Ensembles
Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble

The Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble was founded in 1997 on the initiative of conductor Ivor Bolton. The aim was to perform the cycle of operatic works by Claudio Monteverdi in a historical style.

The ensemble has twice won the Munich Opera Festival Prize for this, including the members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Barbara Burgdorf, Corinna Desch and Christiane Arnold, who have now been performing operas on baroque instruments as soloists for 20 years: La Calisto, L’incoronatione di Poppea, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’Orfeo.

In the 500th anniversary year of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in 2023, Il ritorno / The Year of Magical Thinking was added to the programme, in the always sold-out Cuvilliés Theatre.

The three musicians have also gained an enthusiastic regular audience in annual baroque chamber concerts, including with gambist Friederike Heumann.


Photo credit: Corinna Desch

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 1
https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-1



Photo credit: Alice Bloomfield

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The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-1



Photo credit: Alice Bloomfield

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 2
https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-2



Photo credit: Gage Lindsten

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-2



Photo credit: Gage Lindsten

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 3
https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-3



Photo credit: Jiahuan Wang

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-3



Photo credit: Jiahuan Wang

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 4
https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-4



Photo credit: Antoine Leisure

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-4



Photo credit: Antoine Leisure

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 5
https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-5



Photo credit: Pete Sharp

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/en/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-5



Photo credit: Pete Sharp

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 6
https://www.in-toon.com/de/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-6



Photo credit: Raman Djafari

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/de/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-6



Photo credit: Raman Djafari

Lesestücke
Sakuntala’s Ring: Act 7
https://www.in-toon.com/de/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-7



Photo credit: Masanobu Hiraoka

">

The story of Sakuntala’s Ring is based on Kalidasa’s drama Sakuntala. This is one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The illustrations were commissioned by the Bayerisches Staatsballett on the occasion of the revival of the ballet La Bayadère in May 2023. Seven illustrators have each illustrated one act of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. Click through the acts, look at the pictures and listen to the sound design by Renu Hossain. She has worked with a recording of La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Using the menu, you can not only set the language, but also choose whether you want to show or hide the texts and music. We would be delighted if you could send us a message via the menu item “Participate” and share your ideas with us.

https://www.in-toon.com/de/ballets/sakuntalas-ring/act-7



Photo credit: Masanobu Hiraoka

Zeitzeugnisse
Paul Hindemith: The Harmony of the World

Hindemith’s opera in five acts Die Harmonie der Welt was premiered at the Prinzregententheater on 11 August 1957 – the composer himself conducted. The astronomer and physicist Johannes Kepler is at the centre of the plot, which spans several decades and takes place in Prague, Linz, Sagan in Silesia and Regensburg. Other historical figures such as Wallenstein, Emperor Rudolf II and Emperor Ferdinand II also appear.


Photo credit: Bavarian State Opera Archive

Zeitzeugnisse
Giovanni Battista Maccioni: L’arpa festante

1653: The first opera in Munich, Giovanni Battista Maccioni’s L’arpa festante, is premiered in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz. This is followed in 1657 by L’Oronte by court conductor Johann Caspar Kerll, which marks the inauguration of the first free-standing theatre building north of the Alps: the opera house on Salvatorplatz. A string ensemble together with the continuo group formed a prefiguration of today’s orchestra, which was to grow steadily.


 

Photo credit: Nösselt, Hans-Joachim: Ein ältest Orchester.

Meet the Musicians
Percussion for Alice in Wonderland

Find out more about the special role of the percussion section in Joby Talbot’s ballet Alice in Wonderland in this video.

Programm
1st Chamber Concert 2023/24 (Harmoniemusiken)

On 15 October, the chamber music series of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester will open its new season. Music from Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio in an arrangement by Wenzel Sedlak, Eugène Bozza's Octanphonie and Arvo Pärt’s Fratres for wind octet and percussion will be heard in the Allerheiligen Hofkirche. In addition, Gideon Klein’s text On Culture will be performed before his Divertimento is heard. Klein was a Czech-Jewish composer born in 1919 whose budding career as a piano virtuoso was abruptly interrupted by performance bans and the war. His Divertimento was written at a time when Klein had to interrupt his studies in musicology in 1939 due to the closure of the Prague Conservatory, and deals with the political events of the time. In December 1941, Klein was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he gave concerts and lessons as well as lectures. Shortly before the liberation by the Allies, Klein died in the Fürstengrube concentration camp on 27 January 1945.

Zeitzeugnisse
Alexander Zemlinsky: Sarema

Alexander Zemlinsky’s opera Sarema, based on Rudolf Gottschall’s story The Rose of the Caucasus, was written between 1893 and 1895 and won the 25-year-old composer the Luitpold Prize in 1896. The premiere followed on 10 October 1897 under Hugo Röhr at the Munich National Theatre, thus marking the Austrian composer’s first years of success. Zemlinsky received the Beethoven Prize of the Tonkünstlerverein for his Symphony in B flat major composed in 1897, and by 1899 he had written his opera Es war einmal, …, which was acclaimed in Vienna in 1900 under Gustav Mahler’s direction.



Photo credit: Bavarian State Opera Archive

Zeitzeugnisse
Franz Lachner: Benvenuto Cellini

Franz Lachner’s opera Benvenuto Cellini was premiered on 7 October 1849. Lachner used the French libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri-Auguste Barbier as a model, which was also the basis for the opera of the same name by Hector Berlioz, which was first performed in Paris in 1838. The plot centres on the historical figure of the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, who lived in Florence in the 16th century and whose autobiography was translated into German by Goethe. Three years after the premiere of his opera, Franz Lachner became General Music Director in Munich.


 

Photo credit: Archive Bavarian State Opera

Programm
1. Akademiekonzert 2023/24 (Petrenko)

For three performances of Gustav Mahler’s brilliant Symphony No. 8, former General Music Director Kirill Petrenko returns to Munich on 8, 9 and 11 October. In 1910, the work was premiered in Munich at the Neue Musik Festival Hall, now Hall 1 of the Deutsches Museum Transport Centre. Because of the immense personnel required by the score, including a huge choir and eight vocal soloists, the organiser of the premiere at the time advertised the work with the title “Symphony of a Thousand”. A Pentecost hymn by Hrabanus Maurus in the first part of the symphony meets the setting of the last verses of Goethe’s Faust II.

Zeitzeugnisse
Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold

On 22 September 1869, the first part of Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen was premiered at the National Theatre in Munich. Contrary to Wagner’s wish not to show the entire Ring until after its completion, Ludwig II pushed through the premiere of Das Rheingold in Munich ahead of schedule. Countless letters document the dispute between the composer and his patron; in the end Wagner stayed away from the premiere by Franz Wüllner and concentrated on founding his own festival at which the entire Ring cycle was to be shown. This did not happen until August 1876, when the first Bayreuth Festival opened.



Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Zeitzeugnisse
Richard Strauss: Friedenstag

The opera in one act Friedenstag was written to a libretto by Joseph Gregor with the collaboration of Stefan Zweig and the composer, based on the comedy El sitio de Bredá by the Spanish poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig exchanged plans about an opera project when the composer was in Salzburg in August 1934 during the festival season. After initial sketches, Zweig insisted that the libretto should be written by a third person, since as a Jew he considered the work impossible under the National Socialist regime. Joseph Gregor was suggested by Zweig, and a first meeting between the latter and Richard Strauss took place in Berchtesgaden in July 1935. Strauss repeatedly sought Stefan Zweig’s advice while working on the libretto and reworded verses himself, sometimes even replacing them with his own text passages. Strauss finally completed the score on 16 June 1936, and Friedenstag was premiered at the Munich National Theatre on 24 July 1938. Clemens Strauss conducted, Rudolf Hartmann directed, and the stage design was by Ludwig Sievert.


Photo credit: Friedenstag score. Vienna 1938.

Programm
4th Festival Chamber Concert (Recital Pascal Deuber)

The 4th Festival Chamber Concert on 27 July in the Cuvilliés Theatre featured Richard Strauss’ Andante for horn and piano in an arrangement by Pascal Deuber, as well as the Quintet in C minor by the English composer York Bowen, Jan Koetsier’s Skurrile Elegie auf Richard Wagner and Daniel Schnyder’s Concertino for horn, percussion and string quintet. In addition to Pascal Deuber on horn, Matjaž Bogataj and Felix Key Weber (violin), Adrian Mustea (viola), Emanuel Graf (violoncello), Blai Gumí Roca (double bass) and Claudio Estay (percussion) performed.

Programm
Festival Renaissance Concert (Renaissance and Early Baroque at the Munich Hofkapelle)

On 24 July, General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski conducted a special concert at the Alte Pinakothek, featuring Renaissance and early Baroque composers who are rarely heard in the context of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Orlando di Lasso and Ludwig Senfl are two central figures in the 500-year history of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and have already found their way to the National Theatre this year. Vincenzo Galilei, father of the natural scientist Galileo Galilei, worked in Munich at the court of Albrecht V as court musician. Johann Christoph Pez was not only born in Munich, but was court musician under Elector Max Emanuel from 1688. Rupert Ignaz Mayr was also part of the electoral court chapel, namely under Maximilian II. Emanuel.

Programm
2nd Anniversary Concert (Woodwind Serenades)

Two special concerts celebrating the anniversary of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester celebrate the Munich “household gods” Richard Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the first of the two concerts, instrumental late works and an early song cycle by Strauss are on the programme; in the second, the orchestra’s woodwind section presents two wind serenades, in addition to Mozart’s work in C minor, Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade in D minor.

The second anniversary concert (in Munich’s Prinzregentenheater) will feature the woodwind section of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester performing two of the serenade genre’s pinnacle works. In 1782, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had just begun to build up an existence as a freelance composer and musician in Vienna, after the personnel manager of his Salzburg employer had kicked him out of his employment. The commission to provide a work for the “imperial harmony” (brass band) just founded by Joseph II came welcome but at short notice (“I quickly had to make a night of musique, but only on harmonie”), and as so often, Mozart’s contribution far outstripped the usual: with the nocturnally sombre Serenade in C minor, he basically created a veritable symphony for winds. Antonín Dvořák had this model in mind when he, in turn, wrote a serenade in a minor key for woodwind instruments almost a hundred years later – two works that exhaust the wealth of expressive possibilities of oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, in the case of the Bohemian composer further enriched by violoncello and double bass.



Photo credit: Nikolaj Lund 

Programm
Festival Service

At the annual Festival Service, which takes place in cooperation with the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Franz Schubert’s Mass No. 4 in C major op. 48 D 452 was performed on 25 June. Two works by the contemporary Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa were also performed: Kuroda-bushi (from Japanese Folk Songs) for alto flute and Lullaby of Itsuki (No. 2 from Two Japanese Folk Songs and Gesine) for harp. The Bayerisches Staatsorchester and the Bayerischer Staatsopernchor were joined by vocal soloists Emily Pogorelc, Emily Sierra, Jonas Hacker and Jacques Imbrailo, and Frank Höndgen on the organ. Sergej Bolkhovets was the musical director.



Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Programm
3rd Festival Chamber Concert (Mozart and the Munich Hofkapelle)

On 19 July, the third Festival Chamber Concert took place in the Cuvilliés Theatre. Four works by Mozart were performed: namely his Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Violoncello in F major KV 370, the concert arias “Ma, che vi fece” – “Sperai vicino il lido” as well as “Misera, dove son” – “Ah, non son’ io che parlo” together with the soprano Jasmin DelfsTalia Or and the String Quartet in G major KV 387. The concert opened, however, with Johann Christian Cannabich’s Quintet for two flutes, violin, viola and violoncello in F major, op. 7 No. 1. Cannabich became a member of the Mannheim Court Orchestra at the age of twelve, where he advanced to concertmaster. From 1757 he led the Mannheim court orchestra as Kapellmeister. After the Elector Karl Theodor was appointed Elector of Bavaria and took his court orchestra to Munich, Cannabich took over the direction of instrumental music in Munich. In 1777 Mozart stayed at Cannabich’s house and wrote about him to his father Leopold: “I cannot describe what a good friend Cannabich is to me”.

Programm
Festspiel-Nachtkonzert (Surprise variations)

On 17 July, OperBrass gave a concert at the Prinzregententheater: Brass players are always good for a surprise. Mostly unexpected. Sometimes delicate, often exquisite, always fine and tactful.
OperaBrass therefore with one sound – but many variations:
Brass variations from original compositions and arrangements for ten brass players.
Unheard. Creative. Original.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Programm
2nd Festival Chamber Concert (Cellissimo)

On 13 July, the cellists of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester Yves Savary, Jakob Spahn, Benedikt Don Strohmeier, Oliver Göske, Rupert Buchner, Roswitha Timm, Anja Fabricius and Clemens Müllner played the second Festival Chamber Concert in the Cuvilliés Theatre. The musical range of the programme covered the last five centuries: from an arrangement of a madrigal by Orlando di Lasso to the Concerto per 2 Violoncelli e basso continuo in G minor RV 531 by Antonio Vivaldi and Gioachino Rossini’s Wilhelm Tell fragment for 6 violoncellos as well as Antonín Dvořák’s Rondo in G minor for violoncello and orchestra op. 94 to Krzysztof Penderecki’s Agnus Dei and a composition by the contemporary composer Anne Wilson.

Programm
1st Anniversary Concert (Richard Strauss)

Two special concerts celebrating the anniversary of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester celebrate the Munich “household gods” Richard Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the first of the two concerts, instrumental late works and an early song cycle by Strauss are on the programme; in the second, the orchestra's woodwind section presents two wind serenades, in addition to Mozart's work in C minor, Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade in D minor.

In the first anniversary concert (at the National Theatre in Munich), GMD Vladimir Jurowski conducts a programme that ranges from the music of the young Strauss to two examples of his late instrumental works. The Metamorphoses were composed under the impression of the destruction of the Munich opera house, an epitaph to a vanished epoch and a swan song to an era whose entanglements reverberate in the polyphonically intertwined web of the 23 solo strings. With the Sonatina for 16 winds, Strauss takes up the instrumentation of a youthful work. Self-ironically described as a “wrist exercise”, as it were a postscript to what was actually the end of his creative work, this opus “from the workshop of an invalid” is at the same time an example of Strauss’s contrapuntal mastery of emotional compression. Marlis Petersen has been a welcome guest at the National Theatre since the beginning of her opera career, celebrated as the Queen of the Night as well as Marietta or Lulu and recently also in Strauss roles such as Salome and Marschallin. As a good friend of the Bayerisches Staatsorchesters, she enriches the programme with a rarity: she sings the song cycle Mädchenblumen in an arrangement for chamber ensemble by Eberhard Kloke, in whose arrangement of Der Rosenkavalier the orchestra accompanied her in her role debut as Marschallin.


Photo credit: Nikolaj Lund

Zeitzeugnisse
Maria Jochum about the destroyed Hamburg State Opera House

Photo credit: Archiv der Musikalischen Akademie

Zeitzeugnisse
Aribert Reimann: Lear

On July 9, 1978, Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear was premiered at the National Theatre. Claus H. Henneberg wrote the libretto based on Shakespeare’s drama of the same name, Gerd Albrecht was the musical director, and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle directed. See photos from the production at the time, which featured Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role.


Photo credit: Sabine Toepffer

Programm
European Tour: Linz
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5487947

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The Bayerisches Staatsorchester has two symphonies with the No. 4 in its luggage on its European Tour: namely those of the two composers Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner, each of whom shaped late romantic symphonic music with quite different musical means. On September 22, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester will play the one by Gustav Mahler in the Brucknerhaus in the Bruckner city of Linz, where Anton Bruckner worked as an organist and where, for example, his E minor Mass was first performed.



Image credit: By Josef Löwy - Yahoo et al, Location: Vienna, Austria, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5487947

Programm
European Tour: Vienna

On September 23, the last concert of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester’s 2023 European Tour will take place in Vienna. Here, among other pieces, the prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde will be heard. Before this succeeded in being premiered in Munich, other attempts at premiere failed. For example in Vienna, where the planned premiere in 1863 was abandoned after 77 rehearsals. Only the unconditional support of Ludwig II made it possible for Wagner’s “unperformable” opera to be premiered in Munich by the court orchestra there – today’s Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Now, then, the Tristan prelude is heard in Vienna by its premiere orchestra, in which the ambivalent harmonic course that has become proverbial with the “Tristan chord” is already apparent.


Photo credit: Detail from the score to Tristan und Isolde. Breitkopf and Härtel 1860

Programm
European Tour: Paris
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33037925

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The Bayerisches Staatsorchester has had regular appearances with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in recent years. For example, the orchestra has already performed the two Strauss operas Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Rosenkavalier here, as well as Umberto Giordano’s verismo opera Andrea Chénier. Paris is a constant in the touring activities of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. It returns here Sept. 21 to perform Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor with Yefim Bronfman, as well as the prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, with Elsa Dreisig taking the vocal part.


Photo credit: By Coldcreation - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33037925

Programm
European tour: London

September 1953 saw the first guest performance of the Bavarian State Opera after World War II: Arabella, staged by Rudolf Hartmann, was performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden on September 15, together with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, the Bayerischer Staatsopernchor and the Bayerisches Staatsballett under the musical direction of Rudolf Kempe. Also part of the guest appearance were performances of Strauss’ operas Die Liebe der Danaeand Capriccio.

As part of the 2023 European tour, two concerts – on September 18 and 19 – will take place at the Barbican Centre in London. The first of the two concerts will feature music by Richard Strauss again, 70 years after the aforementioned guest performance: namely, his Alpine Symphony, the composer’s last symphonic poem, which programmatically refers to the Bavarian foothills of the Alps in its impressive depiction of the ascent and descent of a mountain hike through a gigantic orchestral apparatus.


Photo credit: Bavarian State Opera Archive

Programm
European Tour: Berlin

On September 11, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester will perform in Berlin and, among other compositions, will let Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto be heard. This composer has a special relationship with today’s German capital. In 1923, his Three Orchestral Pieces were premiered here, and the world premiere of his opera Wozzeck followed in 1925 under Erich Kleiber, then general music director of the Berlin State Opera. The extreme challenges of this score necessitated 137 rehearsals leading up to the premiere. But the city also represents a crucial setting in the biography of Richard Strauss, whose Alpine Symphony will be heard at the Berlin concert: After Strauss saw no possibility of being hired as a general music director in his hometown of Munich, he went to the Berlin Hofoper in 1898. The composer later recalled that he “never had any reason to regret this relationship with Berlin; actually experienced only joy, found much sympathy and hospitality.” He remained in the city for more than two decades, and it was under his direction that the premiere of the Alpine Symphony took place here in 1915 – the Dresden Royal Court Orchestra (today’s Staatskapelle) played.


Photo credit: F. E. C. Leuckart Verlag 1915

Programm
European Tour: Bucharest
https://www.festivalenescu.ro, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71850005

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On September 13, the European Tour will take the Bayerisches Staatsorchester to Bucharest for the George Enescu Festival. Artistic director of this festival, once founded in honor of probably the most important Romanian composer, was Vladimir Jurowski until he took up his post in Munich. The Munich General Music Director has thus already conducted numerous concerts in this huge concert hall with over 4,000 seats before he now returns here as a guest with his Bayerisches Staatsorchester.


Photo credit: https://www.festivalenescu.ro, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71850005

Programm
European Tour: Hamburg
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This is not the first visit of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. Back in 2018, then General Music Director Kirill Petrenko conducted a program of music by Johannes Brahms and Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky. The city of Hamburg has repeatedly been a point of reference for former heads of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the past: for example, Kent Nagano, who had previously been General Music Director at the Bavarian State Opera until 2013, moved to the Hamburg State Opera in 2015 in the same position. Wolfgang Sawallisch, on the other hand, came from Hamburg to Munich in the opposite direction – before he was to leave his mark on the Bayerisches Staatsorchester for two decades from 1971, he was chief conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra for ten years. And Bruno Walter was also engaged as Gustav Mahler’s assistant in Hamburg – namely at the opera there – before moving to Vienna and finally becoming General Music Director of the Royal Court Opera in Munich in 1913.


Photo credit: Bruno Walter. Photograph by W(enzel) Weis (1858-1930), Vienna, Landstraßer Hauptstraße 67 - Andrea1903, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4503614

Programm
European Tour: Lucerne
https://www.richard-wagner-museum.ch/geschichte/landhaus-tribschen/

Photo credit: By Josef Lehmkuhl – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3599177

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The Culture and Congress Center in Lucerne is the second stop of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester on its European Tour. On September 8, the orchestra will perform Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 and Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, as well as the prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. It takes about half an hour to walk from the KKL to the Tribschen country house, which Wagner lived in between 1866 and 1872. After the premiere of Tristan and Isolde in Munich, Wagner and his wife Cosima finally moved here, to the shores of Lake Lucerne, where the composer completed his operas Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Siegfried.



https://www.richard-wagner-museum.ch/geschichte/landhaus-tribschen/

Photo credit: By Josef Lehmkuhl – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3599177

Programm
European Tour: Merano

On September 7, the first concert of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester’s 2023 European Tour will take place in Merano. The Munich composer, house god of the Bavarian State Opera and former Munich Court Kapellmeister Richard Strauss had a great affinity for this place, and so he described the area in a letter to his biographer Willi Schuh as a “blessed realm”. As a lover of Italy, Strauss visited Merano repeatedly and worked during his stays there, among other things, on his opera Die Liebe der Danae – a draft text included for the opera Capriccio, which premiered in Munich, is also dated “Merano 13 May 40”. Incidentally, on its European Tour, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is spending the night in Innsbruck, where it already made a guest appearance in 1931 together with Richard Strauss at the Strauss Festival.



Photo credit: Archiv Musikalische Akademie

Programm
Semele
this interview, dramaturge Christopher Warmuth and director Claus Guth talk about the new production of George Frideric Handel’s opera Semele.


Photo credit: Karolina Wojtas

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In this interview, dramaturge Christopher Warmuth and director Claus Guth talk about the new production of George Frideric Handel’s opera Semele.


Photo credit: Karolina Wojtas

Zeitzeugnisse
Krzysztof Penderecki: Ubu Rex

On July 6, 1991, Krzysztof Penderecki’s satirical opera Ubu Rex received its world premiere at the Nationaltheater, opening the Opera Festival of that year. The libretto in German was written by the composer together with Jerzy Jarocki, based on the play Ubu roi by the French writer Alfred Jarry from 1896. In the two acts with five scenes each, the captain Ubu plans a conspiracy against the Polish king Wenceslas, who is murdered in the process. Subsequently, Ubu must wage war against Russia and finally flee across the Baltic Sea after a defeat. August Everding, then artistic director of the Bavarian State Opera, directed the production, and Michael Boder was the musical director.


Picture credits: Sabine Toepffer

Programm
Festival Baroque Concert (Dall’Abacos Travel)
https://pqpbach.ars.blog.br/category/dallabaco/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119231902

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On July 3, the Festival Baroque Concert will take place in the Alte Pinakothek. Thomas Dunford conducts an ensemble of six musicians and the soprano Ana Maria Labin. The composer Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco, who lends his name to this concert, was engaged as a chamber musician at the Munich court for a year beginning in 1704. However, the War of the Spanish Succession made regular employment of musicians difficult here as well, and Dall’Abaco had to look for work in other cities. Later, Dall’Abaco returned to Munich and even took the role of concertmaster. After Pietro Torri’s death in 1737, Dall’Abaco was not appointed court kapellmeister as he had hoped, but filled his posts for a few more years, finally dying in Munich in 1742. The Festival Baroque Concert will feature his Sonata in G major, op. 6, No. 5, and compositions by contemporaries who are better known today, namely Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel.


Photo credit: https://pqpbach.ars.blog.br/category/dallabaco/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119231902

Programm
Festival Concert Attacca

On July 2, ATTACCA, the youth orchestra of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, will perform at the Prinzregententheater, supported by the horn players of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester Johannes Dengler, Franz Draxinger, Maximilian Hochwimmer and Rainer Schmitz. Allan Bergius leads this concert with Robert Schumann’s Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra, Richard Strauss’ Symphony No. 1, and a world premiere by composer Oriol Cruixent: Penta Infinitum, a Concerto for Five Percussions and Symphonic Orchestra.

Zeitzeugnisse
Richard Wagner: Die Walküre

Even though the composer had intended otherwise and wanted his monumental Ring tetralogy to be premiered in his own festival theatre in Bayreuth, this second part was already heard on June 26, 1870, at the Munich Hof- und Nationaltheater. King Ludwig II did not want to wait until the Bayreuth Festival Theatre was completed and therefore arranged for the premature premiere of Die Walküre against the composer’s will. To this day, this opera about the love of the twin couple Siegmund and Sieglinde, which breaks all social norms, and the banishment of his favorite daughter Brünnhilde by Wotan, the father of the gods, enjoys enormous popularity.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Programm
1st Festival Chamber Concert (Review – Outlook)

On June 28, the Festival Chamber Concerts will kick off at the Cuvilliés Theatre. After OPERcussion – the percussion ensemble of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester – already released their CD recording “Original Grooves” on the in-house record label Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings this year, they are now thrilling audiences with a program of contemporary compositions. In addition to an original composition by Claudio Estay González – a percussionist from this ensemble – and an older commissioned composition for the ensemble by the composer Oriol Cruixent, the program also includes the world premiere of a commissioned composition: Moritz Eggert’s Die Geschichte des Schlagwerks in der Oper: 1700-2023 for 5 percussionists.

Meet the Musicians
Gaël Gandino (Harp)

A very special concert for Gaël Gandino was the 2nd Symphony of Gustav Mahler conducted by Claudio Abbado in Lisbon. She was an intern with the Berlin Philharmonic at the time. At the end of the piece, when the chorus began, Abbado put down his baton and just held his hands together. He sang along quietly; it was a magical atmosphere. She was moved to tears and will never forget that moment. Her favorite musician is her immediate neighbor in the orchestra pit, principal double bass Florian Gmelin. The harp and double bass very often share the same motifs or single notes, but they don’t need to look at each other. The two feel the music in the same way and are always in sync. After so many years of making music together, it is still overwhelming for her to experience it. Being half Italian, she would love to be fluent in Italian. She would also have a great chance of winning a gold medal for cooking.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Programm
Hamlet
following text, learn more about director of the Hamlet production Neil Armfield’s take on his staging of Brett Dean’s composition, as well as Armfield’s fundamental engagement with the Hamlet material, which dates back to his school days.



Bildnachweis: Wilfried Hösl

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In the following text, learn more about director of the Hamlet production Neil Armfield’s take on his staging of Brett Dean’s composition, as well as Armfield’s fundamental engagement with the Hamlet material, which dates back to his school days.



Bildnachweis: Wilfried Hösl

Zeitzeugnisse
Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Albert_-_Ludwig_und_Malwine_Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_-_Tristan_und_Isolde,_1865e.jpg#/media/Datei:Joseph_Albert_-_Ludwig_und_Malwine_Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_-_Tristan_und_Isolde,_1865e.jpg

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On June 10, 1865, Richard Wagner’s “plot in three acts” Tristan und Isolde was premiered at the National Theatre in Munich. After previous attempts to stage the work failed at several opera houses – including the Vienna Court Opera after nearly 80 rehearsals – the unconditional support of Ludwig II in Munich finally made the project possible. The myth about the unperformability of this opera was nevertheless perpetuated after the premiere Tristan Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld died at the age of 29 only a few weeks after the first performances. Conductors Felix Mottl and Josef Keilberth also suffered breakdowns while conducting Tristan in Munich, leading to the deaths of both. To this day, Tristan und Isolde is a risk for every theatre – because of the immense musical demands on the performers (especially in the title roles), but also because of the outward lack of action with all the more existential themes that are dealt with in the opera. The longing for death of the two lovers pervades all three acts, until the ambivalent harmonic course of the music is resolved with Isolde’s transfiguration at the end. The “Tristan chord” with which the musical prelude begins advanced in music history to become a tonal cipher for a modern tonal language that would culminate in the atonality of the 20th century.


Photo credit: Joseph Albert: Ludwig and Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld as “Tristan und Isolde” in the Munich premiere, 1865, Munich, State Administration of Palaces. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Albert_-_Ludwig_und_Malwine_Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_-_Tristan_und_Isolde,_1865e.jpg#/media/Datei:Joseph_Albert_-_Ludwig_und_Malwine_Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_-_Tristan_und_Isolde,_1865e.jpg

Programm
Un:erhört II – 2nd chamber concert of the Hermann Levi Academy

The Hermann Levi Academy supports talented young musicians by giving them the opportunity to practice with the orchestra under professional conditions, discovering  opera literature with its specific requirements as well as symphonic music.

The Bayerisches Staatsorchester’s Hermann Levi Academy was originally founded in 2002 under the name “Orchestra Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester”. Its task was to pass on the traditions of one of the oldest German orchestras to young musicians and consequently keep this particularly special sound and performance culture alive for subsequent generations. Since July 2021, the Orchestra Academy has included the “Hermann Levi Academy” title in its name to honour Hermann Levi’s importance in the world of music and in particular his forward-looking creativity at the National Theatre in Munich.

On June 12, the Hermann Levi Academy will perform a diverse program at the Alte Pinakothek. A Sonata da chiesa by the Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli and the Piano Quintet in B minor by Johannes Brahms will be heard, as will the Variations on the Song Greensleeves for double bass solo by Knut Guettler, who died ten years ago, and excerpts from the Sonata for Violoncello solo by György Sándor Ligeti.


Photo credit: Frank Bloedhorn

Zeitzeugnisse
Carl Maria von Weber: Abu Hassan
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22630453

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One opera was also premiered in Munich by the pioneer of German-language opera Carl Maria von Weber, whose Freischütz still enjoys particular popularity today. The libretto for the Singspiel in one act Abu Hassan was written by Franz Karl Hiemer and is based on a story from One Thousand and One Nights. Weber was private secretary to Ludwig, Duke of Württemberg, who was in debt and considered corrupt, when he planned the adaptation of a debt story together with Hiemer, a theater poet from Stuttgart. The premiere, however, took place during Weber’s stay in Munich, or more precisely: on June 4, 1811, the first performance of the opera went over the stage at the then Munich Court Theater. In the years that followed, the work enjoyed great popularity and found its way onto the stages of Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Copenhagen and London, among others. However, as the common combination of shorter plays with opera acts slowly disappeared, performances of Abu Hassan also became more sparse. Nevertheless, in the 20th century there were performances conducted by Bruno Walter in Berlin, Felix Mottl in Munich, and Richard Strauss in Vienna, for example.


Image credit: By Caroline Bardua - 1. umnofil.ru2. GalleriX, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22630453

Lesestücke
Felix Weingartner: Malawika

“To be modern means to admit that in a short time one will no longer be modern.” – This saying comes from the text Modernity, published in 1918, whose author Felix Weingartner spoke out against a linear development of music history that was constantly outdone by new forms and modes of expression. Thus, in his notes on his life, he sometimes self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a “Wagnerian” and a “Lisztian” and at another point proclaimed the paradoxical thrust “forward to Mozart!”. Weingartner, whose death anniversary was on May 7, 2022, the 80th time, completed 10 operas, 7 symphonies, several songs and chamber music and participated with numerous books and essays in the music-aesthetic as well as theoretical and performance-practical discourse of his time. His success was based on his activity as a conductor. In his letters to his “dearest friend,” as he usually addressed Weingartner, Gustav Mahler did not hold back with praise: “I know of no one to whom I would hand over my work with such confidence and joyful courage as to you.” Weingartner succeeded Mahler as opera director of the Vienna Court Opera, having previously been Kapellmeister of several opera houses as well as chief conductor of the Munich Kaim Orchestra – today’s Munich Philharmonic. During his 19-year association with the Vienna Philharmonic, Weingartner made a decisive contribution to its worldwide fame. As a subscription conductor, he led all concerts, including the first Beethoven cycle in 1918 and the first South American tour in the orchestra’s history in 1922. His opera Malawika, a “Comedy in Three Acts,” premiered at the Munich National Theatre on June 3, 1886, when the composer was just 23 years old. He wrote the libretto himself, based on a drama by the Indian poet Kalidasa.


Photo Credit: Archiv Bayerische Staatsoper

Programm
6th Chamber Concert 2022/23 (A Festival of Horns)

On May 14, the Munich Opera Horns will perform an eclectic program of music for horn from the last five centuries. Ludwig Senfl, with whose permanent appointment in 1523 by Duke Wilhelm IV in Munich the history of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester can be traced, is represented as well as his successor Orlando di Lasso. Original compositions for horn by Anton Reicha and perhaps the most famous horn player in the long tradition of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Franz Strauss, are performed alongside arrangements for the instrument – for example, the ballet music from Mozart’s opera Idomeneo.

Programm
6th Academy Concert 2022/23 (Jurowski)
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The program of the 6th Academy Concert, conducted by the General Music Director of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester Vladimir Jurowski, will open with an English rarity rarely heard on the continent, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis: a precious piece that blends memory and the present in an enchanting way – presented by the strings of the Staatsorchester. Later on, two soloists can be expected: Gerhard Oppitz takes the solo part in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, which Schumann originally composed for his wife Clara, who also played the piano part at the premiere. For Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, soprano Louise Alder joins the orchestra.


Photo creddit: Franz von Lenbach: Clara Schumann. https://androom.home.xs4all.nl/biography/a002056.htm

Zeitzeugnisse
Children writing to the orchestra 1
jugend@staatsoper.de.
With the kind support of the Friends and Sponsors of the
Musical Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Munich e.V.

for 3rd and 4th grade students

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MUSICAL ACADEMY – DACAPO


DACAPO is the music education project of the Musikalische Akademie des Bayerischen Staatsorchesters e. V. It was developed by musicians of the orchestra for a 3rd and a 4th grade class at elementary schools in the Munich area. Within a few weeks, musicians visit the selected classes of the school. In workshops they present their instruments and their profession. The final event is a concert for all students at the school, if possible. DACAPO combines the encounter with artists as well as getting to know and trying out orchestral instruments in the workshops with the experience of a concert situation.

Applications for the DACAPO project are sent through the Bavarian State Opera’s school program to jugend@staatsoper.de.
With the kind support of the Friends and Sponsors of the
Musical Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Munich e.V.

for 3rd and 4th grade students

Zeitzeugnisse
Hans Werner Henze: Elegy for young lovers

Hans Werner Henze’s opera in three acts Elegie für junge Liebende was premiered on May 20, 1961, at the Schlosstheater in Schwetzingen by the ensemble of the Bavarian State Opera. The opera was commissioned by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk for the Schwetzingen Festival, and Henze approached librettists Wystan Hugh Auden and Chester Simon Kallman with the idea of “a psychologically highly nuanced chamber opera”. A German translation of the libretto was prepared by Ludwig Landgraf with the collaboration of Werner Schachteli and the composer. The action is set in the Austrian Alps in 1910, more precisely in the mountain inn “Schwarzer Adler”. At the center are the two young lovers Toni Reischmann and Elisabeth Zimmer, whose tragic death together in a snowstorm serves as material for the jealous poet Gregor Mittenhofer’s poem “Elegy for Young Lovers”. The music is characterized by a transparent and differentiated sound as well as by reminiscences of Italian opera and Schoenbergian Sprechgesang. The premiere, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Mittenhofer and Heinrich Bender as conductor, in a set by Helmut Jürgens, was praised as Henze’s “breakthrough to a musical language of his own”.


Photo credit: Archive Bavarian State Opera

Zeitzeugnisse
Children writing to the orchestra 2
jugend@staatsoper.de.
With the kind support of the Friends and Sponsors of the
Musical Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Munich e.V.

for 3rd and 4th grade students

">

MUSICAL ACADEMY – DACAPO


DACAPO is the music education project of the Musikalische Akademie des Bayerischen Staatsorchesters e. V. It was developed by musicians of the orchestra for a 3rd and a 4th grade class at elementary schools in the Munich area. Within a few weeks, musicians visit the selected classes of the school. In workshops they present their instruments and their profession. The final event is a concert for all students at the school, if possible. DACAPO combines the encounter with artists as well as getting to know and trying out orchestral instruments in the workshops with the experience of a concert situation.

Applications for the DACAPO project are sent through the Bavarian State Opera’s school program to jugend@staatsoper.de.
With the kind support of the Friends and Sponsors of the
Musical Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Munich e.V.

for 3rd and 4th grade students

Programm
A tuba seldom comes alone

The Bayerisches Staatsorchester is celebrating its five-hundredth birthday this year, and Munich is joining in – not only with numerous concerts and events at the National Theatre, but also with festivals throughout the city. A very special instrument is coming to KulturBunt Neuperlach, namely the tuba: it is the deepest of all brass instruments. In the orchestra pit, it is usually found hidden next to the timpani, and tuba players are used to playing their part all alone in the orchestra. The three tuba players of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester – Stefan Ambrosius, Steffen Schmid and Simon Unseld – now want to change this fact. They are stepping out of the orchestra pit and want to play together. To this end, they have joined forces and will present a colorful program with music of all kinds – from baroque to jazz. Look forward to varied music with coffee and cake in the context of a guest café special of Kulturraum München e.V. and get to know the tuba better.



Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


 

Programm
5th Chamber Concert 2022/23 (The Munich Clarinet Olympus)

The 5th Chamber Concert focuses on Heinrich Joseph Baermann, extraordinary clarinet virtuoso of his time, who inspired composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Carl Maria von Weber to write compositions for the clarinet. Baermann was born in Potsdam in 1784 and was educated there and in Berlin before serving as a military musician during the fighting between Napoleon and Prussia. In 1807, Baermann was accepted as first clarinetist in the Munich court orchestra, where he served until 1834. Baermann was in demand internationally and gave concerts in many European cities before his death in Munich in 1847.

All of the works on the program are related to Baermann: Meyerbeer’s 2nd Clarinet Quintet, for example, was considered lost since World War II until a score copy of it was discovered in Baermann’s estate. During a visit of Heinrich Baermann together with his son Carl to Mendelssohn during a concert tour in Berlin, Mendelssohn composed the Concert Piece No. 1 while Baermann was cooking. And Baermann was also friends with Carl Maria von Weber – the two performed concerts together, and Weber dedicated his clarinet compositions to Baermann.



Photo credit: Print, author unknown, 1829, Munich City Museum, Portrait Collection; Inv: G M IV/873, Public Domain Mark.01


 

Programm
5th Academy Concert 2022/23 (Jindra)

The 5th Academy Concert is dedicated to one of the so-called house gods of the Bavarian State Opera: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He probably composed his Concerto for Flute and Harp in April 1778 in Paris as a commission for the flute-playing Comte de Guines and his daughter, who played the harp. The work has not been performed at the Musikalische Akademie since 1906; at that time with Leonore Kennerknecht-Buff on the harp (see tile “Women in the Orchestra”). In the same month, Mozart wrote to his father about the composition of a “sinfonie concertante”, the original score of which is said to have been lost. The Sinfonia Concertante for winds has long been thought to be an arrangement of the lost piece, but some scholars now doubt that Mozart was the author of this work.

In Prague, Mozart composed the aria “Bella mia fiamma” for the singer Josepha Duschek while he was there in November 1787 to prepare for the premiere of Don Giovanni. Just two months later, the composer himself conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 38, nicknamed the “Prague Symphony”, on January 19, 1787 in Prague. The conductor of the 5th Academy Concert Robert Jindra himself comes from Prague, where he studied opera singing and conducting at the conservatory, and now holds the position of music director of the National Theater.


Photo credit: Prague around 1800 (anonymous etching)


Meet the Musicians
Bass clarinet

Martina Beck-Stegemann, clarinetist of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, talks about the bass clarinet in A. It was built around 170 years ago by Mr Johann Simon Stengel, a clarinet maker from Bayreuth, and was probably played for the premiere of Tristan und Isolde in the National Theatre Munich. It is on loan from the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf.

Meet the Musicians
Holztrompete

In this video, Andreas Öttl, solo trumpeter of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, and Martin Lechner, instrument maker from Bischofshofen, show the wooden trumpet that was developed exclusively for the opera Tristan und Isolde in 1890.

Zeitzeugnisse
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: The Ring of Polycrates / Violanta
https://www.loc.gov/item/2005689510/


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The world premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s two one-act plays Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta took place on March 28, 1916 in Munich’s Hoftheater. The composer was 18 at the time and had already appeared as a child prodigy at the age of 13 with the world premiere of his ballet pantomime Der Schneemann at the Vienna Hofoper. Korngold had already completed his cheerful opera Der Ring des Polykrates in 1914, which was followed immediately by the composition of the tragic opera Violanta. The sensational success of Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt finally followed in 1920, which last premiered at the Bavarian State Opera in 2019 and caused a sensation under the musical direction of Kirill Petrenko in a production by Simon Stone and with Jonas Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen in the leading roles. This spectacle was documented on DVD and Blu-ray on the in-house label Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings. Max Reinhardt brought Korngold to Hollywood in 1934, where the composer provided the music for 19 films and thus had a lasting influence on film music.


Photo credit: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress) https://www.loc.gov/item/2005689510/


 

Programm
Passion Concert

On April 1st at 6:00 p.m. in the Allerheiligen Hofkirche there will be a Passion Concert, which will be performed jointly by the Hermann Levi Academy and young talents from the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera under the musical direction of Michael Pandya. Pieces from the two great oratorios St Matthew Passion and St John Passion as well as from the cantata Sehet! Wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem by Johann Sebastian Bach will be performed.


Photo credit: Magdalena Koenig


 

Programm
Ballett Festival Week 2023

At the beginning of April, the Bayerisches Staatsballett traditionally hosts its Ballet Festival Week. Founded in 1960 by then ballet director Heinz Rosen, the festival presents the highlights of the current season at the Nationaltheater between March 31 and April 8, 2023. It kicks off with the premiere evening Schmetterling, which features two works by the choreographer duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot. In addition, there are the story ballets A Midsummer Night’s Dream by John Neumeier, Romeo and Juliet by John Cranko and Cinderella by Christopher Wheeldon. In addition, the ensemble once again brings the three-part evening Passages to the stage of the Nationaltheater with choreographies by David Dawson (Affairs of the Heart), Marco Goecke (Sweet Bones’ Melody) and Alexei Ratmansky (Pictures at an Exhibition). The junior ensembles perform again at the matinee of the Heinz Bosl Foundation.

Meet the Musicians
Gaël Gandino, harp
Watch full video here. 

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Harpenist Gaël Gandino introduces herself and talks about the 2017 Asia Tour.

Watch full video here. 

Meet the Musicians
Wiebke Heidemeier und Clemens Gordon, Viola
Watch full video here.

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In this video the viola players Wiebke Heidemeier und Clemens Gordon introduce themselves and talk about the 2017 Asia Tour.

Watch full video here.

Programm
3rd Theme Concert – Choosing Not to Know

The third Theme Concert will take place on March 31 at 7:00 p.m. in the Scholastikahaus (Ledererstraße 5, 80331 Munich). The motto of this year’s series is: Waiting to see you again – What do we hold on to in the course of time? New encounters with old problems.

Prof Dr Dr h.c. Christoph Engel, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, gives a lecture on the subject: I don’t even want to know that.

For Immanuel Kant there was no doubt: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-inflicted immaturity.” But does the patient become guilty who does not want to know his diagnosis? Or the spouse who doesn’t want to know if he’s being cheated on? Or the liberators who wrap the cloak of silence around the misdeeds of the old regime? Or the company that doesn’t keep track of the attendance of its employees? How is the conscious decision not to want to know something to be evaluated? And how to protect the legitimate desire to remain unenlightened?

Members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester perform Isang Yun’s Gasa (1963) for violin and piano, two compositions by Toshio Hosokawa (_Memory_. In Memory of Isang Yun for piano trio and Vertical Time Study III for violin and piano) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Trio No. 2 B-major KV 502. Japan’s most-performed composer Toshio Hosokawa is a constant at this year’s Theme Concerts, whose music enters into dialogue with a composition by his composition teacher Isang Yun: Gasa can be translated as “song words” and comes as a narrative song from the Korean tradition.

In cooperation with the Max Planck Society


Photo credit: Pietro Bucciarelli / Connected Archives


 

 

Programm
2nd Theme Concert – Diversity and Justice

The second Theme Concert will take place March 30 at 7:00 p.m. in the Brainlab (Olof-Palme-Straße 9, 81829 Munich-Riem). The motto of this year’s series is: Waiting to see you again – What do we hold on to in the course of time? New encounters with old problems.

Prof Dr Dr h.c. multi. Marie-Claire Foblets, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale) will give a lecture on the topic: Does diversity threaten our democracy?The project of a democratic, liberal, open and pluralistic society is an ambitious and at the same time difficult project, the implementation of which is accompanied by conflicts of interests and values. Opinions vary widely on the degree of openness and respect due to different ways of life and philosophical or religious beliefs, as illustrated by examples from legal practice across the EU, where not only courts but also administrations and legislators deal with issues of see diversity confronted, is illustrated. With a bit of creativity, sensible solutions can be found, but they differ depending on the constitutional framework of the respective country.

Members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester perform two compositions by Toshio Hosokawa: A Song from far away – In Nomine - for 6 players (2001) and The Raven, a monodrama for mezzo-soprano and 12 players (2011/12), based on the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. Armando Merino is the musical director of the latter part of the programme, and Salome Kammer takes on the singing part. Hosokawa’s A Song from Far Away was commissioned for the Witten Festival for New Chamber Music, when the program focused on “In nomine” compositions whose tradition goes back to John Taverner’s six-part mass Gloria tibi Trinitas. Most recently, Arnold Schönberg’s monodrama Erwartung could be experienced on the big stage of the National Theatre, so now a contemporary work of this genre in the Brainlab: In The Raven the discrepancy between forgetting and remembering is addressed, with a mezzo-soprano singing the inner voice of a woman, the voice of the raven and the narrator. Musically, an eerie and mysterious mood prevails.

In cooperation with the Max Planck Society


Photo credit: Pietro Bucciarelli / Connected Archives


 

 

Programm
1. Theme Concert – The Future Doesn’t Wait? Temporality in Capitalism

The first theme concert will take place March 26 at 7:00 p.m. in the Freiraum in Munich High 5 (Werksviertel, Atelierstraße 10, 81671 Munich). The motto of this year’s series is: Waiting to see you again – What do we hold on to in the course of time? New encounters with old problems.

Dr Lisa Suckert, research associate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, will give a lecture on the topic: The future won’t wait? Temporality in capitalism.

Capitalism is not only an economic order and a regime of production, but also involves a specific temporal order. Acceleration and future orientation play a special role in this, but also waiting practices, unequal temporal autonomy and a bureaucratic enclosure of the future. Along with the peculiarities of our current capitalist order of time, its attractiveness but also its numerous paradoxes and fractures become clear.

Members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester play Toshio Hosokawa’s Hour flowers. Hommage à Olivier Messiaen (2008) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano and Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Hosokawa is considered to be the best-known and most-performed composer in Japan today, whose musical language oscillates between Western avant-garde and traditional Japanese art forms. His work Hourly Flowers was written on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, whose famous chamber music work Quatuor pour la fin du temps is also used for the composition of the Hourly Flowers. Messiaen completed his “Quartet for the End of Time” in a Nazi prisoner of war camp, where it premiered in 1941.

In cooperation with the Max Planck Society


Photo credit: Pietro Bucciarelli / Connected Archives


 

 

Programm
About the program of the concert in the Isarphilharmonie (Jurowski/Capuçon)

On March 25, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester will play under its general music director Vladimir Jurowski in the Isarphilharmonie, the Munich concert hall that only opened in October 2021 and can accommodate almost 2,000 guests. Renaud Capuçon will perform Alban Berg’s violin concerto In Memory of an Angel. The dedication refers to Manon Gropius – daughter of Gustav Mahler’s widow Alma from her first marriage to the architect Walter Gropius – who died at the tender age of 18 from complications of polio. Alban Berg used the twelve-tone technique of his teacher Arnold Schönberg for this, allowing himself a few compositional liberties. Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, also known as the “Romantic”, was premiered in Vienna in 1881 and was performed nine years later at the Musikalische Akademie under Franz Fischer after the General Music Director Hermann Levi fell ill. The latter was very committed to Bruckner’s music, for example by contributing to the printing costs of the fourth symphony, so that Bruckner, enthusiastic with gratitude, spoke of Munich as his “artistic home” in a letter to Levi.


Photo credit: © Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig HP8


 

 

Meet the Musicians
Milena Viotti, cornet
Watch full video here.

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Hornist Milena Viotti introduces herself and talks about the 2017 Asia Tour.

Watch full video here.

Programm
Un:erhört – chamber concert of the Hermann Levi Academy

The Hermann Levi Academy supports talented young musicians by giving them the opportunity to practice with the orchestra under professional conditions, discovering  opera literature with its specific requirements as well as symphonic music.

The Bayerisches Staatsorchester’s Hermann Levi Academy was originally founded in 2002 under the name “Orchestra Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester”. Its task was to pass on the traditions of one of the oldest German orchestras to young musicians and consequently keep this particularly special sound and performance culture alive for subsequent generations. Since July 2021, the Orchestra Academy has included the “Hermann Levi Academy” title in its name to honour Hermann Levi’s importance in the world of music and in particular his forward-looking creativity at the National Theatre in Munich.

On March 20th, the Hermann Levi Academy will present itself in the Alte Pinakothek, playing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Trio op. 78, arranged for horn, trumpet and trombone, the wind quintet in C major op. 79 by August Klughardt, the fantasy C minor for harp solo op. 35 by Ludwig Spohr and Beethoven’s string quartet in C minor op. 18 no. 4.


Photo credit: Frank Bloedhorn


 

 

Zeitzeugnisse
Women in the orchestra
https://www.kulturrat.de/themen/frauen-in-kultur-medien/beitraege-publikationen/gendersrecht-in-berufsorchestern/

More about Leonore Buff: https://www.sophie-drinker-institut.de/buff-leonore


Photo credit: Archive of the Musikalische Akademie


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Today, the proportion of women in the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is over a third. That wasn’t always the case: in the photo from 1911, the only female member of the Musikalische Akademie can be seen in the first row, namely the harpist Leonore Kennerknecht-Buff. She was said to be related to Charlotte Kestner (born Buff), who went down in literary history as the historical role model of Lotte in Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. In 1892, Buff was accepted as a member of the Bayerisches Hoforchester, which later became the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Other orchestras took much longer to take this step: while the Berlin Philharmonic accepted the first woman as an orchestra member in 1982, the Vienna Philharmonic only followed suit in 1997.

More about women in orchestras: https://www.kulturrat.de/themen/frauen-in-kultur-medien/beitraege-publikationen/gendersrecht-in-berufsorchestern/

More about Leonore Buff: https://www.sophie-drinker-institut.de/buff-leonore


Photo credit: Archive of the Musikalische Akademie


 

 

Programm
On the program of the 4th Chamber Concert 2022/23: Music around Richard Strauss

At the age of 23 Richard Strauss was Kapellmeister in Meiningen; during this time he composed the Sonata in E flat major for violin and piano op. 18, in which the musical influence of Johannes Brahms, 31 years older, can be felt. Karl Amadeus Hartmann himself named “Strauss’s Salome und Elektra” as the central influence of his first compositions. Hartmann founded the Munich concert series musica viva, and some of his early works were premiered at the Bavarian State Opera, where he even worked as dramaturge from 1945. In his 1932 Little Concerto for string quartet and percussion, the percussion enriches the string ensemble with unusual timbres. Two months before the premiere of Hans Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina, Thomas Mann expressed his anticipation in a letter to the composer, because “it will mean an apotheosis of the music itself, nothing less”. Before that premiere in 1917 was actually to become Pfitzner’s triumph in Munich, he composed his piano quintet op. 23. It was first performed in 1908 and was dedicated to Bruno Walter, who later became General Music Director of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester.


Photo credit: Magdalena König


 

 

Zeitzeugnisse
Beer sign in the Hofbräuhaus Munich
https://www.historisches-unterfranken.uni-wuerzburg.de/db/biermarken/biermarken/aufsatz.php

About the Hofbräuhaus in München: https://www.hofbraeuhaus.de/bierzeichen/


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


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The Staatliches Hofbräuhaus brewery in Munich preserves the tradition of beer symbols, also known as beer marks: since the 19th century they have served as a calculating aid and have been part of almost every brewery for a long time; first made of brass, then aluminium, later made of plastic, in the post-war years after the Second World War also in the form of paper notes. Each brand has a specific value, for example “1 Maß light or dark” or “Good for 1 liter of beer”. In the Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, beer tokens can be purchased that keep the value of a beer, even if the prices on the drinks menu go up. Now there is also a beer sign from the Hofbräuhaus in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester.

Worth knowing about the beer brand: https://www.historisches-unterfranken.uni-wuerzburg.de/db/biermarken/biermarken/aufsatz.php

About the Hofbräuhaus in München: https://www.hofbraeuhaus.de/bierzeichen/


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


 

 

Meet the Musicians
Porth timpani

Miriam Noa from the Munich City Museum and the two solo drummers from the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Pieter Roijen and Ernst-Wilhelm Hilgers, will be showing an instrument that was used in Munich premieres of Richard Wagner’s operas.

Meet the Musicians
Strohfiedel

In this video, Claudio Estay informs about the Strohfiedel, a special xylophone that is still used during performances of Richard Strauss’ Salome by the Bayerisches Staatsorchester.

 

Ensembles
Schumann Quartet
http://www.schumann-quartett.de .

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Consisting of members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, the Munich Schumann Quartet performed Béla Bartók’s early piano quintet and Arnold Schönberg’s 2nd string quartet with soprano in 1994, the year it was founded. Since then, invitations to concert tours and festivals in Europe, Japan and the USA have followed. The close cooperation with singers and composers enables the ensemble to perform rarely heard works as well as world premieres and experimental pieces in addition to the widely diversified common quartet repertoire, which combine video and language arts beyond pure tonal language. The first violinist Barbara Burgdorf is concert master of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Traudi Pauer has been playing here since 1996. Stephan Finkentey has been deputy principal violist since 1988, and one year later Oliver Göske joined the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. For the Schumann Year 2010, the quartet recorded two double CDs, which are available in stores or via http://www.schumann-quartett.de .

Zeitzeugnisse
Carlos Kleiber asks for material

Photo credit: Archive Musikalische Akademiee


Meet the Musicians
Isolde Lehrmann, 2nd violin

In her free time, Isolde Lehrmann likes to photograph still lifes and portraits.


Photo credits: Wilfried Hösl


 

Zeitzeugnisse
The Tragedy of the Devil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MylAsq5_dy0


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


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On February 22, 2010, The Tragedy of the Devil by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös was premiered with a libretto by Albert Ostermaier in the National Theatre. Eötvös himself conducted the Bavarian State Orchestra. The Ukrainian artist couple Ilya and Emilia Kabakov designed the stage and Balázs Kovalik directed. Find out more about the work and the staging of that time in a contribution with Eötvös, Kovalik, Ostermaier and the Lucifer singer of the premiere Georg Nigl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MylAsq5_dy0


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Zeitzeugnisse
Carlos Kleiber discusses the concert program

Photo credit: Archive of the Musikalische Akademie


Zeitzeugnisse
Carl Orff: The moon

Carl Orff’s opera Der Mond was premiered on February 5th, 1939 at the Bavarian State Opera under the musical direction of Clemens Krauss in a production by Rudolf Hartmann. The composer wrote the libretto himself and in doing so took over literal text passages from the fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm. Orff’s description of this “small world theater” is based on the three scenes of heaven, earth, underworld and the view of a little boy on it. Orff thought about his opera as “a thoughtful parable of the futility of human efforts to disturb the world order and at the same time a parable of being safe in this world order”. The composer himself described the music as his “farewell to romanticism”. Critics were enthusiastic, for example the musicologist Fred Hamel: “So you encounter a creation that has been desired for the opera stage for a long time […] It’s great how Orff’s music also fully expresses this power here the elementary means of rhythm and song form […] With this economy of means, Orff’s melodic invention is so powerful, his rhythmic imagination so inexhaustible, that they evoke a sheer abundance of changing impressions of pictorial power.”


Photo credit: Hanns Holdt


Meet the Musicians
David Schultheiss, 1st violin (1st concertmaster)

Among his childhood heroes there were sporting heroes such as Karl Allgöwer (his direct free-kick goals – awesome!), Lothar Matthäus and Boris Becker and of course also violinist-musical ones like Henryk Szeryng, David Oistrach and especially Gidon Kremer. The best hall in which David Schultheiss has played so far is the Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He also has a special memory of a concert in the aforementioned Suntory Hall: David Schultheiss has never experienced such a tense and expectant silence from the audience between the applause for the conductor and the first sound of the concert.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Meet the Musicians
Julia Pfister, 2nd violin

Her childhood heroes are The Three Investigators: She heard Paganini for the first time in these radio plays and then absolutely wanted to play it. A special concert for Julia Pfister was the concert with Kirill Petrenko as part of the 2016 European tour at La Scala in Milan. Everyone was in the flow and the atmosphere was unforgettable!


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Meet the Musicians
Florian Gmelin, double bass (solo)

His favorite book is Trials and Tribulations by Theodor Fontane and Carlos Kleiber is his favorite conductor. Florian Gmelin would have loved to work with him one day.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Programm
4th Akademiekonzert 2022/23

The long-standing collaboration between the Greek composer Minas Borboudakis and the Bavarian State Orchestra has borne fruit, such as the “Musical Theatre for Young People in Eight Scenes” premiered in 2007 entitled liebe.nurliebe, but also Synaptic Arpeggiator for piccolo, English horn, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabassoon and most recently the German and German-language premiere of the chamber opera Z in the 2018/19 season. In the composition commissioned by the Bavarian State Opera for the 500th anniversary of the Bavarian State Orchestra entitled Apollon et Dionysos. Patterns, Colors and Dances for Orchestra Borboudakis is dedicated to the musical fusion of Apollonian and Dionysian opposites. Friedrich Nietzsche already stated in his fundamental writing The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Musicthat “the further development of art is bound to the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian”: light, clarity, harmony and self-knowledge on the one hand and dissolution of boundaries, ecstasy, madness and loss of control on the other side. The ancient god Apollo adorns the gable of the National Theatre Munich to this day.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s popular Violin Concerto in E minor was written by the composer for his friend, the violinist Ferdinand David: “I
I would also like to make you a violin concerto for next winter, one
in E minor stands in my head, the beginning of which gives me no rest.” After this announcement, seven winters should elapse before the world premiere in Leipzig. The result is a visionary work that comes up with some compositional innovations: namely the direct introduction of the main theme by the violin without an orchestral prelude, the position of the solo cadenza in the middle of the first movement and the special feature that all three movements musically merge into one another.

Two formative events in Anton Bruckner’s life flowed into his work on the sprawling Symphony No. 7 in E major: the tragic fire in the Vienna Ringtheater in 1881, in which several hundred people lost their lives, occurred at the time of its composition. Bruckner’s apartment was in the immediate vicinity of the Ringtheater, and the composer is said to have owned tickets for the fateful performance of Les contes d’Hoffmann, but spontaneously decided against going there. Bruckner and his manuscripts were spared from the fire. The slow Adagio as the center of the symphony can be understood as a requiem for the death of Richard Wagner in February 1883, which is given special colors by the use of so-called Wagner tubas (these were originally conceived for the Ring des Nibelungen). After Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony had already sparked a storm of jubilation at its premiere in Leipzig in 1884 – such positive reactions from the audience were a new experience for the hitherto rather ridiculed Bruckner – Hermann Levi, from 1872 to 1896 General Music Director and Court Kapellmeister at the Royal Court and National Theatre in Munich, conducted just one year later the Munich premiere of the work as part of the Musikalische Akademie. Levi also helped spread the work internationally by raising money for its publication, which the publisher was asking for. In Levi’s report on Bruckner’s works, the conductor finally ennobles the composer: “In my opinion, Bruckner is by far the most important symphonist of the post-Beethoven period.”


Photo credit: The Ringtheater fire in Vienna 1881. 19th century, Colored lithograph. Theatermuseum © KHM-Museumsverband


Meet the Musicians
Johannes Dengler, horn (solo)

Johannes Dengler decided at the age of 10 that he wanted to be a musician after realizing that he couldn’t become an astronaut due to travel sickness. His best medicine for stage fright is practice, practice, practice …


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Zeitzeugnisse
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Idomeneo
https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/doclist.php


Photo credit: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Signatur Slg.Her 811


 

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On January 29, 1781, Mozart’s “Dramma per musica in tre atti” premiered in Munich’s Hoftheater, today’s Cuvilliéstheater. The libretto is based on the tragédie lyrique of the same name by Antoine Danchet with music by André Campra and was written by the Salzburg chaplain Giambattista Varesco. Five years later, a version revised by Mozart was performed in Vienna.

In 1775 Mozart’s La finta giardiniera was premiered in Munich, and in 1780 the composer was commissioned by Karl Theodor, the Elector of Bavaria, to create an opera for Munich as the highlight of the carnival season. Mozart attended the rehearsals of both operas. Idomeneo was not finished until he was there, and so Mozart was able to take special account of the vocal possibilities of the singers. A correspondence between Mozart and his father Leopold provides information about the background to the creation of Idomeneo, in which the function of scenes and arias is also discussed.

Mozart Letters and Documents – Online Edition:
https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/doclist.php


Photo credit: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Signatur Slg.Her 811


 

Programm
Director Krzysztof Warlikowski about DIDO AND AENEAS ... ERWARTUNG

Director Krzysztof Warlikowski gives first insights into his production of Dido and Aeneas ... Erwartung: The combination of Henry Purcell’s baroque opera and Arnold Schönberg’s monodrama composed more than 200 years later has its premiere on January 29th at the Nationaltheater.

Zeitzeugnisse
Engelbert Humperdinck: Königskinder

The first version of Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy tale opera was premiered on January 23, 1897 in Munich’s Hoftheater under the musical direction of Hugo Röhr. After the success of Hänsel und Gretel four years earlier, the composer was looking for a text for a comic opera with a popular touch, which was ultimately provided by Elsa Agnes Bernstein, daughter of Humperdinck’s Munich friend Heinrich Porges.

In the years that followed, this melodrama version found its way onto the opera stages of Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Riga, London, Dublin and New York, but disappeared from the repertoire after 1902. The composer revised his melodrama into the through-composed version of the opera known today, for which the text was thoroughly reduced and simplified. Finally, in 1910, this second version was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.


Photo credit: Archiv Bayerische Staatsoper / Hof-Atelier Elvira München


Meet the Musicians
Verena-Maria Fitz, 1st Violin

Verena-Maria Fitz likes to take a vacation in South Africa because her husband was born and raised there, and in South Tyrol. May is her favorite month because it is fresh and colorful and summer is still ahead.


Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl


Ensembles
OPERcussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oiPF874mZk


Photo credit: Dominik Gigler


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Unique in its kind, OPERcussion, the virtuoso percussion quintet, brings the art of percussion from the depths of the orchestra pit to the front row, realizing a new model of artistic creation while respecting history and championing innovation.

When we study the history of the Bayerische Staatsoper, we learn that the first timpanist with a contract began in 1600 in what was then the Court Orchestra. In more than 400 years of musical tradition, the greatest composers and conductors in history have influenced the members of this traditional orchestra and promoted chamber music activities. The members of the percussion group have not escaped this call and since 2008 have been organized in the formation OPERcussion. Thomas März, Pieter Roijen, Maxime Pidoux, Carlos Vera Larrucea and Claudio Estay bring to the ensemble their virtuosity, their knowledge, the traditions of their countries of origin and their peculiarities. This international ensemble has distinguished itself in the world of percussion and in the music scene in general for the innovation and diversity of its programs, which include collaborations and commissions with contemporary composer:s, as well as arrangements of music not originally written for percussion, from the eras: Baroque, Classical and Impressionist to the interpretation of Latin American music with grandiose improvisational ideas.

On January 20th, the drum quintet OPERcussion performed in the Muffathalle and presented their new CD on the in-house label BSOrec. Here you can experience the ensemble in a recording of the 10th Monday Concert 2020 with a varied program from Mozart to Claude Debussy to Astor Piazzolla in their own arrangements together with the violinist Julia Pfister, who also performed in the Muffathalle with OPERcussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oiPF874mZk


Photo credit: Dominik Gigler


Zeitzeugnisse
Fire in the National Theater on January 14th, 1823

On January 14th, 1823, the National Theater burned. Although the accident happened during a packed evening performance, nobody was hurt. Warm brewing water from the surrounding breweries was used to extinguish the fire, since the water used by the fire brigade froze in the syringes. The building could not be saved from the flames, but was reopened two years later.


Photo credit: Münchner Stadtmuseum, collection of graphics / paintings P-1134
Artist: unknown; Wolfgang Pulfer (repro)


Ensembles
OperaBrass

OperaBrass is one of the chamber music ensembles of the Bavarian State Orchestra. Although the formation also exists in the classic brass quintet formation, it is preferable to enter the stage with four trumpets and trombones, a horn, tuba and, in some cases, drums.

In 1996 the eleven musicians made their debut with two concerts in the Cuvilliés Theater in the Munich Residenz with a program made up of works from a wide variety of stylistic periods. Since all ensemble members are not only at home in classical music, but have also gained a wide range of experience from jazz to pop, this type of music also plays a major role in the formation’s repertoire. Arrangements of opera highlights, jazz standards and big band evergreens specially designed for OperaBrass were commissioned. In addition, the trumpeters Andreas Öttl and Frank Bloedhorn have also contributed their own arrangements to the repertoire. The two musicians are particularly attracted by the fact that they can use all their instruments in the ensemble – from the piccolo trumpet to the flugelhorn.

A tour with the cabaret artist Bruno Jonas and the program “Full Pipe - Hot Air” took them off the beaten track: a satirical tin, so to speak, the content of which dealt with no less than 400 years of love and death in the opera.

The musical collaboration with two former General Music Directors of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano, and other renowned conductors such as the baroque specialist Ivor Bolton played an important role in the artistic development of the ensemble.

In 2006, OperaBrass organized a concert together with the world-famous King’s Singers in the Prinzregententheater. Under the title “In Perfect Harmony”, both ensembles spanned the musical arc over the centuries. With Wagner & Friends, the musicians from OperaBrass 2012 ventured directly from the orchestra pit onto the stage of the National Theatre with a real crossover programme. Every summer OperaBrass are also involved in the Unicredit Festival Night at the beginning of the Munich Opera Festival.

Apart from that, you can experience the ensemble at the chamber concerts of the Bavarian State Opera and on tours. More recently, after the European tour in 2016 with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and a guest performance in Asia in 2017, they went to Mallorca in September 2018, where the Munich brass band were guests in Palma Cathedral for the second time.


Photo credits: Wilfried Hösl


Programm
Concert program of the 3rd chamber concert 2022/23: Brass band music from the old days

At the 3rd chamber concert on January 15th, 2023, the OperaBrass ensemble will present a program in the Allerheiligen Hofkirche that is reminiscent of the beginnings of the Bavarian State Orchestra in the 16th century, when the Munich court orchestra at that time was used especially to represent the Bavarian dukes. A chronicler’s report is dated December 10th, 1565 and refers to the heyday of the Munich court orchestra at the time of Albrecht V: “they had three kinds of music during supper: [...] first played on cornetts and trombones, the other sung by several singers, accompanied by fifes and trombones. The third of 5 flutes and a trombone”. The composer Orlando di Lasso, who was already highly regarded internationally at the time, had been engaged to conduct the court orchestra two years earlier, and his pupil Giovanni Gabrieli also worked in Munich a few years later. A polychoral composition by Gabrieli was already heard at the 3rd Academy Concert in 2023 – also performed by brass players from the Byerische Staatsorchester.


Photo credit: Magdalena König


Meet the Musicians
Franz-Strauss-Horn

Franz Strauss (1822-1905) was not only the father of the composer Richard Strauss, but also one of the most renowned horn players of his time, who worked in the Royal Bavarian Court Orchestra, today’s Bavarian State Orchestra, and had a significant influence on its sound. The two horn players Milena Viotti and Johannes Dengler provide insights into the special features of the instrument once played by Franz Strauss.

Programm
Ceremony 500 years Bayerisches Staatsorchester

The anniversary year of the Bayerische Staatsorchester is ushered in with a ceremony. General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski conducts music by composers whose selections offer a glimpse of the orchestra’s formidable history: Four of Richard Wagner’s operas were premiered in Munich by the Bayerische Staatsorchester, among which one boasts particularly festive sounds: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

500 years ago, Ludwig Senfl, as musicus intonator or musicus primarius, and a few year-round musicians were engaged by the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV to collect sheet music, build up a repertoire and perform both ecclesiastical and secular music: this is the birth of an orchestra that was later also presided over by Orlando di Lasso. The popularity of Lasso’s music among Renaissance contemporaries and the composer’s historical significance for music history can hardly be overestimated. Lasso’s last work Lagrime di San Pietro bears impressive witness to this.

But Richard Strauss also conducted the Bayerische Staatsorchester for two years, and the scores of two of his operas were breathed life into for the first time by the Bayerische Staatsorchester. An Alpine Symphony represents the composer’s last symphonic poem and, in its impressive depiction of the ascent and descent of a mountain hike through a gigantic orchestral apparatus, makes programmatic reference to the Bavarian foothills of the Alps.

Zeitzeugnisse
Bruno Walters Neujahrswünsche

 


Photo creddits: Archiv der Musikalischen Akademie


Zeitzeugnisse
Bruno Walter about the Musical Academy

Photo Credit: Archiv der Musikalischen Akademie


 

Zeitzeugnisse
Service list for the annual court concert on January 1, 1863, with soloist Franz Strauss

Photo Credits: Archiv der Musikalischen Akademie


 

Lesestücke
Musical Publics

Armin Nassehi


Prof. Dr. Armin Nassehi has held the chair at the Institute of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian Uni-versity of Munich since 1998, specialising in the sociology of culture, political sociology, sociology of religion, sociology of knowledge and sociology of science. His latest book publications: Das große Nein. Eigendynamik und Tragik des gesellschaftlichen Protests (Hamburg 2020) and Unbehagen. Theorie der überforderten Gesellschaft (München 2021). A passionate musician himself, he has often written es-says for the Bayerische Staatsoper and participated in many events.

Anyone wanting to gain a comprehensive overview of an orchestra’s working me-thods will do so exclusively by glancing up at the stage or down into the pit. Only when we look closely will it become clear very quickly that as institutions orchest-ras are based on the principle of the division of labour and made up of many spe-cialists, male and female, each of whose fields of competence and praxis must be expressed symphonically. As such, an orchestra is a preeminent symbol of the way in which a group of specialized individuals, all of whom are simultaneously doing something different in real time and whose activities need to be coordina-ted, can produce something unified. In turn, however, this unity can be achieved only through the carefully preordained coordination of its members’ individual actions. The result is something that can hardly be attributed to a single individual any longer. The powerful figure of the conductor – in the twentieth century, above all, an almost heroic figure and generally a man – ensures that the musici-ans’ individual activities and abilities are subsumed within a greater, universal whole, with the result that it is the conductor, above all, who is credited with the orchestra’s capacity for working as a collective in the symphonic repertory. In his sociological study of music Adorno wrote mockingly about the conductor who, craving recognition, has to conceal the fact that he (or she) is not working at all but merely cultivating a cult that is centred around his (or her) own person. Closer to the truth is no doubt the view that an orchestra is such an intricate entity that it requires a third party to weld together its complex individual sections and create a single whole.
This glance up at the stage and down into the pit reveals the institution of the orchestra, with all of its structural complexities and historical development, to be the performative reflection of complex musical forms that would not exist wit-hout a body of players based on the principle of the division of labour. This prin-ciple is taken to extreme lengths here and, as such, it is a radically modern inven-tion. Long before this principle was introduced into industrial production, into the structures of state administration and into organizational logistics, it was above all the orchestra that had to subsume within itself the concepts of specialization and coordination, functioning as a single pillar and as the totality of society and reconciling individuality and collectivity, differentiation and integration. Anyone who is surprised that such an orchestral form, which is already five hundred years old, has survived for so long may care to bear in mind that this form of social or-ganization was already in advance of ist time, the harbinger of a society whose inner differences and complex variety may not be symphonically integrated but which is all the more conscious in consequence of the problem of coordinating its actions. One could even go further and describe the symphony orchestra, with its particular, timeless form, as a parable of a social model that is capable of reconci-ling individual abilities, specialisms and characteristics with the need for those actions to be coordinated.
We can also redirect our gaze from the stage or pit to the concert hall or to the opera house. In research into the emergence of “publics” that has been conduc-ted in the fields of both history and the social sciences, concerts, opera perfor-mances and chamber recitals are regarded as early settings in which such “publics” have evolved – the same is true of salons and the theatre. In music es-pecially it can be shown that the change from the sort of performance practices associated with the court and with the Church to the practices bound up with the middle classes not only altered the way in which music as an art form saw itself but also led to its increasing independence and, more especially, to the reason for giving concerts in the first place. Courtly praxis had been geared to providing an introduction to the refinements and distinctive lifestyle of the aristocracy, but the middle-class types of performance that opened up in towns and cities brought with them a completely new kind of public. Music migrated from its court-ly setting to concert halls and opera houses, whose sole function was to mount performances and where Baroque and Classical elements survived only as deco-rative adjuncts.
Only once this last-named type of praxis was established did the audience ac-quire a decisive significance. Unlike performances at court and in church, those that took place in public concert halls brought together strangers who may have remained strangers in terms of most of the aspects of their personality but who were held together by a common focus that allowed them to engage in conversa-tion about the success or otherwise of the performance, about the character of the music, about the more notable features of the conductor, about the critical reviews and about the latest political and economic news and all that was happe-ning in society at large. As a result the middle-class concert hall also represents a way of preparing for public life. In the past, middle-class audiences were also a reading public that could create the sense of a public in these encounters preci-sely because their reading matter was similar and the store of their knowledge was calculable. This knowledge could be communicated in a way that was impar-tial but committed, it could be disinterested or interested, and it could be contro-versial while allowing the participants to agree to disagree. It is also possible that the journey to the concert hall, the breaks between the pieces and the gossip about absent members of the audience first lent the concert experience the cha-racter of a social whole. Concerts were an opportunity for middle-class society to discover itself, even if this was true of only a small carrier group. Here it was no classless society that discovered itself but a class with distinctive features. The result may not have been a democratic agora but there was still the ability to face up to controversies and to encounter other people. There was no attempt to reach a consensus but these conditions still provided a chance to acquire the ability to deal with differences of opinion.
The practices associated with these middle-class performances may be said, therefore, to constitute an exercise in public life inasmuch as the forms of social distance that were cultivated here in ways found in few other places could be practised despite all of the points in common – and this is true even of those pe-riods when expressions of public life involved a high degree of political confor-mism. There is some disagreement as to whether we should regard the concert, the middle-class salon or the theatre as a blueprint for political forms of public life under later (nation-)states, but what is undisputed is that symphonic practices presuppose a public that submits itself to public observation and cultivates cor-responding forms of coordinating actions among strangers. Full-time orchestras – or at least the ones in Germany that are supported or even run by central or local government – continue to be seen as a regular part of our cultural lives. his, too, represents a reminiscence of this model of public life as part of a public spectacle. Here the complexity of the orchestra is merely the corresponding equivalent of a significant and persistent praxis – and in a pluralistic, de-mocratized, egalitarian and, last but not least, globalized culture, it is no longer the exclusive place on whose reflection it continues to feed. Yet it is very much this circumstance that makes it all the more significant and remarkable that it has retained such a stable form, a form which, despite its chronic structure, does not appear to be becoming anachronistic. Perhaps the reason for this state of affairs lies in the fact that both were ahead of their times when they came into exis-tence: the orchestra as an untypically complex example of the principle of the distribution or labour and its audience as a community of strangers engaged in conversation. Ad multos annos!

Lesestücke
1523
Why 1523?

The year 1523 marks the beginning of institutionalized music-making in the instrumental association at the Bavarian court; This was the nucleus of today’s Bavarian State Orchestra, which can now look back on five hundred years of history.

In 1523, probably in the spring, the musician Ludwig Senfl, who was known throughout Europe and had worked for Emperor Maximilian I until his death in 1519, entered the service of Duke Wilhelm IV of Wittelsbach “Expansion of court music” (Dr. Stefan Gasch), in two respects. On the one hand, the music required at court and in the ducal church service was placed on a new basis with a tribe of permanent members. For example, Senfl hired Johannes Steudel, trombonist, about whom it is noted: “Receives 100 Gld. rhein. per year, for 1 horse fodder, 2 court clothes and 3 bushels of grain”, “Steudel shall be the leader among the trombonists”. On the other hand, a pool of written works that were composed for specific occasions was gradually formed. This also made it necessary for all participants to be able to read music (rather than improvising in three parts, as was the case in earlier practice); both aspects are therefore directly related. In addition to the services in the liturgical area, the instrumentalists of the court orchestra also denied festivities such as balls and state visits, contributed table music at banquets and provided the accentuation of important moments at state events with fanfares.

In 1523, therefore, two major developments began: on the one hand, the professionalization of the musicians’ staff, on the other hand, the development of a lasting repertoire - both of which are claims that the Bavarian State Orchestra still makes its own today.


Photo credit: Hans Wertinger, Herzog Wilhelm IV. von Bayern Rückseite: Wappen Bayern-Baden und Devise, 1526, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Alte Pinakothek München


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Why 1523?

The year 1523 marks the beginning of institutionalized music-making in the instrumental association at the Bavarian court; This was the nucleus of today’s Bavarian State Orchestra, which can now look back on five hundred years of history.

In 1523, probably in the spring, the musician Ludwig Senfl, who was known throughout Europe and had worked for Emperor Maximilian I until his death in 1519, entered the service of Duke Wilhelm IV of Wittelsbach “Expansion of court music” (Dr. Stefan Gasch), in two respects. On the one hand, the music required at court and in the ducal church service was placed on a new basis with a tribe of permanent members. For example, Senfl hired Johannes Steudel, trombonist, about whom it is noted: “Receives 100 Gld. rhein. per year, for 1 horse fodder, 2 court clothes and 3 bushels of grain”, “Steudel shall be the leader among the trombonists”. On the other hand, a pool of written works that were composed for specific occasions was gradually formed. This also made it necessary for all participants to be able to read music (rather than improvising in three parts, as was the case in earlier practice); both aspects are therefore directly related. In addition to the services in the liturgical area, the instrumentalists of the court orchestra also denied festivities such as balls and state visits, contributed table music at banquets and provided the accentuation of important moments at state events with fanfares.

In 1523, therefore, two major developments began: on the one hand, the professionalization of the musicians’ staff, on the other hand, the development of a lasting repertoire - both of which are claims that the Bavarian State Orchestra still makes its own today.


Photo credit: Hans Wertinger, Herzog Wilhelm IV. von Bayern Rückseite: Wappen Bayern-Baden und Devise, 1526, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Alte Pinakothek München


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