Sun, Oct. 06, 2024, 11.00 am | Elbphilharmonie, Recital Hall
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Gustav Mahler: “The Song of the Earth” - chamber orchestra version by Arnold Schönberg, completed by Rainer Riehn
A cooperation with the “Liedstadt” festival, which begins its musical journey in Hamburg and gives the song genre new perspectives.
Musikalische Leitung: Kent Nagano
Tenor: Julian Prégardien
Mezzosopran: Fleur Barron
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
Kent Nagano is considered one of today’s outstanding conductors for both operatic and orchestral repertoire. Since September 2015, he has been General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg. In addition, he is committed as Artistic Director of the Ring project “The Wagner Cycles” of Dresdner Musikfestspiele with Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln, and as patron of the Herrenchiemsee Festival. 2023 he was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra, in 2021 of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, in 2019 of the Concerto Köln, and in 2006 of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
The 2023/2024 season in Hamburg begins with four concerts, performing with the Philharmonische Akademie at the Laeiszhalle, then with the Philharmonic State Orchestra at the Rathausmarkt Open Air and the Elbphilharmonie. This will be followed by a series of opera productions at the State Opera in September and October, with a premiere of Mussorgski’s Boris Godunow in a production by Frank Castorf and a premiere of Strauss’s Salome in a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov, as well as performances of Sciarrino’s Venere e Adone and Britten’s Peter Grimes. Furthermore, as in every season Nagano will conduct symphonic concerts with the Philharmonic State Orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie, including the New Year’s performance.
His past years in Hamburg include opera productions such as Les Troyens, Lulu, Lady Macbeth von Mzensk, the world premiere of Stilles Meer and German premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence, the "Philharmonische Akademie" at St. Michaelis, open-air concerts at the Rathausmarkt and the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin's work Waves for organ and orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie. Orchestral tours with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg have taken Kent Nagano to Japan, Spain and South America.
Kent Nagano has worked with the world's leading international orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique Radio France, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national in Paris, the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Wiener Symphoniker. Special projects were productions of Wagner's Das Rheingold with Concerto Köln and the Bernstein opera A quiet place at the Paris Opera. His operatic work has included Dusapin‘s Il viaggio, Dante at the Festival d‘Aix-en-Provence, Hindemith's Cardillac and Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites at the Opéra National de Paris and Henze’s The Bassarids and the premiere of Saariaho's L’amour de loin at the Salzburg Festival. Other world premieres conducted by Nagano include Bernstein's A White House Cantata and the operas Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin, Three Sisters by Peter Eötvös and The Death of Klinghoffer and El Niño by John Adams.
The 2023/24 season will see Kent Nagano make a wide variety of appearances at the Maison symphonique in Montréal, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Konzerthalle in Bamberg and the Kulturpalast in Dresden. In addition, he will conduct the Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon and lead a new production of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre by Krzysztof Warlikowski at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
Under the artistic direction of Kent Nagano and the Intendant of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele Jan Vogler, Wagner's "Ring Tetralogy" will be performed in the artistic context of the period in which it was composed, based on the latest findings of research into Wagner and performance practice, and integrated into an extensive supporting program as part of the multi-year project "The Wagner Cycles" of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele from 2023 to 2026. The prelude was the performance of "Das Rheingold" at the Dresden Music Festival in 2023 and the tour to Cologne, Ravello and Lucerne under the musical direction of Kent Nagano. With "Die Walküre," the second work in the epochal narrative will follow in 2024.
Highlights of Kent Nagano's collaboration with the OSM as Music Director from 2006 to 2020 included the inauguration of the orchestra’s new concert hall La Maison Symphonique in September 2011, performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, concert versions of Wagner's Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and Das Rheingold, Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bücher, and Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise. Tours have taken Nagano and the orchestra to Canada including the Northern Territories, Japan, South Korea, Europe (latest 2019), Latin America and the USA. In July 2018, Kent Nagano conducted Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion with the OSM at the Salzburg Festival opening concert.
His recordings with the OSM on Sony Classical/Analekta include Mahler’s Orchestral Songs with Christian Gerhaher in 2013 and a complete recording of all of Beethoven’s symphonies in 2015. Decca released a recording of the North American premiere of L'Aiglon, a rarely performed opera by Honegger and Ibert in 2016, conducted by Nagano in 2015. Further releases by Decca are Danse Macabre with works by Dukas, Saint-Saens, Ives and others in 2016 as well as a recording of Bernstein's A quiet place in 2018 on the occasion of the composer's 100th birthday. John Adams' Common tones in simple time & harmony (Decca) was released in 2019, the Lukas Passion by Penderecki (BIS) and works by Ginastera, Bernstein and Moussa (Analekta) in 2020.
At the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he was General Music Director from 2006 to 2013, Kent Nagano commissioned new operas such as Babylon by Jörg Widmann, Das Gehege by Wolfgang Rihm and Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin. New productions included Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites, Messiaen’s Saint François d'Assise, Berg’s Wozzeck, George Benjamin's Written on skin and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Tours took Nagano and the Bavarian State Orchestra through Europe and Japan. In addition to Bruckner's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 (Sony), Kent Nagano has released several opera performances with the Bavarian State Orchestra on DVD: Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland (2008) and Mussorgsky's Chowanschtschina (2009) with unitel classica/medici arts, Dialogue des Carmélites with Bel Air Classiques (2011) and Lohengrin (2010) with Decca.
Another very important period in Nagano’s career was his time as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 2000-2006. He performed Schönberg’s Moses und Aron with the orchestra (in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera) and took them to the Salzburg Festival to perform both Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, as well as to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Parsifal and Lohengrin in productions by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Recordings with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for Harmonia Mundi include repertoire as diverse as Bernstein’s Mass, Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 6, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, Schönberg’s Die Jakobsleiter and Friede auf Erden, as well as Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Schönberg’s Variationen für Orchester Op. 31. In June 2006, at the end of his tenure with the orchestra, Kent Nagano was given the title Honorary Conductor by members of the orchestra – only the second recipient of this honour in their 60-year history. To this day he maintains a close friendship with the orchestra.
In October 2019, Kent Nagano and Mari Kodama expanded their joint recordings of Beethoven's works for piano and orchestra with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 0 E-flat Major WoO 4, a nearly unknown work from the composer’s youth, and his Rondo for Piano and Orchestra WoO 6 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The complete edition of Beethoven’s piano concerti was released on the Berlin Classics label.
Nagano was awarded Grammys for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with Opéra National de Lyon, Prokofjew’s Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra and Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin. He has worked with labels such as BIS, Decca, Sony Classical, FARAO Classics and Analekta for many years, and has also recorded CDs with Berlin Classics, Erato, Teldec, Pentatone, Deutsche Grammophon and Harmonia Mundi.
To celebrate Kent Nagano's 70th birthday in 2021, a 3-CD box set of works by Olivier Messiaen was released in October on the BR Klassik label. The release includes live recordings of the works Poèmes pour Mi, Chronochromie and La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ from his concerts with the Symphonieorchester und Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, demonstrating Nagano's close familiarity with Messiaen's musical language in a special way.
In September 2021, Kent Nagano published his second book with Berlin Verlag. In "10 Lessons of my Life", he recalls ten deeply personal encounters from which he learned important lessons, not only for his career but for his life more broadly. Among those experiences are encounters with the Icelandic pop artist Björk, Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and the Nobel Prize winner in physics Donald Glaser.
In 2015 Kent Nagano published "Erwarten Sie Wunder!" also in Berlin Verlag, a passionate appeal for the relevance of classical music in today's world. In 2019 the book was released in English by the Canadian McGill-Queen's University Press under the title ″Classical Music - Expect the Unexpected" and in 2015 under "Sonnez, merveilles!" in French by Éditions du Boréal.
Born in California, Nagano maintains close connections with his home state and was Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 1978-2009. His first major successes came with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1984, when Messiaen appointed him assistant to conductor Seiji Ozawa for the premiere of his opera Saint François d'Assise. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments: Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998) and Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra (1991-2000). Kent Nagano became the first Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in 2003 having already held the position of Principal Conductor for two years.
Kent Nagano was awarded an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Montréal in 2005, an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal in 2006, and an honorary doctorate from San Francisco State University in 2018. Since 2017, Kent Nagano has been a "Compagnon" of the "Ordre des arts et des lettres" of Québec and in the fall of 2023, Kent Nagano was also awarded the title of "Chevalier" in the "Ordre des art et des lettres" of France. In February 2024, Kent Nagano was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Federal President.
Born in Frankfurt in 1984, tenor Julian Prégardien was trained in the choirs of Limburg Cathedral. After having studied voice in Freiburg and at the Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival Academy, he was a member of the soloist ensemble of Frankfurt Opera from 2009 to 2013. In parallel, he developed an international solo career, collaborating particularly often with conductors specialized in historical performance practice. 2008 marked his first collaboration with René Jacobs, his participation in a widely hailed recording of Bach’s St John Passion with La Chapelle Rhénane, and his début performances at the Theater an der Wien (in Gluck’s Ezio) and at Opéra de Monte Carlo (in Haydn‘s L'infedeltà delusa). His first Lieder recitals took place as a member of the “Young Elite” at Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, as one of the “Jeunes Étoiles” at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, and at Rheingau Music Festival. In 2010 he went on European tour as soloist with Collegium Vocale Gent and Concerto Köln in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
In the meantime, Prégardien has become one of the outstanding young vocalists on the international scene. In recent years he gave his début at Aix-en-Provence Festival, at Hamburg State Opera, at Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Salzburg Festival has been regularly inviting for concert appearances since 2015.
Kent Nagano regularly invites Prégardien to perform with the two orchestras of which he is Music Director: Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. Sharing the stage with his father Christoph Prégardien, Julian also sang the title role in a concert performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo with the ensemble Concerto Köln, likewise with Nagano conducting.
Julian Prégardien has collaborated with René Jacobs and with Christophe Rousset in a great number of projects featuring opera and concert repertoire of the Baroque and Classical eras, including works by Lully, Charpentier, Rameau, Carissimi, Pergolesi, Bach, and Mozart.
In his career, Julian Prégardien lays particular emphasis on Lied recitals along with chamber music projects. He was one of the vocalists selected to participate in the complete performance of the Lieder of Franz Schubert at the Schubertiade in Hohenems and Schwarzenberg (Austria), at Wigmore Hall, and at the new Boulez Hall in Berlin. Along with this father and the early music ensemble Anima Eterna conducted by Jos van Immerseel, he conceived a special Monteverdi recital featuring excerpts from the operas Ulisse and Orfeo along with madrigals: the programme was featured at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, at Dresden Music Festival and at Versailles Castle.
Prégardien has launched the media platform P.RHÉI, a multimedia editorial project that throws new light on the performance history and practice of Schubert’s Winterreise. The project includes a recording of Hans Zender’s orchestral version of Winterreise, to be released on the Alpha Classics label in 2018.
In November 2017, Julian Prégardien was appointed Professor of Voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. He is a member of the Schumann Network and a patron of Canto elementar, a programme that actively supports children’s singing activities in Kindergärten.
Hailed as “a knockout performer” by The Times, Singaporean-British mezzo Fleur Barron recently triumphed at the San Francisco Symphony in the title role of Kaija Saariaho's opera Adriana Mater in a production helmed by Peter Sellars and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival as Ottavia in Monterverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. She is a current Rising Star of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and an Artistic Partner of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Oviedo, for which she will curate/perform multiple projects across several seasons. A passionate interpreter of opera, chamber music, and concert works ranging from the baroque to the contemporary, Fleur is mentored by Barbara Hannigan.
Fleur launches the 23/24 season with a return to the London Symphony Orchestra, where she is the soloist in their Season Opening Concert at the Barbican, performing Claude Vivier's Wo bist du Licht, and in performances of Stravinsky's Pulcinella the following week, both under the baton of Barbara Hannigan. Autumn 2023 sees the release on Pentatone Records of her performance in the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with La Nuova Musica, and she also begins a multi-season partnership with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ludovic Morlot, joining them to record Ravel's Shéhérazade and Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé, and for performances of Shéhérazade and Montsalvatge's Cinco Canciones Negras at L'Auditori Barcelona and on tour to Hamburg and Stockholm. Further orchestral engagements include Mahler’s Symphony no.3 with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov at the Baden Baden Festival, both Das Lied von der Erde and Mahler Symphony no.2 with Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias under Nuno Coehlo, and Freya Waley-Cohen's Spell Book with the Manchester Collective at the Barbican.
In 23/24 Fleur debuts three opera roles: Penelope in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria with baroque ensemble I Gemelli, which tours to major venues including Teatro Real Madrid, Opéra de Bordeaux and Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse; multiple roles in George Benjamin’s two-person opera Into the Little Hill with the Staatskapelle Berlin under Finnegan Downie Dear; and the title role of John the Baptist in Maria Margherita Grimani's baroque opera La Decollazione di San Giovanni Battista with Haymarket Opera in Chicago. On the recital platform, Fleur joins regular collaborator Julius Drake for concerts in London, Copenhagen, Santa Fe, Padua, Ireland and Oviedo. She debuts at the Wiener Konzerthaus in multiple chamber music concerts for their Gemischter Satz Festival, returns to the 92 Street Y in New York with Myra Huang, and joins Swedish ensemble O/Modernt at Wigmore Hall and Queen Silvia Concert Hall, Stockholm. Fleur is also the curator of OSPA's East-West Fest in April 2024, featuring symphonic programs, chamber music, late-night concerts and community engagement over two weekends in Oviedo and Gijon.
In the 2022/23 season, Fleur had critical success in the title role of Kaija Saariaho's opera Adriana Mater in a new production by Peter Sellars with the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen, and made a string of exciting orchestral debuts: Debussy La Damoiselle Elue with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Orchestre de Paris, Stravinsky Pulcinella with the Göteborgs Symfoniker and Barbara Hannigan, Berio Folksongs with Sir Mark Elder on tour with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Bruckner Te Deum with Vasily Petrenko and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Beethoven Missa Solemnis with Thomas Hengelbrock and the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, Beethoven 9th Symphony with Rafael Payare and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Berlioz Les Nuits d’Ete with the Slovenian Philharmonic, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias. She also sang the title role in Hasse’s Marc Antonio e Cleopatra with the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover, alto soloist in a new, staged production of Mozart’s Requiem at the Opéra National de Bordeaux, Bersi in Andrea Chénier and Mallika in Lakme for Opéra de Monte-Carlo and the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. On the recital platform, Fleur joined Julius Drake for concerts at Het Concertgebouw, MiTO Festival in Milan and Turin, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spivey Hall, and at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris. She teamed up with duo partner Kunal Lahiry for recitals at Wigmore Hall and Oxford Lieder Festival, with Malcolm Martineau at Snape Maltings and with Joseph Middleton at Buxton Festival.
Highlights of recent seasons include Ottavia in L'Incoronazione di Poppea at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, la Zelatrice in Suor Angelica with the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko, Tchaikovsky’s Olga and Paulina, at Garsington Opera and Opera de Toulon, and her debut in the title role of Carmen for Arizona Opera; concerts with the Munich Philharmonic under Barbara Hannigan, the BBCSO, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Malaysian Philharmonic, and opera roles with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, La Monnaie/de Munt, Garsington Opera, Opéra National de Montpellier, Opéra National du Rhin and Cape Town Opera.
Fleur is committed to the way music can facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and healing. She is passionate about curating inclusive chamber music programming that amplifies the voices of diverse communities. Born in Northern Ireland to a Singaporean mother and British father, Fleur grew up in Hong Kong and later New York. She holds degrees from Columbia University (B.A. Comparative Literature) and Manhattan School of Music (M.M. Vocal Performance).
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.
Gustav Mahler's development and work as a composer focused largely on two musical genres: symphony and song. The two very different forms approached each other again and again, but the combination of the monumentality of the symphony and the intimacy of the song reached a hymn-like climax in “Das Lied von der Erde”. A compositional legacy based on texts by Hans Bethge that Mahler left to the world, knowing full well that his own death was already waiting for him around the next corner. For the concerts of the “Association for Private Musical Performances” Arnold Schönberg arranged Mahler's final song for a chamber orchestra, a work that was finally completed by Rainer Riehn. The arrangement for chamber orchestra made Mahler's composition a masterpiece of its own, in which the essence of the original sound is preserved through careful reduction and transforms into a new quality of characteristics and emotional experience.
Venue: Elbphilharmonie, Recital Hall, Platz der Deutschen Einheit 4, 20457 Hamburg
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