite from Stravinsky's ballet ‘Petrushka’, which takes place at an early 19th century Russian fair among Punch and Judy puppets, forms the furious conclusion to the evening.
The chicken that seems to cluck through the first movement of Haydn's Paris Symphony No. 83 in the second theme was not sighted there by the composer himself but, as is so often the case, by posterity. But with Haydn's numerous symphonies, epithets are certainly helpful. With ‘La Poule’ from 1785, Joana Mallwitz continues her Haydn focus at the Konzerthausorchester, which spans several seasons. This is followed by a leap into the 20th century: Béla Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, interpreted by Igor Levit, touchingly demonstrates that shortly before his death in exile in the US in 1945, the seriously ill composer managed to free himself from the gloom of his final years and write a cheerful, luminous work for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory. He was only unable to orchestrate the last 17 bars himself. The suite from Stravinsky's ballet ‘Petrushka’, which takes place at an early 19th century Russian fair among Punch and Judy puppets, forms the furious conclusion to the evening.
A puppet is brought to life, but is then plagued by bothersome human feelings like love, jealousy and anger … and dies again. That’s the story of Petrushka from Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name from 1911. A Russian cousin of Pinocchio? Well yes, but without the happy ending of a Disney film, not spun out of sugar, like candy floss, which didn’t yet exist in St. Petersburg in the 1830s, where the tragic story takes place. But instead, delightful fun fair music, Russian folk songs and dances. All in the scope of the ›Debut‹ series, where you can experience tomorrow’s stars today with the DSO.