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

Felix Mottl was born on 24 August in Unter-St. Veit near Vienna. He studied harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory with Anton Bruckner, among others, before founding the Academic Wagner Society and working as a répétiteur at the Vienna Opera. In 1876, he worked as a copyist and assistant at the first Bayreuth Festival, where he conducted over 70 performances between 1886 and 1906. After working as General Music Director of the Philharmonic Society in Karlsruhe and as a guest conductor in Paris, Brussels, London and New York, he came to Munich in 1904 as Court Kapellmeister. In 1907, he was appointed director of the Munich Court Opera, where he worked until his death. Felix Mottl died as a result of a heart attack suffered on 21 June 1911 during a performance of Tristan in Munich. The corresponding passage in the second act is recorded in the performance material of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and is a reminder of the tragic event at every performance to this day.

Photo credit: By J. Hartmann, Bayreuth – http://www.rgrossmusicautograph.com/60/089-60.jpg, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46867254

Hermann Zumpe was born in Oppach on 9 April 1850 and died in Munich on 4 September 1903. He took composition lessons with Albert Tottmann in Leipzig, and in 1872 he became the conductor of a Leipzig vaudeville theatre. In the same year, he went to Bayreuth, where he assisted Wagner with the completion of his Ring scores and prepared a piano reduction of Götterdämmerung. After positions as Kapellmeister in Salzburg, Würzburg, Magdeburg, Frankfurt and Hamburg, he was appointed Court Kapellmeister in Stuttgart in 1891. From 1895, he conducted the Kaim Orchestra, which later became the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, before moving to Schwerin as Court Kapellmeister in 1897. In 1901 he moved to the new Prinzregententheater in Munich in the same position and in 1902 he was appointed General Music Director.

Photo credit: From unknown - edocs.ub.uni-frankfurt.de, PD-alt-100, https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5002963

Bernhard Stavenhagen was born in Greiz on 24 November 1862 and died in Geneva on 25 December 1914. After the family moved to Berlin, he became a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music before studying piano, music theory and composition from 1878. His C major piano concerto won him the Mendelssohn Grand Prize for the Performing Arts. From 1885, he was a pupil of Franz Liszt in Weimar, whom he accompanied on his travels and whose funeral oration he delivered. In 1890, he was appointed Grand Duke of Saxony’s court pianist in Weimar, where he worked as court conductor from 1894. After Richard Strauss gave up his position in Munich to move to Berlin, Stavenhagen took over as Court Kapellmeister in 1898. He was engaged here until 1902, when he once again devoted himself increasingly to soloist and chamber music activities.

Photo credit: https://www.tripota.uni-trier.de/portraits/385/2/385_0966_p_900.jpg

Hugo Röhr was born in Dresden on 13 February 1866 and died in Munich on 7 June 1937. He studied in Dresden with Franz Wüllner, the conductor of the world premieres of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, who was engaged as First Court Kapellmeister in Munich from 1871. From 1886 he worked as a solo repetiteur at the Court Opera in Dresden, then as a conductor at the Augsburg City Theatre, the Kassel Court Theatre and the German State Theatre in Prague and Breslau. From 1892 to 1896 he held the post of First Kapellmeister at the Mannheim National Theatre before being appointed to the Munich Court Theatre in 1896. His secular oratorio Ekkehard was premiered at the Musikalische Akademie, followed by his opera Das Vaterunser in 1904 at the Munich Court Theatre. He held his post until 1918.

Photo credit: Musikalische Akademie Mannheim

Max Carl Christian Erdmannsdörfer was born in Nuremberg on 14 June 1848. He studied music theory, piano and violin at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1863 and 1867 before training as a conductor in Dresden in 1868/1869. In 1871, he became court conductor to the Prince of Schwarzburg in Sondershausen, and between 1881 and 1889 he conducted the concerts of the Russian Music Society in Moscow, where he also taught at the conservatory. From 1889, he conducted the philharmonic concerts and the Singakademie in Bremen before moving to Munich in 1895. One year later, he was appointed Bavarian court conductor. He also conducted the Academy Concerts and taught at the Academy of Music until 1898. Erdmannsdörfer died in Munich on 14 February 1905.

Photo credit: Wilhelm Höffert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From 1894, the 30-year-old Richard Strauss conducted the Munich Court Orchestra for two years, first as Royal Kapellmeister and then as Court Kapellmeister. Alongside Wagner, Mozart’s operas were a particular focus of his work in Munich. His symphonic poems Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra and Don Quixote were also composed during this time, although they were premiered in Cologne and Frankfurt rather than Munich.

Photo credit: Portrait photograph of Richard Strauss (cabinet format). Atelier Hertel; Weimar (Friedrich Hertel † 1918), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Franz Fischer was born on 29 July 1849 in Munich, where he also died on 8 June 1918. He took part as cellist in the Munich premiere of Wagner’s Rheingold, but also played his instrument as principal cellist at the Pest National Theatre and in the first festival orchestra at the Bayreuth Festival. As Hofkapellmeister at the Mannheim National Theatre, he conducted Wagner’s Tannhäuser before being appointed to the same position in Munich under General Music Director Hermann Levi. He conducted the posthumous Munich premiere of Wagner’s Die Feen in 1888 and several concerts as part of the Musikalische Akademie. He worked in Munich between 1880 and 1913.

Photo credit: Franz Fischer, photographed around 1880 by Egon Hanfstaengl Source: Portrait collection of the Munich City Museum

Meyer was born in Altenburg on 2 March 1818 and died in Munich on 30 May 1893. After working in Trier and Stettin, Meyer became court conductor in Munich in 1869, where he worked until 1882. The young Richard Strauss studied with Meyer from 1875 and later dedicated his Serenade in E flat major op. 7 to him, which was the 17-year-old composer’s first work to be premiered outside of Munich in 1882.

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.

Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger was born in Valduz (Liechtenstein) on 17 March 1839 and studied at the Hauser Conservatory in Munich, where the twelve-year-old was then considered the youngest and most talented student at the institute. In 1859 he was employed as a piano teacher at the Munich Conservatory and as organist at the church of St. Michael. Rheinberger’s first compositions were published by Peters from this time onwards. From 1864 he was solo répétiteur at the Munich Court Opera, where he took part in the world premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, among other works. In 1876 he was appointed professor of composition and organ playing at the newly founded Royal School of Music. Just one year later he took up the post of court conductor in Munich, succeeding Franz Wüllner, which he gave up in 1894 in order to devote himself fully to his compositions. Rheinberger died in Munich on 25 November 1901. He left behind numerous works, including masses, songs, symphonic instrumental music and operas. His Wallenstein Symphony, the opera The Seven Ravens, his Requiem in B flat minor and his Florentine Symphony op. 87 were particularly successful during his lifetime.

Photo credit: By Atelier Müller-Hilsdorf, Munich – own (Münchner Stadtmuseum), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99154084

Hermann Levi was born in Giessen on 7 November 1839 and quickly made a name for himself as a musical prodigy. After early studies in Mannheim and Leipzig, he held posts as music director and Kapellmeister in Saarbrücken, Mannheim and Rotterdam from 1859 onwards. From 1864 to 1872 he worked as Hofkapellmeister in Karlsruhe, where Wagner became aware of him during his Meistersinger conductions. In 1872 Levi finally came to Munich as court conductor. He worked as assistant in Bayreuth, among other places, where he conducted the first performance of Parsifalin 1882. In Munich, he championed works by Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, but also Hector Berlioz and Engelbert Humperdinck. He also had a decisive influence on the so-called Mozart Renaissance with his translations that were used until the 1930s. Two years after being appointed General Music Director, Levi retired in 1896 due to illness. He died in Munich on 13 May 1900. Because of his importance for music and especially his pioneering work at the National Theatre in Munich, the Orchestra Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, founded in 2002, has borne his name since 2021: Hermann Levi Academy.

Photo credit: Andrea1903 (scan); photographer unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Franz Wüllner was born in Münster on 28 January 1832 and already toured with Beethoven’s late piano sonatas between 1850 and 1854. In 1854 he moved to Munich, where he worked as a piano teacher from 1856. After positions as municipal music director in Aachen and as director at the Lower Rhine Music Festival, he was appointed court conductor of the Royal Vocal Orchestra in Munich in 1864. Wüllner conducted the premieres of Wagner’s Rheingold and Walküre in Munich and was finally appointed 1st Court Kapellmeister in 1871. He worked in this position until 1877, when he took over the direction of the conservatoire in Dresden as well as the Court Kapellmeister’s office there. In 1884 he went to Cologne as municipal Kapellmeister and conductor of the Conservatory. He died in Braunfels on 7 September 1902.

Photo credit: Dresden, Saxon State Library – Dresden State and University Library (SLUB), shelfmark/inventory no.: MB.gr.2.2

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.

Hans Richter was born in Raab (in present-day Hungary) on 4 April 1843; his father was a cathedral conductor and his mother an opera singer. After his father’s death, he received his further education in Vienna, first as a choirboy, then at the conservatory. From 1862 to 1866 he was horn player with the orchestra of the Kärntnertortheater, before coming to Tribschen in October 1866 to join Richard Wagner, where he copied the score of his opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. As musical assistant, he took part in the rehearsals for the Munich premiere of the same opera and was eventually appointed royal music director here. As early as the following year, however, i. e. 1869, he gave up this post again because he refused to premiere Das Rheingold against the composer’s wishes. Instead, Franz Wüllner was to conduct the first performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in Munich, which King Ludwig II had longed for. From June 1870 Richter worked as Wagner’s secretary in Tribschen, where he also copied the score of Siegfried. From 1871 he was Kapellmeister at the National Theatre in Pest, and from 1875 he worked at the Vienna Court Opera, conducting, among other things, the concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic between 1875 and 1898. He was the conductor of the first complete Ring performances in 1876 in Bayreuth, where he conducted a total of 77 performances, and conducted the German opera performances at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden between 1903 and 1910. Richter died in Bayreuth on 5 December 1916.

Photo credit: By Herbert Rose Barraud, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29443729

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

Hans von Bülow was born on 8 January 1830 in Dresden, where he received his first lessons in music theory and where the premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera Rienzi left a lasting impression on the then twelve-year-old. He studied law in Leipzig and Berlin before the premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin in Weimar on 28 August 1850 finally persuaded von Bülow to devote himself entirely to music. Hans von Bülow completed his pianistic training with the conductor of the Lohengrin premiere and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt, while Wagner himself supported von Bülow in his musical plans and arranged his first engagements as a conductor. Liszt’s daughter Cosima finally married Hans von Bülow in 1957, after he had already completed his first concert tours and taken up a permanent position as a piano teacher at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. In 1864, von Bülow was appointed to Munich by King Ludwig II at Wagner’s suggestion: initially as royal prelude player, then as head of the Munich Music School to implement Wagner’s reforms there, and finally as Court Kapellmeister from 1867. Despite his wife Cosima’s relationship with Richard Wagner, von Bülow remained loyal to the composer and conducted the premieres of his operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Munich. Cosima eventually moved to Switzerland to live with Wagner, whom she married in 1870. After this finality of separation, Hans von Bülow devoted himself to his career as a pianist, giving concerts in London, Russia and the USA. In 1877 he became first court conductor in Hanover, in 1880 court music director in Meiningen, and from 1885 he conducted, among other things, the Hamburg subscription concerts and events of the Berlin Philharmonic. Plagued by severe headaches and no longer able to undertake the extensive travels of his touring life, Hans von Bülow sought relief from the Egyptian climate in Cairo, where he died on 12 February 1894. Hans von Bülow not only composed songs, symphonic poems and piano music, but in addition to his activities as a conductor and piano virtuoso, he also appeared as an educator and music writer.

Photo credit: By author unknown – Carte de Visite Woodburytype – Print (Repro by/of Günter Josef Radig), Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6783959

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

Johann Caspar Aiblinger was born in Wasserburg am Inn on February 23, 1779, and received his education at the Benedictine Abbey at Tegernsee and at the Jesuit Gymnasium in Munich. At Landshut University he studied philosophy and theology before going to Italy, where he worked as a composer and music teacher in Vicenza and Venice. In 1819 he became Kapellmeister of La Scala in Milan and in the same year moved to Munich as director of the Italian Opera, after whose dissolution in 1825 Aiblinger was given the post of Vice-Kapellmeister. From 1826 to 1864 he was finally engaged in Munich as Hofkapellmeister. He composed sacred music, numerous works for choir, but also operas and ballets. Aiblinger died in Munich on May 6, 1867.

Bildnachweis: Johann Kaspar Aiblinger, Photolithographie um 1850, Museum Wasserburg a. Inn, Inv. Nr. 2259a

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

Franz Lachner was born in Rain am Lech on April 2, 1803, and after other stations in Munich, Vienna and Mannheim, he conducted opera performances, the concert series of the Musical Academy and church music as Court Kapellmeister from 1836 to 1868. Lachner’s appointment as Court Kapellmeister marked the beginning of the venerable series of Bavarian General Music Directors. Now it was no longer the concertmaster who was in charge, but a conductor with a baton leading an ever-growing ensemble. The orchestra included excellent virtuosos such as the clarinetist Heinrich Baermann, the horn player Franz Strauss and members of the Moralt family, who thrilled all of Europe on their travels as a string quartet. New instruments entered the orchestra, valves expanded the range of horns and trumpets, and the Munich solo flutist Theobald Böhm developed a new key system for woodwind instruments that is still in use today.

Photo credit: Franz Lachner. Lithograph by Andreas Staub. Public domain photograph, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4372774

On May 22 and 23, Vladimir Jurowski conducted the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the 6th Academy Concert, featuring music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler. Gerhard Oppitz was the soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, and Louise Alder took the vocal part in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

On May 15, the new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida premiered. Daniele Rustioni conducted the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, and Damiano Michieletto directed. Elena Stikhina was featured in the title role.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

On May 7, the production Il ritorno / Das Jahr des magischen Denkens premiered as part of the Ja, Mai festival. Christopher Moulds conducted the opera by Claudio Monteverdi, which was combined with a play by Joan Didion. The production was directed by Christopher Rüping.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

On April 17 and 18, Robert Jindra conducted the Bayerisches Staatsorchester at the 5th Academy Concert. During the Mozart program, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller also took the stage for the concert aria “Bella mia fiamma” – “Resta, o cara”.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

The Bayerisches Staatsorchester, together with its General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski, was a guest at the Isarphilharmonie on March 25. Renaud Capuçon joined the orchestra on stage for Alban Berg’s violin concerto Dem Andenken eines Engels, before Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 was heard.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Joseph Hartmann Stuntz was born in Arlesheim near Basel on July 23, 1793, and after receiving his first music lessons from his father, he composed a Te Deum for the Strasbourg Cathedral at the age of 14. He joined the Munich court orchestra in 1808 and studied with Peter von Winter, later also in Vienna with his teacher Antonio Salieri. From 1816 to 1818 Stuntz was Kapellmeister of the Italian Opera in Munich, and in the following years he composed several operas for the theaters in Venice, Milan and Turin. At the Teatro alla Scala, his opera La rappressaglia was so successful that he was awarded the title “maestro di cartello.” In 1823 Stuntz became Vice-Kapellmeister of the Munich Hofkapelle and in 1825 first Hofkapellmeister, succeeding Peter von Winter. As the “national composer and festive conductor” of Bavaria, Stuntz’s music was played at major inauguration ceremonies – for example, the opening of the Valhalla or the laying of the foundation stone of the Befreiungshalle and the unveiling of the Bavaria. He is also considered the founder of male choral singing in Munich. He died in Munich in 1859.

Photo credit: Etching by Joseph Hartmann Stuntz circa 1830. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Ausstellungskataloge, 38.

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

On April 29th Stefan Ambrosius, Steffen Schmid and Simon Unseld played at the event “Tube-Trio: A tuba rarely comes alone” at KulturBunt Neuperlach as part of the event series “Celebrate!”

Peter von Winter was born in Mannheim on August 28, 1754, and began his career as a violinist in the court orchestra there, where he also played double bass in the meantime. During his participation in the orchestra, he became intensively acquainted with Italian and German opera before composing his own operas. In 1778 he moved to Munich when a large part of the Mannheim orchestra was called there. During a stay in Vienna, he studied for several months with Antonio Salieri, and in 1787 he was appointed vice kapellmeister of the Munich court orchestra, then kapellmeister in 1798, when he directed mainly church music and Italian opera. His own operas were celebrated at that time in Naples, Venice and Vienna, later also in London. Together with Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of The Magic Flute, Winter created a sequel to Mozart’s popular opera entitled The Labyrinth or The Struggle with the Elements. Mozart himself, however, referred to Winter as his “greatest enemy” in a letter to his father in 1781. Along with Carl Maria von Weber, Peter von Winter’s Singspiele were significant pioneering works in the field of German opera before Richard Wagner. In addition, in 1811 Winter, together with members of the Munich Hofkapelle, was involved in the founding of the Musikalische Akademie: the Munich Concert Association, which still exists today. Winter worked in Munich until his death in 1825.

Image credit: Johann Nepomuk Haller, The Composer and Kapellmeister Peter von Winter (1754-1825), 1825, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen - Neue Pinakothek Munich, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/de/artwork/ZKGPvAyxgA

After the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on April 1 at the National Theatre, the fifth event of the series “Encounters” took place. The audience met musicians of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the Rheingoldbar.

On March 12, the 4th chamber concert of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester took place in the Allerheiligen Hofkirche. Markus Wolf, So-Young Kim, Adrian Mustea, Emanuel Graf, Carlos Vera Larrucea and Julian Riem played music by Richard Strauss, Karl Amadeus Hartmann as well as Hans Pfitzner. The photos show impressions from the rehearsals.

The violinist, Kapellmeister and composer Paul Grua was born in Mannheim on February 1, 1753 and received his musical training from his father Carlo Pietragrua, who as Kapellmeister at the Electoral Palatinate Court under the Electors Carl Philipp and Carl Theodor had been responsible for all areas of court music. Paul Pietragrua worked in the Mannheim court orchestra before being sent to study in Bologna and Parma in 1777. After the Mannheim court moved to Munich, Paul Pietragrua was appointed vice kapellmeister in 1779 before serving as Kapellmeister of vocal music at the Munich court from 1784. In 1780 Paul Pietragrua’s carnival opera Telemaco was premiered at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, after which the composer concentrated on church music. He held his post of Kapellmeister in Munich until his death in 1833, a total of nearly half a century.

Photo credit: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00054636?page=6,7 Location: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Slg.Her 1725

Andrea Bernasconi was probably born in 1706 in Marseille and composed several operas before coming to Munich. He also worked in Venice at the Ospedale della Pietà as “maestro di capella”. In 1753 he was appointed vice kapellmeister at the Munich court by the Elector Maximilian III Joseph in Munich, to whom he also gave music lessons. After the death of the Hofkapellmeister Giovanni Porta, Bernasconi took over his position in 1755. Bernasconi’s operas were performed in numerous European cities, but most of them in Munich: for example, La clemenza di Tito in 1768, before Mozart was to compose an opera of the same name, or Agelmondo in 1760 and Demetrio in 1772. Bernasconi remained in office until his death in Munich in 1784.

Image credit: From Pietro Metastasio, Andrea Bernasconi – Demetrio. Location: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Bavar. 4015-4,1/4 http://www.mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10381988-6,

Giovanni Porta was born around 1675 in Venice, where he was a pupil of Francesco Gasparini, before working at the court of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome between 1706 and 1710. Other places of activity were in Vicenza and Verona and at the Conservatorio della Pietà under Antonio Vivaldi. From 1716 he devoted himself mainly to the composition of operas and sacred works. From 1726 to 1737 he was “maestro di coro” at the Ospedale della Pietà as a colleague of Vivaldi. In 1737, after the death of Pietro Torri, he took over his position as Kapellmeister at the Munich court. Porta died in Munich in 1755.

Image credit: By Heinrich Eduard Winter - This image is from the Gallica Digital Library and is available under ID btv1b8423665z, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13401583

Photo creddit: Ars Produktion https://www.ars-produktion.de/Pietro_Torrica1650_1737_La_Baviera/topic/SACDs/shop_art_id/132/tpl/shop_article_detail

The singer, composer and organist Pietro Torri was born around 1650 in Peschiera del Garda. He was organist and Kapellmeister at the court of the Margrave of Bayreuth, before serving as organist at the court of Elector Max Emanuel in Munich from 1689. When the latter was appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Torri followed the Elector to Brussels in 1692, where he took up the post of “maître de chapelle” in the Brussels court orchestra and conducted the opera performances. After a change of power, Max Emanuel returned to Munich in 1701, where Torri served for the time being as chamber music director, since the office of court conductor was still held by Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei. During the War of the Spanish Succession, the Elector resided again in Brussels from 1704 to 1714, where Torri also followed him. Back in Munich, Torri held the title of court conductor in 1715 until he was finally appointed court conductor in 1732 after Bernabei’s death. Torri died in Munich in 1737. He left behind masses and other liturgical forms, oratorios, cantatas, and numerous operas, most of which were premiered in Munich.

There exists a CD recording of selected works by Torri by Christoph Hammer and the Neue Hofkapelle Munich: https://www.amazon.de/Baviera-Neue-Hofkapelle-München/dp/B00011MK38

Photo creddit: Ars Produktion https://www.ars-produktion.de/Pietro_Torrica1650_1737_La_Baviera/topic/SACDs/shop_art_id/132/tpl/shop_article_detail

After the performance of Die Teufel von Loudun on March 11 at the National Theatre, the fourth event of the series “Encounters” took place. The audience met musicians of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the Rheingoldbar.

After the performance of Manon Lescaut on February 25 at the National Theatre, the third event of the series “Encounters” took place. The audience met musicians of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the Rheingoldbar.

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

After the performance of Dido and Aeneas … Erwartung on February 4 at the National Theatre, the second event of the series “Encounters” took place. The audience met musicians of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the Rheingoldbar.

On March 20, the young talents of the Hermann Levi Academy presented themselves at a concert in the Alte Pinakothek.

The son of Ercole Bernabeis was born in Rome in 1649 and received his musical training from his father, who he succeeded as kapellmeister at San Luigi dei Francesi in 1672. He was ordained a priest before moving to Munich, where he was appointed vice kapellmeister in 1677 and, after his father’s death in 1687, his position as Munich hofkapellmeister. Giuseppe Antonio stopped composing operas for Munich as early as 1690 and was able to concentrate entirely on court church music when court music director Pietro Torri took over the composition of operas and chamber music. In 1704 the court orchestra was temporarily dissolved when Bavaria was occupied by Austria, and in 1708 Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei was dismissed. In 1715 the Elector returned to Munich, and Bernabei was able to devote himself again to conducting church music as hofkapellmeister in Munich until his death in 1732.

Photo credit: Unknown painter 1700 – Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei. Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna, Italy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GA_BERNABEI.jpg

Kerll was born in 1627 in Adorf (today in the Vogtland district of Saxony) as the son of an organ builder, where he took up his first position as organist at St. Michael’s Church. He probably converted to Roman Catholicism in Vienna in the 1640s and went to Rome around 1648/49 to study with the composer Giacomo Carissimi. After the appointment of his brother Leopold Wilhelm as governor of the Netherlands by Emperor Ferdinand III. Johann Caspar became court organist in the Brussels residence. In 1655 the Brussels court was dissolved, and Kerll was appointed to the Munich court opera, where he was initially provisional vice-kapellmeister, then vice-kapellmeister and after the death of Giovanni Giacomo Porro finally in 1656 hofkapellmeister. Kerll took over the musical direction of the services, the chamber and table music as well as the court opera. Several of his operas were premiered in Munich. He resigned his post in 1673, probably as a result of intrigues by Italian musicians. In 1674 Kerll went to Vienna with his family, where he received a pension granted by the emperor and from 1677 worked as the court’s first organist. Nevertheless, he repeatedly visited Munich, for example in 1688 when the Munich engraver Carl Gustav Amling made the only known portrait of the composer. In 1692 Kerll gave up his post in Vienna to go to Munich, where he died on February 13, 1693 and was buried in the crypt of the Augustinian monastery on Kaufingerstrasse. During his lifetime, Kerll was considered the best-known German composer of operas and church music, and his works were performed internationally. He was equally famous as an organ improviser.

Photo credit: Engraving, Carl Gustav Amling, around 1680, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Inventar-Nr. 122532 D

Ercole Bernabei was born in 1622 in Caprarola, 57 kilometers northwest of Rome. In Rome he was from 1653 organist at San Luigi dei Francesi, from 1665 for two years conductor at the Lateran Basilica and from 1667 head of the chapel San Luigi dei Francesi. In 1672 he took up the position of Kapellmeister at St. Peter’s Church, which he gave up when he was called to Munich by the Bavarian Elector Ferdinand Maria. He was hofkapellmeister here from 1774 until his death in 1687. His works include numerous motets, cantatas and madrigals as well as several lost stage works that he wrote for Munich, possibly in the opera seria genre. In Munich, Bernabei was also commissioned by Elector Max Emanuel to train students from Bavarian monasteries and monasteries in composition.

Photo credit: By Heinrich Eduard Winter – This image comes from the Gallica Digital Library and is available under the ID btv1b8415785d, in the public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46619527

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)

The second Theme Concert concert took place on March 30, with members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and the mezzo-soprano Salome Kammer under the musical direction of Armando Merino playing music by Toshio Hosokawa and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. multi. Marie-Claire Foblets gave a lecture on: Is diversity a threat to our democracy?

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Giovanni Giacomo Porro was born in Lugano around 1590 and worked, among other things, as organist for the Duke of Savoy Carlo Emanuele, as Kapellmeister at the Roman San Lorenzo in Damaso and as a substitute for the organ virtuoso Girolamo Frescobaldi at the Cappella Giulia. In 1635 he was appointed Kapellmeister to the court of Maximilian I in Munich. From there he made several trips to Italy to recruit Italian musicians for the Munich court orchestra. Porro used to be in regular contact with Galileo Galilei, by whom he set poems to music. Although no opera performance has survived under Porro’s direction, there are indications of him as a potential co-founder of the music-theatrical tradition in Munich. He worked here until his death in 1656. Almost all of his compositions, which were mostly of a sacred nature but also included madrigals and ballets, have been lost, according to a posthumous list of more than 1100 compositions.

Photo credit: By Domenico Tintoretto – http://collections.rmg.co.uk, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=230541

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

On March 26, the first Theme Concert took place in the Freiraum in Munich Hoch5, with members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester playing music by Toshio Hosokawa and Olivier Messiaen and Dr. Lisa Suckert gave a lecture on the topic: The future doesn’t wait? Temporality in capitalism.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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 composer Giovanni Battista Crivelli was born in Scandiano (province of Reggio Emilia) at the end of the 16th century and probably studied in the cathedral of Reggio Emilia, where he worked as organist from 1614. From 1620 he was Kapellmeister at the Chiesa dello Spirito Santo in Ferrara, and from 1629 he finally worked in Munich at the court of Maximilian I, where he conducted the Court Orchestra. From 1635 he worked in Reggio Emilia, where he was appointed conductor at the Basilica della Ghiara, and at Milan Cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. Crivelli held his last post as Kapellmeister of the court orchestra of the Duke of Modena, where he died in 1652. His compositions mainly include motets and madrigals.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Classe 3l, CC BY-SA 4.0,  commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duomo_Di_Reggio_Emilia,_Facciata.jpg

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

Although Orlando di Lasso was the most famous offspring of his family, he was not the only composer and musician closely connected with the history of the Munich court orchestra. Because after his son Ferdinand I di Lasso, his son Ferdinand II di Lasso was also court music director in Munich: probably between 1616 and 1629 Ferdinand II conducted the orchestra of Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria. A letter dated July 24, 1613 shows how intensively Maximilian I himself dealt with cultural policy. It shows that the Duke had sent Ferdinand II to Rome so that he could study there. Maximilian I was closely informed about the progress of Orlando di Lasso’s grandson, and so he wrote to Rome:

“From your letter of the 6th I have learned what progress Ferdinando Lasso is making in music there, and that he is now able to return and render services as soon as he will have stayed in Rome for three more months to write allegro compositions in a modern style, having hitherto engaged in serious ones. I can therefore tell you that I am content to leave him there for the three months mentioned, so that he can try to perfect himself as much as possible, not only in composing, but also in practicing and putting together concerts for two, three or more choirs. Then let him come back here.”

Photo credit: Wenceslaus Hollar: Maximilian I. als Herrscher. University of Toronto Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_I._(Bayern)#/media/Datei:Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Compton_or_Carleton._Philosophia_universa_(State_4).jpg

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

On March 5th, Sergei Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace premiered at the National Theatre in a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov. The general music director Vladimir Jurowski conducted the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, the Bayerische Staatsoper Chorus and the additional choir of the Bayerische Staatsoper. The opera also requires a huge ensemble of singers to embody the numerous roles.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

The son of Orlando di Lasso was born in Munich around 1562 and trained by his father in the court orchestra. In 1585 he was employed as Kapellmeister at the court in Hechingen, and in 1587 a collection of motets by Ferdinand I di Lasso was published, which was dedicated to his employer Eitel Friedrich IV von Hohenzollern-Hechingen. In 1589 he returned to Munich and worked as a tenor singer there and in Landshut before he succeeded Johannes de Fossa as Kapellmeister to Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria in 1602. In 1622 he initiated the publication of the collection Apparatus musicus with eight-part works by his father. In 1609 Ferdinand I di Lasso died in Munich. The Cantiones Quinque Vocum in the cover picture is an edition published in 1597 of previously unpublished motets by his father and Ferdinand I.

Photo credit: Lasso, Orlando di: Cantiones quinque vocum. Ab Orlando di Lasso et huius filio Ferdinando di Lasso. Compositae Typis iam primo subiectae et in lucem editae. Location: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 4 Mus.pr. 164. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00072000?page=2,3

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 .

Johannes de Fossa’s date and place of birth are unknown. Up until his entry into the Munich court orchestra in 1569, de Fossa’s biography is documented incompletely. He probably comes from a Dutch family of musicians, in which his name appeared several times. In a copy he made himself, de Fossa referred to the composer Johannes Castileti – also known as Jean Guyot – as his teacher. De Fossa was probably Castileti’s pupil in the 1540s and 1550s in Liège. In 1569, de Fossa was finally appointed Vice Kapellmeister of the Munich court orchestra and held this office until Orlando di Lasso’s death in 1594. After di Lasso’s death, di Fossa took over his position as Munich court music director, although the official appointment did not take place until 1597. His merits were honored by de Fossa’s elevation to the imperial nobility. He died in Munich at Pentecost 1603, having had to resign from office a year earlier due to health problems.

Photo credit: Fossa, Johannes de: 7 Sacred songs – BSB Mus.ms. 2757. Location: Munich, Bavarian State Library Mus.ms. 2757. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00079000?page=6

Great rejoicing after the 4th Academy Concert for the Bayerische Staatsorchester, its former general music director Zubin Mehta, the violinist Vilde Frang and the composer Minas Borboudakis.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

On January 8th, the anniversary year of the Bayerische Staatsorchester got off to a brilliant start with a concert in the Nationaltheater. General music director Vladimir Jurowski conducted. The invited guests included Ilse Aigner, President of the State Parliament, and Markus Blume, Bavarian Minister of State for Science and Art, who both gave speeches.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Here the former General Music Director Zubin Mehta rehearses together with the violinist Vilde Frang and the Bayerische Staatsorchester for the 4th Academy Concert. The composer of the specially commissioned world premiere, Minas Borboudakis, was also present.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

On January 29th, the Munich audience celebrated the new production Dido and Aeneas … Expectation and its protagonists: the conductor Andrew Manze, the production team around the director Krzysztof Warlikowski and the singer ensemble (Ausrine Stundyte, Günter Papendell, Victoria Randem, Rinat Shaham, Key’mon W. Murrah, Elmira Karakhanova).

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Ludwig Daser was born in Munich around 1526 and joined the Munich court orchestra as a young man, where he probably received his musical training under Wolfgang Fynnckl and Andree Zauner, perhaps also under Ludwig Senfl. Like Andree Zauner, Daser studied at the University of Ingolstadt and from 1552 was active as court conductor of the Munich court orchestra. In 1563 Daser finally resigned from his position in Munich, and in 1572 he became Kapellmeister at the Württemberg ducal court in Stuttgart, where he worked until his death in 1589. Daser was a prolific composer of masses, motets and sacred songs, much admired by his contemporaries. Recently he has again become the focus of musicology, and so the publication of the extensive book Ludwig Daser (1526–1589) – Grenzgänger Zwischen den Traditionen by Daniel Glowotz is in preparation.

Photo credit: Daser, Ludwig: 9 Masses – BSB Mus.ms. 18. Location:
München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Mus.ms. 18. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00079115?page=6,7

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.

Andree Zauner was the successor of Wolfgang Fynnckl and conducted the court orchestra from 1550 to 1552. Zauner originally came from Landshut and was enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt from 1525, where he mainly studied the writings of Johannes de Muris, who as a late medieval intellectual with music theory busy and decisively promoted music notation. Accordingly, Zauner used the academic title “Maister” (magister), which is rare for a musician. He remained with the court orchestra as a singer after resigning and even received a grace payment until his death in 1577.

Photo credit: Coat of arms of the University of Ingolstadt 1580. Illustration from: Schrot, Martin: Wappenbuch Des Heiligen Römischen Reichs, und allgemainer Christenheit in Europa, München, 1580 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/2 Herald. 46).

On January 20, 2023, OPERcussion performed in the Muffathalle and presented their new CD “Original Grooves”.

Photo credit: Dominik Gigler

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

Little is known about Ludwig Senfl’s successor: only Wolfgang Fynnckl’s name and office are known. After Senfl stopped his work at the Munich court orchestra in 1543 and before 1551, Fynnckl must have continued the work of his predecessor and thus the Munich court music. During Fynnckl’s tenure, two new instrumentalists were hired: Sebastian Hurlacher (-> tile on this website “appointment lapel of trombonist Sebastian Hurlacher”) and Bastian Behaim.

Photo credit: Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten der christlichen Zeitrechnung bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Bd. 4. Quelle: gallica.bnf.fr. Provenienz: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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

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

Photo creddit: Wilfried Hösl

Sa 08.04.2023
Mikhail Agrest