Classical concerts featuring

Anna Lucia Richter

Basel Chamber Orchestra / Giovanni Antonini

A servant tricks a nobleman: even in the arts, such a thing was practically a call for revolution in 1786. And yet the title character of Mozart’s opera »Le nozze di Figaro« was allowed to take his employer Count Almaviva for a full ride on the stage of the Vienna Court Opera that very year and end up making a real fool of himself. The Emperor himself had authorised the performance after Mozart had played him a few pieces from the new opera: he was evidently just as unable to resist the pull of the wonderful music as the audience, who still celebrate the opera as one of Mozart’s absolute masterpieces to this day. At the Elbphilharmonie, the performance of this brilliant work by Mozart specialist Giovanni Antonini with his Basel Chamber Orchestra and a top-class line-up of soloists promises nothing less than a masterly performance.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor Berlin

Really old and extremely lively: For many seasons now, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has been demonstrating how thrilling music from the 17th to the early 19th century can sound in its own series at the Konzerthaus Berlin.Bach's „St Matthew Passion“ was premiered for the second time in 1829 - in the Singakademie building in Berlin, which is now home to the Maxim Gorki Theatre. The conductor was Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who was only twenty years old. He paved the way for a Bach renaissance with the version he arranged and shortened. In the era of Viennese Classicism, Bach's music had simply hardly ever been performed. The Passion, however, which was first presented to the congregation of St Thomas' Church in Leipzig in 1727, is one of the most haunting musical depictions of the story of the crucifixion.

Schumann Quartett / Anna Lucia Richter

Anna Lucia Richter mezzo-soprano

Mahler Festival: Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer - Mahler's Symphony No. 2

'Mahler's beauty always hurts', conductor Iván Fischer said recently. Tonight he conducts his own Budapest Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 2, full of passion, lyricism and brightly shining melodies. Mahler is in good hands with Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Fischer knows like no other how to get Mahler's music flowing, there is no composer he understands better. As early as 2006, Fischer and the orchestra recorded Mahler's Symphony No. 2. 'Impressive', wrote Gramophone.He who calls us gives us eternal life - sings the choir towards the end of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. In this emotionally charged work, Mahler expresses his ideas about life after death. Bliss and melancholy are both given space. Pure, insinuatingly and moving.

Mahler Festival: Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer - Mahler's Symphony No. 2

'Mahler's beauty always hurts', conductor Iván Fischer said recently. Tonight he conducts his own Budapest Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 2, full of passion, lyricism and brightly shining melodies. Mahler is in good hands with Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Fischer knows like no other how to get Mahler's music flowing, there is no composer he understands better. As early as 2006, Fischer and the orchestra recorded Mahler's Symphony No. 2. 'Impressive', wrote Gramophone.He who calls us gives us eternal life - sings the choir towards the end of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. In this emotionally charged work, Mahler expresses his ideas about life after death. Bliss and melancholy are both given space. Pure, insinuatingly and moving.

Mahler Festival: Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer - Mahler's Symphony No. 5

'The beauty of Mahler always hurts,' conductor Iván Fischer once said. At the Mahler Festival, he conducts both the Second Symphony and, today, the Fifth. A powerful work from a heyday in Mahler's life. Turbulent, full of life and passion. Mahler, having just met his great love Alma, seems to express his feelings in the beloved Adagietto.'Each part has its friends and its enemies', Mahler wrote of his Fifth Symphony. He was thrilled that this work raised such extremes of emotions. After three partly vocal symphonies, the Fifth is a purely instrumental. But therefore no less intense: sometimes jubilant, sometimes gloomy, always fiery. 'The work has come to represent the total of all the suffering that life brought to me.'

Budapest Festival Orchestra / Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor / Iván Fischer

»Resurrect, yes resurrect, you will!« It is at the end of Mahler’s Second Symphony that the choir vocalises the religiously and philosophically motivated central message of the work with poignant optimism. Performances of the monumental »Resurrection Symphony« remain an impressive event to this day – not only in Hamburg of course, where the composer once had the inspiration for the choral finale in the »Michel« church. How fitting that the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Choir, a Hamburg-based orchestra, should now be performing the finale. The manuscript of the work, which lasts around one and a half hours, was auctioned off several years ago for 5.3 million euros. Fortunately, the live experience of hearing the work is a little more affordable – and priceless at the same time. »Resurrect, yes resurrect, you will!« It is at the end of Mahler’s Second Symphony that the choir vocalises the religiously and philosophically motivated central message of the work with poignant optimism. Performances of the monumental »Resurrection Symphony« remain an impressive event to this day – not only in Hamburg of course, where the composer once had the inspiration for the choral finale in the »Michel« church. How fitting that the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Choir, a Hamburg-based orchestra, should now be performing the finale. The manuscript of the work, which lasts around one and a half hours, was auctioned off several years ago for 5.3 million euros. Fortunately, the live experience of hearing the work is a little more affordable – and priceless at the same time.

Fabulous

Werner is head over heels in love with Margareta. And since he is The Trumpeter of Säkkingen, it makes sense to serenade his sweetheart on said instrument: The perfect trigger for Gustav Mahler to become creative and start composing. In 1884, a stage production of the novel about Werner and Margareta is put on at the Hoftheater Kassel, and Gustav Mahler writes the music for it. Out of that, Blumine is the only remaining piece. The rest was destroyed by 24-year-old Mahler who was second Kapellmeister at the time – quality control at its most radical. Since this highly romantic but isolated movement wouldn’t really fit into Mahler’s next major project either, his first symphony, seven decades went by before Blumine was rediscovered: Pure, nearly unclouded beauty by Mahler, and with a trumpet solo to melt your heart. Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) is a collection of texts that always remained a source of inspiration for Gustav Mahler, and a point of focus in his musical thinking. The joy and suffering of love, life as a soldier, death and its gruesomeness: The Gürzenich Orchestra is once more looking forward to welcoming renowned mezzo soprano Anna Lucia Richter from Cologne who will perform songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Surely, what is nowadays referred to as Franz Schubert’s »small« C Major symphony must have felt quite »great« to the barely 21-year-old composer: The orchestra is generously staffed for the time (1818), and the wind section finds itself on the strong side of an emancipatory boost, having rarely been this prominently featured in a symphony. The young gentleman skillfully puts to use the achievements made by his Viennese role models Haydn and Beethoven – he even composes a bold scherzo which would certainly have pleased the great Ludwig. Still, Schubert tells his very own symphonic story which is far from being laden with pathos but instead defies gravity in a unique, somnambulistic way. Simply fabulous!

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