Work of the week

This year's BBC Proms will include a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) on 8 August. Simon Russell Beale will narrate, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and Philharmonia Voices.



In 1933, Schoenberg, the son of a Jewish merchant, fled the Nazi party’s rise to power and emigrated to the USA. The Nazi dictatorship and subsequent Holocaust clearly impacted Schoenberg deeply, driving and intensifying the representation of human suffering and torment in his compositions, as evident in A Survivor from Warsaw .

A Survivor from Warsaw - A groundbreaking exploration of twelve-tone technique

In just 8 minutes, Schoenberg expresses musically the suffering and persecution of an entire population. The cantata text, written by Schoenberg himself, portrays a scene in the Warsaw Ghetto to illustrate experiencing the Nazi reign of terror. The cantata is in three different languages: The narrator speaks English, but quotes the commanding shouts of a soldier in German, and finally in a devastating emotional climax to the work, the narrator cries out in Hebrew ‘Shema Yisroel’, a Jewish declaration of faith.

Now, what the text of the Survivor means to me: it means at first a warning never to forget what has been done to us, never to forget that even people who did not do it themselves, agreed and found it necessary to treat us this way. We should never forget this, even if such things have not been done in the manner in which I describe in the ‘Survivor’. This does not matter. The main thing is that I saw it in my imagination. – Arnold Schönberg

Other Schott works at the BBC Proms include Henri Dutilleux’s The Shadows of Time (1997) on 8 August in the same programme as A Survivor from Warsaw, Sir Charles his Pavan (1992) by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies performed by Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic on 9 August and a new Cello Concerto by Huw Watkins will receive its world premiere with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Thomas Søndergård and with the composer’s brother Paul Watkins as soloist on 12 August.

• Arnold Schönberg - profile


• A Survivor from Warsaw - workdetails

This week, Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber will receive two performances: on 3 August by the Suffolk Youth Orchestra under Philip Shaw in Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Suffolk, United Kingdom and on 6 August at the Britt Music & Arts Festival in Oregon, USA with Teddy Abrams conducting the Britt Festival Orchestra.



In 1936, a final ban was issued by the Nazi government on performances of Paul Hindemith’s works, leading to his eventual emigration to the United States four years later. Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis was the first work he wrote in his new adopted homeland.

Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis – A Ballet’s transformation into symphony

In 1938, Hindemith composed music for the ballet Nobilissima Visione for the dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine. It was on the back of this project that the idea for a new piece was formed: Massine asked Hindemith to arrange piano works by Carl Maria von Weber for a new ballet. However, the artists could not reach an agreement. Hindemith decided against Massine’s suggestion and instead composed variations on themes by Carl Maria von Weber, rewritting them in his own style - in a letter to his wife, Hindemith wrote that he had “coloured them lightly and made them sharper”. Massine rejected the result for its complexity and in the end the ballet was never completed. It wasn't until 1944 that Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis received its world premiere by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. Virtuosity, imagination and humour characterise the work, and the Turandot-Scherzo, with its pentatonic motive and boisterous jazz fugato for winds and percussion, is especially popular with audiences.

Among all the participants in the creation, distribution, and reception of music, the individual with the keenest sense for the technique vested in a piece of music is always the performer. The impeccable technique of a masterpiece he transmits will be the most valuable stimulus for his own technique of re-creation; his performance will be carried along by the composition’s perfection; his craving for the listener’s satisfaction will most readily be crowned with success. – Paul Hindemith

Suffolk Youth Orchestra recently performed Symphonic Metamorphosis in a tour of Germany including Wittenberg, Magdeburg and Dessau. Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, USA will present the first three movements of the work (Allegro, Turandot-Scherzo and Andantino) arranged for concert band on 6 August under conductor Steve Davis.

Other notable upcoming performances of Hindemith's music include a concert on 28 August in which conductor Kent Nagano and members of Philharmisches Staatsorchester Hamburg will play Kammermusik Nr. 1 at the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival.

• Paul Hindemith - profile


• Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber

On 30 July, Peter Eötvös’ Halleluja - Oratorium balbulum will receive its world premiere at the Salzburg Festival as part of the ‘Ouverture Spirtiuelle’ series, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and Hungarian Radio Choir under Daniel Harding.



Halleluja is Eötvös’ first symphonic vocal work, scored for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra, and will be dedicated to his close friend, the late author Péter Esterházy, who collaborated with Eötvös on the oratorio’s libretto.

Choir, angels, narrator and a stuttering prophet

Esterházy and Eötvös devised Halleluja as a 'meta-oratorio', in which the characters demonstrate self-awareness of their parts, recognising their roles are constructed and exist within an artistic performance. Throughout, Eötvös includes fragments of existing hallelujahs from a variety of musical periods ranging from baroque cantatas to gospel music. Examples include Bach’s Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, Handel’s Messiah, and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. For his prophet protagonist, Esterházy drew upon the figure of Notker Babulus, a monk also known as Notker the Stammerer. The oratorio explores themes of personal identity intended to resonate with contemporary political environments. Eötvös renders Notker, a figure from the dark ages, into a symbol of our time:

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to be a prophet because everything is unpredictable, and so the oratorio is not really a portrait of Notker, but rather a reflection of our time. As the work unfolds, the chorus as representative of the masses becomes increasingly assertive and critical. – Peter Eötvös

Harding will conduct two more performances of Halleluja on 23 November in Vienna and 24 November in Budapest. Next year, Eötvös will preside as ‘Creative Chair’ at Tonhalle Zürich and on 22 March, he will conduct the Tonhalle Orchestra in the Swiss premiere of Halleluja alongside his percussion concerto Speaking drums. On 1 August, he will conduct his chamber work Sonata per sei with Klangforum Wien at the Salzburg Festival.

• Peter Eötvös - profile


• Halleluja - Oratorium balbulum - workdetails

On 18 July this week, Fazıl Say’s Ballad for alto saxophone and orchestra will receive its world premiere in Tokyo with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Say composed the work for Japanese saxophonist Nobuya Sugawa, who will perform as soloist.



Born in Ankara in 1970, Say began playing the piano aged four and began composing as a teenager at Ankara conservatoire. Today, as internationally acclaimed composer and concert pianist, his keen interest in jazz, improvisation and traditional music influences much of his work and provides elements that are frequently incorporated into his compositions.

Fazıl Say’s Ballad – full of sonic possibilities

Say composed Ballad in a style allowing the soloist the opportunity to explore the full sonic possibilities of the saxophone's tonal range. Beginning with a long lyrical meditation evoking a search for peace, soft drum beats provide a backdrop reminiscent of the ocean.

All my compositions, as indeed my life does, take place between these two musical lineages (oriental and occidental). Turkish music has a stronger rhythmical character, German music has a great history. Both cultures interact with each other. - Fazıl Say

July has been a particularly busy month for Say with the composer himself performing as soloist for his piano concerto China Rhapsody with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra conducted by Long Yu on 15 July, and looking ahead The Hong Kong Sinfonietta Orchestra performing his piano concerto Silk Road on 23 July conducted by Yip Wing-sie. On 14 August Say will give a recital including four of his solo piano works, Bodrum, Paganini Jazz, Alla Turca Jazz and Summertime Variations at the Mosel-Musikfestival in Bernkastel-Kues.

• Fazıl Say - profile


• Ballad - workdetails

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

On 6 July, Jörg Widmann’s Messe for orchestra will be performed by the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich with whom Widmann has held the title of ‘Creative Chair’ for the 2015/16 season.



First awarded in the 2014/15 season, the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich’s ‘Creative Chair’ creates a position for eminent composers, conductors and soloists to work with the orchestra, as well as to share their knowledge through workshops, lectures and discussion sessions. On 6 July, Widmann will also perform as the soloist in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major.

Messe is one of a trilogy of orchestral works by Widmann, alongside Lied (2003) and Chor (2004), exploring the idea of vocal music for orchestral forces where the orchestra is used both as the soloist and choir. Messe also touches on the composer's academic interest in spiritual music. This work marked a turning point in Widmann's compositional style along with his fifth string quartet with soprano Versuch über die Fuge, which challenged him to use strict musical forms. Techniques that he had previously avoided set the tone for each movement in Messe.

The instrumental singing is the topic of my earlier orchestral works 'Lied' and 'Chor'. There is no singer or choir performing; the orchestra is singing, reciting and declaiming. That’s how it is with Messe: The musicians are the protagonists: Solos, choir and orchestra rolled into one. For example, there is an antiphony between choir and organ in the ‘Monodia’ of the ‘Kyrie’, but no choir or organ is really involved. In central liturgical passages, for example at the beginning of the ‘Kyrie’ or the ‘Gloria’, the notes appear like a gigantic choral score. Every musician ‘sings’ the particular mass text on his instrument. – Jörg Widmann

In performances between 6-8 July, Widmann will conduct Messe at the Tonhalle Zürich. Other upcoming performances of Widmann’s works include Versuch über die Fuge for soprano, oboe and chamber orchestra performed by the Saarländisches Staatsorchester on 10 July and in August the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim will perform Con brio in their 2016 summer tour, including concerts at the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival and BBC Proms.

• Jörg Widmann - profile


• Messe - workdetails

On 2 July, a production of Henze’s opera Elegy for Young Lovers will be staged by the Armel Opera Competition and the Liszt Academy in celebration of what would have been Henze’s 90th birthday on 1 July. The production will be directed by András Almási-Tóth with the Pannon Philharmonic conducted by Gergely Vajda at the Thália Theatre, Budapest.



Elegy for Young Lovers is set in an inn near the Austrian Alps where poet Gregor Mittenhofer has assembled a circle of loyal companions: his secretary countess Carolina, his physician Dr. Reischmann, his lover Elizabeth, and Hilda Mack who is haunted by the husband she last saw 40 years ago before he vanished in the mountains. Elisabeth falls in love with Toni Reischmann, the son of Mittenhofer’s doctor and although Mittenhofer agrees to let Elisabeth go, he begs her for one last labour of love: The young couple must bring him an Edelweiss from the mountains. Mittenhofer and the countess fail to warn Elizabeth and Toni that there is a snow storm approaching and soon after they set out into the mountains the storm comes. The young lovers both die, tightly embraced in each other’s arms.

Henze worked with two of his most admired American authors, W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, to write the libretto. In his autobiography he writes about their collaboration:

I told them I wanted a small group of singers and a small instrumental ensemble comprising no more than twenty players. These instruments might perhaps play a role within the piece’s dramaturgical structure by being identified with particular characters. I told them that I would like the work to be a psychological drama, a chamber drama that would deal in the most general terms with questions of guilt and atonement, in other words, with subtle and complex issues. I was delighted with this draft and even while reading it could already hear the artificial air of the Hammerhorn buzzing in my ears. I could already hear the first notes of the music for the two lovers, delicate flowers, meadow saffron and violets, and the grotesque, Wotanesque huffing and puffing of Mittenhofer, the cold-hearted poet who offers up human sacrifices to his Muse. These people are real people, modern men and women, with their weaknesses and strengths, mortals, not gods or heroes or any other kind of supernatural beings. – Hans Werner Henze

Elegy for Young Lovers will also be staged in spring 2017 at the Theater an der Wien with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Albrecht. Further birthday performances include a concert of Henze’s chamber works to be performed in his home town, Gütersloh on 1 July, and the orchestral works L'usignolo dell'imperatore and Seconda sonata per archi in Montepulciano.

• Hans Werner Henze - profile


• Elegy for Young Lovers - workdetails

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

On June 17, Cincinnati Opera presents the world premiere of Gregory Spears’s Fellow Travelers, with a libretto by Greg Pierce based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon. The world premiere production is directed by Kevin Newbury. Fellow Travelers was developed and co-commissioned by G. Sterling Zinsmeyer and Cincinnati Opera.



Fellow Travelers takes place at the height of the McCarthy era in 1950’s Washington, D.C. Recent college graduate Timothy Laughlin is eager to join the crusade against communism, and a chance encounter with handsome State Department official Hawkins Fuller leads to Tim’s first job—and his first love affair with a man. Drawn into a maelstrom of deceit, Tim struggles to reconcile his political convictions and his forbidden love for Fuller.

The piece uses the love affair of Laughlin and Fuller to shed light on “the lavender scare”, an often-overlooked period of McCarthyism that resulted in the mass firings of suspected homosexuals from the United States government. “It’s about a part of our history which was almost invisible,” Spears says of Fellow Travelers, “and I think one of the things opera can do is make invisible things visible.”

The Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio hosts ten performances running through July 10.

• Gregory Spears - profile


• Fellow Travelers - workdetails


• Cincinnati Arts Association - Informations to the performance

On 27 May, Hartmann’s Symphony No. 1 will be performed the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Kismara Pessatti under the direction of Arie van Beek in Rotterdam.

Hartmann composed his Symphony No. 1 for contralto and orchestra in 1935 but because of his political dissidence, the music was classified as degenerate. He would wait more than 10 years before the work was finally premiered in 1948. Today, Symphony No. 1 is a standard part of the new music repertoire. The work, subtitled “Versuch eines Requiems” (“Attempt at a Requiem”), was originally intended as a Cantata Lamento. By 1955, after many re-workings, the piece had matured into the symphony known today. The text is taken from poems by Walt Whitman, whose words also Paul Hindemith used in his Requiem 'for those we love'.

Symphony No. 1: music against the war

Hartmann's Symphony does not follow the classical form of four movements, but rather, five movements are structured concentrically around an instrumental middle movement (a "song without words"). This middle section contains a quotation from his anti-war opera, Simplicius Simplicissimus, in the form of theme and variation. Like many of his works, Hartmann's Symphony bears the impression of life under the Nazi regime.

He describes his motivation and feelings at the time of its composition:

Then there came 1933, with its misery and hopelessness, and with this that consistent development of violent dictatorship - the most dreadful of all crimes: the war. That year I recognised the necessity of confession, not in desperation and fear of that power, but as a counteraction to it. I told myself that freedom will win, even if we are destroyed – at least back then I believed this. At that time, I wrote my 1st String Quartet, the Poème Symphonique "Miserae" and my First Symphony with the words of Walt Whitman: 'I sit and look at all plagues of the world and at all distress and disgrace'. – Hartmann

Next month, Hartmann’s Concerto funebre for solo violin and orchestra will be performed on 4 June at the Wiener Festwochen Festival with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Klangforum Wien. On 4 and 5 July, it will also be performed by the Studio-Orchester München with conductor Christoph Adt at the Reaktorhalle in Munich.

• Karl Amadeus Hartmann - profile


• Symphony No. 1 - work details