ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Chamber Music Hall (Berlin)
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Lukas Sternath, born in 2001, began his career as a Vienna Boys' Choir member before studying piano in Vienna and Hanover under Igor Levit. He won first prize and seven special awards at the 2022 ARD Music Competition. He has performed at prestigious venues like Vienna's Musikverein and Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. As a Rising Star, he returns to Cologne's Philharmonie for a solo recital, featuring Liszt's challenging sonata.
Robert Schumann composed his last piano piece communicating with his fears. He claimed that ghosts were playing music that was both most beautiful and repulsing especially for him, revealing their secrets and threatening him with hell. As the artist left us used to his music being interpreted through the lens of his private life, excessive interpretations and negations of this unusual and beautiful cycle of variations’ worth are not uncommon. It is just as “mad” as Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor is “sane”, the latter being a striking drama of symphonic breadth, enclosed within a single-movement form, destructive and beautiful like a storm. How will this background work together with a new piece by Patricia Kopatchinskaya, composer known for playing with classics, finding hidden meanings and enlivening concert programmes? Let us learn. Adam Suprynowicz Concert duration: approximately 80 minutes
Lukas Sternath, a young Viennese pianist, won the prestigious ARD Music Competition in 2022 despite a broken elbow. His teacher, Igor Levit, expressed immense pride in his achievement. Sternath will perform in Essen, playing Schubert's "Wandererfantasie," Liszt's B minor Sonata, and "Négy tárgy" by Márton Illés. A post-concert discussion with Daniel Finkernagel will follow.
Ludwig van Beethoven: genius, freethinker and troubled soul – as well as a master of coping with crises through music. In 1809, he lamented: »We have experienced a rather crowded misery. The entire course of events has affected my body and soul. What a destructive, desolate life around me! Nothing but drums, cannons, all kinds of human misery!« At that time, he was greatly distressed by the current situation, as Vienna was occupied by Napoleon's troops. Food shortages, the black market and inflation were making life difficult for the people. Beethoven often sought shelter in the cellar – and put pillows over his head to avoid hearing the noise. But despite these unfavourable conditions, he wrote his great Fifth Piano Concerto: a gigantic work that gives the impression as if he wanted to drown out the chaos of war with the power and splendour of his music. For long segments, it spreads a belligerent sound – but with the Adagio, a very contemplative movement is interwoven: Beethoven is said to have been thinking of the »chants of devout pilgrims«. These fragmented states of mind are already pervasive in his Fifth Symphony, which was premiered a year earlier and can certainly be understood as a statement on the political fate of Europe at that time. With its famous obsessive motif, the work is at first full of anxiety and emotional complexity over long stretches. But an astounding inner force is able to find its way out of the initial darkness and into the ever brightening light. Like Beethoven wrote in one of his conversation books, which he used because of his deafness and in which he also collected essential ideas: »With music I have transformed my suffering into hope«.
After last season‘s two-concert guest performance at the river Elbe in Hamburg, our orchestra is looking forward to a veritable »residency« with three programmes in the great hall of the Elbphilharmonie – by the way, already our concerts nos. 6 to 8 in this iconic landmark. Ludwig van Beethoven‘s symphonies are the link between the three programmes, each of which aims to retrace the influence of his music on the composers of the Romantic and Modern eras. This is most apparent in Richard Strauss‘s tone poem »Ein Heldenleben«, whose relationship to Beethoven‘s »Eroica« is not only evident in the title, but can also be heard musically as one listens through the work. Strauss himself wrote to his father during the composing process, ironically referring to the »Eroica«, that he was now working on a larger tone poem entitled »Heldenleben« (»Heroic Life«) »to remedy an urgent need, without a funeral march, but still in E-flat major, with lots of horns, which for once are aimed towards heroism«. Beethoven‘s 7th Symphony was soon described as the »apotheosis of dance«, particularly for its wild, dance-like finale. Stravinsky spoke highly of the »constructive power of order« in Beethoven‘s works and once said that he should be revered only for his music: »In the supreme quality of his tone material, not in the nature of his ideas, lies his true greatness«. In »Sacre du Printemps«, Stravinsky elevates the idea of dance to the archaic, the monstrous, and the juxtaposition of the two compositions, tying ritual, dance and movement into symphonic frames, is particularly attractive. Finally, in Hamburg we combine Beethoven's 5th Symphony with his 5th Piano Concerto – two model works by the composer, which in their respective genres both exerted the greatest influence on many of his successors. Our soloist Lukas Sternath in 2022 created a sensation at the International ARD Music Competition – in addition to the 1st prize, he was awarded seven special prizes, including the audience prize and the award for the best interpretation of the commissioned composition.
Ludwig van Beethoven: genius, freethinker and troubled soul – as well as a master of coping with crises through music. In 1809, he lamented: »We have experienced a rather crowded misery. The entire course of events has affected my body and soul. What a destructive, desolate life around me! Nothing but drums, cannons, all kinds of human misery!« At that time, he was greatly distressed by the current situation, as Vienna was occupied by Napoleon's troops. Food shortages, the black market and inflation were making life difficult for the people. Beethoven often sought shelter in the cellar – and put pillows over his head to avoid hearing the noise. But despite these unfavourable conditions, he wrote his great Fifth Piano Concerto: a gigantic work that gives the impression as if he wanted to drown out the chaos of war with the power and splendour of his music. For long segments, it spreads a belligerent sound – but with the Adagio, a very contemplative movement is interwoven: Beethoven is said to have been thinking of the »chants of devout pilgrims«. These fragmented states of mind are already pervasive in his Fifth Symphony, which was premiered a year earlier and can certainly be understood as a statement on the political fate of Europe at that time. With its famous obsessive motif, the work is at first full of anxiety and emotional complexity over long stretches. But an astounding inner force is able to find its way out of the initial darkness and into the ever brightening light. Like Beethoven wrote in one of his conversation books, which he used because of his deafness and in which he also collected essential ideas: »With music I have transformed my suffering into hope«.