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The Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Germany's youth orchestra, celebrates its 50th anniversary with a season of works by American composers. The program includes pieces by Copland, Gershwin, Bolcom (with the Kebyart Saxophone Quartet), and Bernstein. A new commissioned work by Swiss composer Daniel Schnyder will also be premiered. Delyana Lazarova conducts.
Pianist and Echo Klassik award-winner Sebastian Knauer presents a very special programme - the sounds of Hollywood - in original works and new, never-before-heard arrangements written exclusively for him, accompanied by the large orchestra of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. The evening will be conducted by Oscar-nominated composer and conductor David Newman. He comes from the most successful film music dynasty in the history of the Academy Awards. The programme includes music by his father Alfred Newman, the founding father of the Hollywood sound, composer of the world's most famous fanfare, the 20th Century Fox logo, winner of nine Oscars and his brother Thomas Newman, who has also been nominated for several Oscars. The Oscar-winning composers Alex North, Bernard Herrman, Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner can also be heard. Of course, the great American classics George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber are not to be missed on this evening.
Many people consider Julian Prégardien a Frenchman, but in fact he comes from a clan of tenors from Frankfurt. He first sang to praise the Lord as a choirboy; as a teenager, he was crazy about the rock band Nirvana. But he ultimately could not escape the family genes: a Berliner by choice, he has become a modern singer with a melts-in-your-mouth tenor voice. At the Musikfest Berlin he will transform into Mahler’s wayfarer in love, yearning for the »blue eyes of my beloved«, as it says in one of the songs.
A gentle trill from the clarinet, a lascivious glissando, and one of the most famous pieces for piano and orchestra picks up speed: George Gershwin’s »Rhapsody in Blue«. Presented to the public slightly awkwardly in 1924 as an »experiment in modern music«, it has since become something of a signature tune for the Broadway composer. Catchy jazz and blues melodies together with a casual orchestral sound and a highly virtuoso piano part bring the Roaring Twenties vividly to life. The Kansas City Symphony is celebrating its 100th anniversary under the direction of its new chief conductor Matthias Pintscher together with 30-year-old pianist Conrad Tao, whom the New York Times sees as the »future of classical music«. This highlight of the piano repertoire is framed by two further classics by famous American composers: Charles Ives’s »Three Places in New England« with a marvellously whimsical march in the middle section, and Aaron Copland’s powerful Third Symphony. Welcome to the United States of America!
In Kansas City Symphony, Berlin will encounter a young American orchestra – founded in 1982, it now attracts a wide audience with its innovative programming. On its debut tour with new Music Director Matthias Pintscher it will explore the rich American composing tradition with pieces by anniversary artist Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” which is celebrating its centenary this year.
The Berlin Academy of American Music cultivates the great heritage of American musical culture, but does not hide its passion for new discoveries. At the invitation of the TheaterGemeinde Hamburg, the chamber orchestra not only dances on the borderline between symphonic music and jazz with Gershwin’s snappy tone poem »An American in Paris« and three pieces by Bernstein and Copland, but also enters a world of light and shadow together with the young Dresden violinist Charlotte Thiele and a work by the American Missy Mazzoli. The world premiere of »A Mass of Stars Block the View« also awaits. Danish cellist and composer Josefine Opsahl describes her piece as »a great, cosmic and adventurous journey into the infinite universe«.
In everyday life, the city is more than just a background, a collective experiment in the social laboratory, a place for life and stories, for memories and longing: Ensemble Resonanz accompanies Copland to nighttime New York, and Tchaikovsky to an Italian summer; it lets Vito Zuraij serve up a surprise or two, then travels on to Rome and joins forces with Vivier to look behind the scenes at ourselves and at a foreign environment. A melancholy trumpet tune rises from the nocturnal solitude, gently underscored by shimmering strings, and fantasises about people’s nighttime thoughts in a city that never sleeps. This concert opens with Aaron Copland’s ode to New York »Quiet Cities«, which captures the feeling of space and the American spirit even in this huge metropolis. By way of contrast, Claude Vivier immerses himself in the sphere of mystery and longing with a work at once accessible and yet enigmatic, full of free-floating melodies that bring to life recollections of foreign places, people and musical traditions. In his »Souvenir de Florence«, Tchaikovsky blends his personal memories of an Italian summer with Russian folk music, while Ensemble Resonanz combines Tchaikovsky with Andrew Norman’s »Companion Guide to Rome«, each part of which consists of a study of Roman buildings. Can floor decoration be audible? Can music be turned into wallpaper?
In everyday life, the city is more than just a background, a collective experiment in the social laboratory, a place for life and stories, for memories and longing: Ensemble Resonanz accompanies Copland to nighttime New York, and Tchaikovsky to an Italian summer; it lets Vito Zuraij serve up a surprise or two, then travels on to Rome and joins forces with Vivier to look behind the scenes at ourselves and at a foreign environment. A melancholy trumpet tune rises from the nocturnal solitude, gently underscored by shimmering strings, and fantasises about people’s nighttime thoughts in a city that never sleeps. This concert opens with Aaron Copland’s ode to New York »Quiet Cities«, which captures the feeling of space and the American spirit even in this huge metropolis. By way of contrast, Claude Vivier immerses himself in the sphere of mystery and longing with a work at once accessible and yet enigmatic, full of free-floating melodies that bring to life recollections of foreign places, people and musical traditions. In his »Souvenir de Florence«, Tchaikovsky blends his personal memories of an Italian summer with Russian folk music, while Ensemble Resonanz combines Tchaikovsky with Andrew Norman’s »Companion Guide to Rome«, each part of which consists of a study of Roman buildings. Can floor decoration be audible? Can music be turned into wallpaper?
Beethoven’s only violin concerto is one of the best-known works of its genre and the most significant concerto in the violin repertoire altogether. Time and again artists undertake new interpretative approaches to this masterpiece. One such artist is the Munich violinist Julia Fischer, the winner of many coveted prizes, including the Beethoven Ring. The last time she stood on the Gasteig concert stage with the BRSO was in 2009, when she played Prokofiev’s First Concerto under Mariss Jansons. Besides Beethoven, the American conductor-composer Michael Tilson Thomas will also conduct Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony. Leonard Bernstein, who gave the work its European première, maintained that “the symphony has become an American monument, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial”, and called it “the greatest American symphony ever written”.
Beethoven’s only violin concerto is one of the best-known works of its genre and the most significant concerto in the violin repertoire altogether. Time and again artists undertake new interpretative approaches to this masterpiece. One such artist is the Munich violinist Julia Fischer, the winner of many coveted prizes, including the Beethoven Ring. The last time she stood on the Gasteig concert stage with the BRSO was in 2009, when she played Prokofiev’s First Concerto under Mariss Jansons. Besides Beethoven, the American conductor-composer Michael Tilson Thomas will also conduct Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony. Leonard Bernstein, who gave the work its European première, maintained that “the symphony has become an American monument, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial”, and called it “the greatest American symphony ever written”.