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This programme is unusually diverse even for the musicians of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Yet the musical worlds of Ligeti, Wagner, and Webern, which merge more or less seamlessly in this concert, are not as far apart as one might think. And in the second half there is Bruckner’s auratic Ninth Symphony, a true monolith. “It seems that the Ninth is a limit. If one wishes to go beyond it, one must leave this world. Those who wrote a Ninth were already too close to the hereafter” – this was Schönberg’s prophetic statement regarding Mahler, who died without ever having heard his Ninth Symphony. Bruckner is also said to have been afraid of this fatal number: “I don’t want to start on my Ninth at all, I don’t dare.” He died while working on the fourth movement.
This programme is unusually diverse even for the musicians of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Yet the musical worlds of Ligeti, Wagner, and Webern, which merge more or less seamlessly in this concert, are not as far apart as one might think. And in the second half there is Bruckner’s auratic Ninth Symphony, a true monolith. “It seems that the Ninth is a limit. If one wishes to go beyond it, one must leave this world. Those who wrote a Ninth were already too close to the hereafter” – this was Schönberg’s prophetic statement regarding Mahler, who died without ever having heard his Ninth Symphony. Bruckner is also said to have been afraid of this fatal number: “I don’t want to start on my Ninth at all, I don’t dare.” He died while working on the fourth movement.
“Thus might we die, that together / ever one, without end / never waking, never fearing / namelessly enveloped in love / given up to each other / to live only for love!” In Act 2 of the music drama, Tristan and Isolde assure each other of their boundless love, which outlasts even death. “And regardless of how often you perform it, it continues to be shocking,” says Sir Simon Rattle. For the BRSO Chief Conductor, this music by Wagner, in which every bar trembles and sways until everything finally dissolves, is a narcotic, an addictive drug. Rattle continues his series of Wagner operas in concert performances with the brilliant Lise Davidsen as Isolde, who is singing this role for the first time. This will undoubtedly be an eagerly awaited highlight of the early part of the concert season.
“Thus might we die, that together / ever one, without end / never waking, never fearing / namelessly enveloped in love / given up to each other / to live only for love!” In Act 2 of the music drama, Tristan and Isolde assure each other of their boundless love, which outlasts even death. “And regardless of how often you perform it, it continues to be shocking,” says Sir Simon Rattle. For the BRSO Chief Conductor, this music by Wagner, in which every bar trembles and sways until everything finally dissolves, is a narcotic, an addictive drug. Rattle continues his series of Wagner operas in concert performances with the brilliant Lise Davidsen as Isolde, who is singing this role for the first time. This will undoubtedly be an eagerly awaited highlight of the early part of the concert season.
Attracting around 8,000 visitors on site and considerably more via TV and radio, Klassik am Odeonsplatz is one of the highlights of every BRSO season. For this year’s program, Sir Simon Rattle has chosen excerpts from Wagner’s Walküre, of which Brahms probably would have approved. In his opinion, there were “wonderful things” in it, and said about one performance: “In the Second Act, I drink a glass of beer, deliberately lie down for half an hour, and afterwards I feel refreshed again.” Brahms wrote his Second Symphony during a summer holiday on Lake Wörthersee. It’s the perfect piece for a wonderful Munich open-air concert – possibly with a glass of beer to celebrate the new BRSO chief conductor’s first season.
A cleverly woven programme in which demise comes first: Sir Simon Rattle begins by letting Tristan and Isolde “lament, drown, and sink” in their “swelling, welling, resounding, flowing, urgent, vibrant” yearning for love. However, this sensation that has been transposed into music by Wagner along with its obsessive tragedy finally dissolves into the peaceful, contemplative atmosphere of birdsong, the babbling of a brook, footsteps, and a cleansing thunderstorm: Beethoven’s Pastoral transforms the walk of a city dweller in nature into an onomatopoeic experience and is thus decidedly reminiscent of Rattle’s inaugural concert as Chief Conductor that featured Haydn’s Creation. Between breathtaking harmonies and an intimate finale lies a substantial new orchestral work by Thomas Adès, composed for the 75th anniversary of the BRSO. Greatness in every respect.
A cleverly woven programme in which demise comes first: Sir Simon Rattle begins by letting Tristan and Isolde “lament, drown, and sink” in their “swelling, welling, resounding, flowing, urgent, vibrant” yearning for love. However, this sensation that has been transposed into music by Wagner along with its obsessive tragedy finally dissolves into the peaceful, contemplative atmosphere of birdsong, the babbling of a brook, footsteps, and a cleansing thunderstorm: Beethoven’s Pastoral transforms the walk of a city dweller in nature into an onomatopoeic experience and is thus decidedly reminiscent of Rattle’s inaugural concert as Chief Conductor that featured Haydn’s Creation. Between breathtaking harmonies and an intimate finale lies a substantial new orchestral work by Thomas Adès, composed for the 75th anniversary of the BRSO. Greatness in every respect.
For years Mariss Jansons was the principal conductor of both the BRSO and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. If gifted young musicians from two academies now assemble in Munich for a concert, they do so in memory of this great conductor, who left an indelible imprint on both orchestras. Jansons had a firm commitment to talented young orchestral musicians, and the idea of the academy continues in his spirit, helping graduates to find their way into professional orchestras. Now, for the first time since their initial exchange of 2019, the two academies reunite in a concert that straddles the boundaries of Germany and the Netherlands. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, George Benjamin’s modernist take on Purcell and Richard Strauss’s Suite from Der Bürger als Edelmann give these young musicians ample opportunity to display their prowess under the baton of Daniel Harding.
One subject dominates the ecstatic scores that Daniele Gatti has chosen for this concert: love’s boundless rapture. For Don Juan, the suave ladies’ man, Strauss took his inspiration from a poem by Lenau: “O magic realm, illimited, eternal, / Of gloried women, loveliness supernal! / Fain would I, in the storm of stressful bliss, / Expire upon the last one’s lingering kiss!” Things that flew a thousandfold to Don Juan were denied to the autobiographical hero of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, who seeks his beloved in vain. In his mind she becomes a torturous idée fixe until he turns to drugs and takes part in a hallucinatory witches’ sabbath featuring his own execution. Both men – Don Juan and Berlioz’s hero – constantly cross red lines. And Die Meistersinger? Here the hero sings of love with divine inspiration and wins the prize – in this case, anachronistically enough, a woman named Eve.
One subject dominates the ecstatic scores that Daniele Gatti has chosen for this concert: love’s boundless rapture. For Don Juan, the suave ladies’ man, Strauss took his inspiration from a poem by Lenau: “O magic realm, illimited, eternal, / Of gloried women, loveliness supernal! / Fain would I, in the storm of stressful bliss, / Expire upon the last one’s lingering kiss!” Things that flew a thousandfold to Don Juan were denied to the autobiographical hero of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, who seeks his beloved in vain. In his mind she becomes a torturous idée fixe until he turns to drugs and takes part in a hallucinatory witches’ sabbath featuring his own execution. Both men – Don Juan and Berlioz’s hero – constantly cross red lines. And Die Meistersinger? Here the hero sings of love with divine inspiration and wins the prize – in this case, anachronistically enough, a woman named Eve.
In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.
In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.
