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.

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.

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.

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.

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 

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

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”.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Karolina Wojtas

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

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

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.

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.

Bildnachweis: Wilfried Hösl

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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Als „Akademien“ wurden schon im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (oft privat organisierte) Konzerte bezeichnet. Der Münchner Verein Musikalische Akademie e. V. wurde 1811 aus der Mitte des damaligen Hofopernorchesters gegründet. Damit etablierten die Musiker die erste symphonische Konzertreihe Münchens.

Anders als beim Festakt enthält das Programm des 3. Akademiekonzertes ein zweichörig komponiertes Instrumentalwerk des venezianischen Komponisten Giovanni Gabrieli, der in München bei Orlando di Lasso studierte und als Schlüsselfigur an der Schwelle von Renaissance- zu Barockmusik später selbst Komponistengrößen wie Heinrich Schütz unterrichten sollte.

Das Bayerische Staatsorchester erhält nicht nur die großen Werke der letzten Jahrhunderte am Leben, sondern fühlt sich auch der Neuen Musik verpflichtet: Nachdem es unter seinem Generalmusikdirektor Vladimir Jurowski 2020 bereits sehr erfolgreich Brett Deans Testament aufgeführt und im hauseigenen CD-Label Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings veröffentlicht hatte, folgt jetzt die Uraufführung einer Auftragskomposition bei dem australischen Komponisten: Nocturnes and Night Rides. Mit den diesjährigen Münchner Opernfestspielen kommt außerdem seine Oper Hamlet auf die Bühne des Nationaltheaters. 

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