Berliner Philharmonie 7 September 2019 - Peter Eötvös and Isabelle Faust | GoComGo.com

Peter Eötvös and Isabelle Faust

Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany
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7 PM
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Important Info
Type: Classical Concert
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 19:00
Duration:

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Programme
Péter Eötvös: Alhambra, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3
Iannis Xenakis: Shaar for large String Orchestra
Edgard Varèse: Amériques (1st Version from 1918 − 1922, revised 1997)
Overview

This concert is innovative, virtuosic and cosmopolitan. Conductor and composer Peter Eötvös presents his Violin Concerto No. 3, known as the Alhambra (soloist: Isabelle Faust), which musically roams the fortress of the same name in Granada. In contrast to this airy Mediterranean world are Edgard Varèse’s famous impressions Amériques from the noisy New York of the 1920s. An insider tip is Shaar by Iannis Xenakis: eerily inscrutable and ingeniously eccentric.

In the past, “Japanese, French, German, English and American culture” have inspired Peter Eötvös, born in Hungary in 1944, to musical works, as he has stated. In recent years, the compositional cosmopolitan has placed more focus on yet another cultural sphere: the music traditions of the Basque Country and of Spain. Eötvösʼs third violin concerto was commissioned by the International Dance and Music Festival in Granada, the Berlin Philharmonic Foundation, the BBC Proms and the Orchestre de Paris. It is inspired by the architecture and history of the Alhambra – as Eötvös writes, the “intersection of Spanish and Arabic culture”.

Violinist Isabelle Faust, soloist at the premiere in Granada in July 2019 and, in addition to conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, one of the work’s dedicatees, has been acclaimed around the world for the past quarter of a century. At this concert, she will present the German premiere of Eötvös’s third violin concerto Alhambra in Berlin, conducted by the composer.

The second half of the concert is no less international: in 1983 the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis composed the string piece Shaar based on Old Testament ideas as a commission for an Israeli festival of contemporary music. In contrast, Amériques for large orchestra was the first composition that Edgard Varèse, born in Paris in 1883, wrote in the US after emigrating there in 1915. The work was premiered in 1926 by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. According to Varèse, the composition depicts journeys of discovery to “new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men”.

Alhambra, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3 – commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation together with the Granada Festival, Orchestre de Paris and BBC Proms German Première

Venue Info

Berliner Philharmonie - Berlin
Location   Herbert-von-Karajan-Str. 1

The Berliner Philharmonie is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany and home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The Philharmonie lies on the south edge of the city's Tiergarten and just west of the former Berlin Wall. The Philharmonie is on Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, named for the orchestra's longest-serving principal conductor. The building forms part of the Kulturforum complex of cultural institutions close to Potsdamer Platz.

The Philharmonie consists of two venues, the Grand Hall (Großer Saal) with 2,440 seats and the Chamber Music Hall (Kammermusiksaal) with 1,180 seats. Though conceived together, the smaller hall was opened in the 1980s, some twenty years after the main building.

Hans Scharoun designed the building, which was constructed over the years 1960–1963. It opened on 15 October 1963 with Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It was built to replace the old Philharmonie, destroyed by British bombers on 30 January 1944, the eleventh anniversary of Hitler becoming Chancellor. The hall is a singular building, asymmetrical and tentlike, with the main concert hall in the shape of a pentagon. The height of the rows of seats increases irregularly with distance from the stage. The stage is at the centre of the hall, surrounded by seating on all sides. The so-called vineyard-style seating arrangement (with terraces rising around a central orchestral platform) was pioneered by this building, and became a model for other concert halls, including the Sydney Opera House (1973), Denver's Boettcher Concert Hall (1978), the Gewandhaus in Leipzig (1981), Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), and the Philharmonie de Paris (2014).

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and his quartet recorded three live performances at the hall; Dave Brubeck in Berlin (1964), Live at the Berlin Philharmonie (1970), and We're All Together Again for the First Time (1973). Miles Davis's 1969 live performance at the hall has also been released on DVD.

On 20 May 2008 a fire broke out at the hall. A quarter of the roof suffered considerable damage as firefighters cut openings to reach the flames beneath the roof. The hall interior sustained water damage but was otherwise "generally unharmed". Firefighters limited damage using foam. The cause of the fire was attributed to welding work, and no serious damage was caused either to the structure or interior of the building. Performances resumed, as scheduled, on 1 June 2008 with a concert by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.

The main organ was built by Karl Schuke, Berlin, in 1965, and renovated in 1992, 2012 and 2016. It has four manuals and 91 stops. The pipes of the choir organs and the Tuba 16' and Tuba 8' stops are not assigned to any group and can be played from all four manuals and the pedals.

Important Info
Type: Classical Concert
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 19:00
Duration:
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