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The David Geffen Hall, home to the New York Philharmonic, lies within walking distance of Manhattan’s iconic Central Park. Fittingly, on 21 March 2019 the orchestra with conductor Jaap van Zweden will perform Charles Ive’s Central Park in the Dark.

Composed in 1906 and originally titled A Contemplation of Nothing Serious or Central Park in the Dark in “The Good Old Summer Time”, the piece forms part of Ives’ Three Outdoor Scenes, alongside the complimentary orchestral piece The Pond and the lively quintet for piano and string quartet, Hallowe’en. The first performance of Central Park in the Dark did not happen until 1946, 40 years after its original composition.

Charles Ives: Central Park in the Dark – Nighttime portrayal of the famous park

Central Park in the Dark combines the characters of the two other pieces of Three Outdoor Scenes. A series of quiet atonal chords in the strings creates a curious nocturnal atmosphere that is both nostalgic and melancholy. Short flashes of melody evoke the sounds of the surrounding city cutting through the silence of the park. Over the course of the piece, the musical events become denser; motifs begin to overlap before abruptly settling back into the near silence of soft string chords.

"The strings represent the night sounds and silent darkness – interrupted by sounds from the Casino over the pond – of street singers coming up from the Circle singing, in spots, the tunes of those days – of some “night owls” from Healy´s – the “occasional elevated”, or a “break-down” in the distance – of newsboys crying “uxtries” – of pianolas having a ragtime war in the apartment house “over the garden wall” – a fire engine, a cab horse runs away, lands “over the fence and out” – again the darkness is heard – an echo over the pond – and we walk home."
Charles Ives

Central Park in the Dark will receive three performances by the New York Philharmonic on 21, 23, and 26 March 2019 alongside works by Johannes Brahms and John Adams.

 

• Charles Ives - profile


• Central Park in the Dark - work details


• New York Philharmonic

 

Photo: greips at Pixabay

 

A new production of Hans Werner Henze’s opera, Der Prinz von Homburg, opens on 17 March 2019 at Staatsoper Stuttgart for a series of five performances. The production is directed by Stephan Kimmig and will be conducted by music director, Cornelius Meister.

Hans Werner Henze wrote more than 20 operas including Elegy for Young Lovers, The Bassarids, and Der junge Lord. The initial impetus for Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg came from Italian director, Luchino Visconti, with whom the composer had worked with on the ballet Maratona di Danza in 1957. Henze asked Ingeborg Bachmann to adapt the libretto from Heinrich von Kleist’s play, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg oder die Schlacht bei Fehrbellin and the opera was premiered in Hamburg in 1960.

The opera begins with the eponymous Prince of Homburg who, having been distracted by a daydream before a major battle, misses the field marshal’s briefing and risks the army’s victory when he leads his troops into the fight. The battle is won nonetheless, but the prince is sentenced to death for disregarding orders. Der Prinz von Homburg explores the prince’s struggle with guilt and reconciliation, as well as the justice or injustice of his sentence.

Hans Werner Henze: Der Prinz von Homburg – Musical drama dealing with guilt and reconciliation

By moving between free tonality and serial techniques, Henze sets the drama in a way that immerses listeners into the apparent binaries of the opera’s major themes: dreams and reality, war and peace, freedom and captivity.

“The ‘Prince of Homburg’ focuses on the glorification of a dreamer, the destruction of the traditional concept of a classical hero: the essence is the blind and unimaginative application of laws and the glorification of human benevolence whose comprehension also strays into more profound and complex areas than would be ‘normal’ and permits a man to find his place in the world despite being a dreamer and sentimentalist, or maybe precisely because of this.”
Hans Werner Henze

There will be a number of other opportunities to hear Henze’s operas in 2019: On 23 May, Der junge Lord begins at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, and from 23 July, a new production of the Elegy for Young Lovers will open at Theater Aachen.

 

• Hans Werner Henze - profile


• Der Prinz von Homburg - work details


• Staatsoper Stuttgart

 

Photo: Theater an der Wien / Wilfried Hösl

John Casken’s Madonna of Silence, a new 24 minute work for trombone and orchestra, will be given its world premiere by the Hallé Orchestra on 28 February 2019 at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. The work was commissioned by the orchestra for their Principal Trombone Katy Jones, and will be conducted by Jamie Phillips.

Madonna of Silence takes its name from a drawing by Michelangelo that Casken first discovered in Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. Composed in a single movement, the drama of the work is divided into three sections: The Madonna in contemplation, The Madonna’s hymn and The Madonna’s lamentations.

John Casken: Madonna of Silence - ‘A scene brimming with unease and premonitions’

Casken’s fascination with Michelangelo’s image began with its beautiful title, but extends to every aspect of the new composition. The personalities, motivations, and stories of each character are embodied in the music through the interaction between the trombone soloist and the orchestra.

‘The Madonna is not the delicate young woman we usually associate with such painted scenes […] her right hand holding an open book. Is this a Book of Prophets that has revealed the truth about the child on her lap?  Joseph is a towering figure at her left shoulder, gazing as a thoughtful and troubled witness.
The child Jesus is far from being a child, his position across the Madonna’s lap already that of the pietà, the fallen Christ descended from the cross. And, who is the mysterious figure in the background, finger to his lips, shushing, urging silence on the scene? Is he urging silence in order not to wake the child, or is it a more serious exhortation not to speak of what is about to unfold in the life of Christ?’
(John Casken)

The interaction between these four figures is the reason Casken has called Madonna of Silence ‘a drama for trombone and orchestra’ rather than a concerto.

Further dramatic works by Casken can be heard this spring with the song cycle Lines from a Wanderer at Wigmore Hall on 30 April 2019 and the Brighton Festival on 15 May 2019, and performances of the melodrama Kokoschka’s Doll throughout the UK.

 

• John Casken - profile


• Madonna of Silence - details


• Hallé Orchestra

 

Image: Virgin and Child with Saints Joseph and John the Baptist (after Michelangelo´s Madonna del Silenzio), 1561, Metropolitan Museum of Art

‘La secret de la vie’, (the secret of life) is the topic of Aribert Reimann’s recent work, Fragments de Rilke, which will receive its world premiere on 23 February 2019 at the Berlin Philharmonie. This song cycle for soprano and orchestra was commissioned by the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin who will give the first performance as part of the Brahms-Perspektiven festival with chief conductor, Robin Ticciati and soprano soloist, Rachel Harnisch.

It was while writing his most recent opera, L‘Invisible (2011-2017) that Reimann first worked with Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetic fragments; the texts have since found their way into a number of works for voice and piano. In Reimann’s new orchestral settings, however, Rilke’s influence has been allowed to extend to its accompaniment, colouring the composer’s dramatic orchestral writing.

Aribert Reimann: Fragments de Rilke – The human experience

Reimann’s chosen texts, written between 1911 and 1926, deal with questions of defining human experience: what shapes a life – could it be love, fate or something divine? The work consists of a single movement, which is divided in the score into a prelude followed by 12 fragments and highly varied interludes. The piece concludes with the fragment ‘Profond amour qui de la terre s’élève’ (Deep love that rises from the earth), after which Reimann states that the intellectual objective has been satisfied.

“Everything that happens
puts
a mask on our face that
never dares to be definitive
[…]
The wind of which memory, of which life the wind
has in passing laid a mask on my being”
(Fragments V and VI)

In an introduction to the concert on 23 February, Aribert Reimann will discuss his work with musicologist Habakuk Traber. There are a number of other opportunities to hear Reimann’s vocal music this year: On 10 March Reimann’s …oder soll es Tod bedeuten after Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy will be played in Chemnitz, and on 22 March Drei Gedichte der Sappho will be performed in Karlsruhe.

 

• Aribert Reimann - profile


• Fragments de Rilke - work details


• Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

 

 

On 16 February 2019, Jörg Widmann’s Babylon-Suite will be performed by Orchestre National de France under the direction of Nicholas Collon in the Radio France Auditorium in Paris as part of the Festival Présence. The performance will be accompanied by video-installations created by students of the École Estienne.

Widmann’s Babylon-Suite concentrates his monumental opera Babylon into 30 minutes of music. The composer has captured the original vocal parts and embedded them into the fabric of the orchestration so the voices emerge from the orchestra itself.

Jörg Widmann – Babylon-Suite: Sibling to the opera

Babylon, with its libretto by cultural theorist and philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, is a story of different cultures living together and the organisation of their shared society, reaching beyond the Biblical Babylon and the Tower of Babel. The monotheistic, monogamous culture of the Jewish people and the multicultural Babylonian people who recognise many deities and practice non-monogamy are set apart in particular in the fifth scene of the opera. The Jewish people sing a lamentation psalm (“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion”), while the Babylonians praise their gods with an exuberant ceremony. By setting this scene in 17-part counterpoint with the orchestra split into 70 parts, an intricate representation of Sloterdijk and Widmann’s Babylon is created.

“It was my task as composer to express the opposing energies as drastically as possible in their differences and nevertheless find a way that the scenes result in an entirety. The construction of the opera is similar to the Tower of Babel, starting with a huge fundament and reducing to the top.”
Jörg Widmann

 

• Jörg Widmann - profile


• Babylon-Suite - work details


• Babylon (opera) - work details


• Maison de la Radio


• Staatsoper Unter den Linden - Babylon-Suite


• Staatsoper Unter den Linden - Babylon (opera)

 

Photo: Bayerische Staatsoper München / Wilfried Hösl

On the 9 February 2019, Dutch National Ballet will give world premiere of Gavin Bryars’ Requiem, ten-movement setting of liturgical texts, for orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists with choreography by David Dawson. The performance will be the first of a seven to be given throughout February in Amsterdam with the final performance taking place on 1 March.

Gavin Bryars and David Dawson’s collaboration in this new work is the latest in an ongoing and fruitful creative partnership. Dawson used Bryars’ Third String Quartet for his ballet Reverence, and the pair worked together on a production for Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp, production resulting in Bryars’ string orchestra work, The Third Light.

Gavin Bryars: “My most personal Requiem”

The form of the Requiem is not unfamiliar to Gavin Bryars, who has previously written a number of works exploring its subject matter from various perspectives. Cadman Requiem (1989), his first requiem, was written in memory of Bryars’ friend Bill Cadman and premiered by the Hilliard ensemble. He composed After the Requiem (1990) elaborating on material he had used in his first requiem. Together these works explore a period of mourning, loss and acceptance, with the latter written, in Bryars’ words, in ‘that state which remains after mourning is (technically) over.’ Nevertheless, Bryars has described his recent Requiem as his most personal exploration of the form.

‘This is by far my most personal Requiem. David’s idea to portray dancers as angels, as beings between heaven and earth strongly appeals to me. It is a beautiful image that offers a certain comfort: musicians and singers that make the dancers float through the space.’
Gavin Bryars

In Requiem, Bryars and Dawson seek to explore the passing of time and the essence of faith. Dawson has described the piece as a method of acknowledging the past and remembering it so that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes.

• Gavin Bryars - profile


• Requiem - work details


• Dutch National Ballett

 

Photo: Het Nationale Ballet / Alain Honorez

Containing both immense soundscapes and delicate, lyrical melodies, Pēteris Vasks’ Symphony No. 2 for large orchestra is a work that oscillates between extremes. On 1 February 2019, the Winnipeg New Music Festival will perform the symphony’s North American premiere in Canada led by conductor Daniel Raiskin.

Commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the BBC Proms in 1999, Symphony No. 2 is a vast work written as a single movement and lasting 40 minutes. In the 20 years since its premiere, the symphony has received many repeat performances in Europe has been the basis for three different ballet productions.

Pēteris Vasks – Symphony No. 2: a powerful work

Vasks intention for Symphony No. 2 was to express the suffering experienced by the Latvian people under German and Russian occupation throughout the twentieth century. The weight of this subject casts a dark atmosphere over much of the symphony, which is prone to loud, frightening passages. Despite this, there is a duality to the symphony in which moments of palpable fear and desperation are contrasted by moments of optimism and hope, musically characterised by melancholic, gentle themes and bright string-sounds, as well as in folk-like tunes and birdsong motives.

“In my opinion, every honest composer should search for solutions for the crises of his time and strive for a better future. A composer can demonstrate how humankind can prevail against its own self-destructive nature. If we can find a solution or reason for hope, then I will gladly make it my business to join the exploration.”
Pēteris Vasks

This position is informed by Vasks’ own life experiences. Born in Latvia in 1946 during its occupation by the USSR, Vasks suffered from discrimination as the son of a Baptist pastor and moved to Lithuania to study the double bass. After studying, he began a performing career with a number of Latvian orchestras and developed an interest in composition, starting composition studies in Riga in the 1970s. Although initially Vasks suffered from Soviet censorship due to his beliefs and artistic convictions, today he enjoys a position as one of the most frequently performed composers in the world.

On 30 January, Vasks’ meditation for violin and string orchestra, Vientuļais eņģelis (Lonely Angel) and a setting of Dona nobis pacem for mixed choir and string orchestra will also be presented at the festival.

• Pēteris Vasks - profile


• 2nd Symphony - work details


• Winnipeg New Music Festival

On 27 January 2019 Peter Eötvös’ melodrama Secret Kiss will be premiered by ensemble Gageego! and actress Ryoko Aoki in Gothenburg. Eötvös, who recently celebrated his 75^th birthday on 2 January, will conduct the performance.

In Secret Kiss, we are transported back to nineteenth-century to follow the intimate story of a young man, who having travelled from France to Japan, falls in love with the mistress of a local nobleman. Through the smallest of gestures, the two young individuals establish a sensitive but powerful connection. The subtly of this connection, the ‘secret kiss’ of the work’s title, is shown when they each drink from the same place on the same teacup.

Following on from his opera Senza Sangue (2014-2015/2016), Eötvös has once again taken his inspiration from the Italian author Alessandro Baricco, whose acclaimed 1997 novel Silk provides the plot for Secret Kiss, with an adapted by the composer’s wife, Mari Mezei.

Peter Eötvös – Secret Kiss: Noh theatre and contemporary music 

Ryoko Aoki, who will narrate Eötvös’ new work, is a renowned singer and performer in the field of Noh theatre. Having studied at the specialist Noh theatre school Kanze in Tokyo, her work often connects the traditional elements of Noh artistry with contemporary music, and it was her initial interest that spurred Eötvös to compose Secret Kiss.

The spoken text of Secret Kiss is accompanied by flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion who together create the unique atmosphere of this extraordinary work. Evocative musical figures make direct reference to the story’s plot, while low woodwinds represent the powerful underlying emotional connection between the young lovers.

Then he rose and bowed.
The last thing he saw before he left were her eyes, staring mutely into his.
Perfectly mute.
Her eyes transfixed him, and her face was the face of a young girl.
(Secret Kiss, Scene 8)

Following the world premiere, Aoki will give further performances of Secret Kiss in Tokyo on 9 March, in Porto on 24 March with the Remix Ensemble, in Madrid on 17 April with the Plural Ensemble, and in Berlin, Cologne, and Budapest on 8, 15 & 17 September respectively with Ensemble Musikfabrik.

• Peter Eötvös - profile


• Secret Kiss - work details


• The Concert Hall Gothenburg

 

Photos:
Adobe Stock / tenglao
The New York Times Style Magazine / Masanori Akao / http://ryokoaoki.net/e/

On 19 January 2019, a new critical edition of Strauss’ one-act opera Elektra will be premiered at the Landestheater Linz, led by their chief conductor Markus Poschner and directed by Michael Schulz.



A preliminary new performance material for Elektra has been prepared as part of the Richard Strauss Works - Critical Edition, which is the first scholarly critical edition of Richard Strauss’ complete musical oeuvre. Rather than being created purely for musicological scholarship, the edition strives to also serve performing artists and has been developed as an extraordinary symbiosis of musicology and artistic practice. Drawing on the insights of extensive research by the Richard Strauss Institute, the edition consolidates such source materials as autograph scores, alternative versions, and Strauss’ own correspondence. Salome will be the first stage work to be published in April 2019, to be followed by Elektra.

Performance materials based on the edition are also being created. Landestheater Linz is now putting the score and orchestral material of the Elektra edition to the test in close cooperation with the editors of the research institute at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, before the volume is concluded and published.

Elektra: new performance material for a well-known opera

The opera is based on Sophocles’ play of the same name and adaptation of the Greek myth, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Employing the most extreme musical tools at his disposal, Strauss transforms the story of Elektra into a deeply emotional, intense and violent soundscape, as the vengeful Elektra is consumed by her desire to avenge her father’s death.

Strauss has described his motivation in writing Elektra:

“My desire to confront Winckelmann's Roman copies and Goethe's humanism with a possessed, exalted Greece of the sixth century won over a myriad of misgivings, and so Elektra (in contrast to Salome) employs an even greater unity of structure, and with it, greater violence.”

Following the premiere, Landestheater Linz will stage eleven further performances of Elektra concluding 26 April 2019.

• Richard Strauss: profile


• Elektra: work details


• Richard Strauss Works - Critical Edition


• Landestheater Linz

Photo: Staatstheater Nürnberg / Ludwig Olah

On 22 December, Theater Münster will perform Kurt Weill's opera Street Scene (1946), staged by Hendrik Müller and conducted by Stefan Veselka.

After seeing a performance of Elmer Rice’s original play in Berlin, Weill was immediately inspired to set the play to music and fulfil his dream of writing an ‘American Opera’ by seamlessly fusing European Opera with the American Broadway style. It took 10 years of persistence for Rice to agree to the idea, but he then became very involved in the process and ultimately co-wrote the opera’s libretto with James Hughes. On 9 January 1947, Street Scene was premiered at the Adelphi Theater in New York, staged by Charles Friedman and under the musical direction of Maurice Abravanel.

Kurt Weill – Street Scene: an American Opera

Street Scene transports the audience to the streets of 1920s New York, and into the lives of the inhabitants of a shabby East Side tenement building. Over the course of two hot summer days, the opera follows their stories of hope, violence, love and disappointment.  Anna Maurrant is having an affair with the milkman and the whole neighborhood, apart from Anna’s husband Frank, are aware of her deception. Meanwhile Anna’s daughter Rose is in love with the neighbor's son Sam, and together they dream of escaping to a better life. One day Frank comes home unexpectedly to find Anna with her lover, leading to a tragic finale.

American opera has at last been realized. . . . Weill's music is dissonant, melodic, cacophonous, brutal, powerful, and emotional, with incredible climax building upon incredible climax, as the orchestra and singers love, weep, wail and shout the joys and sorrows of life against a stark, sordid background of a great dramatic story of America.  - Musical Digest, 1947

Weill's opera will receive 8 further performances at Theater Münster from 3 January to 23rd April 2019. Further Kurt Weill performances will take place from 2 February to 30 March 2019 in Stuttgart, when Schauspiel Stuttgart will present his satirical ballet chanté The Seven Deadly Sins (1933).

• Kurt Weill - profile


• Street Scene - details


• Theater Münster (German)

 

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