Tagged with 'Orchestra'

A musical Rübezahl: The new orchestral work Geistervariationen by Anno Schreier will be premiered with the Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie in Zittau on 1 July 2023. Ewa Strusinska will be the conductor.

It’s Ligeti’s Birthday! To mark the centenary of this iconic composer, Peter Eötvös (*1944) will conduct the world premiere of his new work entitled LIGETIDYLL with the Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra on 28 May 2023. 

Let’s go see the dinosaurs! On 14 May 2023 the Capitol Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premiere of Ludger Vollmer's Lost World in Offenbach, Germany under the baton of Stefanos Tsialis.

We want more trumpets! In Fazil Say’s exciting new work Concerto, he features not only one, but two solo trumpets! World-renowned virtuosos Gábor Boldoczki and Sergei Nakariakov will perform the world premiere with the FOK Prague Symphony Orchestra and conductor Andrey Boreyko on 13 May 2023 in Budapest’s spectacular Béla Bartók National Concert Hall.

Composed for a birth, performed for a coronation! To celebrate the upcoming inauguration of King Charles III, the London Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Sir Michael Tippett’s Suite in D on 06 May 2023 under the baton of Edward Gardner at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Ready to explore China? The orchestral work Sichuan Image by Xiaogang Ye will receive its Norwegian premiere with the Studentersamfundets Symfoniorkester with the conductor Ruiyi Li on 27 April 2023 in Trondheim.

Starting point Beethoven with an ambiguous ending: The new orchestral work Forestallings by Han Lash will be premiered in Mainz on 14 April 2023 by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz under the direction of  Hermann Bäumer.

Audiences can expect a true revelation at the upcoming world premiere of Sebastian Hilli's orchestral work, Miracle. Hilli’s new work bursts with surprising and unconventional ideas and will be boldly taken under the direction of Ryan Bancroft and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra as they embark on the composition’s first live performance on February 1st, 2023 at the Konserthuset Stockholm.

The Staatskappelle Berlin celebrates its impressive history as it marks its 450th anniversary this year. The earliest sources mentioning the orchestra date from 1570. On 11 September, the world premiere of a new work by Jörg Widmann commissioned specially for the occasion, Zeitensprünge (Leaps in time), will be given in a concert conducted by Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera House. 

The title Zeitensprünge is a pun about musical time-travel and stylistic escapades. Widmann explores the multiple stylistic periods through which the orchestra has lived during its long history, with the opening bars featuring an off-stage ensemble playing renaissance dances. Only when the musicians enter the stage does the idea of conducting start to take form, and a concert of today’s understanding commences. 

Jörg Widmann – Zeitensprünge: A Concerto for Orchestra in a nutshell

Though Zeitensprünge is a condensed 10-minute orchestral work of only 450 bars (one for each year of the Staatskapelle´s history), it nevertheless has everything a full-scale Concerto for Orchestra needs. There are solos from nearly every section of the orchestra, ensembles such as fanfares emerge from the texture, medieval winds and consorts play next to each other, and Widmann uses a variety of musical forms to lead to a brilliant final canon that symbolises many becoming one. 

“When I sit in front of a sheet of manuscript paper, I don’t keep thinking ‘you have to invent something new’. Not at all. My head is full of harmonies, connections and combinations that have never been heard before. My problem is to find forms for them. I am now in a stage of fighting to find these new forms.” - Jörg Widmann 

• Jörg Widmann – composer profile


• Zeitensprünge – work details and online score


• Staatskapelle Berlin
  

Photos:Marco Borggrve, Adobe Stock / spuno

+++ After the following story was published, we learned that the concert and live-streaming had to be cancelled as well. +++

On 11 April, the NHK Symphony Orchestra will perform Toshio Hosokawa’s Meditation to the victims of Tsunami (3.11) as part of a livestream concert conducted by Masaru Kumakura. The concert has been organised to replace the orchestra’s scheduled public performance in response to ongoing restrictions of COVID-19. 

Born in Hiroshima following World War II, Hosokawa has composed a number of works (including Memory of the Sea and Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima) that express a deeply personal connection to those who have found themselves victims to disasters – both present and historical. Remarking that the Tohoku Earthquake on 11 March 2011 gave him pause to contemplate more deeply what it is ‘to live’, Hosokawa draws listeners’ attention to the strength of people in the face of the unimaginable.

In recent works, Meditation to the victims of Tsunami (3.11), a mourning for the victims of Tsunami, Klage, in which a mother could heal her deep sorrow by singing, and Nach dem Sturm depicting a flower that experienced storm gradually regaining the world of light, Hosokawa expressed fear of primitive power and the terror of nature, and the anger against irrationality that we are threatened by nuclear power we ourselves created. His work coexists with each of these, finding space between them to illuminate the resilience of humanity.

My musical idea is to find harmony between nature and humans. Therefore, the tsunami of 2011 was a great shock to me. Nature just isn’t only nice and beautiful, it can also be cruel sometimes. We Japanese seem to have lost our respect for nature. - Toshio Hosokawa

• Toshio Hosokawa - profile


• Mediation – work details and audio stream


• NHK Symphony Orchestra