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Gewandhaus Leipzig, Großer Saal (Leipzig)
Musical works of Charles Ives, Arnold Schönberg, Dmitri Schostakowitsch
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Musical works of Charles Ives, Arnold Schönberg, Dmitri Schostakowitsch
»Peace, peace on Earth!« Arnold Schoenberg’s message in his choral work »Friede auf Erden« is unequivocal. But it’s also an illusion: the composer was not the only one to admit as much after he had completed the score. Recent events in the political arena make this plain to us all. But the improbability of achieving peace on earth makes it all the more important to repeat these words as often as possible. And this prompted Alan Gilbert to choose this Late Romantic work to open the Hamburg International Music Festival 2024. »War and Peace« is the motto this time, taken from Leo Tolstoy’s famous and timeless novel. The opening concert with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra sees the return to the Elbphilharmonie of star baritone Thomas Hampson to sing Kurt Weill’s »Walt Whitman Songs«, which he wrote in American exile in 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Whitman – whom Weill regarded as the USA’s first original poetic talent – wrote the song texts, some defiant, some moving, during the American Civil War. The concert comes to an end with Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony, described by Alan Gilbert as the »big bang of modern American music«. With this 1925 work, the great pioneer of musical collages made his boldest dreams come true: how many different tempos, keys and rhythms can be played at the same time without total chaos resulting? Ives’s exciting score supplies a spectacular answer to this question. Performing the symphony is a great challenge for any orchestra – so great that the composer never lived to hear the four-movement piece played in its entirety. Now Alan Gilbert and his musicians join forces with the Prague Philharmonic Choir in this musical adventure.
»Peace, peace on Earth!« Arnold Schönberg’s message in his choral work »Friede auf Erden« is unequivocal. But it’s also an illusion: the composer was not the only one to admit as much after he had completed the score. Recent events in the political arena make this plain to us all. But the improbability of achieving peace on earth makes it all the more important to repeat these words as often as possible. And this prompted Alan Gilbert to choose this Late Romantic work to open the Hamburg International Music Festival 2024. »War and Peace« is the motto this time, taken from Leo Tolstoy’s famous and timeless novel. The opening concert with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra sees the return to the Elbphilharmonie of star baritone Thomas Hampson to sing Kurt Weill’s »Walt Whitman Songs«, which he wrote in American exile in 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Whitman – whom Weill regarded as the USA’s first original poetic talent – wrote the song texts, some defiant, some moving, during the American Civil War. The concert comes to an end with Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony, described by Alan Gilbert as the »big bang of modern American music«. With this 1925 work, the great pioneer of musical collages made his boldest dreams come true: how many different tempos, keys and rhythms can be played at the same time without total chaos resulting? Ives’s exciting score supplies a spectacular answer to this question. Performing the symphony is a great challenge for any orchestra – so great that the composer never lived to hear the four-movement piece played in its entirety. Now Alan Gilbert and his musicians join forces with the Prague Philharmonic Choir in this musical adventure.
They play with technical brilliance, enjoy pushing extremes and dare to break out in ways that can sometimes push a hall's acoustics to their limits: The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, which, with its enchantingly warm and darkly glowing sound, is without doubt one of the best orchestras in Europe. Since 2004, the orchestra has organised the international "Mahler Competition" every three years - a very special conducting competition that also attracts great international attention. Winning the competition means embarking on a successful career as a conductor, which is why it will be exciting once again in mid-July 2023. Young conductors between 18 and 35 years of age from all over the world will then once again be guests in Bamberg to face worldwide competition in preliminary rounds, main round, semifinals and finals. Which of them will be crowned the next classical star of the scene is still completely open at this point. The secret will only be revealed on 15 July, when the winner conducts the grand final concert. The lucky winner can be heard the very next day in the Ingolstadt Festival Hall conducting the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra - together with star guest Thomas Hampson, who has one of the most beautiful baritone voices of our time: It is rare to find such a balanced timbre combined with such flawless vocal technique, even among the very greats of their field. Hampson, who for decades has been one of the most sought-after artists worldwide in opera, operetta, musical, oratorio and lied, devotes himself to Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs, a highly atmospheric music that sounds like fin de siècle and Viennese Jugendstil. Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony has a similar tone, even if it hints at a rather dark world view. This is already indicated by the names of the middle movements, for it was not by chance that Mahler called them "night musics": endangered idylls in which the homely and the eerie enter into an eerily beautiful combination. The evening opens with Joseph Haydn's "Oxford Symphony", music that is literally stretched to bursting point, with a dramatically charged atmosphere that has lost none of its thrilling effect to this day.
The winner of the MAHLER COMPETITION 2023 is Giuseppe Mengoli! He will conduct the final concert. The winner of the prize for the best conducting of the contemporary piece is Kevin Fitzgerald. He will conduct "Con moto" by Bernd Richard Deutsch.