Tagged with 'Luxembourg'

Talking cats, living teddy bears and flying fish - quite normal! At least in Toshio Hosokawa's children's play Your Friends From Afar (German original title “Deine Freunde aus der Ferne”). It will be performed in Germany for the first time on 3 March 2024. Members of the SWR Symphony Orchestra will perform the German premiere together with narrator Rainer Strecker at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Although known predominantly for his operas, Richard Wagner’s oeuvre includes many orchestral and chamber works. Among these is Wesendonck-Lieder for voice and piano, which will be performed this week in the version orchestrated by Felix Mottl in Luxembourg and in the arrangement for ensemble by Hans Werner Henze in the UK, Switzerland and Germany.
While in exile in Zurich, Wagner met the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck, who quickly became his friend and sponsor. Between 1857 and 1858 Wagner became infatuated with Otto’s wife, Mathilde, as is documented in copious correspondence between the two. The affair inspired Wagner to write a piano sonata and the Wesendonck-Lieder, a setting of five of Mathilde’s poems. The relationship only ended when a letter was intercepted by Wagner’s then wife, Minna.

Richard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck: ‘Our songs’

This song cycle gives an insight into Wagner’s tormented mental state at the time, alternating between exuberant euphoria and delusional distress. Mathilde also inspired a soft lyricism that is not widely observed in his operatic works. Wagner revisited some of the material from the Wesendonck-Lieder in his opera Tristan and Isolde which he was concurrently writing: the third and fifth songs in the cycle are subtitled “Studie zu Tristan und Isolde”.
There have been many versions of the song cycle, with Felix Mottl’s orchestration for large orchestra being the most popular. Hans Werner Henze didn’t consider his 1976 version for alto and chamber ensemble an arrangement, as it allows for a larger range of creativity in the voice part and introduces modern harmonic structures to the accompaniment.

I have not written anything better than these songs and very few of my works will be remembered besides them. – Wagner in a letter to Mathilde

Henze’s version of the Wesendonck-Lieder can be heard on 20 November in Stadthalle Braunschweig with soprano Jelena Kordiæ, on 21 November in Geneva with alto Sara Mingardo and on 25 November in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh with mezzosoprano Cheryl Forbes. The Felix Mottl version for large orchestra will be performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe with Bernard Haitink and soprano Eva Maria Westbroek on 21 November at the Philharmonie in Luxemburg.

• Richard Wagner – profile


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  • Wesendonck-Lieder version by Henze – workdetails and score
  
  
  • Wesendonck-Lieder version by Wagner – workdetails and score
  
  

  
  

  
  

On 26 June, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ last large-scale work, The Hogboon, will be premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, joined by the London Symphony Chorus, LSO Discovery Chorus and Guildhall School Musicians at the Barbican Hall, London. The work was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Philharmonie Luxembourg.



The Hogboon is a children’s opera which tells the story of Magnus, a young Orkney Islander who, with the help of a friendly Hogboon (a household troll), sets out to defend the village from the feared sea monster, Nuckleavee.

Completed shortly before his death in March,The Hogboon was particularly close to Maxwell Davies' heart as an Orkney resident and a passionate advocate for music education. The composer wrote the libretto himself, based on an Orkney folk tale. He took great pleasure in creating a work for combined professional and student forces, assigning the children’s choir the roles of the angry sea monster and the witch’s kittens. The opera also bears an ecological moral: we must take care of nature if we wish to live alongside it.

Bearing in mind the involvement of children and students, I have not written down to them with any condescension – rather – I have written up, knowing, from long experience, that, taken absolutely seriously, children and students are wickedly perceptive, and not to be taken for granted. I have attempted to make the masque work on several levels, of interest to adults, students and children, with weavings into the work’s verbal and musical textures diverse layers of meaning not least to do with our accommodations with Nature, and our present ecological problems.– Maxwell Davies

The Hogboon can next be seen in Luxembourg with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2017. Following the premiere of The Hogboon in London, a free memorial event in Maxwell Davies' honour will take place at St John's Smith Square on 27 June. Included in the programme are two of his last works, The Golden Solstice (2016) for choir and organ and String Quartet Movement 2016, receiving its premiere performance. For more information and booking go to: https://www.sjss.org.uk/events/max-celebration.

• Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - profile


• The Hogboon - workdetails


• Barbican Hall - information on the premiere The Hogboon


• St. John's Smith Square - information on the memorial event