Tag: Daniel Barenboim

The Berliner Philharmoniker celebrate the founding of the orchestra on 1 May 1882 with their European Concerts which they give on that date at a venue in Europe of cultural and historical significance every year. And since the Berliner Philharmoniker themselves are based in a highly culturally significant venue, it seems obvious to make it a venue for the European Concert – especially since the Philharmonie celebrated its 50th birthday at the beginning of the 2013/2014 season. The concert is conducted by a man who has been associated with the Berliner Philharmoniker for over 50 years: Daniel Barenboim, who made his debut as the soloist in Béla Bartók’s First Piano Concerto under the direction of Pierre Boulez in June 1964. Six years later, he took to the conductor’s desk of the orchestra for the first time. He has since performed regularly with the Berliner Philharmoniker as a pianist and conductor.

The programme of this European Concert has an international flavour: Otto Nicolai’s Singspiel The Merry Wives of Windsor, which received its premiere in Berlin in 1849, is based on William Shakespeare’s comedy of the same name, and its lively overture has long since secured a place on the concert stage. Also inspired by a Shakespearean comedy hero is Edward Elgar’s symphonic study Falstaff. We then turn from comedy to the tragic twists of fate: The Fifth Symphony of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is characterised by a sombre main theme that for the Russian composer symbolises “a complete resignation before fate, which is the same as the inscrutable predestination of fate”.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/17003

Since 1991, the Berliner Philharmoniker have commemorated the day when they were founded in 1882 by giving a concert on 1 May in a different European venue of special cultural and historical significance. For their first such visit in 1991, they travelled to Prague to mark the bicentenary of Mozart’s death, returning there in 2006 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. It was at the famous National Theatre – renamed the Estates Theatre in 1798 – that Mozart had enjoyed some of his greatest triumphs with Le nozze di Figaro, La clemenza di Titoand especially Don Giovanni, which was specially written for the theatre. It was here that the Philharmoniker gave their European Concert in 2006.

Daniel Barenboim, who has been closely associated with the orchestra for more than fifty years, appeared in his tried and tested role as both conductor and soloist, opening the proceedings with the popular Haffner Symphony that Mozart wrote in the summer of 1782 based on an earlier serenade. He performed the symphony for the first time to great acclaim in Vienna in the spring of 1783. Barenboim then masterfully led the orchestra through the E flat Concerto No. 22 from the piano, just as Mozart is likely to have done: an acclaimed keyboard virtuoso, Mozart composed most of his piano concertos for his own particular use.

The first item on the programme after the interval was likewise performed without the need for outside help: the solo part in Mozart’s First Horn Concerto was taken by the young Czech horn player Radek Baborák, who was then the orchestra’s principal horn player. He was only eighteen when he won the ARD Music Competition in 1994, becoming the principal horn player with the Czech Philharmonic later that same year and joining the Berliner Philharmoniker in a similar capacity in 2003. He remained in Berlin until 2010. His performance of Mozart’s Horn Concerto was notable for what one critic called “extraordinary beauty and control”. The programme ended with the Linz Symphony, which Mozart wrote in only a few days in the autumn of 1783. The result is a masterpiece that nowhere betrays any sign of the speed with which it was composed.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/15467

A local visitor: Daniel Barenboim, general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin is the guest conductor of the Philharmoniker for this concert. The first piece of the programme is a discovery: Jörg Widmann’s symphonic hymnos Teufel Amor – a work that owes its title to a fragmentary surviving poem by Friedrich Schiller from 1782. In the line “Sweet Amor, / remain in melodic flight”, the text provides a musical reference which gave Widmann the inspiration for his half-hour-long orchestral work. The imagination of the composer was also fired by the contradiction in the title Teufel Amor, which led musically to a linking of strongly contrasting elements. And perhaps it is only the experience of the darkly timbred and “almost unbearably long introduction, in which the assembled violins of the orchestra are silent” (Widmann) that gives the later “beautiful places” of the unabatedly tonally composed music its beguiling effect.

After the interval, Daniel Barenboim turns to Piotr Tchaikovsky’s dramatic Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, which also begins with an extremely sombre introduction. Tchaikovsky himself declared the symphony to be the “keystone of his whole creative works”; while composing it, he was repeatedly reduced to tears. The idea of the Pathétique as Tchaikovsky’s highly emotional legacy is still given credence by the fact that he died nine days after the premiere. Contemporaries report, however, that the composer worked on the piece no differently than on any other, and turned immediately after its completion to other projects. And in fact, it probably needs a minimum of serenity in order to create such a soulful, but also ingeniously constructed work in which there is, for example, a waltz in the complicated 5/4 time.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/20441

In 2001, the Berliner Philharmoniker and conductor Daniel Barenboim celebrated New Year’s Eve with dance music from three centuries. The proceedings began with a gavotte by Bach – the first time that one of the Thomaskantor’s works had been heard at a New Year’s Eve concert since 1984, when Karajan conducted the Magnificat. There followed a minuet by Mozart and the Rondo for Piano and Orchestra K. 386, for which Barenboim abandoned the conductor’s podium for the keyboard – much to the delight of the audience.

After this Classical and Baroque opening, it was the turn of the Romantics with the cheeky Dance of the Moorish Slaves from Verdi’s Aida and Dvořák’s impassioned Slavonic Dance No. 8. A series of very special waltzes followed in the form of Tchaikovsky’s gossamer-light Dance of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, Sibelius’s melancholy Valse triste and the splendid Emperor Waltz by Johann Strauß, encouraging listeners and musicians alike to revel in the music’s triple-time rhythms.

With Kodály’s Dances of Galánta Barenboim then moved into the 20th century before ending his programme with two bonnes bouches from his Latin American homeland: with Horacio Salgán’s tango for orchestra, A fuego lento, and the catchy, jazz-inspired Tico Tico, the orchestra once again showed that there is no musical language in the world in which it is not at home. As one critic wrote, “There are not many symphony orchestras, especially in Europe, that could articulate these exotic rhythms with such razor-sharp clarity.” The audience’s enthusiasm persuaded the orchestra to perform three encores before conductor and orchestra were allowed to leave the platform, after which the concertgoers hurried away to other New Year’s Eve celebrations.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/12216