ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Chamber Music Hall (Berlin)
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»Ecstatic screams from the audience, standing ovations« was how the Tagesspiegel described Mao Fujita’s DSO debut in April 2023. Fujita’s god is Mozart. One music track from his ›Mozart Reworked‹ CD made it all the way to the top on Apple Music’s ›Piano Chill Playlist‹; his recording of all the piano sonatas has been enthusiastically received by the critics. A real discovery.
Anyone who delves into George Frideric Handel’s vocal and instrumental music will find a wealth of treasures. Elegance, virtuosity, delicacy – all this can be discovered in an endlessly inventive world of musical expression. In a programme with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and conductor Robin Ticciati, you can experience some of Handel’s most beautiful arias and orchestral pieces from operas and other works. Iestyn Davies, one of the leading countertenors of our time, is the soloist. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a great admirer of Handel. His festive and exuberant “Haffner Symphony” concludes the programme.
“It is the best thing I have written in my life”, declared Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1784 of his piano quintet. Many of his most famous works had not yet been written, but the quintet remains a Mozartian jewel, with its melodic beauty and charming dialogues between the instruments. It is no wonder that the young Ludwig van Beethoven was inspired by Mozart’s example to write an equally enchanting quintet. Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker play both works with pianist Kit Armstrong. Contemporary counterpoints are provided in the form of wind quintets by Hans Werner Henze and Wolfgang Rihm.
Slovakian organist Zuzana Ferjenčíková dedicates her debut concert on the organ of the Berlin Philharmonie Berlin to her teacher Jean Guillou, who died in 2019. Guillou performed on the the Philharmonie’s organ several times himself. His speciality: his own arrangements of famous orchestral works, with which he created unexpected orchestral timbres on the organ. Zuzana Ferjenčíková plays some of Guillou's most impressive arrangements, including the delicate “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker and Mussorgsky's powerful cycle Pictures at an Exhibition.
Finding coherence in the complex – that is the Simply Quartet's recipe for success. After winning several international competitions, including the Carl Nielsen Competition in Copenhagen and the Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna, the young ensemble is one of the rising stars of the quartet scene. For their debut in our quartet series, the four musicians will perform classics of the genre such as Mozart's “Hunting Quartet” and Grieg's Opus 27, as well as Wynton Marsalis’ jazzy Creole Contradanzas and American composer Rebecca Clarke’s thought-provoking Poem.