The Wiener Symphoniker celebrate their anniversary at the Wiener Musikverein, the very place where their inaugural concert took place 125 years ago. The concert looks back to the orchestra’s very first program in 1900 with Wagner’s rarely performed Faust Overture. It also celebrates two landmark premieres: In Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs, “the orchestra provided Hanna-Elisabeth Müller with a soundscape reminiscent of an Art Nouveau painting” (Kurier); Anna Vinnitskaya’s performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was “gripping and full of energy” (Der Standard) The evening concludes with Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, performed an extraordinary 282 times over the orchestra’s 125-year history. PROGRAM Wagner: Faust Overture; Berg: Sieben Frühe Lieder (Seven Early Songs); Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; Mozart: Symphony No. 41
Salzburg Easter Festival: Strauss, Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is how Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal described their final collaboration, on which they worked between 1927 and 1929. Arabella revolves around the true love between two very different couples – the love that unites two people forever “in joy and sorrow, hurt and forgiveness”, as Arabella herself puts it at the end of the opera. With René Fleming in the title role and a supporting cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Gabriela Benacková and the young tenor Daniel Behle – surely a star of the future – this production from the Salzburg Easter Festival was the first of the piece at the Festival since 1958. Under the Strauss specialist Christian Thielemann, it featured a Strauss ensemble that could hardly be bettered today. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson are a “dream couple for Richard Strauss” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
Daniel Harding – The Inaugural Concert: Schumann Scenes from Faust
For his inaugural concert as the new Musical Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the young British conductor Daniel Harding chose to conduct a work with which he has already enjoyed phenomenal success in Berlin, Munich and London: Robert Schumann’s rarely performed Szenen aus Goethes Faust (Scenes from Goethe’s Faust). A Magical evening in the Parisian concert hall, with an aesthetic excellence that leaves you speechless.” (Huffington Post) “For his inauguration concert Harding lands a coup.” (Le Figaro)