Work of the week

Carl Orff's masterpiece Carmina Burana will take the stage on 6 September at this year's BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London. Keith Lockhart leads the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir, Southend Boys' and Girls' Choirs, with soprano Olena Tokar, tenor Thomas Walker and baritone Banjamin Appl.

Carmina Burana remains one of the most performed works of the Twentieth century, with productions internationally by professional and amateur orchestras and choirs alike. Through its captivating music, Carmina Burana addresses the ups and downs of life - love and death, happiness and unhappiness, growth and decay - dictated by Fortune's ever-turning wheel. The work consists of 200 medieval verses and songs divided into three major parts: in the first, spring and nature are praised; the second part tells of earthly pleasures from the perspective of an abbot with a set of grotesque solo songs; and the last part pays tribute to love in its many manifestations. The large choir begins and ends the piece by singing to the capricious goddess Fortuna. Throughout the work, archetypal characters such as the adventurer, the girl and her companion, or the lovers, are used as in folk song to depict the facets of human life.

Orff wrote:
A special stylistic feature of Carmina Burana is the static architecture. In its strophic structure it knows no development. A once found musical formulation - the instrumentation has always been included from the very beginning - remains the same in all its repetitions.

Further major performances this autumn include those on 26 September at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, on 5 September and 24 October at the Munich Marionette Theatre, and a ballet production at the Volksoper Wien on 22 October.

• Carl Orff - Profile


• Carmina Burana - information


• BBC Prom's 2015

foto: Carmina Burana at the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin

On 27 August, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra will premiere Heinz Holliger’s new song cycle Dämmerlicht (Hakumei) at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. The piece, based on a haiku written by Holliger himself, will be sung by soprano Sarah Maria Sun and conducted by the composer.

The traditional Japanese haiku form often plays with the dichotomy of sound and silence. In Dämmerlicht, Holliger makes deliberate musical use of this notion, whilst creating a smooth and atmospheric progression through his haiku. Another common theme in haiku is the idea of peace and contemplation; this is certainly present in Holliger’s poems with themes such as the sunset and the “lonely cloud”. Musically, the composer skilfully evokes the twilight of the title by using unpitched sounds, string glissandi and shimmering woodwind, whilst frequent changes of pace reflect the uncertainty felt in the transition between day and night.

Lonely cloud

the red evening sky

Souls move homeward

- Haiku no. 5

The concert at Suntory Hall will also include the Japanese premiere of Holliger’s Recicanto for viola and small orchestra. The Tokyo venue has recently featured many of Holliger’s works in its programmes, including his Trio for oboe, viola and harp; Trema, his Quintett for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn; and Increschantüm, for soprano and string quartet.

• Heinz Holliger: composer profile


• Dämmerlicht (Hakumei): Details and online score


• Tokyo Symphony Orchestra

(08/24/15)

On 23 August, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra will give the Japanese premiere of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s monumental Requiem for a Young Poet. The performance at Suntory Hall in Tokyo will be conducted by Kazushi Ono.

Combining a symphony orchestra, three choirs and a jazz band with vocal soloists and speakers, Requiem for a Young Poet is one of Zimmermann’s largest-scale works, completed in 1969. The composer chose the term ‘lingual’ for the subtitle: a speech piece. It uses elements of radio play, speech and reportage alongside those of cantata, mass and oratorio, frequently transitioning between spoken language, speech with music, and sung text. The piece also uses tape with recordings of armoured vehicles, jet fighters, narration of James Joyce’s Ulysses and speeches by Pope John XXIII, Josef Goebbels and many others. Here, Zimmermann paints a portrait of diverse sonic phenomena that, despite fundamental differences, sound together in one musical work.

‘The Requiem does not refer to a specific young poet (though three poets, namely Mayakovsky, Yessenin and Bayer, are given special attention in the work) but, as it were, to the epitome of the young poet as we can imagine him during the past fifty years – in his many and diverse relations with the things that had a decisive influence on his intellectual, cultural, historical and linguistic experience and thus our experience in Europe from 1920 to 1970.’ — Bernd Alois Zimmermann

20 March 2018 would be Zimmermann’s hundredth birthday. Despite the complexity of his work, he was extremely popular with his contemporary audiences. The conductor Ingo Metzmacher was once asked whether or not audience members might be overwhelmed by Requiem for a Young Poet. His answer: ‘Astoundingly, it was one of the greatest successes of our season. It is a massive, striking piece, and it has much to do with Zimmermann’s concept of ‘spherical time’—of the simultaneity of what we often assume to be far apart.’

 

• Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Profile


• Requiem for a Young Poet - information

(08/17/15)

On 16th August, Pierre-Laurent Aimard will perform György Ligeti’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the International Contemporary Ensemble in New York. Part of the Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the performance will be conducted by George Benjamin at Avery Fisher Hall.

Ligeti’s Piano Concerto was composed in two stages: the first three movements were premiered in 1968 but Ligeti subsequently expanded the work to five movements, premiered in their entirety in 1988. The composer was working on the first two books of his famous Études pour piano around this time, and the superimposed African rhythms, shifting accents and changing tempos so characteristic of those pieces can be heard too in the concerto. The concerto also notably uses some unusual instruments, including a slide whistle and ocarina.

Aimard worked closely with Ligeti for many years. He writes:

When I first worked with Ligeti in the early 1980s, I was a member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Our collaboration intensified, I regularly played his music, took part in portrait concerts, and premiered new works. It was a fascinating experience. Although Ligeti already had a precise vision or idea of his piece, he was always looking for ways to transfer his ideas into the real world. He would search for the right tempo, tone, articulation and the correct character. He had a lot of imagination.

An insight into Ligeti’s piano works, created in collaboration with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, can be found online at the Ruhr Piano Festival’s ‘Explore the Score’ project. Amongst multimedia scores, audio samples and video recordings of Ligeti’s work, Aimard talks about the music, interpretation and his own piano master classes.

 

• György Ligeti - Profile


• Concert for Piano and Orchestra


• explorethescore.org

(08/10/15)

The focus of this Work of the Week is not in fact a single work, but Japan’s most popular contemporary film composer, Joe Hisaishi. On 6 August, a portrait concert "My Neighbor Totoro: The Best of Joe Hisaishi" will be given by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Singapore’s Esplanade Concert Hall.

Hisaishi is a prolific film composer, having written well over a hundred works for the big screen, TV and advertising. He is responsible for the scores of some of the most successful animated films to come out of Japan, including "Howl’s Moving Castle" and the Oscar-winning "Spirited Away", working in collaboration with Studio Ghibli and director Hayao Miyazaki. Hisaishi’s scores are often atmospheric: using gentle, melancholic piano lines or the power of a large orchestra he is able to abduct his listeners into a fairytale world.

Hisaishi on the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki:

Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings. So I tried to connect with this feeling of hope, to the spirit of these scenes. Music that is slower, that allows the audience to experience what’s in the space between movements. It still starts the same way - with a piano. I use technology but don't rely upon it. I think it should be part of the process, not the entire process.

 

• Joe Hisaishi - performances


• Film Scores and other works by joe Hisaishi


• Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay

(08/03/15)

Joaquín Rodrigo‘s Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra is arguably one of the most important guitar concertos ever written. This year marks the 75th anniversary of its 1940 première in Barcelona, and the piece still enjoys frequent performances around the world. Its success lies partly in Rodrigo’s technical mastery of the potential acoustic problems: he succeeds in making the solo guitar an equal counterpart to the orchestra.
Concierto de Aranjuez was composed in Paris in 1939, just before Rodrigo’s return to Madrid following the Spanish Civil War. With the piece Rodrigo intended "to provide a reminder of past times, the magnificent gardens of Aranjuez, its trees and its birds". The Palace of Aranjuez and its gardens, the 18th century summer residence of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, now form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The first movement takes the bolero rhythm as its inspiration, with Rodrigo using pizzicato and arpeggio effects to produce a characteristically Spanish sound. The famous theme of the second movement is based on an old Spanish religious song, the Saeta, which is sung during Holy Week in Andalusia. The melody has Arabic, Jewish and Spanish influences and is often ornately decorated.

In 1939, standing there in my small studio in the heart of the Latin quarter, vaguely thinking about the concerto, I heard a voice inside me sing the entire theme of the adagio all at once, without hesitation. Immediately afterwards, without a break, I heard the theme of the third movement. There it was! … Where the adagio and the allegro were born of a supernatural inspiration, the first movement required more thought, calculation and determination. I finished the work where it should have begun. Paris, 1939. - Joaquín Rodrigo

Concierto de Aranjuez can be heard on 27th July in Chautauqua, NY as part of the Colorado Music Festival, and on the same day in Hersbruck, Germany. It will also be performed on 29th July at the Teatro di Verdura in Palermo, Sicily and in Manchester, UK and Washington, D.C. in September.
This summer’s edition of schott aktuell is dedicated to the 75 anniversary of the première. It will include more background information about the composer and his work, as well as a Palace of Aranjuez wall calendar for the 2015/2016 season. You can read schott aktuell online using the following link and order the calendar via e-mail: [email protected].

• Joaquín Rodrigo - composer profile


• Concierto de Aranjuez - work details


• schott aktuell "Concierto de Aranjuez"

(07/27/15)

On 23rd July 2015, Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann ("Tales of Hoffmann") will be staged by the Norwegian Opera at the Bregenz Festival, directed by Stefan Herheim. Johanne Debus will conduct a cast that includes Daniel Johansson, Kerstin Avemo, Bengt-Ola Morgny and Rachel Frenkel. Although the composer died before the opera was finished, leaving several performing versions, Schott, together with Offenbach researchers Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck, has produced a definitive critical edition of Les Contes d'Hoffmann, which is used for this production.

At the centre of the opera is the poet Hoffmann, who, whilst waiting for his beloved Stella, tells of his failed amorous adventures. These include his destructive obsession with the mechanical doll Olympia, a fatal tryst with the singer Antonia, and the loss of his reflection during a sensual encounter with the courtesan Giulietta. After his story-telling, and realising that Stella will join his roster of failed relationships, Hoffmann takes refuge in his art, following the Muse as the only true friend of the poet.

Above all, I have a terrible, unstoppable weakness, namely that I cannot stop working. I regret this on behalf of those who do not love my music, because I will certainly die with a tune under my pen - Jacques Offenbach

The production runs until 6th August and is broadcast on 26th July on ORF3. The Komische Oper Berlin will present the opera from 2nd October 2015 in a production by the Australian director Barrie Kosky.

• Jacques Offenbach - Profile


• Work details


• Les Contes d'Hoffmann - Bregenz Festival

Foto: bregenzerfestspiele.com

(07/20/15)

On 18 July 2015 Atsuhiko Gondai’s new orchestral work Vice Versa will receive its world premiere by Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa at Ishikawa Ongakudo Concert Hall in Kanazawa, Japan.

This is the second commission Gondai has received from Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, after the success of his work 84,000x0=0 in 2005. Vice Versa will be conducted by Michiyoshi Inoue, the orchestra’s award-winning Chief Conductor, who has taken the group on worldwide tours including to Germany, France, South America and Australia.

Vice Versa is a work exploring the limits of opposition. Gondai contrasts new compositional techniques with traditional musical ideals, constructing a work of two movements that deliberately contradict each other as much as musically possible. The intention in these movements is to create conflicting musical experiences for the audience – literally, swapping vice versa. As the composer explains:

The aim of the composition was to examine opposition in each recognisable musical element, beginning with the mutual rejection of each of the work’s movements. The music seeks to overcome this rejection and for the instruments to create a new dialogue of connection and fusion, so, one is simultaneously looking from the summit downwards, and from the bottom up. – Atsuhiko Gondai

On 4 November Gondai will present another, as yet untitled, new work for orchestra, to be premiered at Alte Oper in Frankfurt by hr-Sinfonieorchester under Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

• Atsuhiko Gondai - Profile


• Information on Vice Versa

(07/13/15)

On 6 July 2015, Richard Strauss’ late lyric opera Arabella will be staged in a new production by theatre and film director Andreas Dresden at Munich Opera Festival. Performances will take place at Nationaltheater München, with Philippe Jordan of Opéra National de Paris conducting a cast that includes Anja Harteros (Arabella), Kurt Rydl (Graf Waldner), Doris Soffel (Adelaide), Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (Zdenka), Joseph Kaiser (Matteo) and Thomas J. Mayer (Mandryka).

The opera tells the story of Arabella, a beautiful but stubborn girl intended by her parents to marry a rich man for his money. After numerous complications including the dressing of her sister Zdenka as a boy, unrequited advances and misidentification in darkened rooms, both Arabella and her sister eventually end up with the men they love.

Arabella is the final work Strauss wrote with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who died in 1929, three years before the opera’s completion. Their intention was to model the opera on their successful earlier work Der Rosenkavalier (1911) but, in the words of Strauss, “without its faults and length”. As in Der Rosenkavalier, the narrative takes place in Vienna and is rich in indulgent, Classical-style waltzes.

We must work to ensure that the waltzes sound less brilliant, less classical, and more melancholy. They must shimmer in their ambiguity and decadence to guarantee that, unlike those in Der Rosenkavalier, they stand in their proper historical place. – Philippe Jordan

The new production runs until 17 July 2015. Three further performances are scheduled in January 2016 with Bayerische Staatsoper, who will also be presenting Strauss’ Elektra and Die Schweigsame Frau at the Munich Opera Festival this year.

 

• Richard Strauss - Profile


• Bayerische Staatsoper München

(Foto: Matthias Creutziger)

(07/06/15)

• Mark-Anthony Turnage - Schott profile


• Staatsoper Hamburg: Blood on the Floor