Tagged with 'SWR Sinfonieorchester'

Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Symphony No. 3 is a postwar masterpiece. Its expressive drama and rich orchestration make it an unforgettable experience. Don’t miss it live with the SWR Symphony Orchestra in February.

Chaya Czernowin’s inspiration for her new cello concerto, Guardian, grew from her in depth research of the human experience of time. The work is dedicated to cellist Séverine Ballon who along with the SWR-Sinfonieorchester and Pablo Rus Broseta, will give its world premiere at the closing concert of the 2017 Donaueschingen Festival on 22 October.



In our dreams, the brain creates its own worlds using fragments from our waking reality combined with figments of our imagination. In the same way, Czernowin creates works using fragments from the natural world expressed through her own creative voice. Guardian creates a gloomy alternative reality, in which time is elongated and compressed like an accordion.

Chaya Czernowin – Guardian: exploring the elastic quality of time

On the surface, Czernowin seems to adhere to traditional concerto form: a distinct solo line is supported by an orchestral accompaniment, interspersed with orchestral tuttis and a final cadenza.  But if we look more closely, the roles are anything but traditional.

Guardian is a floating exchange between the merging and parting of two sound bodies.  In one instance, the cello emerges from the orchestra but increasingly pulls away, getting louder and louder. At times the orchestra acts as a single cello.  The wind instruments for example are instructed to create breathy tones instead of distinct clear notes in order to resemble the bow being pulled on a string. The resulting dense clusters, played at pianissimo, create the illusion of a unison sound.

Two speakers amplify the solo cello, which ranges in sound from plaintive cantabiles to roaring like a wild animal. In the orchestra, extended techniques add shade and colour to Czernowin’s alternative world.

The field of Open Form in algorithmic visual computer work enables a multi-dimensional development of objects […], at any moment one or the other parameters of the shape takes over, impacting the overall form. This is the way in which this concerto thinks. – Chaya Czernowin

Guardian will be performed again at the rainy days festival in Luxembourg on 17 November with Roland Kluttig conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with Séverine Ballon.

• Chaya Czernowin – profile


• Guardian – workdetails and score


• Donaueschinger Musiktage

On 16 July, the Festival Napa Valley presents Embraceable You and I Got Rhythm from George Gershwin’s musical Girl Crazy with Kathleen Battle, Joel Revzen conducting Festival Orchestra NAPA.



Based on the libretto by Guy Bolton und John McGowan, Girl Crazy tells the story of Danny Churchill, an entertainer from New York who falls for the woman of his dreams, a postwoman named Molly Gray, after his father sends him to a ranch in Arizona. Nonetheless Danny longs for a sinful life, and turns the ranch into a night club and casino. Despite the ensuing chaos of conspiracies, robbery and pursuits, Molly and Danny manage to find their way back to each other.

George Gershwin’s Girl Crazy – a musical with jazz standards

Embraceable You was written in 1928 and was originally meant for the unpublished operetta, East is West. Two years later, Gershwin used the song as a romantic serenade in Girl Crazy. I Got Rhythm was also composed earlier, developing out of a slow instrumental piece from Gershwin’s previous work Treasure Girl (1928). The songs are now some of the most popular jazz standards, which shot singers like Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman (who played the role of Kate Fothergill, a singer in Danny’s night club) to stardom overnight.

It was the first time I’d met George Gershwin, and if I may say so without seeming sacrilegious, to me it was like meeting God. Imagine the great Gershwin sitting down and playing his songs for Ethel Agnes Zimmermann, of Astoria, Long Island. No wonder I was tongue-tied. When he played ‘I Got Rhythm’ he told me: ‘If there’s anything about this you don’t like, I’ll be happy to change it.’ There was nothing about that song I didn’t like. But that’s the kind of guy he was. I’ll never forget it. – Ethel Merman

I Got Rhythm can be heard again on 16 July by the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra in Louisiana. The work will also be featured in an arrangement by William C. Schoenfeld for piano and orchestra, I Got Rhythm Variations, at a gala performance by the Hamburg Ballet on 17 July.

Further performances of Gershwin’s works this month include Rhapsody in Blue on 11 July performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille and Faycaol Karoui. On 12, 13 and 15 July the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival presents performances of Rhapsody in Blue and Cuban Ouverture. The latter work will also be performed by the SWR Sinfonieorchester in Freiburg on 16 July and in Evian by the orchestra of Académie Musicale d’Evian conducted by Bruno Peterschmitt on the same day.

• George Gershwin - profile


• Girl Crazy: Embraceable You - workdetails


• Girl Crazy: I Got Rhythm - workdetails


• Girl Crazy: I Got Rhythm Variations - workdetails