The Munich Philharmonic offered a program of very different sound worlds in the Isarphilharmonie under the knowledgeable, confident and wide-awake direction of Susanna Mälkki. In their uniqueness, the pieces also appeared like the physiognomies of their creators. It began with Anton Webern's six orchestral pieces op. 6: darkness and the finest sense of sound, allusion and lament in the shortest possible form, orchestral richness in the smallest of spaces and the exploration of piano and pianissimo regions. Webern's music provides...
music Berlin Philharmonic back to Salzburg Chief conductor Kirill Petrenko (m) with the Berlin Philharmonic in the Waldbühne in Berlin. photo © Fabian Sommer/dpa Herbert von Karajan once founded the Easter Festival in Salzburg with the Berlin Philharmonic. After a few years in Baden-Baden, the orchestra is now returning to Austria. The Berlin Philharmonic is moving back from Baden-Baden to Salzburg for the Easter Festival. From 2026 onwards, the orchestra will play again at the festival that the then chief...
Like hardly any other composer of the 20th century, George Gershwin knew how to combine jazz and blues with symphony and how to write sophisticated classical and popular music at the same time. Born in New York in 1898 as a child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Gershwin (actually Jacob Gershovitz) would have turned 125 this year - so it's fitting that his most famous work, alongside the opera "Porgy and Bess", "Rhapsody in Blue" was performed at the Philharmonie's New Year's...
By Klaus P RichterWhen Kent Nagano throws himself into the elegant illusionism of Richard Strauss in the Isarphilharmonie, the Munich Philharmonic are in their element. The suite "The bourgeois as a nobleman" is more of a comedic scene, inspired by Molière's stage magic and Lully's musical esprit. As always, Strauss transforms everything into ingeniously instrumented chimes with characteristic solos but also fairytale idylls, such as in the intermezzo of the second act: "galante e grazioso". And Nagano turned it into...
Igor Stravinsky's Violin Concerto from 1931 makes it impressively clear that dryness can be sensual, that distance can be attractive and that elegant coolness should not be confused with harsh cold. Provided that a violinist who is as familiar with all the violin literature as Frank Peter Zimmermann plays on this evening in the Isarphilharmonie with the Munich Philharmonic under the baton of conductor Dima Slobodeniuk, who stepped in for the ailing Mikko Frank. Then it flashes and tingles, then...
The French singer and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, newly appointed music director in Atlanta, makes her debut with the Munich Philharmonic.What a fine, mournful and comforting November program with choir and orchestra of the Munich Philharmonic in the black and yet acoustically warm wooden box of the Isarphilharmonie: "Schicksalslied" based on Friedrich Hölderlin by Johannes Brahms, Max Reger's "Requiem" and Tchaikovsky's Fifth.Nathalie Stutzmann, until recently the great contralto with the unmistakably deep voice, but now principal conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony...
Three years occupy heart and brain almost painfully, while in the Isarphilharmonie the Czech Philharmonic under its chief conductor Semyon Bychkov electrifies Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11. On November 9, 1905, the tsar caused a bloodbath in Moscow among demonstrators who wanted to hand over a petition, causing a thousand deaths - that's what the symphony is about! Premiered 65 years ago, it also tells of the bloody suppression of the uprising in Hungary in 1956, a year earlier, by...
Nomen est omen: "Ampere" is the name of the small club next to the Muffathalle, and the way Christian Prommer and Johannes Brecht electronically overwrote the capriccio from Bartók's second quartet was so loud and electrically charged that you could hear the huge likenesses of the fascinated by the musicians on the wall (video: Maotik), but after less than half a minute, violent stitches in the heart forced them to flee on this "Spielfeld Klassik" excursion to the Muffatwerk: next...
art or politics? This question has not been easy for the Munich Philharmonic recently. And so the program for the season opening must be understood as political: the Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv conducts in the Isarphilharmonie. First Valentin Silvestrov's "Elegie for String Orchestra": Ukrainian modernism with piercing pizzicati, swaying strings - floating nervously. Then Sofia Gubaidulina's "The Wrath of God". A musical event in itself. Deep brass, booming, almost like a synthesizer. Then standing strings in the middle register, undefined, without...
It was only in the spring that the Philharmoniker parted ways with star conductor and Putin friend Valery Gergiev. Now concertmaster Lorenz Nasturica-Herschcowici is leaving the orchestra, a part-time job in Russia - although permissible - led to resentment.After star conductor Valery Gergiev, concert master Lorenz Nasturica-Herschcowici has now also left the Munich Philharmonic. After 30 years, he will devote himself to other artistic tasks, confirmed the culture department of the city of Munich on Thursday Bavarian Radio. The collaboration...
