With a highly acclaimed performance, shooting star Bruce Liu thrilled as part of the 2024 Klavier-Festival Ruhr. The Chinese-Canadian pianist excelled in this concert evening with the full range of his stupendous playing technique, which he proved with an impressive performance of a stylistically wide-ranging series of works from Haydn, Chopin, and Beethoven to Prokofiev, touching on the variations of the Ukrainian Nicolai Kapustin, which are infused with a relaxed jazz feeling. Bruce Liu has made a name for himself by winning the Warsaw Chopin Competition in 2021, conquering his place in international music life. PROGRAM Haydn: Sonata No. 32; Chopin: Sonata No. 2, Op. 35; Kapustin: Variations Op. 41; Beethoven: Sonata No. 18, Op. 31/3 “The Hunt”; Prokofiev: Sonata No. 7
Peltokoski conducts Holst and Vaughan Williams
Tarmo Peltokoski, a favourite of audiences and musicians alike, is at the conductor’s podium to begin his final season as the LNSO’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. The accordion part of “Tango” by Arturas Maskats is played by the widely acclaimed bandoneonist Arturs Noviks. Gustav Holst is celebrating his 150th birthday in 2024, and therefore his most famous work, the symphonic suite “The Planets” is part of the program. Each movement of the seven-movement suite is dedicated to a different planet in the solar system and its astrological characteristics. In its final movement, “Neptune, The Magician”, the orchestra is joined by the singers of the Riga Project Choir, directed by Christopher Walsh-Sink. Their voices can also be heard in the performance of Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ Seventh or “Antarctic Symphony”, which has its roots in the music for the 1948 film “Scott of the Antarctic”. PROGRAM Holst: Planets; Vaughan Williams: Antarctic Symphony; Maskats: Tango
RCO: Mäkelä conducts Strauss and Wagner
The chief conductor has traditionally led the orchestra in the Christmas Matinee – and now its future chief conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, assumes that role, leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a programme based on the theme of love. Wagner surprised his wife Cosima with the ‘Siegfried-Idyll’ on Christmas Day, 1870. Marital love also inspired Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, which he dedicated to the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza is a declaration of love for the music of Beethoven. It was with this same work that Klaus Mäkelä opened the programme he conducted on his Concertgebouw Orchestra debut in September 2020, when sparks between maestro and orchestra first flew. PROGRAM Unsuk Chin: subito con forza; Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll; Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
Yuja Wang & Víkingur Ólafsson: Live in Berlin
Two classical superstars and two of the most remarkable pianists of their generation join forces: Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson come together at the Philharmonie in Berlin for what promises to be an unmissable meeting of musical minds. As part of an extended tour that sees them performing together for the first time, they present a programme built around two classics of the four-hand repertoire – Schubert’s haunting Fantasie in F Minor and the two-piano version of Rachmaninoff’s powerful Symphonic Dances – alongside John Adams’s 1996 masterpiece Hallelujah Junction and further works by Adams, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and Arvo Pärt.
Messa di Gloria
The ‘Messa a quattro voci’, better known as the ‘Messa di Gloria’, is a youthful work by Giacomo Puccini for orchestra and choir as well as solo tenor and baritone. It was the Italian composer’s final project at the Istituto Musicale Pacini in Lucca and was premiered there on 12 August 1880.
The majestic Romanesque church of San Biagio in Bellinzona, the capital of the canton of Ticino and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, provides an appropriate setting for this milestone in classical music. The performance with original texts and instrumentation by Puccini offers the perfect opportunity to discover the Italian composer’s diverse compositional talent outside the world of opera.
Requiem A
Requiem A – the ‘A’ in the title stands for ‘Beginning’ (German ‚Anfang’), ‘setting off’ (Aufbruch), ‘ash’ (Asche), and ‘breathing’ (atmen). Words that describe the mourning, reconciliation and new beginnings after a time of conflict. Composer Sven Helbig wrote his Requiem A in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Dresden’s destruction and the end of the Second World War. However, war is not at the centre of his piece; he wants to thematise the subsequent reconciliation and forgiveness. Helbig, a self-taught composer of music for choir, orchestra, and chamber ensembles and a multi-instrumentalist, has collaborated with artists such as Snoop Dog, Rammstein, and the Pet Shop Boys. The performance of Requiem A features visuals by the Icelandic film artist Máni M. Sigfusson, underscoring the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Kreuzchor Dresden, soloist René Pape, and the live electronics of Sven Helbig himself.
Dancing Queen
‘Everybody dance!’ – With this call, the lautten compagney BERLIN, together with saxophonist Asya Fateyeva, invites the audience to embark on an exciting journey through three centuries of musical history. It seems audacious to link Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) and ABBA (1972-), two absolute giants of European music history. However, even a second listen reveals countless similarities: the originality and catchiness of their melodies, the rhythmic buoyancy and the unrestricted popularity of both building a bridge from the present day to a time when it was less the Queens and more the Kings who could be found on the dance floor. ABBA’s music is arranged, played on instruments from the baroque period and not just juxtaposed with Rameau’s music. In fact, the pieces are sometimes so fused that it is almost impossible to recognise what was penned by the late baroque Frenchman and what came from the Swedish pop quartet’s workshop.
Verdi: Requiem from Santa Cecilia
Set in the astonishing context of the “Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura”, one of the papal basilicas of Rome, this program combines Verdi’s Requiem, the excellent baton of British conductor Daniel Harding and one of the leading Italian orchestras and choir, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. Harding’s interpretation of Verdi’s famous funeral mass recreates “an immaterial, disembodied, spiritual sound, suitable for this extreme meditation on the end of life and on the mystery that lies after life” (Il giornale della musica). The excellent soloists Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Yulia Matochkina, Charles Catronovo, Roberto Tagliavini contribute to an outstanding performance and an optimal fusion with the choir’s sound. “The last bars, with the crescendo never heard so full of controlled tension and the following pianissimo “dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem”, left the audience deeply touched and speechless: Only after a silence of emotional recollection, which seemed to never end, did the intense applause break out” (il giornale della musica).
Christmas in Versailles – Sonya Yoncheva
Sonya Yoncheva is the star of this Christmas concert at the Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Accompanied by the Choir and Orchestra of the Opéra Royal of Versailles under the baton of Stefan Plewniak, Sonya Yoncheva performs popular carols from around the world. Works by Handel, Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Berlin, Adam and Mohr – can be heard while enjoying stunning footage of the various magnificent halls and gardens of the Palace of Versailles, with exclusive access granted to the Bulgarian opera diva.
Blomstedt conducts Bruckner 9
To mark the bicentenary of Anton Bruckner’s birth, Herbert Blomstedt and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra are bringing his Symphony No. 9 in D minor to the sumptuous Austrian abbey of St Florian, with which the composer had a strong bond.