For a change, rather than standing on stage in one of the worlds renowned grand concert halls, Anne-Sophie Mutter spent two evenings playing in a tiny graffiti-scrawled nightclub in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin, jam-packed with hip young people. “I definitely wanted to put the audience in touch with the music I love and believe in, music that packs such a huge emotional punch. An audience which I’ll never find in the Philharmonie. So I thought to myself: If there’s a bunch of people who will never go to the Philharmonie, I’ll have to go to them”. Accompanied by pianist Lambert Orkis, Mahan Esfahani and her own Virtuosi – young scholarship holders from her foundation – Mutter performed works ranging from the Baroque to the present day – from J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi (Four Seasons) to George Gershwin and John Williams. The music she otherwise plays behind a sort of cordon sanitaire in the world’s great concert halls acquired an incredible intensity, if only from her proximity to the listeners. The audience, to Anne-Sophie Mutter’s great joy, was equally euphoric in ist response: “The applause was moving. I will always cherish the enthusiasm of the audience in these intimate club appearances.”
Thielemann conducts Bruckner No. 6 & Beethoven
Bruckner’s music has played a central role in Thielemann’s relationship with the Staatskapelle; he launched each new concert season with a Bruckner symphony – now the Sixth, this recording of which completes Thielemann’s cycle of the mature Bruckner symphonies. For the Sächsische Zeitung this performance marked “another Bruckner triumph for Dresden” by revealing “the greatness of the work with a rarely heard transparency and clarity. It could hardly have been better!” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 featured one of today’s outstanding keyboard virtuosos, the Soviet-born Israeli-American pianist Yefim Bronfman, in a performance marking the start of his residency as the Staatskapelle’s “Capell-Virtuos”. In the words of the Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten: “He has music ‘in his fingertips’ (…) ‘High School’ of piano playing.”
Festive Advent Concert at the Frauenkirche Dresden 2015
Since the first of these annual events in 2000, when the magnificent Frauenkirche was still a building site – destroyed during World War II, it was painstakingly reconstructed out of the ruins – the Advent Concert has become a new holiday tradition in Dresden, to be enjoyed by music lovers throughout the world. That appeal is reflected in the concert’s lineup of artists. This time they are headed by renowned Scottish maestro Donald Runnicles, featured “in the solid, German repertoire which is his chief glory” (Financial Times). His soloists are rising-star soprano Sonya Yoncheva, “charismatic” (New York Times) and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni. Beginning in a blaze of glory with the opening chorus from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, the thoughtfully compiled programme features seasonally appropriate selections by Handel, Seidel, Weber, Mendelssohn, Humperdinck, Gounod and Reger. “A thrilling concert, festive, ambitious and impressively filmed.” (Sächsische Zeitung)
The Prokofiev Marathon
This suite of five concerts at Munich’s Philharmonic Hall performed by the Münchner Philharmoniker, the Mariinsky Orchestra and several soloists, forms part of the MPhil 360° Festival. The MPhil 360° Festival is a new festival which marks the beginning of Valery Gergiev’s collaboration with the Münchner Philharmoniker. Core of the program of the festival’s first edition are the five piano concertos of Prokofiev who enter into a dialogue with history and modern age. All of Prokofiev’s piano concertos are complemented by works of the German musical literature. PROGRAM: Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 1, Haydn: Symphony No. 82
Jansons conducts Shostakovich, Bartók & Ravel
Mariss Jansons is one of the leading conductors of his generation and a close friend of the Berliner Philharmoniker. For this special concert he brings works by Bartók, Shostakovich and Ravel to the rostrum and together with the Berliner Philharmoniker he succeeds in “rocking the Berlin Philharmonie” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). For Shostakovich’s 2nd Violin Concerto Jansons and the Berliner Philharmoniker are joined by the German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann. PROGRAM Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Ravel: “Daphnis et Chloé”; Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2
Salonen conducts Sibelius and Grieg
This concert by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundunks has an entirely Scandinavian theme. Under the aegis of Finnish-born Esa-Pekka Salonen the orchestra begins the recital with “Eleven Gates”, a work of soundpainting by the contemporary Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Alice Sara Ott provides the focal point of the evening, with the Piano Concerto by the Norwegian Edvard Grieg. The orchestra rises to the challenge with the impressive final work, the great Fifth Symphony by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, a performance marking his 150th birthday “that no one who was present will ever forget.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Haitink conducts Shostakovich and Webern
Bernard Haitink begins the musical programme at the rostrum of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with Anton Webern’s early and seldom played orchestral work “Im Sommerwind”. It is followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony.
The Odeonsplatz Concert – “Spanish Night”
The ballet music “El sombrero de tres picos” by Spain’s Manuel de Falla, with its three dances that characterize three Spanish regions, opened the lively proceedings in the open air. It was complemented by the Iberian influences in the other works written by composers outside Spain, such as Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto (performed by star violinist Julia Fischer), that shows clear signs of Spanish influence in the rhythm and melody. The musicians rounded off this Spanish night in Munich with Claude Debussy’s homage to Spain, “Ibéria”, and Maurice Ravel’s “Alborada del gracioso”.
Nelsons conducts Mahler & HK Gruber
Mahler’s Fifth is among the best loved of his symphonies; not least thanks to the Adagietto, made legendary as the soundtrack to Visconti’s Death in Venice. Andris Nelsons on the rostrum of the the Berliner Philharmoniker made this symphony into “a true celebration of beauty and the phenomenal Philharmonic string sound” wrote in Der Tagesspiegel delight. The concert got off to a racing start, too: the “master trumpeter” (Berliner Zeitung) Hakan Hardenberger carried the audience with him in HK Gruber’s trumpet concerto Aerial. After all his showpiece: the composer wrote this BBC Proms commission specially for him. “Hardenberger, the virtuoso supersonic, thrills his audience through and through.” (Berliner Morgenpost)
La Belle Hélène
Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène has always been one of its composer’s most successful works. Its first performance in Paris was quickly followed by productions in Vienna, Berlin, London, Milan and New York. A satire of middle-class values, this opéra bouffe pillories narrow-mindedness in society. Adopting a pro-active stance, director Renaud Doucet and designer André Barbe treat the piece as a “great show” with numerous choreographic elements, relocating the action of Offenbach’s classical spoof and setting it on a cruise ship in the 1960s, when Flower Power, love and drugs were all the rage. “La Belle Hélène is a firework display for ears and eyes” (Hamburger Morgenpost), “opulent and amusing” (Bild), and in the title role Jennifer Larmore convinces with her “fantastic vocal performance” (Das Opernglas)