Berliner Philharmoniker
Riccardo Muti
Vittoria Yeo, Soprano
Elīna Garanča, Mezzo-soprano
Francesco Meli, Tenor
Ildar Abdrazakov, Basse
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Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Berliner Philharmoniker. Mostrar todas las entradas
lunes, 2 de agosto de 2021
viernes, 18 de diciembre de 2020
miércoles, 29 de abril de 2020
jueves, 16 de abril de 2020
lunes, 13 de abril de 2020
lunes, 11 de marzo de 2019
Andreas Ottensamer / Yuja Wang BLUE HOUR
Born in 1989, Andreas Ottensamer comes from an Austro-Hungarian
family of musicians and was drawn to music early, receiving his first
piano lessons when he was four. At the age of ten he began studying the
cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, then
changed to the clarinet under Johann Hindlerin in 2003.
Andreas Ottensamer gained his first orchestral experience as a deputy
in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic
and as a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. In 2009 he
interrupted his Harvard studies to become a scholar of the Orchestra
Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic. He is now the principal
clarinettist of the Berlin Philharmonic.
A highlight of this season will be the Europakonzert of the Berlin
Philharmonic, in which Andreas Ottensamer will perform Carl Maria von
Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No.1 under Mariss Jansons.
martes, 6 de noviembre de 2018
GREAT BACH SINGERS
2018 marks 333 years since the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach; music in
Bach’s time went far beyond the superficial process of just placing
pleasing harmonies on manuscript paper – it had religious significance
and meaning built into its very structure. Of particular prominence in
some of Bach’s music are references to the number three, reflecting the
important doctrine of God’s Tri-unity which lies at the core of Bach’s Lutheran faith. So for Bach at least, 333 would have had real
significance.
viernes, 24 de agosto de 2018
Berliner Philharmoniker / Simon Rattle / Krystian Zimerman LEONARD BERNSTEIN Symphony No, 2 "The Age of Anxiety"
W. H. Auden was a charming moralist, wistful yet pitiless, affectionate yet weighed down by emotional pain. With The Age of Anxiety,
he created a historical and psychological diagnosis of the soul and of
the time in the guise of a Baroque pastoral poem: “Lies and lethargy
police the world / in its periods of peace. What pain taught / is soon
forgotten; we celebrate / what ought to happen as if it were done, / Are
blinded by our boasts. Then back they come, / The fears that we fear.”
The outer frame of the action is provided by the four protagonists who
fall into conversation in a New York bar and – as the alcohol breaks
down the barriers of internal censorship – discuss the war, their own
world view and their faith: a fictional conversation between average
people, the chorus of a drama (that fails to materialise) and a hymn and
elegy.
The poem, which won Auden the Pulitzer
Prize, inspired Leonard Bernstein to compose his eponymous symphony:
“The essential line of Auden’s poem,” said the composer, “is the record
of our difficult and problematic search for faith. In the end, two of
the characters enunciate the recognition of this faith – at the same
time revealing an inability to relate to it personally in their daily
lives.” In the score, which mixes a kaleidoscopic variety of different musical styles, the concertante solo piano takes on a symbolic function:
“The pianist,” as Bernstein wrote, “provides an almost autobiographical
protagonist, set against an orchestral mirror in which he sees himself,
analytically, in the modern ambience.” In the Berlin Philharmonie, no
less than Krystian Zimerman will take on the solo part, interspersed
with jazz-style syncopation, to which Bernstein subsequently added an
extensive cadenza before the final coda.
martes, 31 de julio de 2018
Anne-Sophie Mutter / Berliner Philharmoniker / Manfred Honeck DVORÁK
miércoles, 3 de enero de 2018
Zimerman / Andsnes / Grimaud / Boulez BARTÓK Piano Concertos
As this wonderful new CD shows, the mesmerising clarity is still there .
. . and there's a welcome flexibility in the rhythm. But the thing that
really strikes you is the sheer beauty of the sound . . . And the three
soloists - Zimerman, Andsnes and Grimaud - are all marvellous. (Record Review /
Ivan Hewett,
Times/Eye / 19. February 2005)
martes, 18 de abril de 2017
Anne Sofie von Otter / Cord Garben / Berliner Philharmoniker / James Levine BERLIOZ Les Nuits d'été - Mélodies
sábado, 3 de diciembre de 2016
Simon Rattle / Berliner Philharmoniker THE SOUND OF SIMON RATTLE
viernes, 4 de noviembre de 2016
Sol Gabetta / Berliner Philharmoniker / Sir Simon Rattle / Krysztof Urbanski LIVE
Sol Gabetta (who starred in this year’s first night
of the Proms) releases this album with Sir Simon Rattle, Krzystof
Urbanski and the Berlin Philharmoniker. Featuring two treasures of the
cello repertoire, Gabetta places Elgar’s stunning Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 alongside Martinů’s first cello concerto, H. 196.
miércoles, 6 de julio de 2016
Claudio Abbado / Berliner Philharmoniker THE LAST CONCERT
The recordings impressively convey the
special atmosphere of the evening: the great affection the orchestra and
the audience had for Claudio Abbado – and of course the enthusiasm for
the musical performances. Renowned not least for his clever concert
programming, Abbado combined two works here that deal with the theme of
dreams in music in very different ways: Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
conveys the multifaceted magical atmosphere of Shakespeare’s original,
while Berlioz uses modern means to tell his delirious tale of fateful
love and drug-induced hallucinations. Abbado’s performance brings out
the full splendour of these scores. It is – as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
wrote – a “wonder, the freedom and youthful-like spirit with which the
soon to be octogenarian expends himself, which he radiates and which he
presents to his audience from the conductor’s stand.” (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)
sábado, 2 de julio de 2016
Mischa Maisky / Berliner Philharmoniker / Zubin Mehta DVORÁK Cello Concerto RICHARD STRAUSS Don Quixote
It's not because Maisky lacks his mentor's technical ability. The
problem is with the interpretations. Maisky is willful, much as Leonard
Bernstein was when he conducted the Dvořák with Maisky back in the
1980s, but without Bernstein's electric personality. In spite of it all,
there's a reticence to Maisky's playing that is out of character with
this music. This reticence is emphasized by Mehta's conducting, which is
correct, but thick and not very interesting. It's as if Mehta is trying
to remove the last possibility that some listeners might find these
works vulgarly exciting. (If only Mehta would reclaim the passion he had
access to in the 1960s and 70s!) The coda to the Dvořák's opening movement, for example, doesn't get anyone's adrenaline flowing, and the
opening minutes of the finale, usually so compelling, are even more
stolid. (For what its worth, Maisky comments that he has removed some of
the "distortions" that have become part of this work's tradition since
the very first performance.)
Don Quixote is even more problematic. Mehta dusts off
every single orchestral detail with care, but in terms of emotion, he
and Maisky draw an almost complete blank. The cellist doesn't succeed in
painting a multifaceted portrait of the knight. Shorn of its humanism,
as it is here, Don Quixote is not much more than a series of noisy but cleverly orchestrated episodes. (Raymond Tuttle)
lunes, 7 de marzo de 2016
Yundi Li / Berliner Philharmoniker / Seiji Ozawa PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 2 - RAVEL Piano Concerto in G major
sábado, 16 de enero de 2016
Pierre Boulez WEBERN Complete Works
He was making patterns with the past, too. Serialism
reinvigorated for him the standard forms, especially variations and
canon. And it brought him closer to the old masters. Starting with his
Symphony (1927-28), most of his movements are canons of one kind or
another, often allowing an expressive gesture to be answered, balanced
and pinpointed by a copy moving in the other direction, a lift by a
sigh, along the course of a regularly waving rhythm.
Canonic and variation forms were also outcomes of a
quest for integration, for creating music in which a motif of three or
four notes would be constantly present in different colorings,
registrations and rhythmic placements. Hence the paradox that the music
feels, expressively, so fragile that it might fall apart if one put a
finger on it and yet, structurally, it is tightly made and reinforced in
every direction. It is at once tender and tough.
As for links with predecessors, that same symphony,
although it has just two movements, is scored for chamber orchestra and
lasts less than 10 minutes, has something of the grand melodic sweep
Webern admired in Bruckner. The concerto that came soon after is a
modern ''Brandenburg,'' and Bach is invoked again in the two cantatas on
spiritual themes that came near the end of Webern's life.
At the same time, Webern outfaced his nostalgia by
resolute adherence to the new means he had devised for himself, with
cues from Schoenberg, and by steady exploration of their possibilities.
He never worried that his music, in essential respects, sounded quite
unlike anything that had come before or was being written around him. He
just went on, with exemplary persistence. He had no way of knowing that
the vacuum in which he worked would rapidly be filled after his death,
not least by Stravinsky, who learned a lot from his music in the 1950's,
but also by many younger composers.
Among the eager Webernians then was Pierre Boulez,
who returns to be the mastermind of the new recordings, just as he was
30 years ago for a set made by CBS, now available on CD from Sony
Classical. But there are differences. One is that the new box (Deutsche
Grammophon 457 637-2; six CD's) is twice as large, including many works
Webern withheld from publication.
Some of these are juvenilia, imparting the
unsurprising news that the composer at 16 was a talented, hopeful,
somewhat incompetent beginner. His later rejects, though, include
wonderful pieces, especially among the songs and instrumental movements
he wrote in 1913 and 1914. During that period he gave thought to a
sequence of orchestral pieces, some with solo soprano, rather in the
manner of a distilled Mahler symphony. There might have been a similar
string quartet with voice. Much later, though, Webern decided to issue
sets of purely instrumental movements: the Six Bagatelles (Op. 9) for
string quartet and the Five Pieces (Op. 10) for orchestra.
This left out of account not only the song movements
-- two with orchestra and the one with quartet are breathtaking -- but
also quite a number of orchestral movements. Mr. Boulez includes five,
and two extra bagatelles.
A CD player can be programmed to present, say, Opus 9
followed by the two unselected bagatelles and, to end, the song with
quartet, which not only provides a passionate slow finale but also
leaves a clue to the music's expressive core, in a sense of grief and
loss. Similarly, one can reconstruct a vocal symphony, which would have
to include an alarming brassy piece (No. 3 among the additional
orchestral movements) and the magical setting of a Stefan George poem,
with its delicious spot for voice and percussion, and its penultimate
gesture of a huge rise from the singer on the word ''holy.''
These and many other pieces sound, here, marvelous
to perform. All the string quartets and trios are played by the Emerson
String Quartet, which, strong and expressive, makes every little
miniature sound big. Nearly all the songs, and the soprano parts in the
cantatas, are sung by Christiane Oelze, for whom the music seems to have
been waiting. Defying gravity, Ms. Oelze moves with ease through the
enormous pitch intervals Webern loved and makes them beautiful and true,
keen points in the continuing phrase and markers of exaltation or
anguish.
Her contributions include, happily, all the songs
with piano, which again embrace remarkable items Webern did not publish:
the Five Dehmel Lieder of 1906-8, right on the bright moonlit borders
of atonality; and 4 George songs from the next year, in addition to the
10 published as Opuses 3 and 4. Webern changed his mind about the
planning of these cycles, eventually deciding that each should have an
introduction followed by four songs in which the singing persona's
feelings are reflected in nature (Op. 3) or in a tragic relationship
(Op. 4). The numbers thus omitted are well worth hearing, especially
when sung so well -- and played so well, by Eric Schneider.
Among other exceptional pianists at work here are
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in the quartet with saxophone and the concerto,
and Krystian Zimerman, in the Variations (Op. 27) and two other pieces.
Mr. Zimerman gives a beautiful account of the variations: the finale,
highly effective, has wide-spanning melodies, often violent and gentle
in the same breath, searching in a musical space that comes to be
defined by chord resonances in the background.
But of course the performer who figures most
prominently and comprehensively is Mr. Boulez, as conductor. To an
astonishing degree, his tempos are close to those of his earlier
recordings. Yet consistency of timing is deceptive, for within identical
spans a lot has changed. Mr. Boulez is working here with the Berlin
Philharmonic and the Ensemble Intercontemporain: musicians who have a
much fuller appreciation than anyone did three decades ago of Webern's
flow, dependent on subtle phrasing and a chamber-musical responsiveness
of one player or section to another.
Where, for instance, the arrangement Webern made of
the six-part ricercar from Bach's ''Musical Offering'' almost fell apart
in the 1969 London Symphony recording, the new version is secure and
even imposing. The earlier performances of the original works often
sound scrappy and preliminary, and though the first clarinet in the
symphony achieves some suavity in rather torn textures, the same part
emerges in the later recording far more gorgeous and sensitive.
Inevitably, there are losses as well. The spikiness
Mr. Boulez found in this repertory when he was in his mid-40's was not
just a result of unconsidered playing: it came from a conviction that
the music was fierce and that it mattered. Witness, for example, the
swing between aggressiveness and recuperation in the second movement of
the symphony, or the way the choral women in the third movement of the
Second Cantata seem to sing with teeth bared, like Valkyries. These
moments are more beautiful in the later recordings but not necessarily
more exciting.
There are also performances in the earlier set that
will not be supplanted, like the account of the two Rilke poems, with
Heather Harper, or the many appearances of another soprano, Halina
Lukomska, whose flaming voice is so different from Ms. Oelze's but
equally apt.
Something else has happened to Webern during the
last three decades: we know far more about his life, and about his
opinions, which were not all edifying. His pursuit of purity in his
music -- of complete homogeneity and integration, of absolute precision
in the minutest detail -- and the high value he placed on German culture
led him, crazily and dismayingly, to consider that his ideals were
shared by the Third Reich.
He was not an anti-Semite. Indeed, he helped conceal
Jews in Vienna. But he seems to have thought that Hitler was some kind
of agent of spiritual regeneration, and that the spreading Nazi
conquests of 1939 to 1941 were all to the benefit of the nations
overcome: this even though the annexation of Austria in 1938 had put an
end to his activity as a conductor and to any hopes he had of hearing
his music again, other than in neutral Switzerland. The Nazis closed his
public career. And yet, privately, he applauded them.
Knowing this, we might want to listen to the
Variations for orchestra of 1940 a little more carefully and a little
more critically: to pay less attention, perhaps, to the coherence and
symmetry the music so ostentatiously exhibits than to the delicacy,
strangeness and variety of its component parts, and even to insist,
contra Webern, on multiplicity and ambiguity as essential elements in
his art.
More useful, too, than dismissing him for his
foolish views would be to learn from his example of magnificent but, in
crucial respects, misaligned idealism. Snowflakes and flowers are all
very well, and we need them, but their rules arCDe not those of politics. (Paul Griffiths / The New York Times)
jueves, 1 de octubre de 2015
Krystian Zimerman / Simon Rattle / Berliner Philharmoniker LUTOSLAWSKI Piano Concerto - Symphony No. 2
. . . [Piano Concerto]: the hall's acoustics respond beautifully to the
mellow, floating textures. Lutoslawski often writes quiet music, but
with such detail that every nuance needs to be heard. Every nuance is
heard here, and the effect is spectacular. The piano is always apparent
across the orchestra, even when their respective textures call its
dominance into question. Of course, Lutoslawski knows what he is doing,
and no doubt he is relying on Zimerman's always clear articulation and
touch to project the piano's lines . . . The Berlin Philharmonic sound is ideal here, not only for the sheer elegance the orchestra displays,
but also for the details that it is able to project, again aided by the
excellent audio . . . this Zimerman/Rattle collaboration comes highly
recommended. Whatever this mercurial pianist's motivations for returning
to the concerto, we should all be glad he did.
domingo, 7 de septiembre de 2014
Gustavo Dudamel / Berliner Philharmoniker RICHARD STRAUSS Also Sprach Zarathustra (reuploaded)
Richard Strauss’s association with the Berlin Philharmonic
lasted for over half a century.
The orchestra was formed in 1882 by an independent group of
musicians and first played one of Strauss’s works in 1887, when Karl Klindworth
conducted the 23-year-old composer’s F minor Symphony, a work which, dark and
resplendent in its colouring, lacks the individuality of the Munich composer’s
later output. If the performance proved only tolerably successful, the fact that
it took place at all at such an early stage of Strauss’s career is remarkable.
During the first three years of the orchestra’s existence, when its
subscription concerts were conducted by Franz Wüllner, there were still no
works by Strauss that the orchestra could have performed; and, by the time that
such works did exist, Wüllner was already in Cologne, where he gave the world
premieres of Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote with his Gürzenich
Orchestra. In Berlin, meanwhile, Hans von Bülow had taken charge of the orchestra’s
fortunes. He knew Strauss from Meiningen, acknowledging him as a “first-rate”
conductor and an “exceptional musician” who had it in him “to assume the highest position of command
with immediate effect”. And so Strauss was invited to conduct the Berlin
Philharmonic. The concert agent Hermann Wolff, who was the orchestra’s
éminence grise, even helped to sponsor Strauss’s appearance with the aid of an
exceptional travel allowance – even as a young composer Strauss already enjoyed a certain
cachet.
At his first concert with the Berlin Philharmonic on 23
January 1888 Strauss conducted his own symphonic fantasy Aus Italien. Press and
public and, not least, Bülow were impressed by the atmospheric work, and
Strauss was no less enthusiastic about the orchestra, describing the players in
a letter to his father as “the most intelligent, fantastic and alert orchestra
I know”. But there were also disagreements: in 1890, for example, Bülow refused to allow Strauss to conduct the
local premiere of Don Juan and insisted on conducting it himself,
comprehensively ruining it in the eyes of the mortified composer. Even so, this
did not discourage Strauss, who, having fallen in love with the city, was
determined to find a permanent position there, either with the Berlin
Philharmonic or at the Lindenoper.
An opportunity arose in March 1894 after Bülow, already
terminally ill, gave his final concert with the orchestra. Since Wolff was
unable to find an eminent successor, he turned to the 30-year-old Strauss, who
took over the orchestra’s ten subscription concerts during the 1894–95 season
and suffered the worst fiasco of his career.
The devastating reviews took issue not only with his
uninspiring appearance on the podium but also with his programmes: as was later
to be the case with his own Berlin Tonkünstler Orchestra and the Lindenoper’s Königliche Hofkapelle, he
conducted an above-average number of contemporary works that proved
indigestible fare for the capital’s conservative middle-class audiences.
The contract was
torn up prematurely, although contact between the two parties was not lost
altogether. In 1908 they even undertook a triumphant concert tour of France,
Spain and Portugal together. But by then Germany’s greatest living composer no
longer needed to prove himself in Berlin, for he was now an internationally
sought-after conductor and his symphonic poems were a regular part of the
repertory. The Berlin Philharmonic’s principal conductors during this time –
Arthur Nikisch and, from 1922, Wilhelm Furtwängler – were both important
advocates of his work. (Furtwängler made his debut with the orchestra in 1917
conducting Don Juan.)
When Strauss
moved to Vienna in 1919, his Berlin appearances became increasingly infrequent.
Even so, the 1920s witnessed the premieres of two of his works in Berlin: his Hölderlin
Hymns in 1921 and his symphonic studies Panathenäenzug in 1928. He
himself returned to the Philharmonie podium in March 1933, and in the November
of that year he shared the conducting duties with Furtwängler at a gala concert
marking the launch of the Reich Culture Chamber. His dubious association with
the Nazis culminated in 1936 with the first
performance of his Olympic Hymn. His final concert with the orchestra
took
place in April 1939, when the programme comprised Don Juan, the Symphonia
domestica and the Burlesque
for piano and orchestra.
The Strauss Memorial Concert in September
1949 was
conducted by Sergiu Celibidache. During the decades that followed, Berlin’s
Strauss tradition was shaped by Herbert von Karajan, whose recordings of this
repertory continue to be regarded as benchmark performances.
But many of the
visiting conductors who have had particularly close links to the Berlin
Philharmonic have also privileged Strauss’s works in their programmes, most
recently Gustavo Dudamel.
Dudamel was 22
when he first conducted
the music of Richard Strauss: Don Juan
with the
Philharmonia Orchestra in London.
Since then, he has championed many
of
Strauss’s songs, symphonic poems and concertos, including the Oboe
Concerto
with the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal oboist, Albrecht Mayer. With
the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, he has toured South and North America, as
well as Europe, with Don Juan,
Till
Eulenspiegel and the Alpine
Symphony, taking the entire Venezuelan orchestra up into the Swiss
mountains before the latter’s performance so that they could collectively
experience the atmosphere and majesty of nature which
Strauss had rendered into music.
In April and May
2012 Gustavo Dudamel conducted three performances of Also sprach Zarathustra in the Berlin Philharmonie, followed by four Berlin performances of Don
Juan and
Till Eulenspiegel in early 2013. The present release is his
first audio recording with the orchestra.
lunes, 31 de marzo de 2014
Yundi Li / Berliner Philharmonker / Daniel Harding BEETHOVEN Emperor - SCHUMANN Fantasy
The new album, Emperor I Fantasy, includes Beethoven's Piano Concerto
No. 5 (Emperor) and Schumann's Fantasie in C. It is his second
recording with conductor Daniel Harding and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Li will play these works as well as traditional Chinese pieces on a
European tour that will take in 25 cities from February to April,
including St Petersburg, Warsaw and Prague. The first concert will be
hold at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Feb. 25.
"The Emperor Concerto is one of my favorite compositions, which not
only expresses Beethoven's uniqueness and confidence but is also filled
with romanticism," said the pianist.
Known as the "prince of piano" in China, Li said the core of his new
album is to tell people that "everybody has an emperor inside
themselves. To become one, people have to face challenges, make progress
and break through barriers. One day, they will become their own
emperor."
He added, "Playing the Beethoven concerto is a breakthrough for me. I
hope I can achieve more and perfect my musical skills to become my own
emperor. I hope I can bring more beautiful music to people in the
future."
The young pianist rose to prominence after he took first place at the
14th International Chopin Competition in 2000 at the age of 18, making
him both the youngest pianist and the first from China to win. (Xinhua and Staff Reporter / 2014-02-11)
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