Clear the stage for the U30 generation! Once again this season, musically talented »Jungs & Deerns« from northern Germany will have the opportunity to present themselves together with the Hamburg Camerata in the exquisite Recitall Hall of the Elbphilharmonie. Youthful energy, fresh motivation and a certain amount of positive excitement make these concerts a particularly intense musical experience.
Grieg compiled the most beautiful pieces of his original incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s drama »Peer Gynt« into two orchestral suites, dispensing with the spoken dialogue and vocals. Morning Mood, the first movement of Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, is so frequently used in advertising, film and television that it is one of the best-known classical melodies. »In the Hall of the Mountain King« and »Solvejg’s Song« are also often quoted and are among Grieg’s most famous compositions.
Nordic Christmas Magic: Kristjan Järvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic thrilled audiences and the media with their past concerts at the Elbphilharmonie. Now they return with their successful concert programme »Nutcracker Reimagined« and bring the magic and enchantment of the Christmas season to Hamburg. The programme includes music by Grieg, Pärt, and Tchaikovsky’s world-famous »Nutcracker«, and for the entire concert, they put their music stands aside and play completely from memory – a unique concert experience!
French singer Sabine Devieilhe is currently on a roll. The Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bavarian State Opera, the Salzburg Festival – everyone is clamouring for her clear-as-a-bell soprano. She recently impressed in the Elbphilharmonie as Micaëla in Georges Bizet’s opera »Carmen«. Fortunately, she is not only addicted to opera, but also to song. Together with her long-time piano partner Mathieu Pordoy, she sings her way through a whole cosmos of loving lullabies by Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss and Edvard Grieg at the Elbphilharmonie. In the second half of the concert, she juxtaposes Strauss’ »Mädchenblumen« about four female characters with the female perspective of Lili Boulanger’s songs. With works by Germaine Tailleferre and Cécile Chaminade, Devieilhe brings two other French female composers to the stage who otherwise often lag behind the voices of their male colleagues. Of course, the chanson icon Édith Piaf and her »Hymne à l’amour« should not be missing in such a frenzy of love.
Old meets new and the familiar meets the strange and fairytale-like in the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra’s 2nd Academy Concert, when the propulsive, youthful freshness of the just-turned-seventeen Mozart meets the relatively unknown Romantic sound of Hamburg-born Ferdinand David. Things take an atmospheric turn with Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is a resounding reflection of his origins and homeland in England. Just like Edvard Grieg’s »Peer Gynt« from Norway.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has a distinguished history of promoting new American works. In 1986, for example, it premiered John Adams’s fanfare for orchestra »Short Ride in a Fast Machine«, with which the musicians opened their concert in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall under the direction of long-standing chief conductor Manfred Honeck. For Rachmaninov’s mighty »Concerto for Elephants«, whose piano part allegedly has the most notes per second of all the great piano concertos, the Grammy award winning orchestra will be joined by brilliant American pianist Yefim Bronfman. The programme continues in a late Romantic style after the interval with an orchestral suite from Giacomo Puccini’s last opera »Turandot« – even without vocals, great emotions unfold in an arrangement by Manfred Honeck. The work is juxtaposed with Stravinsky’s music to the ballet »The Firebird«, in which Ivan Tsarevich defeats the evil sorcerer Kastschei with the help of a fantastic bird.
At the age of just 24, Mao Fujita is already at home on the world’s top concert platforms and at the side of major orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. In his hometown, he studied at the Tokyo College of Music, and he is currently refining his playing as a student of Kirill Gerstein’s in Berlin. He has also received a lot of praise for his recording of the complete Mozart sonatas: »You can hear how much pleasure he takes in the many, often witty little details,« commented the NDR reviewer. It’s with Mozart that Fujita opens his first solo recital at the Elbphilharmonie. The varied foray into the worlds of Classical and Romantic music continues with a Chopin Barcarolle, with the »Kreisleriana« that Schumann dedicated to Chopin, and then Prokofiev’s impressive F-minor Sonata. In addition, an interesting rarity in the shape of the dreamy and playful »Les fêtes« by French impressionist Déodat de Séverac is on the programme.
Quatuor Ébène is a French string quartet.
Together with its principal conductor Case Scaglione and the Hamburg pianist Matthias Kirschnereit, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn is heading to the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In addition to the early symphonic works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and one of Edvard Grieg’s most popular string pieces, Joseph Haydn will be at the centre of the programme. With Matthias Kirschnereit, an expert pianist is on board who has been a valued solo partner of the WKO not only since the highly praised joint album with all of Haydn’s piano concertos (»wit and great drive«, Rondo magazine).
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