Wenn mein Mond deine Sonne wäre
Musical direction
Vilmantas Kaliunas
Vilmantas Kaliunas was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. He received his first piano lesson from his father at the age of four before he started playing the oboe at the age of eleven. After studying conducting and oboe in Vilnius, he came to Germany in 1993 and continued his oboe studies with Prof. Armin Aussem at the Conservatory of Music Saarbrücken.
Since 1998, Kaliunas is principal oboe in the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern. During his time in Saarbrücken, he worked with conductors like Paavo Järvi, Andrey Boreyko, Christian Thielemann and Heinz Holliger. Conducting Masterclasses with Prof. Karl- Heinz Bloemeke, Prof. Lutz Köhler or Prof. Jorma Panula and regular assistance for Maestro Karl Marek Chichon were initial impulses for Kaliunas to focus on his career as a conductor.
Vilmantas Kaliunas studied conducting at the University of Music “Franz Liszt” in Weimar with renowned Prof. Nicolas Pasquet.
Since 2014 he has conducted the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival Orchestral Academy and assisted conductors such as David Newman and Christoph Eschenbach. He works with soloists and prizewinners of the ARD International Music Competition like Tanja Becker-Bender, Jone Kaliunaite-Fassbender or Guilhaume Santana. From 2011 to 2015, Kaliunas was Music Director of the Saarlouis Symphony Orchestra.
As a guest conductor, he regularly works with the Berlin Sinfonietta, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the Thuringinia Philharmonic Orchestra Gotha and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Pazardjik Symphony Orchestra (Bulgaria) and the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra (Lithuania).
In 2016 he conducted the premiere and led the whole production of “Rigoletto” at the Ukraine State Opera of Dnepropetrovsk.
photo: Foto: Franziska Gilli
Speaker
Julian Greis
Speaker
Julian Greis, born in Hattingen in 1983, studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart from 2003 to 2006. During this time he already performed as a guest at the Landestheater Esslingen and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. For his roles in "Merlin oder Das wüste Land" he received the solo and ensemble prize of the Schauspielschultreffen in 2006. After graduating, he got a permanent engagement at the Schauspielhaus Graz with Anna Badora, where he worked with Viktor Bodó, Tom Kühnel and Christina Rast, among others. Under the directorship of Joachim Lux, he came to the Thalia Theater and worked with directors such as Antú Romero Nunes, Kornél Mundruczó, Christopher Rüping and Jette Steckel. In December 2012, he was awarded the Boy Gobert Prize for young actors by the Hamburger Bühnen and in October 2014 he was awarded the Rolf Mares Prize for "Best Actor" together with his colleagues for "Moby Dick" (directed by Antú Romero Nunes). Julian Greis has been a permanent ensemble member at the Thalia Theater since the 2009/10 season. He also works as a successful narrator for audio books and radio plays and received the German Children's Audio Book Award BEO for Best Performer in 2017 and 2018.
photo: Julia Schwendner
Orchester
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.
More about Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
photo: Foto: Felix Broede
