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.

The picture book by Rolf Fänger and Ulrike Möltgen tells of friendship, owning, sharing and letting go. The music spans from well-known repertoire of opera history to works by the contemporary composer Richard Whilds. At the same time, the world of opera is opened up to the youngest audience members through a touching story. The dramaturge of the Bavarian State Opera, Malte Krasting, created the concept based on the children’s book Der kleine Mondbär (“The Little Moon Bear”) together with Catherine Leiter, who has been responsible for the Kind & Co section since the 2021/22 season. On April 28, Der Mondbär was now released as a radio play with music for children.

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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)

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

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

For Anja Fabricius, the best thing about her job is the fact that she is allowed to create, and a special concert moment for her was the last Academy concert with Zubin Mehta. Everything about it was urgent. Anja Fabricius’ book recommendation is The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz. Her childhood heroine is also from a book: Momo.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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.

Benedikt Don Strohmeier prefers to go on vacation where there is water, wind and, ideally, waves to be able to kitesurf well. He knew very early on that he wanted to be a musician, but at some point he had to decide whether it should be the cello or the piano. At that time he also made street music, for example on the final day of the 2002 World Cup. He sat down with his sister and friends in the old town in Regensburg and played the second movement of Haydn’s Kaiserquartett on a continuous loop. After about an hour and a half they had enough money to have a nice afternoon and evening.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

Lead violinist So-Young Kim introduces herself and talks about the 2017 Asia Tour.

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Cellist Rupert Buchner introduces himself and talks about the 2017 Asia Tour.

Watch full video here.

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

Watch full video here. 

Percussionist Thomas März introduces himself and talks about the 2017 Asia Tour.

Watch full video here.

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

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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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

The boundary between dream and reality increasingly dissolves as Paul, mourning his dead wife Marie, meets the dancer Marietta. With her looks so similar to Marie’s, Marietta becomes the object of the projection of Paul’s erotic desires. His grief has the traits of a ritual: The carefully composed strands of his dead wife’s hair are guarded like a relic. Following a nerve-racking “vision” with cathartic effect, Paul is finally reeled back to reality. He can leave the Belgian city of Bruges as the place of his death cult. The original title of the piece, “Triumph des Lebens” (Triumph of Life), is symbolic of the main character’s personal development.

Just a few weeks before the immensely successful world premiere of Die tote Stadt, none other than Giacomo Puccini himself described Erich Wolfgang Korngold, only 23 at the time, as the “greatest hope of new German music”. Because of their melodic urgency, arias such as “Glück, das mir verblieb” (Marietta’s Lute Song) and “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” (Pierrot’s Song) have found a home among the concert repertoires of numerous opera singers and radiate far beyond the fame of Die tote Stadt.

The premiere of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt at the Bavarian State Opera in autumn 2019 was praised by press and audience alike. Experience the Bayerisches Staatsorchester under Kirill Petrenko as well as Marlis Petersen (Marie / Marietta) and Jonas Kaufmann (Paul) in the main roles of this intensive and stirring production by Simon Stone on DVD or Blu-ray. Winner of the Gramophone Music Awards in the categories Opera and Recordings of the Year:

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Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

Since May 2021, the Bayerische Staatsoper has been documenting its excellence, versatility and tradition with a new in-house label: Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings.

Discover selected opera productions and concert recordings as well as important archive recordings on CD or DVD/BD under the new label of the Bavarian State Opera: BSOrec. Productions from the children’s and youth program KIND & CO as well as chamber music editions, which are intended to provide a platform for first-class ensembles of the Bavarian State Orchestra, complete the label’s range.

Shortly after it was founded, the label was also able to look forward to special awards, for example at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2022: Kirill Petrenko and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester won the award in the category orchestral recordings with their recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queenwas honored in the Contemporary category, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt received two awards: the Opera category and the coveted award “Recording of the Year”. Most recently, our in-house label won the “Video: Opera” category at the 2023 International Classical Music Awards with the release The Snow Queen, directed by Kirill Petrenko.

More about the label and previous releases:https://www.staatsoper.de/recordings

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

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

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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

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

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

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 .

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

Photo credits: Wilfried Hösl

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

Photo credit: © EVISCO

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.

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Photo credit: © EVISCO

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

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

In addition to Munich, Christian Loferer feels very comfortable in Sydney and San Francisco. He has busked in Edinburgh before, and if he could make any activity an Olympic event, time telling would give him the best chance of winning a medal.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

For Barbara Burgdorf, the best thing about her job is the beauty it offers for the soul, for herself and for others. If she hadn’t become a musician, she would probably have been a biologist.

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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.

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

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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

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

Sa 08.04.2023
Mikhail Agrest

500 – what a number! Five hundred years ago, the history of the ensemble began, which today, as the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, is one of the most respected opera and concert orchestras in the world and can be justifiably proud of this unique history. The orchestra’s early days are associated with names such as Ludwig Senfl and Orlando di Lasso as artistic directors, and there has never been a lack of important personalities since then. Collaborations with the greatest composers of their time – such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss – as well as with the great conductors of the past and present (the list of names is too long to mention here) have decisively shaped the orchestra and made it one of the best in the world. Not only the result but also the reason for this quality is the diversity of its activities: in opera, in ballet, in symphonic repertoire, in the cosmos of chamber music, in its commitment to musical education and outreach. This last point is represented in particular by the commitment of the Hermann-Levi-Akademie, the talent factory for the future not only of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester but of orchestral music in general. The founding of the first concert series for the Munich bourgeoisie in 1811, the Musikalische Akademie, which is still alive today, speaks of the orchestra’s deep connection with the city of Munich and its citizens, which has not dried up even after more than two hundred years. In the festival year 2023, we want to further deepen this connection with many proven and new formats. I congratulate the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, which I am honoured to preside over as chief conductor, and look forward to a musically rich 500th anniversary.

Vladimir Jurovsky
General Music Director of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester since 2021

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

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.

21. Dezember 2023 19:00 Uhr

Vladimir Jurowski
 

Armin Nassehi

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

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

31. März 2023 19:00 Uhr

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

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

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

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

Why 1523?

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

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

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

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

What distinguishes the Bayerisches Staatsorchester especially in my opinion? For me, it is the mixture of dark, warm sound, transparent texture, individual timbre and a distinct common identity that has been continuously built up and developed over five centuries, strongly influenced by the great composers and artists associated with this house. This combination of klang and personality, which has been constantly renewed, though the flexibility, technical capacity and energy of each new generation is unique, and in the best sense a counter phenomenon to certain trends emerging from our information age.

In its 500-year history, this great ensemble has shared the priceless gift of humanism with the world, and thus it will continue to be relevant in the future. Thank you, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, and happy birthday!

Kent Nagano
General Music Director 2006–2013

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

The seven years I was privileged to spend with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester as its principal conductor are but a breath in the light of its long history. But for me, these seven years as Bavarian Music Director have been an unspeakably happy time. I hope that together we have been able to leave some traces that will outlast our own work. As the Bayerisches Staatsorchester has undertaken so many new things in the five hundredth year of its existence, this event becomes less a retrospective of a glorious past than an outlook on a far-reaching and radiant future. I wish this wonderful orchestra that with all my heart – and I am very happy that we will meet again in its anniversary year.

Kirill Petrenko
General Music Director 2013–2021
Honorary Conductor of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

29. November 2023 20:00 Uhr

3. Juli 2023 20:00 Uhr

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25. Juni 2023 10:00 Uhr

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17. Juli 2023 20:00 Uhr

OperaBrass

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24. Juli 2023 20:00 Uhr

Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble

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7. Mai 2023 19:30 Uhr Premiere

Christopher Moulds
Christopher Rüping

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26. Juni 2023 19:00 Uhr Premiere

Vladimir Jurowski
Neil Armfield

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29. April 2023 18.00 Uhr

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10. Juni 2023 18:00 Uhr

Ensemble Sentimentale

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13. Mai 2023 18.00 Uhr

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 27. Mai 2023 18.00 Uhr

OperaBrass

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25. Juni 2023 18:00 Uhr

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A brief look back at the rich history of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester reveals an orchestra that is more than the sum of its parts.

Holger Noltze

The slogan “One for all and all for one” may initially remind us of football but it is in fact taken from Alexandre Dumas’ timeless novel The Three Musketeers, which was written before the invention of football as a sport. These words express the individual’s unconditional commitment to the collective and his (or her) willingness to subordinate the particular to the general. This beautiful idea can be applied with arguably even greater justification to music-making as part of an ensemble. In football it is ultimately only the goals that count, so everything depends on the player who scores those goals. Fencing, too, could be said to be first and fore-most a solo discipline. But making music together involves a deeper truth: indivi-dual excellence must be acknowledged as part of a greater whole. Players must be able to listen and, where necessary, step back from the limelight. It is this abili-ty that marks out the true artist within the collective. Indeed, it is this that decides the quality of a body of musicians – not that this precludes either the appeal or the principle of contrapuntal polyphony. This principle has always been a promi-nent feature of the long and glorious history of what is now the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, formerly known as the Munich Hofkapelle and, five hundred years ago, as the Munich Kantorei. The appointment of that brilliant master of polyphony, Ludwig Senfl, as musicus intonator in 1523 marks the beginning of one of the world’s longest orchestral histories. Although Duke Albrecht V may have had a reputation as a man who suffered from melancholia, it was his artistic un-derstanding and farsightedness that inspired him to appoint the cosmopolitan Flemish composer Roland de Lassus – known in Italian as Orlando di Lasso – as tenor secundus at his court in 1556. By 1563 Lasso was the maestro della musica di camera and the Kantorei’s principal composer. As the master of a new vocal and instrumental style of composition, he opened up the prospect of a new sym-phonic approach to music that still lay far in the future. In short, there is a long line linking this period with Wagner’s ideal of the sort of sonorities that are found in his later music dramas. The Munich Hofkapelle has had the honour of premiering not only Mozart’s Idomeneo but also Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – a work that changed the course of musical history – and his Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
But the orchestra was also instrumental in bringing about a shift in attitudes to middle-class culture. The Academy Concerts that were established to promote symphonic music date back to 1811. Over two centuries later, the orchestra is still organizing these concerts. After all, the players are able to perform not only ope-ras. They began with a symphony in D major by an as yet relatively little-known composer by the name of Beethoven. The list of the conductors – some of them among the greatest practitioners of their art – who have headed this special and long-standing artists’ collective, which since 1918 has been known as the Bayeri-sches Staatsorchester, is a lengthy one and extends from Franz Lachner, Hans von Bülow, Hermann Levi and Richard Strauss to Bruno Walter, Hans Knapperts-busch, Georg Solti, Rudolf Kempe, Joseph Keilberth, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Kirill Petrenko and, most recently, Vladimir Jurowski: an almost intimidating roll of honour stretching back over five centuries and starting out with Orlando di Lasso.
A further long-standing aspect of the orchestra’s activities has been its travels in the form of extended tours across Europe and to Asia. Its special interplay of venerable tradition and its desire to embrace the new may be heard in the world’s great centres of music, including Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie and Lucer-ne’s Culture and Congress Centre. For the eighth year in a row and the tenth time in all, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester has recently been named "Orchestra of the Year“ in a poll conducted among fifty international music critics for Opernwelt magazine. It is no surprise, therefore, that the orchestra has sought to document its successful performances on its own label, Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings. Its very first releases were showered with prestigious prizes, including no fewer than four Gramophone Awards. Its work in preserving the past through the medi-um of recordings has met with an entirely positive response.
We should not forget that with music-making, too, the truth is to be found “on the field”. The individuals who make up the team must learn to submit to a single figu-re. At least for as long as the music is still playing.

5. März 2023 17:00 Uhr Premiere

Vladimir Jurowski
Dmitri Tcherniakov

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With Orlando di Lasso, Duke Albrecht V engaged what is probably the most important musician of his time. From 1562/63 he was the court music director, taking over the management of the table and chamber music as well as the musical arrangement of the services. The Duke enjoys close contact with his musicians and spends a lot of money on them. The Bavarian court is looking for the best singers and instrumentalists throughout Europe. At the wedding of the heir to the throne Wilhelm V in 1568, visitors raved about the artistic interplay and varied repertoire of the court orchestra.

Photo credit: Deutsch, Bildnis des Orlando di Lasso, 1580, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/de/artwork/ma4d3KgGrO

With most of the orchestras I conduct these days, I am half the age of these bodies. Fortunately, I can’t say that about the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. So I wish my colleagues and all their predecessors nothing but the best on their 500th birthday! My eight years with this great ensemble have been a highlight of my career, and I can’t tell you how many wonderful memories I have in both symphony and opera: our European tour with the Mahler Three; the Bruckner Eight; the trip to Kashmir and Mumbai; the Don Carlo production with Jürgen Rose; as well as the two Ring productions I was privileged to conduct, will remain forever in my heart.

Great musicians were and are gathered in the Bayerisches Staatsorchester to whom I tip my hat in admiration. I can only end these words of homage this way: Ladies and gentlemen of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, I love and adore each and every one of you all and cannot wait to make music with you again. In deep friendship and admiration

Zubin Mehta
General Music Director 1998–2006
Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra

Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl

31. März 2023 19:30 Uhr Premiere

Sol León und Paul Lightfoot

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The Bayerisches Staatsorchester is remarkable for its fascinatingly varied reper-tory, its multifarious forms of artistic expression and its multiple activities.

Ruth Renée Reif

“Fear! … a deep-seated sense of fear and, time and again, the question as to how the various orchestral departments will survive and what effect it will have on their nerves when the timpani launch an assault on the violas and double basses?” This was Gerd Albrecht’s anxious question when conducting Aribert Reimann’s Lear. But then came the surprising answer: the Bayerisches Staatsorchester accepted this music in a characteristic spirit of professionalism and impassioned commit-ment. It knows how to deal with the problem that arises when the flutes are asked to negotiate keenly strident intervals while accompanying a shimmering pianissi-mo in the violins and violas and a tintinnabulation of jingles, cymbals and a triangle and trumpets add their fanfares not only in the orchestra pit but also in the audi-torium. Always willing to confront the unfamiliar and the new, the orchestra casts its spell on its audiences with its mystical sounds and ecstatic highs, while also captivating them with ist subtle delicacy and lyric enchantment. It revels in Ro-mantic melodies but retains the ability to explore a world of rhythmic brutality and austerity, indulging in beautiful sounds, paying tribute to the spirit of virtuosity and to a universe of noise and inviting audiences to immerse themselves in worlds of sound that allow it to function as a psychological sounding board.
The operatic repertory of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is characterized by its variety. Every evening there is a different work from a different period on its schedule. And the orchestra has the ability to bring every composition to life and to transform music that was written only yesterday – or several centuries ago – into joy, sadness and tragedy. It is with openness and inquisitiveness that it rises to the challenge of exchanging its modern instruments for their Baroque equiva-lent and following the conductor not on his or her podium but seated at a harpsi-chord. Its players study old scores and are happy to try out novel performance techniques. It is with sheer bravura that it returns to a period that it helped to shape centuries ago, when the singers onstage fought sea monsters or the enti-re stage, including its performers and dancers, was relocated to a raft on the River Isar so that a spectacular sea battle could be enacted there.
Past experiences live on, leaving their mark on the players and overwriting their history in the manner of a palimpsest, while leaving btraces of earlier layers. Nothing is ever completely forgotten. Just as something is invariably left over from every good relationship, so each experience leaves behind a residue that continues to exist in unseen ways, emerging only when it is required to do so. Their exploration of so many different musical landscapes creates a variety that pushes back the horizon even further. Just as the orchestra’s engagement with Classical and Romantic works makes it easier for its players to understand indivi-dual styles on the cusp of tonality and beyond, so their work on contemporary scores allows them to take a fresh look at the classics.
The variety of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is also reflected in the range and depth of its programmes as well as in the manifold forms that its activities take, activities that it invariably pursues with passion. When Octavian presents a silver rose to Sophie, this scene is accompanied not only by radiant harmonies on a celesta, two harps and a glockenspiel, turning this moment into an event of the highest order, the score’s complex rhythms and kinetic textures extend beyond the performers’ voices and envelop the rose in an aura of elaborate intervals and ingenious turns of phrase. Dance theatre also represents a significant field of activity for the orchestra, and just as its operatic repertory extends from the Baroque to the great Romantic works and the present day, so it accompanies the entire range of choreographic works for the theatre, opening up a vast panorama that extends from dance episodes from the Baroque to the classical ballets of the nineteenth century, the works that were created in the twentieth century and projects involving the contemporary avant-garde.
The prospect of being able to work on projects that no other house can attempt draws international choreographers to Munich’s Nationaltheater. “Here we can play music that demands a great and outstanding orchestra,” says choreographer Jörg Mannes in the context of his adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. And so Ariel can chase the stranded seafarers over the stage as dogs, jackals and tigers, while jagged intervals rise up out of the crowded orchestra pit. The fact that the orchestra is an equal partner in ballet performances is underscored by the work of choreographers in which the dancers visualize the music. While the orchestra performs works from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centu-ries, the dancers respond by adopting the appropriate dance idioms. And so the enchantment associated with mystery is cast over the stage when the dancers respond to a musical explosion in the pit with expressive concentration.
Finally, whenever the Bayerisches Staatsorchester invites audiences to its Academy Concerts, the Nationaltheater is transformed into what Wolfgang Sa-wallisch is once called “Munich’s most beautiful concert hall”. On these occasions the orchestra is literally centre-stage. These concerts, which are now a local in-stitution, can be traced back to a time when a major concert was held every Wed-nesday at Nymphenburg. The symphonic repertory that has been performed throughout these years is correspondingly vast and varied. And new works are added each year, in many cases commissions by the Bayerische Staatsoper that are receiving their first performances.
But it is the chamber concerts that cover the greatest historical range, a circum-stance due in part to the fact that the Bayerisches Staatsorchester was originally a chamber ensemble and in part because its members explore the whole spect-rum of music at their chamber concerts, taking a particular interest in the period from the early twentieth century to the present day but also going back in time to the Baroque and the Renaissance. They also engage with remote corners of the repertory and enjoy experimentation. In this way they have sought to establish connections with other arts, including literature, and with other cultures, including Far Eastern sounds and African polyrhythms. Every department of the orchestra takes part in these activities, exploring traditional chamber formations such as the string quartet and the piano trio but also investigating other resources, inclu-ding flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet and bassoon or flute and percussion or oboe, bass clarinet and piano. Nor do they shy away from novel performance techniques, holding their string instruments as they would hold a guitar, for exa-mple.
This range culminates each year in the Munich Opera Festival, when the Bayeri-sches Staatsorchester is challenged in the whole range of its activities from an opera and ballet orchestra to concerts that are a part of its Academy Concert series, specially mounted Festival concerts and chamber recitals.
Yet the most valuable tool in this varied arsenal is the people who over the centu-ries have breathed life into this ensemble and who have allowed it to grow artisti-cally. Evening after evening the individual members of the orchestra contribute to its profile and to ist brilliant success with their own cultural background, their indi-vidual life stories, their abilities and their experience. The creativity, commitment and talents of the musicians in the pit and on the podium have resulted in the strength that has kept this wonderful orchestra alive through wars, political uphe-avals, fires and the repeated loss of its instruments. It is this strength that also guarantees the orchestra’s future.

15. Juli 2023 18:00 Uhr Premiere

Stefano Montanari
Claus Guth

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23. Juni 2023 19:30 Uhr Premiere

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