sign in sign up
<<
Home , Anna Prohaska, Dionysos (opera), Echo Klassik, Ensemble Modern, Howard Arman, Mojca Erdmann

PRESS KIT räsonanz – Stifterkonzert 2017

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE INITIATIVE

Mission Statement räsonanz – Stifterkonzerte Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung

Press Release

Interview with Michael Roßnagl, Michael Haefliger and Winrich Hopp by Max Nyffeler

Preview of räsonanz in Munich 2018 räsonanz – STIFTERKONZERT LUCERNE 2017

Program

Biography

Biography Performers – – – Hanno Müller-Brachmann – – Bavarian Radio Choir Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

PHOTO OVERVIEW

ABOUT THE INITIATIVE

räsonanz Stifterkonzerte

With the donor concert series räsonanz, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation lives up to its responsibility for providing contemporary music in a special way. Together with its partners and musica viva of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the foundation enables one concert in Munich as well as one in Lucerne every year featuring international top-ranking orchestras and acclaimed soloists performing the works of presentday composers.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation accordingly reinforces the foundation’s idea: Ernst von Siemens stands for entrepreneurial reason and unique vision, for social responsibility and ambitious promotion of science and arts. Social impact and artistic demand, daring change of perspective and the beauty of the unprecedented – all this becomes evident when contemporary music defines, explores and exceeds its limits. räsonanz is challenging as well as demanding and räsonanz wants to support; the willingness to embark on the unfamiliar and the appreciation of the “new” within New Music. www.evs-musikstifung.ch www.lucernefestival.ch www.br-musica-viva.de

Press Release, April 2017 räsonanz – Donors’ Concert 2017 in Lucerne Swiss Premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Requiem-Strophen

As part of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s initiative räsonanz – Donors’ Concerts, the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Bavarian Radio, under the baton of Mariss Jansons, will guest at the Easter Festival of the Lucerne Festival with the Swiss premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Requiem-Strophen.

After a successful räsonanz – Donors’ Concert 2017 in Munich with Teodor Currentzis, the MusicAeterna Choir from Perm and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, coming Saturday will see a further räsonanz – Donors’ Concert in Lucerne too. ‘Nearly 20 years ago, himself – as a member of the advisory board – expressed his wish for the foundation to participate more actively in the contemporary music scene and launch initiatives of its own. This aspect of the foundation’s work, initiated by the great composer, has certainly reached its provisional culmination with räsonanz’, states Michael Rossnagl, Managing Director of the EvS Music Foundation. The goal of the initiative is for leading international orchestras to present performances of contemporary works for large forces in Munich and Lucerne.

Mariss Jansons with the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Bavarian Radio at the Lucerne Festival On 8 April 2017, Wolfgang Rihm’s Requiem-Strophen for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra will be heard in Switzerland for the first time. The former Ernst von Siemens Music Prize laureate Mariss Jansons will conduct the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Bavarian Radio. The solo parts will be sung by the sopranos Anna Prohaska and Mojca Erdmann, as well as the baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann. The work, commissioned by musica viva, was premiered in Munich on 30 March 2017 and was lauded by audience and press alike. With texts by Hans Sahl, Johannes Bobrowski, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and a psalm, Wolfgang Rihm compiled an unusual and highly personal selection for his new evening-length choral work. In an interview with Max Nyffeler, Rihm said of his new work: ‘Here the concern was to create an awareness of an individual problem: the case of homo reus, the guilty human. But it’s not about eschatological excitations, some visions of horror from the Final Judgement. I tried to write a form of requiem without this apocalyptic threat in the background.’ Directly before the concert, Mark Sattler, Dramaturge for Contemporary Music at the Lucerne Festival, will offer an introduction to the programme in the auditorium of the KKL.

Lucerne Festival Ticketing & Visitor Service: Tel. +41 (0)41 226 44 80 | [email protected]

Contact: Nina Steinhart | +41 / (0) 41 226 44 – 43 | [email protected] Imke List and Dr Tanja Pröbstl | +49 / (0)89 / 6 36 3 29 – 07 | [email protected]

www.evs-musikstiftung.ch | www.lucernefestival.ch

Interview: November 2015 in Lucerne The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s räsonanz initiative Max Nyffeler in conversation with Michael Roßnagl, Michael Haefliger and Winrich Hopp.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s „räsonanz“ initiative will give new stimulus to contemporary orchestral music. Max Nyffeler spoke about the background and aims of the project with three of those who are directly involved: Michael Roßnagl, Secretary of the Board of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Winrich Hopp, artistic director of musica viva Munich, and Michael Haefliger, director of the Lucerne Festival.

NYFFELER: Mr Roßnagl, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s räsonanz concert series is a new way of promoting contemporary music. What is the idea behind it?

ROßNAGL: Currently we support contemporary music projects and award our annual music prize, as well as the prizes for young composers. We are very happy with the way things are going. räsonanz is about taking the initiative ourselves. This idea is, by the way, very much in accordance with something our trustee Pierre Boulez once said: “Do something yourselves, too!” Our initiative is directed at contemporary oarchestral music and we are focussing, for the moment, on two places: Munich, with its important musica viva concert series; and Lucerne with a festival that is showing the way for the integration of modern music into ‘normal’ concert programmes. The fact that the Foundation has its management in Munich and its headquarters in Switzerland was also a factor in choosing the locations.

NYFFELER: So it wasn’t the organisers who took the initiative, it was the Foundation?

ROßNAGL: That’s right .

NYFFELER: What do you think about this initiative, Mr Haefliger?

HAEFLIGER: It’s beyond our wildest dreams. For a festival like ours, which has clear ambitions in the area of contemporary music, it’s a wonderful stroke of luck. A partner comes along and asks “what would you like to do and what do you need to do it? We’ll help!” It’s not just about financing a commission for a new composition, it’s about creating the right conditions for today’s music. An open space is being created. This is fantastic, particularly at a moment when many things in the Arts are being called into question.

HOPP: I agree with this appraisal. The initiative sets an example in the world of international orchestral music. It says: look, we are doing something for contemporary music ‒ specifically for music from the second half of the 20th century up until the present.

NYFFELER: How does this model actually work?

ROßNAGL: The organisers plan a project, and we guarantee that it can take place by taking on the deficiency guarantee up to a certain amount.

NYFFELER: As a rule, you support projects for up to three years. It seems to be different in this case.

ROßNAGL: Yes. It is our own initiative, so we can offer longer term perspectives.

NYFFELER: How are the programmes decided on, und what is the Foundation’s role?

HAEFLIGER: All three partners work together closely.

ROßNAGL: Of course the members of the Board are invited to take part in the discussions. We are all in close contact, and we can sense a strong feeling of common purpose.

HOPP: It’s important to note that it is an initiative of the Foundation. The concerts are Foundation concerts, and we, the organisers in in Lucerne und Munich, develop the artistic concept in cooperation with the Board of Trustees.

NYFFELER: So tell me about the details! What will the programmes be like?

HOPP: The first concert will take place on 27th February – without Lucerne, for the moment – in the context of a musica viva concert weekend. The programme consists of works by George Benjamin, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti und Georg Friedrich Haas. George Benjamin will conduct the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. The programme is representative of the orchestra’s artistic achievements during the seventy years of its existence. The cooperation with the Lucerne Festival will take effect from 2017. This will take various forms. We can engage an orchestra together for concerts in Lucerne and Munich, either on consecutive days, or, if the dates don’t suit, with some time in between. Or we can invite two orchestras with two different programmes, and so on. We are very flexible in this regard.

NYFFELER: The concerts in Lucerne: will they take place in summer, and are they part of the Festival Academy or are they integrated into the normal programme?

HAEFLIGER: As far as the date is concerned, we are very open, it could even be at Easter. And where exactly these concerts fit into the context of the whole programme will vary from case to case. It depends on the constellation.

NYFFELER: The musica viva concert series is associated with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Will there be any change here?

HOPP: No. It was always part of musica viva’s tradition to invite guest orchestras and ensembles ‒ from to Ensemble Intercontemporain and the German Radio Symphony orchestras, to the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Berliner Philharmonic in the 60s and 70s. A musica viva season usually consists of ten events. Five of these make up the heart of the series: these are the concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Foundation’s initiative allows us the take international guest orchestras into consideration.

NYFFELER: Does that mean that in the future one musica viva concert will be performed by a guest orchestra?

HOPP: Yes, but to be quite clear, this is not an additional concert! The Foundation’s initiative does not replace anything, it adds and enriches.

NYFFELER: That opens up an international perspective, of course. Which partners do you envisage?

HOPP: Initially, we activated our existing contacts. And now we have the pleasant task of wining over some of the best orchestras in the world with their soloists and conductors to work together with us on this project.

NYFFELER: Interesting prospects indeed for Lucerne and Munich!

HOPP: Yes, but the orchestras will perform not only in Munich and Lucerne. Ideally, they would go on tour with the programme. So räsonanz is a wonderful opportunity for orchestras, too. We encourage them to devote themselves to the music of the 20th and 21st century. We are sending a clear message.

NYFFELER: So you are creating an international network consisting of sponsors, organisers and orchestras. We could say this is a new form of cooperation.

HAEFLIGER: Absolutely.

HOPP: I find Mr Roßnagl’s initial comments on Pierre Boulez helpful towards an understanding of this initiative. He always insisted on bringing New Music into large institutions, which he did with his work as a conductor. So I feel that Pierre Boulez is, in a way, behind the räsonanz initiative, even though it is not his initiative.

ROßNAGL: Strengthening the social status of modern music was very important to him, and if you look at today’s world, this seems to me to be becoming increasingly important.

HAEFLIGER: Boulez was an absolutely dominant figure in Lucerne during the last thirteen years (as he was in other places before this time, too). He would simply say: That’s how it has to be, that’s what we have to do. He was a man with a strong will who could get his ideas off the ground without discussion and debate, because they were necessary and convincing. That’s something that is missing today. An initiative like räsonanz might help to fill this vacuum. Once again, it is not so much about a set of rules, as about generously creating spaces and opportunities.

NYFFELER: A kind of patronage...

ROßNAGL: ... based on a foundation’s statutes that originally gave no directions as far as content was concerned, but that were gradually interpreted by the trustees in the spirit of contemporary music.

HOPP: Sitting here at this table now, we are an interesting constellation. Three entirely different institutions coming together. The Foundation as sponsor and und initiator, then the Lucerne Festival as an established festival with a strong commitment to modern music and thirdly, musica viva, a concert series founded specifically for modern and avant-garde music. What we have in common is an interest in the large orchestra as a representative form. And musica viva has one immeasurable advantage: a world-famous orchestra with an outstanding reputation forms its artistic backbone, making our concert series well-suited to this constellation.

NYFFELER: Many people are speaking about the threat of cuts to funding of the Arts these days, in particular contemporary music, which has no strong lobby. Could räsonanz be perceived by the public as a signal against attempted funding cuts?

ROßNAGL: It’s hard to say. Music is always being composed, but in the end it’s up to the will of a society whether it is performed and thus heard. What’s important is that the musical achievements of our complex society must not be allowed to suddenly disappear. We must work towards ensuring that this complexity is carried on and that we don’t end up dumbing down. I can’t imagine finding solutions to complex social problems in a world with simplified cultural and educational policies. What does this music mean? What does it give us? These are decisive questions, and to find answers, the ties between music and society must be maintained. This is the task of the mediators, organisers and pedagogues. We have to provide the opportunity for the thoughts developed by creative spirits to be perceived and lived out in reality.

NYFFELER: This endeavour is noticeable at the Lucerne Festival, where a broader audience is introduced to contemporary music.

HAEFLIGER: We go to a lot of trouble here. But in general I regret to say that I notice a tendency to rear-guard action these days. This begins with the organisers, who change their focus. We spend a lot of time talking about this in our team, and when I say ‘we must believe firmly in the direction we are going in and continue on’, I feel like I am almost a veteran of New Music. We need new strength and faith. If you don’t water a plant, it will wither and die, and when concert organisers stop offering something, then there will be no audience for it. It’s as simple as that. We as advocates of face great challenges, especially in terms of communication, and when the atmosphere changes, we have to adapt.

NYFFELER: How?

HAEFLIGER: The things I believe in have to be communicated differently if they are to be perceived by today’s audiences. You have to use social media and ask yourself: how can I exploit that on the radio, as a stream, how can I communicate it in advance? In short: how can I create a positive result? If you don’t manage that, you will fail sooner or later, in particular in contemporary music, which has always been a challenge. It’s easy to lose one’s way.

NYFFELER: Could you say a bit more about the ‘rear-guard action’ you mentioned?

HAEFLIGER: The extreme case would be that modern music is no longer performed at all. At first Schoenberg or Stravinsky are still performed, but then one looks back to Debussy and Ravel, and finally one wonders whether one should perform Beethoven or Brahms. And that is when the whole thing collapses.

ROßNAGL: At the Lucerne Festival I heard someone say “I can’t listen to Brahms all the time, I’m glad that there’s contemporary music here.“ That gives us hope. We have to do everything we can, creatively and financially, to maintain the complexity I have mentioned. It’s the only way we can deal with the challenges of reality.

HOPP: As far as orchestral music is concerned, the räsonanz initiative has come at just the right time. We have a generational change, and the young musicians who have entered the ranks in recent years did not personally experience Messiaen and Xenakis. This means that in their eyes post-war modern music is no longer conveyed by the personality of the composer and the aesthetic debates of that time. They are unburdened by such controversies and open for all currents of the recent past and the present. New Music is slowly becoming an accepted part of the repertoire, not only within the orchestra, but also in the public. We at musica viva are at the fore here, and the concert world will, without doubt, follow in our footsteps. räsonanz is the perfect way of giving this process of repertoire expansion a kick start.

Translation: Andrew Williams

© musica viva. Reproduction by permission only.

räsonanz – STIFTERKONZERT LUCERNE 2017

räsonanz Stifterkonzert – Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung

KKL Lucerne | 8 April 2017 | 6:30 p.m.

Wolfgang Rihm

Gruss-Moment 2 - in memoriam Pierre Boulez for orchestra Swiss premiere

Requiem-Strophen for solos, mixed choir and orchestra (2016) Swiss premiere | Commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Bavarian Radio Choir

Anna Prohaska, Soprano Mojca Erdmann, Soprano Hanno Müller-Brachmann, Baritone

Conductor: Mariss Jansons

Biography Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm was born on 13 March 1952 in Karlsruhe, a city near the French and Swiss borders, at a stone’s throw from Strasbourg and Basel, two of the many places where he and his music are at home. He lives there to this day in a spacious apartment not only full of books and scores – those one takes for granted – but also of paintings by contemporary artists, mainly by Kurt Kocherscheidt, the Austrian painter with whom Rihm was befriended and to whom he has dedicated a number of works. Rihm is a composer, professor of composition at the Music Academy of his native city (where his students included Vykintas Baltakas and Jörg Widmann), a remarkable writer on music with several books to his name, including collections of his articles and interviews. He also sits on a number of influential committees in and has a say in decisions affecting the working conditions of his fellow musicians. No doubt about it: Wolfgang Rihm is a unique phenomenon, larger than life. His knowledge of music (the art and craft of composition as well as of music history from ancient times up to the present day) is vast. But he also seems to know everything worth knowing about literature, painting, architecture, philosophy and he freely draws on those as sources of inspiration. A look at the texts he has set to music is an indication of the breadth of his culture: from Homer through Hölderlin and Goethe to Rilke, Botho Strauss and Durs Grünbein. The world he has created with his compositions which now outnumber 400 works is a veritable universe. As such, it cannot be pidgeonholed. To paraphrase the title of a well-known British film on Thomas More, he is a composer for all seasons. Rihm has written 'new music' as it is commonly called and some of his titles have become signposts in the history of post-war music. Soloists, chamber groups and orchestras programme these works as a matter of course now, they have become an integral part of the repertoire (Jagden und Formen, Chiffre-cycle, Pol - Kolchis - Nucleus). Of similar significance are the compositions which take their cue, as it were, from music of past centuries: oratorios with as a point of reference (Deus Passus), orchestral pieces of Brahmsian sound and gesture (Ernster Gesang, Nähe fern 1-4), in the wake of (Fremde Szenen). Already at the age of 25, he composed a chamber (Jakob Lenz) that has since proved itself as probably the most often produced piece of contemporary music theatre in Germany. Jakob Lenz has been followed by a series of large-scale (Die Hamletmaschine, Die Eroberung von Mexico, Das Gehege, ). Wolfgang Rihm is one of the foremost song composers of our times; his string quartets are often presented in cycles by a wide range of groups. Rihm is a composer who puts a giant question-mark over whatever he is doing. Each new work is an answer to the question raised by the previous piece; each new work poses questions which he will seek a reply to in the composition to be written next. There come about work cycles, work families which form a web with other cycles and individual pieces. Everything is in permanent growth, work never stops, new compositions are produced, brought into intriguing relationships with other works, revised and supplemented. ©

Biography Anna Prohaska

The soprano Anna Prohaska, who is the daughter of an Irish-English singer and an Austrian opera director, was born in 1983 in Neu-Ulm and studied voice with Norma Sharp and Brenda Mitchell at the Academy of Music in Berlin. She made her stage debut at the age of 18 as Flora in ’s chamber opera The Turn of the Screw at the , receiving the Bavarian Theater Prize for her performance. Since the 2006-07 season Prohaska has been a member of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin ensemble, where she has performed Mozart roles (Blonde in Abduction and Susanna in Figaro), Poppea in Handel’s Agrippina, Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo, and Sophie in Strauss’s . Her credits at the include Dvořak’s Rusalka, Nono’s Al gran sole, and Mozart’s Da Ponte trilogy; in 2017 she will perform there as Cordelia in a new production of Reimann’s Lear. Anna Prohaska has also sung at La Scala in Milan and Bavarian Staatsoper and in , Paris, and Aix-en-Provence. She enjoys a close association with the and Sir : most recently, in February 2017, she took part in performances of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre in the staging by Peter Sellars. Additional appearances in the current season have taken her to Dutch National Opera (Handel’s Jephtha) and the Theater an der Wien (Purcell’s The Fairy Queen). Anna Prohaska is equally devoted to early and contemporary music; Wolfgang Rihm composed the pieces Mnemosyne and Samothrake for her. As a lied singer she performs such thematic recitals as Faith and Ecstasy, Sirenes, Behind the Lines, and, together with the actor Lars Eidinger, Hamlet and Ophelia. Anna Prohaska received the Schneider-Schott Music Award in 2010 and the Berlin Art Prize in 2016.

Biography Mojca Erdmann

A native of Hamburg, the soprano Mojca Erdmann acquired her first stage experiences in the children’s choir of the Hamburg Staatsoper. After graduating from high school she studied violin and completed her vocal training with in Cologne. At the Federal German Competition in 2002 she won not only first prize but the award for Best Performer of Contemporary Music as well. Her preference for works of the present era is reflected in numerous engagements: she performed in the world premieres of Wolfgang Rihm’s monodrama Proserpina at the Schwetzingen Festival in 2009 and of his Dionysos in Salzburg in 2010; in 2012 she was cast in Rodion Shchedrin’s Cleopatra and the Serpent at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and, in 2016, in Miroslav Srnka’s South Pole at the Bavarian Staatsoper. Mojca Erdmann began her career as a member of the ensemble of the Komische Oper Berlin. In 2006 she made her Salzburg Festival debut as Mozart’s Zaide; in 2007 and 2009 she performed Zelmira in Haydn’s Armida there, which was followed in 2014 by Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Sir Simon Rattle has engaged Mojca Erdmann for performances of Janaček’s Jenůfa and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges. In 2008 she performed as the Wood Bird in Siegfried under his direction at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Mojca Erdmann debuted as Zerlina in at the in 2011, sang her first Lulu at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2012, and opened the season at La Scala in Milan in 2014 as Marzelline in Fidelio. Most recently, in the fall of 2016, she performed Susanna in Mozart’s Figaro for the first time at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; at the beginning of 2017 she interpreted ’s Spazio immergente at the Salzburg Mozartwoche, as well as works by and at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin.

Biography Hanno Müller-Brachmann

The bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann, a native of southern Baden in Germany, began his musical training with the Basel Boys’ Choir. He later studied voice with Ingeborg Most at the Freiburg Academy of Music, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in Berlin as part of his lieder class, and with Rudolf Piernay in Mannheim. In 1996 Müller-Brachmann made his operatic debut at the Berlin Staatsoper in Telemann’s Orpheus under Rene Jacobs. From 1998 to 2011 he was a permanent member of that renowned company, where he performed a wide range of roles, from the Mozart repertoire to such dramatic parts as Orest (in Strauss’s Elektra), Kaspar (Weber’s Freischütz), Golaud (Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande) and Wotan in Wagner’s Ring. Müller-Bachmannʼs credits also include performances at the Munich, Hamburg, and Vienna Staatsoper companies and in San Francisco, Paris, and Madrid. He has collaborated with such conductors as , , Sir , , , Zubin Mehta, and Sir Simon Rattle. He sang Papageno on ’s CD recording of The Magic Flute, which won a Gramophone Award. Müller-Brachmann has also performed lieder at the Edinburgh Festival, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, in London, and in many European cities. At the beginning of 2017 he sang in Bach’s B minor Mass with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons and in Britten’s War Requiem with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva. He will appear with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra in May for performances of Debussy’s Pelléas and with at La Scala in Milan in June for Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. Since the fall of 2011 Hanno Müller-Brachmann has been professor of voice at the Karlsruhe Academy of Music.

Biography Mariss Jansons

Mariss Jansons was born in 1943 in Riga and is the son of conductor Arvīd Jansons. He studied violin, piano, and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory, completing his training as a student of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and of in Salzburg. In 1971 he won the Karajan Competition in Berlin and began his close partnership with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. From 1979 to 2000 Jansons served as Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1997 to 2004 he was Principal Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Since 2003 he has led the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, where his contract has been extended to 2021. Beginning in 2004, for 11 years, he additionally led the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which named him Honorary Conductor in 2015. Jansons has guest conducted the finest orchestras in the United States and Europe, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics; he has led the latter’s New Year’s concerts three times (in 2006, 2012, and 2016). Jansons’ discography comprises many prize-winning recordings, including his Grammy-winning account of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13. Mariss Jansons is an honorary member of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna and of the Royal Academy of Music in London; the Berlin Philharmonic has honored him with the Bulow Medal, the City of Vienna with the Golden Medal of Honor, the State of Austria with the Honorary Cross for Science and Art, and the Federal Republic of Germany with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. In 2013 Jansons, who is also a member of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art and a knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the music world.

Biography Bavarian Radio Choir

Founded in 1946, the Bavarian Radio Choir has been performing the great choral symphonic literature and oratorios from the Baroque to the present since then, especially with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The latter’s music directors have regularly been in charge of the Choir’s artistic leadership of the Choir: from Eugen Jochum through Rafael Kubelik, Sir Colin Davis, and Lorin Maazel to Mariss Jansons. The ensemble is especially acclaimed for its flexibility and for the stylistic diversity of its repertoire. The singers are capable of shifting effortlessly from the austere sonority of a Renaissance madrigal to a Romantic choral work or to the technical challenges posed by contemporary music – all while preserving their signature sonic homogeneity. Through its own subscription series at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, the Choir performs not only the classic works of the canon but also crossover projects and jazz literature. Serving as Artistic Director from 2005 to the summer of 2016 was the Dutch conductor Peter Dijkstra, a self-described “anti- specialist” who ensured the diversity of the programming. At the beginning of the 2016-17 season, Howard Arman became his successor. Regular tours and invitations to the major music festivals are among the Choir’s activities; the singers have also worked with such leading European orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, and the . They additionally perform concerts with such period-instrument ensembles as Koln, B’Rock, and the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin. The Bavarian Radio Choir has won three Awards and, in 2015, the Bavarian State Prize for Music.

Biography Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1949. As its first Chief Conductor, Eugen Jochum helped establish the Orchestra during his 11-year tenure and brought it international renown, especially through his Bruckner performances. Succeeding him was Rafael Kubelik (1961–79), who conducted the ensemble’s first Mahler cycle and expanded its repertoire to include works by Slavic composers as well as 20th-century music. Sir Colin Davis, an acclaimed Berlioz specialist, stood at the helm from 1983 to 1992 and proved to be an equally strong advocate for the Viennese Classical era and the works of British composers. Lorin Maazel held the reins from 1993 to 2002 and led complete cycles of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Mahler. Since October 2003 Mariss Jansons has held the position of Chief Conductor, playing a repertoire that ranges widely, from Haydn to Shostakovich and contemporary composers. Many renowned conductors have led the Orchestra, from Otto Klemperer and Karl Böhm through Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Giulini, and to such stars of today as Herbert Blomstedt, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, and Franz Welser- Möst in the 2016-17 season. The Orchestra regularly premieres new works through its musica viva series. The BR Symphony performs on tour around the world: most recently, in late autumn 2016, they concertized in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, and, at the beginning of 2017, in Vienna, Paris, Wrocław, Katowice, Milan, Luxembourg, and Amsterdam. Since 2004 the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra has had an annual residency at Lucerne’s Easter Festival.

PHOTO OVERVIEW

räsonanz-Stifterkonzert Luzern 2017 Photo Overview

Further information and high res photos can be found on: http://www.evs-musikstiftung.ch/en/press.html

Contact: Imke List | [email protected] | T. +49 / (0)89 / 6 36 – 3 29 07

UA 1 UA 2 World Premiere Requiem-Strophen World Premiere Requiem-Strophen Herkulessaal München, 30.03.2017 Herkulessaal München, 30.03.2017 © Astrid Ackermann © Astrid Ackermann

Wolfgang Rihm © Astrid Ackermann

Mariss Jansons Hanno Müller-Brachmann © Manu Theobald © Monika Ritterhaus

Mojca Erdmann Anna Prohaska © Felix Broede © Harald Hoffmann