Tagged with 'Leipzig'

The rugged landscape of northern Japan as inspiration: the world premiere of Thomas Larcher's new work for choir and orchestra entitled Love and the Fever will take place at the Gewandhaus Leipzig on 10 March 2024. The piece was commissioned by MDR, the Bregenz Festival, the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the NTR Zaterdag Matinee. Dennis Russell Davies is conducting the MDR Rundfunkchor and the MDR Sinfonieorchester.

300 years of Bach in Leipzig and 50 years of Widmann! The new work Kantate by Jörg Widmann will be premiered in Leipzig on 08 June 2023 with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Tomanerchor in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. In the opening concert of the Bach Festival Leipzig, Andreas Reize, Johann Sebastian Bach's 18th successor as Thomaskantor, will take over the musical direction.

Igor Stravinsky’s L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird) has enjoyed regular performances all over the world for more than 100 years, with the Orchestral Suite being a staple of the concert repertoire. This week alone, the piece will be performed in five different cities.



Sergei Diaghilev, manager of the Ballets Russe, originally commissioned Alexander Tscherepnin and Anatoli Ljadow to compose music for the ballet L'Oiseau de feu. However, when both of these collaborations proved unsuccessful, Diaghilew turned to a then unknown 27-year-old by the name of Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky finished the score for the ballet based on two Russian fairy tales within a few months.

Igor Stravinsky’s L'Oiseau de feu – A model for modern film music

While hunting, Prince Ivan captures the Firebird, a powerful female spirit. As a token of thanks for releasing her, she gives him a feather that he can use to summon her when in need. In the forest, Ivan comes across 13 Princesses, all enchanted by the immortal King Koschei, who have slipped away from the palace to dance. Ivan joins in and falls in love with the beautiful Tsarevna. Despite their warnings, Ivan follows them back to the palace which is filled with stone statues. Koschei tries to turn Ivan into stone but the Firebird’s feather saves him. The Firebird then casts a spell over Koschei and his soldiers who begin to dance uncontrollably. Meanwhile, Ivan destroys the source of Koschei's immortality, an egg hidden in a tree. The stone statues regain their human form and Ivan marries Tsarevna.

Stravinsky creates distinct musical identities for the main protagonists in L'Oiseau de feu. Chromatic scales are used to herald Koschei while the Firebird has chromatic, woodwind-driven orchestration. The Prince and Princesses’ music includes quotes from Russian folk songs.
Stravinsky later arranged his ballet music into several orchestral suites. The earliest, from 1911, is essentially a shortened version of the original ballet music. In the 1919 version, the composer reduced the orchestration from 100 musicians down to 60 in order to make the work accessible to smaller ensembles. In the 1945 version Stravinsky added another five movements to the version from 1919.

Remember this young composer; he is a man on the cusp of glory. – Sergei Diaghilev, during a rehearsal in preparation for the world premiere of L'Oiseau de feu.

The L'Oiseau de feu Suite (1919) will be played in Goiânia, Brazil, by the Goiânia Philharmonic Orchestra on 6 September, and in Coburg by the Philharmonische Orchester des Landestheaters on 9 September. The Schwäbische Youth Wind Orchestra will present a special arrangement for wind instruments by Randy Earles in Nördlingen, Germany on 9 September and in Füssen, Germany on 10 September. Herbert Schneider’s revised version of the ballet will be performed by with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig on 9 September.

• Igor Stravinsky – profile


• The Firebird (Suite 1919) – work details and score


• L'Oiseau de Feu (critical revised version) - work details and score


• Landestheater Coburg


• Gewandhaus Leipzig - schedule

Toru Takemitsu’s Nostalghia for violin and orchestra will be performed on 13 September in the Martinskirche in Basel, and on 14 September in St. Peter's Church in Zurich, by violinist Ilya Gringolts and the I Tempi chamber orchestra conducted by Gevorg Gharabekyan.

Composed in 1987 for Yehudi Menuhin, Nostalghia draws inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film of the same name, and its central theme of homesickness. While the word nostalgia refers to desire for a time since past, in both Russian and Italian nostalghia means to acutely miss a place or a person.

Nostalghia - “In Memory of Andrei Tarkovsky”

Takemitsu was attracted to the quiet camera work, sparing use of music, and tendency for long uncut scenes in Tarkovsky’s film, and after the filmmaker’s death in 1986 he dedicated Nostalghia to Tarkovsky’s memory. After a brief introduction, a simple solo violin melody dominates the composition, seeking to evoke a sense of memory, loss and longing. Maintaining the contrasts characteristically found in Tarkovsky’s films, Takemitsu uses a divided string orchestra beneath the violin to musically represent the differing states of water and fog. At the work’s end, the orchestral groups divide again into polyphony, while the solo violin remains in the highest heights.

I would like to follow both Japanese tradition and Western innovation, and to maintain both musical styles simultaneously has become the core focus of my compositional operations. It is a contradiction I do not want to solve – on the contrary, I want the two styles to combat each other. I want to achieve a sound that is as intense as the silence. – Toru Takemitsu

The same concert will also feature Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto funebre for solo violin and string orchestra. On 14 and 15 September, the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi will play Takemitsu’s A Way a Lone II arranged for string quartet and How Slow the Wind for orchestra in the Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Also on 15 September, the Tokyo Sinfonietta conducted by Yasuaki Itakura will perform Rain Coming in the Supporo Concert Hall Kitara in Hokkaido. On 16 September, Pirmin Grehl plays Itinerant for flute at the Schumann Festival in Leipzig, and a day later the Philharmonic State Orchestra Mainz performs Night Signal at the theatre festival Mainz, conducted by Hermann Bäumer.

• Toru Takemitsu - profile

 

• Nostalghia - workdetails