2nd Philharmonic Concert

Andrey Boreyko

Josef Suk: Fantastic Scherzo Op. 25

Igor Stravinsky: Divertimento from "Le Baiser de la fée"

Peter Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in f minor op. 36

Dirigent: Andrey Boreyko
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

Andrey Boreyko

ANDREY BOREYKO
Music & Artistic Director – Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir
Resident Conductor – Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano
2023/24 marks Andrey Boreyko’s fifth season as Music and Artistic Director of Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra with whom he celebrated the orchestra’s 120th anniversary season in 2022/23. Over the course of his tenure, they have toured extensively across Europe, Asia, and the US, with further plans to return to Japan and Korea in 2024. This season, they also appear at the Penderecki Festival, Beethoven Easter Festival, and Chopin & His Europe Festival where they will perform Górecki’s monumental Symphony 3 “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”.
Now in his second season as Resident Conductor of Orchestra Sinfonica de Milano, Boreyko conducts their 2023/24 season-opening concert at the Teatro alla Scala, pairing Mahler’s Lied von der Erde with Beethoven Symphony 5. He also opens their Mahler Festival with Mahler 2, and returns again in the spring to conduct Miloslav Kabeláč’s Mystery of Time amongst other works. Last season, Boreyko made an outstanding return to the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His performance of Shostakovich 5 received glowing reviews:
“Andrey Boreyko was the commanding presence on the podium for a trio of works that thrilled and enthralled in equal measure… he gave a masterclass in how a conductor serves the interests of composers and their works, and how to leave the audience shouting for more” – Christopher Woodley, Bachtrack *****
“conductor Andrey Boreyko’s performance was impressively concentrated.” – Richard Fairman, The Financial Times ****
A popular guest of ORF Vienna, Boreyko conducted their Wagner programme at the 2023 Ravello Festival, and returns this season for a subscription concert with Shostakovich 8. Other 2023/24 highlights include subscription returns to Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Symphony, Aarhus Symphony, Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, RTVE Symphony Orchestra Madrid, amongst others.
Within the last seasons, Boreyko has also returned to Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Montreal Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Valencia Orchestra, Sinfonica Nazionale RAI, Philharmonisches Staastorchester Hamburg, Cleveland Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchester, and the symphony orchestras of Sydney, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Previous tours have included Filarmonica della Scalla (Ljubljana, Rheingau, Gstaad, and Grafenegg festivals), The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia (Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich), and Sinfonia Varsovia (Budapest Palace of Arts’ Bridging Europe Festival with Piotr Anderszewski).
An advocate for modern and lesser-known works, Boreyko championed compositions by Victoria Borisova-Ollas in an extensive concert and recording project with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. With the Warsaw Philharmonic, Boreyko has recorded several albums including André Tchaikowsky’s Violin Concerto, Giya Kancheli’s Libera me, Penderecki’s Piano Concerto and Symphony 2. While Principal Guest Conductor of Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, he recorded Arvo Pärt's Lamentate and Valentin Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 6 (both for ECM records), the premiere recording of his original version of the Suite from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Shostakovich symphonies No. 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 15, all five albums on Hänssler Classics. He has also recorded Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and Lutosławski’s Chain 2 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Yarling Records. Nonesuch released Boreyko’s recording of the Górecki’s Symphony No. 4 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, shortly after he conducted the world premiere in concert with them, subsequently performing the American premiere with Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In 2022, Andrey Boreyko concluded his eighth and final season as Music Director of Artis—Naples. His inspiring leadership raised the artistic standard of the Naples Philharmonic and, throughout the course of his tenure, he explored connections between art forms through interdisciplinary thematic programming. Significant projects he led include pairing Ballet Russes-inspired contemporary visual artworks of Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave with performances of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and The Firebird, and commissioning a series of compact pieces by composers including Giya Kancheli to pair with an art exhibition featuring small yet personal works by artists such as Picasso and Calder that were created as special gifts for the renowned collector Olga Hirshhorn.
Other previous appointments include Music Director positions of the Jenaer Philharmonie, Hamburger Symphoniker, Berner Sinfonieorchester, Düsseldorf Symphoniker, Winnipeg Symphony, and of the Orchestre National de Belgique. As a young musician, Boreyko explored the music of the medieval and renaissance eras, and was an active member of the Soviet Union’s two early music ensemble, Res Facta and Baroque Consort. As a student at St Petersburg Conservatory, he founded one of the USSR’s first rock group with a focus on progressive rock. Off the podium, Andrey Boreyko revels in the beauties of literature, cinema, and nature.

Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

Orchestra

The Philharmonic State Orchestra is Hamburg’s largest and oldest orchestra, looking back on many years of musical history. When the “Philharmonic Orchestra” and the “Orchestra of the Hamburg Municipal Theatre” merged in 1934, two tradition-steeped orchestras combined. Philharmonic concerts have been performed in Hamburg since 1828, artists such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms being regular guests of the Philharmonic Society. The history of the opera company goes back even further: Hamburg has been home to musical theatre since 1678, even if a regular opera or theatre orchestra was only formed later. To this day, the Philharmonic State Orchestra has embodied the sound of the Hansa City, a concert and opera orchestra in one.

During its long history, the orchestra encountered great artist personalities. Apart from composers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, such as Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mahler, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, since the 20th century chief conductors such as Karl Muck, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Aldo Ceccato, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gerd Albrecht, Ingo Metzmacher and Simone Young have shaped the orchestra’s sound. Renowned conductors of the pre-war era such as Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt gave brilliant performances, as did outstanding conductors of our times: suffice it to mention Christian Thielemann, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Petrenko, Adam Fischer and Sir Roger Norrington.

Starting with the 2015/2016 season, Kent Nagano has taken on the position of Hamburg’s General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg State Opera and since June 2023 also its honorary conductor. In his first season Kent Nagano initiated a new project, the Philharmonic Academy, focusing on experimentation and chamber music. In 2016, Nagano and the Philharmonic toured South America, followed by concert tours to Spain and Japan in 2019, and in the spring of 2023, the Philharmonic State Orchestra made its debut at New York's Carnegie Hall under his direction, which was acclaimed by audiences and the press. Since 2017 Kent Nagano and the Philharmonic State Orchestra have continued the traditional Philharmonic Concerts at the new Elbphilharmonie, for which they commissioned Jörg Widmann to compose the oratorio ARCHE, which was given its world premiere during the hall’s opening festivities. The concert recording has been released by ECM, for which Widmann received the OPUS KLASSIK as Composer of the Year 2019, and ARCHE was performed again in 2023 to great acclaim.

The Philharmonic State Orchestra offers approximately 35 concerts per season and performs more than 240 performances per year at the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier, making it Hamburg’s busiest orchestra. The stylistic bandwidth covered by the 140 musicians, ranging from historically informed performance practice to contemporary works and including concert, opera and ballet repertoire, is unique throughout Germany. Chamber Music has a long tradition at the Philharmonic State Orchestra: what began in 1929 with a concert series for chamber orchestra has been continued since 1968 by a series of chamber music only.

In 2008 Simone Young and the Philharmonic State Orchestra won the Brahms Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. The orchestra has recorded the complete Ring by Wagner as well as the complete symphonies of Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner – the latter in the rarely-performed original versions – as well as works by Mahler, Hindemith and Berg, and has released DVDs of opera and ballet productions by Hosokawa, Offenbach, Reimann, Auerbach, J.S. Bach, Puccini, Poulenc and Weber.

The members of the Philharmonic State Orchestra feel equally beholden to Hamburg’s musical tradition and responsible for the city’s artistic future. Since 1978 the musicians have been participating in education programmes in Hamburg’s schools. Today, the orchestra maintains a broad education programme, including school and kindergarten visits, patronage for music projects, introductory events for children and family concerts. The orchestra’s own academy prepares young musicians for their professional careers. The Philharmonic’s musicians thereby make an equally enjoyable and valuable contribution to tomorrow’s music education in the music metropolis of Hamburg.

With conductor Andrey Boreyko, we turn our ears to the East. With his fantastic Scherzo, the Czech Josef Suk, pupil and son-in-law of Antonín Dvořák, created an orchestral work that is emphatically lively - and in no way inferior to the following Divertimento from Stravinsky's ballet "The Fairy's Kiss" in terms of expressiveness.
When Peter Tchaikovsky wrote his Fourth Symphony, one of his best-known works, he was going through dark times. (Unhappy marriage, nervous breakdown, suicide attempt - the biographers paint dark scenes ...) The programme that he himself added to this Fourth sounds accordingly: The "force of fate" can be heard in the opening bars. According to Tchaikovsky, this "fate" constantly controls us, so that happiness and peace are never perfect. "One must submit to it and seek refuge in futile desires." After "a swarm of memories" and wild pizzicati from the strings in the famous third movement, Tchaikovsky comes to the conclusion: "If you find no cause for happiness in yourself, look to others." Life is ultimately "bearable after all" - as long as we turn to a "public amusement on a holiday", as in the symphony finale.