ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Chamber Music Hall (Berlin)
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Under the motto »Orchestra for Democracy«, the DSO invites the audience to two concerts that combine music and speech to make a powerful plea for human rights and the value of our democracy. Central works of classical modernism and late romanticism meet contemporary reflections and create a format that places the demands and reality of our society at the centre.
Under the motto »Orchestra for Democracy«, the DSO invites the audience to two concerts that combine music and speech to make a powerful plea for human rights and the value of our democracy. Central works of classical modernism and late romanticism meet contemporary reflections and create a format that places the demands and reality of our society at the centre.
In addition to his career as a celebrated soloist, violinist Christian Tetzlaff performs all over the world with his own string quartet. This guest performance in the Chamber Music Hall opens with Beethoven's late, expressive String Quartet op. 131, the beginning of which Richard Wagner called “probably the most melancholy thing that has ever been expressed in sound”. In his “Choral Quartet”, Jörg Widmann expresses “sounds and phases of futility that come from nowhere and lead nowhere,” he says. The programme concludes with Johannes Brahms' Second Quartet, which steers a lush course between melancholy and joie de vivre.
For Isabelle Faust only the art matters, not the trappings. She plays with aplomb, focus, deep feeling—that’s how the violinist enthrals the audience, particularly with Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto, which, seriously ill in 1967, he »squeezed out note by note, with difficulty«. Sharply reduced, introverted music that concentrates completely on the violin. Music that inquires into where we are going and why.
The presenters are also members of the orchestra and, at 14 to 19 years old, are just as old as their listeners in the audience. As the sponsoring orchestra of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the National Youth Orchestra will play for grades 5 to 13 in the Main Auditorium of the Philharmonie Berlin on 30 April 2025 and provide information about the orchestra and its repertoire: Where do most of the members come from? What do conductors have to say? Which parts are particularly challenging?
Beethoven's legendary letter to the “Immortal Beloved” inspired Detlev Glanert to write his Second Violin Concerto. Glanert wrote a work full of longing and passion for the violinist Midori; he has admired her since her days as an internactionally-acclaimed child prodigy. Midori is also the soloist in this performance with the National Youth Orchestra under the direction of Patrick Lange. The orchestra, of which the Berliner Philharmoniker is a patron, will also play Johannes Brahms' First Piano Quartet in Arnold Schoenberg's colourful orchestration.
