Programmbuch "Götterfunken" 2014 -english version- by Beethovenfest Bonn

B E E T H O V E N F E S T B O N N 6 S E P T

T O

3 O C T

D I V I N E

2 0 1 4

S P A R K

B E E T H O V E N F E S T

SAT 6 SEP

B O N N

2 0 1 4 + + + + P R O G R A M M E + + + +

11 AM

OPENING MATINEE: Nike Wagner, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Stefan Blunier

8 PM

OPENING CONCERT: London Symphony Orchestra, Gautier Capuçon,

Sir John Eliot Gardiner SUN 7 SEP

MON 8 SEP

TUE 9 SEP

WED 10 SEP

THU 11 SEP

7 PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONYS 1: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, A. Nelsons

8 PM

»Divan of song – Persia«: Christiane Karg, Robert Holl, Burkhard Kehring

8 PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONYS 2: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, A. Nelsons

8 PM

BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET 1: Borodin Quartet

8 PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONYS 3: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, A. Nelsons

8 PM

BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET 2: Borodin Quartet

8 PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONYS 4: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, A. Nelsons

8 PM

BEETHOVEN VIOLIN SONATAS 1: Leonidas Kavakos Violin, Enrico Pace Piano

201

8 PM

»Passio – Compassio«: Ensemble Sarband, Modern String Quartet, Five Mevlevi Dervishes a. o.

8 PM

BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET 3: Borodin Quartet

8 PM

»Spirito latino«: SIGNUMfive

8 PM

BEETHOVEN VIOLIN SONATAS 2: Leonidas Kavakos Violin, Enrico Pace Piano

8 PM

»Happy Birthday« Mnozil Brass

8 PM

BEETHOVEN VIOLIN SONATAS 3: Leonidas Kavakos Violin, Enrico Pace Piano

8 PM

»Alla turca«: Kölner Kammerorchester, Alexander Janiczek

8 PM

»Student Managers Project 2014«: Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble

11 AM

PRIZEWINNERS' CONCERT 1: Sophie Dartigalongue Bassoon

6 PM

Studio musikFabrik, Peter Veale

6 PM

BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET 4: Borodin Quartet

8 PM

»Divan of song – India«: Christiane Iven, Burkhard Kehring a. o.

MON 15 SEP

8 PM

PRIZEWINNERS' CONCERT 2: Stefan Cassomenos Piano

TUE 16 SEP

8 PM

RECITAL: Thomas Zehetmair Violin

WED 17 SEP

202

8 PM

Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, Faust, Queyras, Bezuidenhout, Nézet-Séguin

THU 18 SEP

8 PM

Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, Nézet-Séguin

8 PM

JAZZ 1: Iiro Rantala Trio

8 PM

Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Lars Anders Tomter, Stefan Blunier

8 PM

»String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014« I

4 PM

»String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014« II

203

8 PM

Münchner Philharmoniker, Lorin Maazel

8 PM

»String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014« III

FRI 12 SEP

SAT 13 SEP

SUN 14 SEP

FRI 19 SEP

SAT 20 SEP

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + SAT 20 SEP

8 PM

»Boundless«: Rajaton

SUN 21 SEP

4 PM

»String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014« IV

6 PM

»Solo for cult«: Singer Pur

6 PM

RECITAL: Sebastian Knauer Piano

7 PM

RECITAL: Josef Bulva Piano

8 PM

»String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014« V

MON 22 SEP

8 PM

Ensemble Resonanz

TUE 23 SEP

8 PM

CAMPUS CONCERT: Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra, Is˛ın Metin a. o.

8 PM

RECITAL: Herbert Schuch Piano

204

8 PM

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTS 1: Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Leif Ove Andsnes

8 PM

JAZZ 2: Hugh Masekela, Larry Willis

8 PM

»Baltic Voyage«: Baltic Sea Youth Philharmonic, Jan Lisiecki, Kristjan Järvi

8 PM

Tetzlaff Quartett

8 PM

Canadian Brass

205

8 PM

LIEDER EVENING: Waltraud Meier Mezzosoprano, Joseph Breinl Piano

206

8 PM

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTS 2: Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Leif Ove Andsnes

11 AM

PRIZEWINNERS' CONCERT 3: Elisabeth Brauß Piano

11 AM

Hannelore Elsner, Ensemble Carion, Sebastian Knauer

207

6 PM

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTS 3: Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Leif Ove Andsnes

6 PM

Ludwig van Beethoven: »Fidelio« (premiere)

TUE 30 SEP

8 PM

Hannelore Elsner, Sebastian Knauer

WED 1 OCT

8 PM

Orchester Wiener Akademie, August Zirner, Kirsten Blaise, Martin Haselböck

8 PM

JAZZ 3: Marialy Pacheco Trio

8 PM

Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, Christian Lindberg

8 PM

»Divan of song – Korea«: Kwangchul Youn, Burkhard Kehring

6 PM

FINAL CONCERT: Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Arcadi Volodos,

THU 25 SEP

FRI 26 SEP

SAT 27 SEP

SUN 28 SEP

THU 2 OCT

FRI 3 OCT

Paavo Järvi 61

8 PM

FRI 3 OCT – SUN 5 OCT

Ludwig van Beethoven: »Fidelio« »Save the World«

The Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 is under the patronage of the State Premier of North Rhine Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft.

We would like to thank our Main Sponsors:

C O N T EN T S

4 Messages of welcome 9 ‘Joy hovers like the sound of the stars’ On the motto of the 2014 Beethovenfest Bonn by Barbara Stach

17 Beethoven as centre of gravity International soloists, conductors and orchestras by Annette Semrau

29 ‘Facing the highs and lows of life’ Interview with Andris Nelsons on the Beethoven Symphony Cycle by Christine Lemke-Matwey

35 ‘So strange, so radical’ Interview with Leif Ove Andsnes on the Beethoven Piano Concert Cycle by Tom Service

40 Grand finale Conclusion of the Beethoven String Quartet Cycle with the Borodin Quartet 43 Weekend of the quartets String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014 by Habakuk Traber

51 The magic of the first time First performance and canonization then and now by Rainer Nonnenmann

56 The winter wanderer and the angels Burkhard Kehring on his Lieder Cycle ‘Divan of song’ by Christoph Vratz

63 From student to manager and back Student managers at the Young Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 by Elisa Miebach

66 ‘My nicest experience’ Projects of the Young Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 by Annette Semrau

71 All people will be brothers Orchestra Campus by Deutsche Welle and Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 by Thomas Scheider

72 ‘It is creative, idiosyncratic, and looks to the future in every respect’ Prizewinner concerts 2014 by Annette Semrau

75 Solo for cult Divine sparks with Jazz, Brass and Vocals 81 List of works 84 List of artists 86 Tickets and general informations 88 Selected hall plans 90 Advance ticket agencies 91 Venues

oy, beautiful Divine Spark’: there are few pieces of music that are so popular as Beeth o v e n ’s s e t t i n g o f Schiller’s ode ‘To Joy’. The ‘Divine Spark’ has been chosen by the Beethovenfest Bonn for its 2014 motto, and this is precisely the right choice. For this oldest of music festivals, founded by Franz Liszt, the great-great-grandfather of the new director Nike Wagner, will without any doubt sparkle this year too. Beethoven fans and music lovers from near and far can look forward with expectation to top international orchestras, prominent soloists and promising new musical blood.

Fortunately, Beethoven is no longer perceived as some Titan of sound standing on his plinth suffused in the incense of bourgeois adulation, but as a composer whose works are part of the heritage of humankind and thus of all people who love music. In this spirit the Beethovenfest Bonn has in recent years ‘pressed the flesh’ and extended its venues to include the whole city centre and Bonn’s hinterland too. I am especially looking forward to those parts of the programme aimed at children and young people and their encounter with forms of music with which they are unfamiliar. Cultural education and intercultural meetings are important concerns of the state government. In this spirit we are supporting, this year too, the Orchestral Campus which forms part of the festival. From the beginning of September to the beginning of October, great musical experiences are guaranteed in Bonn. I wish you a great deal of pleasure, just as I wish the new director a happy and successful start.

Yours

Hannelore Kraft State Premier of North Rhine Westphalia

he motto of the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 is ‘Divine Spark’. You do not have to be a connoisseur of Beethoven or Schiller to know at once that this refers to Joy, ‘daughter of Elysium’, which leaps like a spark from one to another when a community gathers together. This can happen in fraternal enthusiasm, or even better, when music is the common factor. It is not by chance that the effect of the ode ‘To Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Sym phony – which we shall be hearing twice at this year’s Beethovenfest – has come to be felt so widely. We hope that sparks will fly at all of the 60 events of the 2014 festival season. This is promised by the appearance of wonderful artists and the performance of important works. The idiosyncratic Sir John Eliot Gardiner is coming with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the eternally youthful Lorin Maazel with the Munich Philharmonic, while the brilliant Yannick Nézet-Séguin is conducting a cult work by Dvořák ‘From the New World’ and the captivating Andris Nelsons is giving us all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Among other sparkling stars are Arcadi Volodos, Waltraud Meier, Thomas Zehetmair and Herbert Schuch, while our string quartets – the Kuss Quartett, the Tetzlaff Quartett and the Borodin Quartet – constitute a veritable galaxy. Nordic orchestras will brighten the evenings with northern lights and a Turkish youth orchestra will be radiant at the pinnacle of our numerous educational endeavours.

Many other ‘Divine Sparks’ are populating our 2014 cosmos, including West-East song projects and ChristianIslamic meditative explorations, a number of first performances, recitals, prizewinner concerts and brass ensembles, but hovering majestically above all of them is the fireball from whom we take our name: in addition to all of Beethoven’s symphonies we shall be hearing all of his violin sonatas and piano concertos too! I am presenting this rich programme in the name of my predecessor Ilona Schmiel; she was the one who conceived it, before she left the Beethovenfest Bonn after ten years as its director. We would like to say a hearty thank-you. I wanted to plant just two seedlings of my own before ‘my’ Beethovenfest begins in earnest in 2015: an opening matinee with ‘contemporary Beethoven’ and a collaboration with the local civic theatre – together we are going to pursue the idea of a ‘Bonn as a World Rescue Station’. I would like to offer my cordial thanks to the city of Bonn, to all supporters, sponsors and foundations, and to our patron, state premier Hannelore Kraft.

Nike Wagner Director of the Beethovenfest Bonn

ear visitors to the Beethovenfest Bonn, once more I should like to welcome you to the festival. The programme, which still bears the clear stamp of Ilona S c h m i e l , w i l l m a ke Bonn sparkle this year too with the stars of the classical music scene. It is already clear that the new director, Dr Nike Wagner, will create a shift of accent by integrating other artistic genres more strongly into the festival. The idea behind this, not least, is to address current issues not only with artistic means, but also taking into account both social, and for example in co-operation with the university, academic criteria.

Of particular interest this year, then, will be the opening address by our new director, and the matinee whose music has been chosen to illustrate this address, in which she will outline her perspectives for the Beethovenfest. We can rest assured, though, that she will continue the concept which has been successfully developed in recent years, and that in the future, too, we will continue to look forward to great orchestras and famous musicians. Not only the Beethovenfest but the whole city is gearing up to the 250th anniversary of Beethovenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birth, which falls in 2020. This will require an infrastructure that will allow the occasion to be celebrated in a worthy fashion. We want to try to bring Beethoven to the hearts and minds of all the citizens of Bonn and all who feel some affinity with his music, and not just Beethoven as the musical genius, but also as the great spirit who is held in honour worldwide.

Yours

JĂźrgen Nimptsch Lord Mayor of the Federal City of Bonn

or centuries, music has been an outstanding ambassador for Germany throughout the world. It is a universal language, and as such, a positively ‘natural broadcasting language’ for Deutsche Welle. The importance we attach to music can be seen in our role at the Beethovenfest Bonn: as copartners in the festival company, we see to the worldwide dissemination of its content – in television programmes and special internet sites, and in the form of live concert recordings and podcasts. The feedback we receive from our international audience tells us time and again that the message of music as a lingua franca is understood the world over. This year’s Beethovenfest motto ‘Divine Spark’ brings this out very clearly. The fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has become the European anthem. His ‘Divine Spark’ stands for joy, diversity, and peace. These are Beethoven’s ideals, which against the background of current political developments, and not just in Europe, are of ongoing relevance.

I hope not only that the Beethovenfest Bonn and Deutsche Welle will provide music-lovers on every continent with many unforgettable listening experiences once more, but also that we understand music as an ambassador and, with ‘Divine Spark’, send a clear signal: for a strong, open, liberal Europe, and for our common European values. This too is a reason why DW as Germany’s voice in the world is passionately committed to and involved in the Beethovenfest Bonn. It is a co-operation that we intend to pursue under the new leadership of both organizations: Nike Wagner and I have already agreed on that. I look forward to working together in the future, and to many wonderful musical projects.

Yours

Peter Limbourg Intendant of Deutsche Welle

‘ JO Y

H O V E R S

S O UN D

O F

L I K E

T H E

S T A R S ’

On the Motto of the 2014 Beethovenfest Bonn

o artist is an artist through the entire twenty-four hours of his normal day; he succeeds in producing all that is essential, all that will last, only in a few rare moments of inspiration. (…) But if artistic geniuses arise in art, they will outlast their own time; if such a significant hour in the history of the world occurs, it will decide matters for decades and centuries yet to come.’ Words from the introduction to the first version of Stefan Zweig’s ‘Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures’, published in 1927. In this work, he collected some of the ‘historical miniatures’ relating to portentous events in politics and culture that were triggered by the genius of individual human beings. A hundred years earlier Beethoven had died, three years after the first performance of his last great work, the Ninth Symphony. As the sketchbooks show, it took a long time to mature. But then the Ninth did come to be written between autumn 1822 and spring 1824: too long to be a ‘significant hour’ in purely temporal terms, but an artistic master stroke which for almost two hundred years has been charged with a wealth of individual, cultural and political significance and continues to exert an influence unparalleled by almost any other artwork.

In such ‘Shooting Stars’ the divine sparks fly. Provocatively, Friedrich Schiller wrote as early as 1782 of the genius in general: ‘Unhappy indeed are those who must / strike up a Divine Spark from the dust’. Schiller’s word for ‘divine spark’ was ‘Götterfunken’ and as far as historical linguistics can tell, it was he who coined the term. Three years later he took it up once again, little knowing that in so doing he would immortalize it. Through the first line of his famous ode, which Beethoven set to music in the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony, thus for the first time introducing a vocal element to symphonic music, ‘divine sparks’ and ‘joy’ are inseparably united. Schiller created the poetic idea that joy is the emanation of a heavenly energy, and illustrates its dynamics and brilliance. Divine sparks leap where creativity is at work, where creative authenticity is enthusiastically received – for example in the concert hall. Between the work, the performer and the audience an electrical field can build up that can transform all involved. Memories that awaken, ideas that flare up, moods that form… Whether it is for example Beethoven’s nine symphonies that at this year’s Beethovenfest are to be

heard on four successive days with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Andris Nelsons, or his complete piano concertos in an original combination with lesserknown works by Igor Stravinsky played by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Leif Ove Andsnes from the piano – the programmes of this festival will create opportunities every evening for the Divine Spark to fly. Beethoven may well have come into contact with Schiller’s poem even before he left Bonn. He was a member of the ‘reading club’ here; the first plans to set it to music were taking shape. And in the following decades too, Schiller’s work, with its revolutionary, idealist and deeply human impetus was a faithful companion. However Schiller’s enthusiasm accorded less with Beethoven’s own state of mind than with a state of longing. ‘O Providence - grant me at least but one day of pure joy - it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart (…),’ wrote Beethoven in the epilogue to his ‘Heiligenstädter Testament’ in 1802. More closely applicable to him is what Schiller penned with disconcerting coldness at the end of the second stanza of his ode: ‘Yes, he who on this earth does call / but one soul his very own / But let him who ne’er was able / steal away in tears alone’. Beethoven never did call one soul his very own, but throughout his life resisted his social exclusion. A simple setting following the stanzas of Schiller’s Ode would have been unthinkable in this sense; Beethoven chooses just a few stanzas

and lines, he fragments the poem and thus questions its jubilant message. When in 1786 Schiller first published what he had written as an occasional poem, and one which he himself did not regard all that highly, Europe was the scene, right up until the first performance of Beethoven’s final symphony in 1824, of enormous political upheaval. After the confusions of the French Revolution, the wars that followed, and the rise and fall of Napoleon, the dominant powers sought, after the Congress of Vienna of 1814/1815, to reinstate the pre-revolutionary structures and promoted a climate of repression. In one particular project, the 2014 Beethovenfest will be looking at this arc of time stretching across the past two hundred years when it presents, at six events along the axis ‘1814 – 1914 – 2014’, three young string quartets together with the renowned Kuss Quartett in various combinations, performing cardinal works of the genre. 1814 was the year that saw the first performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 95 and his Eighth Symphony, as well as the premiere of the definitive version of his opera ’Fidelio’ with its unconcealed avowal of liberty. Even more than the spark of joy, it is probably the spark of freedom that constantly fired Beethoven in his individualism and his refusal to allow anyone to monopolize him. Here to we see his affinity to Schiller, through whose work the praise of liberty runs like a thread, and who, no less than

Beethoven, lived up to this ideal. There was a curious debate, probably by now put to one side, about whether the first word of the ode was not originally ‘Freiheit’ (freedom) rather than ‘Freude’ (joy), and was changed on the orders of the pre-revolutionary censor. But the propinquity of freedom and joy, allowing the spark to leap across, is well illustrated by a passage in Schiller’s prelude to the ‘Bride of Messina’: ‘All art is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher and more serious task than of making people happy. The highest enjoyment, however, is the freedom of the inner life of feeling in the living play of all of its powers.’ When Beethoven ten years after the Eighth Symphony and long since totally deaf, presented his Ninth to the expectant Viennese public for the first time, he must, for all his love of freedom, felt as if he were in a prison. Dieter Hildebrandt, in his study ‘Die Neunte’, writes of the composer that joy was ‘his legacy from Schiller and his trauma, it was what was missing from his life, a “goal to be most earnestly desired”, a code for a blissful state our un-blissful world, a utopia translated into music’. This u-topia, this non-place, this dreamland, became a real place in the concert hall. When people sit together to listen to music, we may experience what glimmered on the idealistic horizon of Schiller and Beethoven: ‘All people shall be brothers’, albeit at first only in the shared aesthetic experience. That the musical artwork encom passes imaginative spaces in every

individual, illuminated by the perceptible spark of artistic inspiration, does not contradict this idea of a ‘societas aesthetica’, but makes it possible in the first place.

The ability of music to address people across borders, whether these are political, linguistic or cultural, has been much invoked. The pianist and lieder accompanist Burkhard Kehring has conceived a programme for three evenings at this year’s Beethovenfest entitled ‘Divan of song’, which examines the relationship between the central European Romantic-to-contemporary lieder repertoire and the literature and music of the Near and Far East, and looks toward Persia, India and Korea. Another project also looks east from the Western cultural area. Under the motto ‘Passio – Compassio’, the international ensemble Sarband, led by Vladimir Ivanoff, are devoting themselves to the traces of suffering and passion in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach on the one hand and in early Christian Aramaic songs and the mystical hymns of Islam on the other – sublimated in a compassion and sensitivity to others through the musical presentation. This transition from earthbound heaviness to spiritual rapture is illustrated in terpsichorean fashion by the whirling meditative movements of the Mevlevi dervishes, who thus make visible what we allow art in general and music in particular to be capable of in principle: transcending borders.

But does this lofty claim of transcending boundaries through music not also harbour the danger of becoming a well-meant cliché, a naïve illusion, or even a trick of marketing strategists? Does trust in a higher aesthetic harmony following the disasters of the First and Second World Wars and countless other conflicts not come across as unworldly? Does the Divine Spark not perhaps merely ignite heart-warming self-deception? One can hardly imagine a grimmer formulation of such disillusionment than that of Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann’s novel ‘Doctor Faustus’: ‘“I have found,” he said, “that this is not to be.”’ And the first-person narrator Serenus Zeitblom, the biographer and old friend of the protagonist, pursues the question: ‘“What, Adrian, is not to be?” “The good and the noble”, he answered me, “what is called human, although it is good and noble. What people have fought for, for which they have stormed fortresses, and what those who are fulfilled have jubilantly proclaimed – that is not to be. It is being withdrawn. I want to withdraw it.” “I do not understand you, my dear fellow, not entirely. What do you wish to withdraw?” “The Ninth Symphony,” he replied. And then nothing more came, as I also waited.’ The Ninth Symphony here is code. Looking at the message of the fourth movement, it stands for the possibility of joy, hope and reconciliation in the world. In view of the greed for power and unscrupulousness on the part of states, of personal selfishness and

thoughts of short-term advantage, it is, for the composer Leverkühn, no longer permissible to bask in the sense of well-being surrounding the philanthropic statement of Beethoven’s symphony. Instead, he composes, in his final work, entitled ‘Dr. Fausti Weheklag’ (‘Dr Faustus’s Lament’) a ‘Counter-Ninth’: ‘No doubt about it, in view of Beethoven’s “Ninth”, it was written as its reverse image in the most melancholy sense of the word. But not only that it turns this more than once formally into the negative: there is therein also a negativity of the religious.’ We concertgoers today enter the hall with different preconditions and experiences from the audience two hundred years ago. We are, if anything, sceptical when it comes to so-called ‘divine sparks’, and not only in the context of Beethoven’s last symphony. The fact that an excerpt from its fourth movement has, meanwhile, been arranged as the European anthem and hence monumentalized makes it difficult to feel real devotion to the text and music. And yet all music-lovers will remember moments in which the sounds wafted them into spaces of inspiration and imagination. Theodor W. Adorno, who, as is well known, assisted Thomas Mann in not inconsiderable measure with the musical sections of ‘Doctor Faustus’, unfortunately never wrote the book on Beethoven he had planned for decades. In the numerous surviving fragments and notes, there is a quotation

from Goethe’s sketches for ‘Faust Part 1’, which Adorno considered as a ‘possible motto for a chapter’ on Beethoven’s humanity and which finely balances Leverkühn’s pessimistic view of art and the idealistically –affirmative aspiration of an aesthetic purging: ‘And joy hovers like the sound of stars / only in our dreams.’ At the concerts of the Beethovenfest Bonn the ‘star sounds of joy’ can become reality. Barbara Stach Author of the Beethovenfest Bonn

S I R

J O H N

E L I O T

G A R D I N E R

BEETHOVEN AS CENTRE OF GRAVITY

International soloists, conductors and orchestras at the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

ivine Spark’ is a term which since Beethoven’s Ninth has had to put up with a lot of interpretation attempts. To relate it to the performing artists themselves does not seem far-fetched, for after all, do we not speak of ‘stars’ or ‘starlets’ in this context? Their skill and virtuosity does seem often to have a supernatural source. What in turn the work to which the ‘divine spark’ owes its fame means for the artists can only be surmised. In any case, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a glittering and fascinating composition: a late work of genius, the pinnacle both of Beethoven’s renown and of the history of the symphony as a genre, a piece of World Cultural Heritage, used and abused by politicians – the history of the Ninth fills whole books. But is it a political work? From the point of view of its effects, Beethoven’s opus 125 could better be described as ‘global’. Commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London, first performed at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna on 7 May 1824, and dedicated to King Frederick William III of Prussia, the work has since continued its triumphal march across the whole world.

To this, we must add the unconventional combination of words (or chorus) and symphony, which Beethoven used in his Ninth for the first time. Schiller’s ode ‘To Joy’ matched Beethoven’s bourgeois-revolutionary ideas and his desire for independence from any political power. The work has nothing to do with ‘state music’, but serves to glorify liberty. It is idealistic, not political.

CYCLES, RESIDENCIES AND THE FESTIVAL FAMILY This is the reason for the attractive force which Beethoven’s Ninth, and indeed his entire œuvre, exerts on musicians and audiences alike. Bonn profits from the fact, not least because the Beethovenfest Bonn is the only Beethoven festival to be held in an authentic place. This year too, numerous artists from all over the world are making their way to Bonn in order to perform in the city where the composer was born. Many programmes are compiled exclusively for the Beethovenfest, although few are exclusively Beethoven programmes. Many works and programme concepts do however have

some relationship with our eponym. The opening concert already includes a work which in form and content relates closely to the Ninth: while in his ‘Reformation Symphony’ Felix Mendelssohn makes do without a chorus, he does use instruments to quote Lutheran chorales – the words would have been present in the minds of his (protestant) audiences. The performance of this sister work of the Ninth will be given by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, both of whom have a long established partnership with the Beethovenfest Bonn. The soloist at this concert is the French cellist Gautier Capuçon, who has also played a number of times before in Bonn. Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, which was composed in the space of a fortnight in October 1850, was the first major composition in this genre, and is characterized by Schumann’s enthusiastic mood as he embarked on his new post as municipal director of music in Düsseldorf. Another British guest orchestra is the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) with its Music Director Andris Nelsons. Nelsons has already conducted Beethoven’s Ninth once before at the Beethovenfest, at the opening concert of the 2012 festival – in 2014 he is returning with an entire Beethoven symphony cycle. Andris Nelsons, chief conductor of the CBSO since 2008, has been exuberantly praised by critics for his energycharged, romantically dominated approach to Beethoven. This interpre-

tation will offer the audience in Bonn a further reading of these magnificent works (see also the interview on pages 29 to 33). In addition to the symphonies, a cycle is also being devoted to the piano concerto genre. The performers here are the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, Artistic Partner of the MCO. The orchestra was founded by the late Claudio Abbado, a conductor from whom the musicians ‘learned the principles of attentive listening to one another and democratic collaboration in a group of independent musical personalities’ (Mark Hampson, member of the orchestra board). The pianoconcerto cycle is a central project of the MCO: from 2012 to 2015, under the title ‘The Beethoven Journey’, Beethoven’s five piano concertos and his ‘Choral Fantasy’ are being performed in more than ten countries, in Bonn for the first time as a cycle on three successive evenings (see also the interview on pages 35 to 38). Another ‘orchestra in residence’ is Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest (RPO), which is returning to Bonn in 2014 for two concerts with its young chief conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin following its great success at the 2011 festival. Yannick – as the Canadian is lovingly called in Rotterdam – had already stormed numerous concert rostrums around the world with his openness and charisma. With the RPO, Yannick Nézet-Séguin is presenting two very different programmes: on the

first evening, the orchestra will be reinforced by a piano trio, an instrumentation which few composers since Beethoven have dared to use. With the violinist Isabelle Faust, the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout we have three artists who combine solo brilliance with chamber-music precision. The second work of the evening is the tone poem ‘Ein Heldenleben’ by Richard Strauss, completed in 1898 and known for its large orchestra; the sesquicentenary of the composer’s birth falls on 11 June this year. The second concert by the RPO is devoted to Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, which was composed in Vienna in 1903 and 1904, while Mahler was engaged their as director of the Court Opera. He himself asserted that the symphony would ‘throw up puzzles’. The tragic tone, at least, seems not to reflect the life of a happily married father of two children and successful Viennese conductor and composer.

Y A N N I C K

N É Z E T - S É G U I N

The symphonic poem ‘Sinfonia Domestica’ by Richard Strauss is an unashamedly autobiographical work. It was written shortly after the tone poem ‘Ein Heldenleben’. The score is dedicated to ‘my dear wife and our son’, while its four sections are named after domestic situations. The first performance took place on 31 March 1904 at the Carnegie Hall in New York, conducted by the composer, who three years later was one of the first guest conductors of the newly formed Städtisches Orchester Bonn (today the

Beethoven Orchester Bonn). In this Richard Strauss jubilee year it is only logical that this orchestra should perform the ‘Sinfonia Domestica’ under its General Music Director Stefan Blunier. It is preceded by two works which are hardly any more recent in date, but far more avantgarde in style: Rudi Stephan is among the exponents of the early Neue Sachlichkeit (‘New Sobriety’) and left a small but impressive œuvre, including the 1912 ‘Music for Orchestra’ in one movement. It forms a bridge to Paul Hindemith’s ‘Chamber Music no. 5’, whose demanding solo part is played by the Norwegian violist Lars Anders Tomter. Like the works of Strauss and Mahler, Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony is also biographically motivated. The name by which it is widely known, ‘the New World symphony’, relates to Dvořák’s stay in New York, where he was Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America for three years. He himself said of the source of inspiration for his symphony: ‘But please leave out the nonsense that I used Indian or American motifs, because that is a lie. I only wrote in the spirit of American folk song.’ The piece, now a genuine cult work of symphonic music, was composed in 1893, the year in which the Munich Philharmonic was formed. They will be playing the work in Bonn conducted by Lorin Maazel. Like Dvořák, Lorin Maazel also worked in New York, where he was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 2002 to 2009, the same orchestra that premiered Dvořák’s Ninth on 16 De-

cember 1893 in the Carnegie Hall. Lorin Maazel, for more than 50 years one of the world’s most highly fêted conductors, was in charge of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2002. In 2012 he returned to the Bavarian capital as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.

YOUNG ORCHESTRAS Like the Munich Philharmonic, all the orchestras mentioned so far have long traditions behind them. In recent years, few new orchestras have been formed, not least because of financial difficulties. This makes it all the more astonishing that the last few years have seen the birth of two new publicly financed symphony orchestras. Above the Arctic Circle, the world’s most northerly orchestra was founded in Norway in 2009: the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, administered by the municipalities of Bodø and Tromsø, and conducted by Christian Lindberg from Sweden, is known to festival-goers in Bonn from its concert with the Beethoven Orchester Bonn in 2013. As last year, Lindberg is appearing this year too as composer, trombonist and conductor, and continuing his musical ‘Kundraan’ narrative. The programme is rounded off by two symphonic works of the late-Romantic period – a composition by the Norwegian Ole Olsen and the Fourth Symphony by Tchaikovsky. The second newly formed orchestra is also based in northern Europe.: ‘100

Musicians, 10 Countries, 1 Idea: BSYP – A New Voice in the North!’ The Baltic Sea Youth Philharmonic (BSYP), which was set up by the Estonian Kristjan Järvi in 2008, knows no borders, either geographical or between genres. And so it will be taken the audience in Bonn on a trip through the countries of origin of its members: from Russia the journey proceeds via Norway and Finland to Lithuania and Latvia. The Polish-Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, who already played at the 2012 Beethovenfest Bonn, was invited as soloist. Born in 1995, he has been hailed in the press for his brilliant and musically confident performances and the naturalness of his playing technique, which positively predestine him for Grieg’s highly romantic piano concerto.

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Kristjan Järvi comes from a famous Estonian musical family – his father Neeme and brother Paavo are also conductors, the latter being very well known in Bonn. Together with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, whose artistic director he is, Paavo Järvi has been ‘artist in residence’ at the Beethovenfest Bonn since 2003. He has already conducted this orchestra in numerous magnificent concerts here. For the final concert of 2014, Paavo Järvi has brought together works that are particularly tailored to the diaphanous chamber sound of the ensemble. In addition to the D-major Serenade by Brahms,

which, lasting a good 40 minutes and requiring a large number of players, verges on the symphonic, we shall hear Krzysztof Penderecki’s ‘Sinfonietta per archi’, a piece purely for strings. The evening’s soloist is the Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos, who, following his celebrated solo recital at the 2011 Beethovenfest 2011, is returning to Bonn for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3. Family ties also link Tanja and Christian Tetzlaff, who give their name to the Tetzlaff Quartett: they are brother and sister. It was their passion for chamber music that brought them together as a string quartet with Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister in 1994. And although as successful soloists they only play together infrequently, the ensemble quickly developed into one of the most soughtafter string quartets of the age. The programme in Bonn includes two demanding late works: Schubert’s last string quartet and Beethoven’s opus 132, both written at about the same time. They are radical works, which draw on the summation of all the acoustic and formal experiments of their creators.

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Further late works by Beethoven in this genre can be heard in the Beethoven string quartet cycle by the longestablished Borodin Quartet (see also pages 40 to 41), whose many years of experience in playing together have created a particularly homogeneous impression: ‘Here we have not four individuals playing together, but one,

playing a single instrument of sixteen strings with a high degree of virtuosity.’ (14 October 2013, FAZ, Gerhard Rohde) Wolfgang and Sebastian Knauer, who together have developed an extremely successful concert format, are also closely related: while Wolfgang is responsible for the concept and choice of text, his son Sebastian taps the ivories. The first of their two ‘Word Meets Music’ programmes this year is devoted to the Congress of Vienna, which began 200 years ago this year. With documents from 1814 and modern politico-literary texts, the two re-tell the story of the Congress, with the not altogether apolitical composer Lud wig van Beethoven in the thick of it. Hannelore Elsner, an award-winning actress, will be lending her voice to the world of the Congress. With the same performers supplemented by the Danish Ensemble Carion, a further ‘Word Meets Music’ programme will be devoted to the genre of the ‘bagatelle’, without which, since Beethoven, the concert scene has been unthinkable.

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The Congress of Vienna is theme of a further concert, for which the Viennese conductor and organist Martin Haselböck has brought together three works from Beethoven’s middle period: looking back to a concert held on 27 February 1814, the Orchester Wiener Akademie is combining the musical battle painting ‘Wellington’s Victory or the Battle of Vittoria’ with the Eighth Symphony, which was first performed on the same occasion. The two pieces will

be preceded by the likewise politically significant incidental music for Goethe’s ‘Egmont’. In Bonn, the part of Egmont will be spoken by the American-Austrian actor August Zirner, who is very well known in Germany from his film and TV appearances. 24

PIANO, VIOLIN AND LIEDER RECITALS The pianist Sebastian Knauer will be showing off his solo talents by bringing together classics of the piano repertoire. They are arranged around Beethoven as the ‘centre of gravity’: his second ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’ will also form the chronological centre of the programme. Herbert Schuch, born in Romania in 1979 has included both Beethoven’s final sonata – likewise a classic – and his Bagatelles op. 119 hat in his sophisticated programme. In 2005, Schuch won three first prizes at international piano competitions – an achievement that deserves the highest recognition and paved his way to the top. While the path of Josef Bulva was not marked out by three competitions, it has been characterized by three new starts. Aged just 21, he was appointed ‘state soloist’ of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, in 1972 he defected to Luxembourg to build a career as a pianist on this side of the Iron Curtain, and in March 1996 he fell on an icy road and injured his left hand, so that it seemed as if his career was at an

end. After a break of 13 years, and thanks to both a small medical miracle and iron discipline on his part, Josef Bulva played his way back on to the concert stage. Thomas Zehetmair has an impressively stringent path behind him. Known the world over as a successful violinist and conductor, in Bonn he is playing the highly virtuoso 24 Caprices op. 1 by Niccolò Paganini, which he also recorded in 2009: ‘These pieces are not studies, nor are they unemotional pyrotechnics, but improvised character pieces full of poetry and fantasy.’ The Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos also has a special relationship with Paganini: in 1988 he won the Paganini Competition. In Bonn he is playing, together with the pianist Enrico Pace, all ten Beethoven violin sonatas on three evenings. The two musicians are combining them on each occasion with one of the 24 Préludes for Violin and Piano op. 46 by the Russian composer Lera Auerbach. Kavakos, who recently successfully recorded the sonatas, describes his access to Beethoven’s music thus: ‘You always have to discover something new – not in order to literally invent something, but to serve the work even better.’ The mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier, who in July 2013 won the special prize category of the newly created Bavarian Music Prize as a ‘passionate interpreter of Wagner’, is an extremely emotional artist personality. Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler are two

fixtures in her repertoire – at the concert in Bonn, she is bringing together three great lieder cycles by the two composers, who tell of pain and yearning in their late-Romantic musical language, and who, in their radical openness, look forward far into the twentieth century. Waltraud Meier, who is appearing at the Beethovenfest Bonn for the first time in 2014, said in an interview: ‘Song is the consummate expression of a personality. A mirror held up to oneself.’ Annette Semrau Dramaturge of the Beethovenfest Bonn

SAT 6 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE OPENING CONCERT

Gautier Capuçon Cello London Symphony Orchestra Sir John Eliot Gardiner Conductor Works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann 10

WED 10 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Leonidas Kavakos Violin Enrico Pace Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Lera Auerbach 14

FRI 12 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Leonidas Kavakos Violin Enrico Pace Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Lera Auerbach

W A L T R A U D

M E I E R

SAT 13 SEP

8 PM

203 S A T 2 0 S E P

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

BEETHOVENHALLE

Leonidas Kavakos Violin Enrico Pace Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Lera Auerbach

Münchner Philharmoniker Lorin Maazel Conductor Works by Antonín Dvoˇrák and Johannes Brahms

SAT 13 SEP

8 PM

6 PM

BURG NAMEDY

Kölner Kammerorchester Alexander Janiczek Leader Works by Igor Stravinsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Xaver Süßmayr

Sebastian Knauer Piano Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert

TUE 16 SEP

8 PM

7 PM

Josef Bulva Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin and Karol Szymanowski

Thomas Zehetmair Violin Niccolò Paganini: 24 Caprices for solo violin op. 1 202 W E D 1 7 S E P

SUN 21 SEP PETERSBERG

8 PM

ST. HILDEGARD MEHLEM

SUN 21 SEP

KURSAAL BAD HONNEF

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8 PM

TUE 23 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Isabelle Faust Violin Jean-Guihen Queyras Cello Kristian Bezuidenhout Piano Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Strauss

Herbert Schuch Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven, György Ligeti and Frederic Rzewski

THU 18 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Jan Lisiecki Piano Baltic Sea Youth Philharmonic Kristjan Järvi Conductor Works by Modest Mussorgski, Edvard Grieg, Jean Sibelius and others

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor

FRI 26 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

FRI 19 SEP

Tetzlaff Quartett Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Lars Anders Tomter Viola Beethoven Orchester Bonn Stefan Blunier Conductor Works by Richard Strauss, Rudi Stephan and Paul Hindemith

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SAT 27 SEP

8 PM

OPERNHAUS

Waltraud Meier Mezzosoprano Joseph Breinl Piano Works by Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner

52 S U N 2 8 S E P

11 AM

HOTEL KÖNIGSHOF

Hannelore Elsner Recitation Ensemble Carion Sebastian Knauer Piano Wolfgang Knauer Compilation of texts Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and György Ligeti 55 T U E 3 0 S E P

8 PM

STADTMUSEUM SIEGBURG

Hannelore Elsner Recitation Sebastian Knauer Piano Wolfgang Knauer Compilation of texts Works by Ludwig van Beethoven 56 W E D 1 O C T

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

August Zirner Recitation Kirsten Blaise Soprano Orchester Wiener Akademie Martin Haselböck Conductor Works by Ludwig van Beethoven 58

THU 2 OCT

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra Christian Lindberg Trombone, Conductor Works by Ole Olsen, Christian Lindberg and Peter Tchaikovsky 60

FRI 3 OCT

6 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE FINAL CONCERT

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Arcadi Volodos Piano Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen Paavo Järvi Conductor Works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Krzysztof Penderecki

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Interview with Andris Nelsons on the Beethoven Symphony Cycle

hristine Lemke-Matwey (CLM): Who is Ludwig van Beethoven for you, personally? Andris Nelsons (AN): I don’t know whether one can have a personal relationship with such a genius, such a giant … CLM: All the same, it was works by Beethoven that you selected for your conducting debut … AN: I must have been mad. The ‘Coriolanus Overture’ and his Second Symphony. Who is Beethoven? A revolutionary. A fighter. One who stands above things – politically, aesthetically, historically. Beethoven cannot be reduced to anything, it is very difficult to sum him up. Sure, he was a German by birth, but does that mean he wrote German music? No. Of course he started by dedicating the ‘Eroica’ to Napoleon, but does that mean his music is political propaganda? No. Non-musical categories are not appropriate to understanding him – and musical ones not either, actually! In his music everything is set aside – love, happiness, death, despair – for all time.

CLM: The proverbial classic? AN: Yes, but not for sitting comfortably on the sofa. Beethoven doesn’t leave us in peace, he constantly challenges us. All those who concern themselves with his music with the symphonies, the string quartets, the piano sonatas, must take a position. This is not meant in a negative sense, but there are composers with whom one can, as a conductor, let things go a little. That’s not possible with Beethoven. He constantly puts the ball in our court, whether we’re the performers or the audience: decide! choose! shape! That is strenuous, but rewarding. CLM: Have you any idea of him as a person? AN: I don’t know if I want to have one (laughs). He can’t have been a particularly pleasant person to have around, from all I’ve read about him. A difficult, gruff, coarse guy. Also very masculine, in his way. Maybe Beethoven and Richard Wagner weren’t so very different. Only: Beethoven is a tragic figure, and Wagner isn’t. A composer who loses his hearing while still young? What a bitter irony of fate! And what a struggle!

CLM: Where do you see traces of this struggle in his symphonies?

AN: Oh, everywhere! In the Finale of the Fifth, for example. This movement can be interpreted as individual triumph, in the sense of: I have composed a symphony, although I’ll never be able to hear it. In my opinion there is far more in it than that. (sings a few bars of the main motif): namely the force of the universe. A person can overcome himself, says Beethoven. Or the Pastoral: it’s not about illustrating nature, but about the most intimate, most fragile emotions. Beethoven was anything but open-hearted, and you hear that here. Like Pan, he lurks in the bushes and talks to God. That may seem like pathos, but he was one of the elect. Such conversations are not given to everyone, and that’s true also of the third movement of the Ninth, his farewell-to-the-world music, or the clarinet solo in the funeral march in the Seventh. For me that’s pure metaphysics, a vision of Paradise, even more than ‘Freude, schöner Götterfunken’. CLM: When you consider Beethoven’s symphonic development, from the First to the Ninth: is it logical and consistent? Or are there twists and turns? AN: The first two symphonies still suggest that here we have the next classical composer coming along – at least from the gesture. But at the same time, if you look more closely

at the notes: the very first symphony begins with a dissonance, Haydn would never have done that! Nor could the Allegro ever have been by Haydn or Mozart, this harsh military rhythm. The Third then takes a giant leap, with it, Beethoven catapults himself into an entirely different world. Into a world which of course bears the marks of Napoleon and the political events, and which at the same time says: The true hero is the artist. You can see that already in the name, ‘Eroica’, and also in the length of the symphony. The composer takes possession of reality. 1803/1804 was also the time, though, when Beethoven started to go deaf. He realized he would not have a happy life. What a thing to realize! CLM: But in the Fourth, didn’t he write precisely in the face of this? A smaller, lighter symphony in a limpid B flat major? AN: I don’t agree there. The introduction to the first movement: is there any darker music than that? For me, it’s pure depression. But then Beethoven takes himself by the scruff of his neck: Listen how I can fight! This first theme may sound like Haydn or even Rossini – and yet is anything but just cheerful and merry. It tastes bitter and is very uncomfortable for the orchestra to play. And what the bassoon has to do in the Finale is not very nicely written! It’s as though Beethoven wanted to let the musicians feel something of his own disquiet.

CLM: A disquiet that the Fifth, a year later, brings to a head? The so-called ‘Symphony of Destiny’ in C minor, with a motif in the first movement that to this day is known the world over and that comes across as a signature for everything that’s dramatic? AN: The popularity of this symphony is certainly not without its problems, on the one hand. How is a conductor ever supposed to counter that? On the other hand, with this opening, this emblematic di-di-di-da, Beethoven throws his torch far into the future – that’s something we shouldn’t forget. This is true in particular also for the transition from the third to the fourth movement: what we hear there isn’t pathos, but defiance, anger, rage impetuosity. Today we’d think the composer was high on drugs. Or he was schizophrenic – which he wasn’t. The victory of the music at the end isn’t a triumph, but an acknowledgement. The artist knows the pose of the victor, but he also knows that it is only a pose. Just as he knows all the dances, of course, and in the Seventh, dances as though he needed a new hip! CLM: At the Beethovenfest Bonn you’ll be conducting all nine symphonies in chronological order. There are other conductors who prefer a division into groups, shorter symphonies with longer ones, early symphonies with later …

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AN: Forming groups may sell the concerts better (laughs) … I understand chronology as a kind of journey. We stick to Beethoven’s heels, through the highs and lows of his life. And we face the highs and lows of our own lives. That’s what it’s about – not the right or wrong tempo, not historically informed or modern performance practice. Interpreting Beethoven means confronting oneself. That’s something you have to endure.

Annette Dasch Soprano (10 Sep) Lioba Braun Contralto (10 Sep) Toby Spence Tenor (10 Sep) Vuyani Mlinde Bass (10 Sep) CBSO Chorus (10 Sep) City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Andris Nelsons Conductor 3

SUN 7 SEP

7 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major op. 21 Symphony No. 2 in D major op. 36 Symphony No. 3 in E flat major op. 55 ('Sinfonia eroica')

The interview with Christine Lemke-Matwey took place on 16 January 2014.

MON 8 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major op. 60 Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67 7

TUE 9 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F major op. 68 ('Pastorale') Symphony No. 7 in A major op. 92 9

WED 10 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 in F major op. 93 Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125

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Interview with Leif Ove Andsnes on the Beethoven Piano Concert Cycle

om Service (TS): By the time you get to Bonn, Leif Ove, your ‘Beethoven Journey’ will been under way for more than two years – but these concerts will be the first time you will have played all five concertos and the ‘Choral Fantasy’ in such a short space of time. Will that be a special experience, even in the context of all of the performances of Beethoven’s concertos you have given since 2011? Leif Ove Andsnes (LOA): I’m really looking forward to playing the concertos in just four days. But I don’t see the pieces as a cycle. And Beethoven never intended them that way, because they are such wonderfully diverse pieces, as I have been discovering. But in Bonn, playing these six masterpieces, including the ‘Choral Fantasy’, it will give audiences a chance to see the fantastic development in all of them, from Number 2, the first he wrote, to the Fifth. TS: So how do you think of, and interpret, that development, in terms of Beethoven’s personal achievement and the bigger story of the history of the concerto? LOA: I think the B flat major concerto, No. 2, is much influenced by both Haydn and Mozart: in all those short

phrases, those surprising contrasts, especially in the first movement, and the humour in the finale, I feel very much the influence of Haydn. But there’s also a legacy of how Mozart had developed the piano concerto in the way Beethoven has the piano introduce a new theme into the argument in the first notes I play. That’s exactly what Mozart did in his last few concertos – a musical technique that also introduces the idea that the soloist is an individual, playing against the masses. That was a new psychology for the concerto, and that’s what Beethoven follows and continues. And through the five concertos, his ambition becomes greater and greater. He creates a kind of epic musical story-telling in the rest of the concertos: you really feel that he starts in the Third Concerto, the C minor piece, with a different approach to what’s gone before; there’s a feeling in that piece of something very important that needs to be said and communicated. The Fourth has a unique quality of lyricism, and the completely revolutionary idea of starting the piece with the piano solo. And then, of course, there’s the Fifth, which is so important for what we

know as the romantic heroic piano concerto. The piece was so loved in the 19th century – Liszt made his debut with the E flat major concerto in Paris – and because of the Fifth, suddenly there was this idea of the piano concerto as a kind of gladiator stage for the piano, which continued through the rest of the 19th century – for better or for worse! Everything that came later and that we love so much, from Brahms to Rachmaninov, is influenced by how Beethoven developed the form. TS: Part of your own story over the last few years has been to play the concertos – including of course the First, the C major piece, that you hadn’t played before this Journey began – in different contexts, with large symphony orchestras and conductors, as well as working with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom you direct the concertos from the keyboard. What have those diverse situations and ways of playing these pieces revealed to you? LOA: I’ve learnt a lot from playing them with big symphony orchestras and conductors like Herbert Blomstedt, who I performed with in Philadelphia. Naturally, that was very, very different to the way I play these pieces with the MCO. But it’s been worthwhile to look at this music from different angles. You can really wrestle with these pieces because they have such a strong spine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have clear ideas about what I want to do with them. And my ideal comes pretty close to being

realised with the MCO. That’s because they have a combination of lightness, of contrast, as well as being able to bring out the revolutionary aspect of these pieces without ever becoming heavy. They respond so wonderfully to the different demands of sound in these pieces, and they give me ideas that I had never thought of. TS: Fundamentally, how do you think of these pieces in performance? Are you attempting to put them in the context of the time and place of their composition, or playing them, as it were, out of time? LOA: For me, it’s always most important that the concertos are relevant to us now. But of course we have learnt a lot from the new approaches to this music over the last 30 or 40 years. My generation grew up with Harnoncourt’s set of Beethoven’s Symphonys, for example, rather than Karajan’s – or maybe both! For me, we’re now at a very interesting point in the history of performance. All of these new ideas, of the early music movement, have been integrated into an orchestra like the MCO, so it’s not something one has to talk about much in rehearsal. They are really awake as musicians, so it’s all available to them, questions of vibrato, of colour, of lightness. That means we’re not trying to recreate something from 1799, but simply making the pieces alive for here and now. For example, there was never a question whether or not I would play on a Steinway or a fortepiano. I feel that we live in such a different society now,

and our halls we’re playing in are so much bigger, that it’s very difficult to imagine the pieces working on a fortepiano. And simply, I love the possibilities of a Steinway. I can’t help it! And I think that Beethoven would have done too. It’s a cliché to say so, but I really think that’s true: he was so delighted with all of the improvements to the piano during his lifetime. I have a feeling that all those obsessions with trills and vibrations in his later piano music mean that he wanted more sound from the piano. So he would have been thrilled with a good Steinway. TS: As well as the concerts and the residencies with the MCO as part of the ‘Beethoven Journey’, you’ve also been working together on an education project with deaf children around these pieces called ‘Feel the Music’. LOA: When I first heard about it, I thought: that’s so strange, so radical, how can it work? What will these profoundly deaf children take from the experience? But they get so much from it, and they are delighted to be part of a creative musical project: we show them our instruments, and they play a little bit themselves, and I make them sit under the piano and feel the vibrations of the soundboard and the strings. They sit with us during the orchestral rehearsals, and they can feel so much through the floor, it’s astonishing. And at the end, we invite them to conduct, and we improvise with chords and improvise to their gestures. And what is amazing,

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and humbling – especially thinking about Beethoven’s own deafness – is that the kids sit through a whole twohour concert, and are completely fascinated. It’s a wonderful project, and I’m very touched to have been part of it: »Feel the Music« has expanded my horizons of how music is perceived.

WDR Rundfunkchor (27 Sep) Mahler Chamber Orchestra Leif Ove Andsnes Piano, Conductor 204 T H U 2 5 S E P

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 2 in B flat major op. 19 Igor Stravinsky: 'Apollon Musagète'. Ballet music for string orchestra Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 4 in G major op. 58

38 The interview with Tom Service took place on 15 January 2014 in London.

206 S A T 2 7 S E P

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Igor Stravinsky: 'Dumbarton Oaks'. Concerto in E flat for string orchestra Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 3 in C minor op. 37 Arnold Schönberg: 'Friede auf Erden' for mixed choir a cappella op. 13 Ludwig van Beethoven: Fantasia for piano, chorus and orchestra in C minor op. 80 ('Choral Fantasy') 207

SUN 28 SEP

6 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Igor Stravinsky: Concerto in D for string orchestra Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 1 in C major op. 15 Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 5 in E flat major op. 73 ('The Emperor')

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Conclusion of the Beethoven String Quartet Cycle with the Borodin Quartet

A s the high artistic quality of the Borodin Quartet speaks for itself, we are collating here some of the concert reviews for the Beethoven string quartet cycle from the Beethovenfest Bonn 2012 and 2013 as a foretaste of the four concerts of the cycle at this year’s festival. ‘The Borodin Quartet has been in existence for 65 years, and of course its members have changed over the years (…), but what has not changed is the very high level at which it performs – a powerful, sonorous and altogether colourful sound creates the impression that what we have here is not four individuals playing, but rather that just one is playing a sixteen-stringed instrument in highly virtuoso fashion.’

‘When at the end of the Eighth String Quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich the last of three largo movements quietly dies away, this is an almost transcendental experience for the listener. At least when the sound hovers so disembodied in the room as the Moscowbased Borodin Quartet celebrated it at the fully sold-out concert in the Redoute in Bad Godesberg.’ (26 September 2012, General-Anzeiger (Bonn), Bernhard Hartmann)

(14 October 2013, Frankfurter Allgemeine

‘Naturally, over the course of the long history of the Borodin Quartet the members have changed (…). The outstandingly clean intonation and the interpretations, absolutely true to the scores and almost putting the personalities of the performers in the background, have not.’

Zeitung, Gerhard Rohde)

(27 September 2012, Bonner Rundschau, Felicitas Zink)

‘Always striking: the attractive homogeneous sound which has never gone off the rails and which the four musicians – always keeping their composure – have never taken to undue extremes.’ (28/29 September 2013, General-Anzeiger (Bonn), Guido Krawinkel)

‘(…) with gripping expressivity (…)’ (30 September 2013, General-Anzeiger (Bonn), Jan Crummenerl)

‘(…) this interpretation had class, passion and composure.’ (2 October 2012, Bonner Rundschau, Jürgen Bieler)

Borodin Quartet Quartet in Residence 2012â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2014

Ruben Aharonian Violin Sergey Lomovsky Violin Igor Naidin Viola Vladimir Balshin Cello

MON 8 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

String Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, Dmitri Shostakovich and Nikolai Miaskowski

TUE 9 SEP

8 PM

LA REDOUTE

String Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, Igor Raykhelson and German Galynin

THU 11 SEP

8 PM

STADTMUSEUM SIEGBURG

String Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich

SUN 14 SEP

6 PM

ST. HILDEGARD MEHLEM

String Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich

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K U S S

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WEEKEND OF THE QUARTETS

String Quartets 1814 – 1914 – 2014

he string quartet has had a curious and thought-provoking history. Its beginnings lie in the milieu of good entertainment in which in the mid-eighteenth century mostly aristocratic music-lovers were involved, either as listeners or as performers themselves. It was Joseph Haydn’s achievement that, from the practice of the ‘divertimento’, by dint of enhanced compositional aspirations and aesthetic experiments he created a genre which to this day represents the epitome of chamber music. With his compositions, Beethoven set a standard which required professional musicians for its performance. In his final works for four strings, Franz Schubert mobilized the energy of boundary experiences: he pushed the potential of the formation to its very limit, forcing it into spheres of sound in which even an orchestra would be challenged. His last quartets are symphonies entrusted to four individuals, just as the burden of the age seemed to the composer and his friends often seemed to be placed on the creative, forward-looking individual. No less remarkable than its history, however, is the fact that the high regard in which the string quartet is held has been maintained to this day –

through the era of modernism, of avantgarde experimentation and the discovery of electronic creative possibilities. The fact that today more young quartets are not only being formed than ever before, but also asserting themselves in musical life, says two things: artists are seeking for musical intensity, and listeners are tending to discover, in the allegedly ‘elitist’ character of chamber music, a gift which unites mental concentration with intuitive enjoyment.

CO-OPERATION, NOT COMPETITION Three young ensembles have been invited to Bonn by the Beethovenfest for third weekend in September. They come from different parts of Europe: the Bennewitz Quartet was founded at the Academy of Music in Prague in 1998, the Heath Quartet at the Royal Northern College in Manchester in 2002, the Quatuor Zaïde in Paris in 2009. They sprung to mind as a result of their cleverly compiled programmes, their committed playing, and their desire for musical perfection, seeking to do justice to the particular features of every work. Thus they won prizes that meant something, and knew how to win over audiences and critics alike.

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They are collaborating with the Berlinbased Kuss Quartett, which has been in existence for 25 years, having been formed by the violinists Jana Kuss and Oliver Wille as 14-year-olds in 1989, the year of German and European hopes. With their studies under Walter Levin and a year with the Cleveland Quartet, they created important perspectives for their own artistic development. They are now, in their turn, passing on their experience to younger fellow-musicians. This reflects a new spirit among top ensembles: they determine their mutual relationships not on the basis of competition, but of their common concern and of reciprocal inspiration – to their own advantage, to be sure, but above all for the benefit of their audiences.

PATHS OF COMMUNICATION The new style of communication is reflected by the concert configurations during the quartet weekend in Bonn. The ensembles are not each giving their own concerts, but working together in different groupings, each of them playing one work (or two shorter pieces) at each event, and where more players are needed, as in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘Phantasy Quintet’ or Arnold Schoenberg’s sextet ‘Verklärte Nacht’, musicians from another formation will supplement the main ensemble. They are also pursuing different ways of putting the music across. In addition to the tried-and-tested concert form, which will prepared by an introduction, they are offering a

concert for schoolchildren which will leave sufficient time for mutual dialogue. And with its programme, the ‘teatime concert’ on Sunday afternoon has something of the character of the serenade from which the string quartet emancipated itself, historically, and with which composers liked to flirt. Something special is promised by the comparative performance in which the Bennewitz Quartet and the Quatuor Zaïde will each play their own interpretation of Leoš Janáček’s First Quartet, and then justify their approach. They thus add depth to the important insight that no musical artwork has a sound in itself: it only ever arises through the subjectivity of the performers, who appropriate the objectivity of the written score and pass it on. In the person of Valentin Erben, the cellist of the Alban Berg Quartett, an experienced connoisseur of the material takes on the presentation of these rare insights into art.

HISTORICAL CIRCLES OF EVENTS The four ensembles are concentrating the repertoire in three hundred-year steps, symbolized in this year full of commemorations by the dates 1814, 1914 and 2014. Seen from the point of view of the history of the quartet, the oldest group of works dates from the first plateau of the genre, namely the development from Haydn to Schubert. Beethoven represents its centre. His F minor Quartet op. 95, which received

its first performance in May 1814, forms the threshold to his own late work on the one hand, and on the other to Schubert’s quasi-orchestral view of chamber music. The second group of works circles around the transition to modernism, which in this context means above all the redetermination of the relationship between art and life: in individual existence (Schoenberg’s sextet ‘Verklärte Nacht’), in the co-existence of groups and peoples (Josef Suk’s ‘Meditation’, Béla Bartók’s and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s quartets, Janáček’s studies of the melody of speech as compositional foundations), in the opening up to international entertainment culture (Erwin Schulhoff) and the claims of art vis-àvis society. In a study of the persecution of music and musicians under the Nazi and Stalinist dictatorships, the Russian-American musician and scholar Boris Schwartz predicted that the one day the twentieth century would be called the century of migration. He was proved right – and far beyond the period and the professional group that he had in mind. The new works for string quartet at this festival within a festival address the theme of Schwartz’s insight from various angles. When the Prague composer Slavomír Hořínka began to work on his ‘Songs of Immigrants’, he explored ‘musical stations, in which I might condense the rich variety of various vernacular traditions into a compact statement. The tragedy off Lampedusa on 3 October 2013 changed my concept fundamentally. Of

the 370 victims, more than half came from Eritrea. Accordingly, the material of the composition now comes from the traditional music of different ethnic groups in Eritrea, natural sounds from Lampedusa, and snapshots in all their harshness.’ For Oliver Schneller, migration was the path to life. Born in Cologne, he grew up in Dublin, Khartoum, Brussels, Bonn and Manila, studied first in Bonn, then in Boston and at Columbia University in New York. He is characterized by openness, openness to different musical languages, to other art forms such as literature, the visual arts and architecture. Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the emigrants of whom Boris Schwartz spoke. In 1992 she left Russia to move to the vicinity of Hamburg. In her works, hearing and seeing often intermesh. The light score in the Fourth String Quartet recalls composers of early modernism, who, like Alexander Scriabin, sought to break down barriers between different art genres. The synopsis of the arts creates a link between the different eras. Habakuk Traber Freelance writer and musicologist, Berlin

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Z A 誰 D E

Kuss Quartett Jana Kuss Violin Oliver Wille Violin William Coleman Viola Mikayel Hakhnazaryan Cello Bennewitz Quartet Jakub Fišer Violin Štˇ epán Ježek Violin Jiˇrí Pinkas Viola Štˇ epán Doležal Cello Heath Quartet Oliver Heath Violin Cerys Jones Violin Gary Pomeroy Viola Christopher Murray Cello Quatuor Zaïde Charlotte Juillard Violin Pauline Fritsch Violin Sarah Chenaf Viola Juliette Salmona Cello FRI 19 SEP

3 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS CONCERT FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS

String Quartets by Joseph Haydn, Erwin Schulhoff, Belá Bartók, John Bennett and Harrison Birtwistle

FRI 19 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

String Quartets by Franz Schubert, Josef Suk, Oliver Schneller and Arnold Schönberg

SAT 20 SEP

4 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS COMPARATIVE INTERPRETATION

String Quartet No. 1 ('Kreutzer Sonata') by Leoš Janáˇ cek, presented by Valentin Erben

SAT 20 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

String Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonín Dvoˇrák and Slavomír Hoˇrínka 36

SUN 21 SEP

4 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS TEATIME CONCERT

Works by Hugo Wolf, Belá Bartók and Ralph Vaughan Williams 40

SUN 21 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

String Quartets by Joseph Haydn, Sofia Gubaidulina and Franz Schubert

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THE MAGIC OF THE FIRST TIME

First performance and canonization then and now

e read new literary publications, we visit exhibitions of modern art, we go to see new films and new plays, and we take an interest in contemporary architecture. But we have problems with new music. Why? After all, here too we are contemporaries, and is contemporary music less varied, exciting, enlightening, sensuous or pleasurable? Why then, when it comes to music, are we so timid, so in love with the past? Must we envy the audience who had the privilege, as the first eye-witnesses, and ear-witnesses, of experiencing the first performances of immortal masterpieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Verdi or Wagner? What were the feelings of the listeners at the ‘Grosse musikalische Akademie’, which Ludwig van Beethoven staged on 22 December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, at which both his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies as well as parts of the Mass in C major and the ‘Choral Fantasy’ and, not least, his Fourth Piano Concerto with himself as soloist were all performed for the first time? This was without any doubt a highlight of musical history, with consequences for the entire further development of the symphony and concerto genres. But the audience were totally overburdened by this mammoth programme, which is why we should

refrain from overhasty romanticization of the past. For what we admire today as ‘classical music’ was the contemporary music of its day, and was also experienced thus. Beethoven’s late works were received by contemporaries, as we see from numerous reviews, as ‘alien, dark, confused’, ‘far exceeding the bounds of the usual’, ‘difficult to grasp’, ‘fissured’, ‘monstrous’, ‘quaint’, ‘eccentric’ and ‘incomprehensible, like Chinese’. This gives us something to think about, and suggests that those who don’t want to know about new music understand nothing of the old, because they ignore the potential for innovation that made the old music the new music of its day. It is of the essence of European art music of the last 800 years that its techniques have undergone constant change, extension and innovation. Within longer or shorter periods of time, prevailing ideas, norms and rules were continually being replaced by new, often contrasting ideas, which then, in their turn, were displaced by others. Precisely Beethoven was an outstanding representative of this ‘tradition of the revolutionary’ (Carl Dahlhaus), whose effects can be traced via Wagner, Brahms and Mahler all the

way to the new music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. New and old always stood, and stand, in a close mutual relationship, for ‘new’ is a relative term: nothing is new for ever. The new is totally inconceivable without the old, because the new contrasts with the old and the old only becomes old when the new appears, although it was once new itself. Unlike traditionally static musical cultures, like the Asian, European musical history is characterized by a tradition of ongoing break with tradition. This heritage, on which Beethoven left such a mark, is being continued by the Beethovenfest Bonn, not least through its commissioning of compositions from contemporary composers. As in Beethoven’s day, first performances of new works of various styles still provide ample opportunity both for incomprehension and perplexity and for fulfilled, enlightening and pleasurable listening experiences. Representative of the international differentiation and many voices of today’s new music, the Beethovenfest 2014 is offering, alongside a number of twentieth-century works, eight new pieces by composers of the middle and younger generations from India, Korea, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Turkey: by Param Vir, Hannah Hanbiel Choi, Myung-Sun Lee, Philipp Maintz, Helmut Oehring, Alexandre Ouzounoff, Martin Smolka and Tolga Yayalar. In his essay ‘Neue Musik, veraltete Musik, Stil und Gedanke’ (1930/1946) raised the fundamental question of ‘What is new music?’ in order then

(amazingly for one of the founding fathers of modern music) to answer with references to old music: ‘What is new music? Obviously it has to be music, which, although it is still music, differs in essence from music composed earlier. Obviously it has to express something that has not yes been expressed in music. Obviously, in higher music, only those things are worth representing that have never been represented before. There is no great artwork that does not put across a new message to mankind; there is no great artist who fails in this respect. This is the code of honour of all the great artists, and consequently we shall find in all great works that new thing that never fades, whether it is by Josquin des Prés, by Bach or Haydn, or by any other great master. For art is new art.’ While Schoenberg answered the question ‘What is new music?’ using the criteria of differentness, originality, ‘first-time-ness’ and relevance to human history, he extended his answer at the same time to a definition of art generally, by discovering the same claim to novelty in all ‘great masters’ and in fact generally identifying novelty and art. For real, that is to day ‘great’ art is for Schoenberg always ‘new’ art. But, conversely, not all ‘new’ art is automatically ‘great’ art. The decision on that is only made by complex selection mechanisms, which among other things led to the situation where of the totality of music written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, currently a tiny residue of operas, symphonies, concertos, quartets, lieder, choral works,

organ works and piano works are still in the repertoire today. New music is subject to the same selection process, although the active selection and passive forgetting of music have been transformed by the technological recording, storage and reproduction possibilities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, all the way to mass media and the internet. In addition, works canonized by music history are not necessarily identical with those works particularly present in musical life on account of their particular popularity. Canonization and repertoire-formation are, rather, two different, albeit related, judgement processes: collective, dynamic and on principle not conclusive. All the protagonists of musical life are involved with different effect, the audience no less than composers, performers, impresarios, institutions, educational establishments, scholars, journalists, the media, the music industry, and technological developments. Like all historiography, all canonization of selected master or key works is conditioned by the age. Alongside aesthetic and performance-practice criteria, social, political, ideological, economic, national and regional factors also play a role, their different influence leading inexorably to differences in the assessment of composers, works and performers, and provoking continual revision of those thus canonized. Properly understood, a canon is ultimately the expression of living musical history, for it is the provisionally formulated result of a discourse conducted in

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many voices by different social forces on the quality and significance of music. In principle, anyone can take part in this discourse. So let us be contemporaries! Let us listen to the music of our own day just as we listen to music of the past. Let us be moved by it, touched by it, disturbed by it, just as, at the time, the audience was moved, touched and disturbed by Beethovenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music. For we can say, continuing Schoenbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s line of thought: if art is an experience of the new, it always opens up new experiences. We should not miss out on this: let us seize the art of the hour! Rainer Nonnenmann Freelance writer and musicologist, Cologne

H E L M U T

O E H R I N G

SUN 14 SEP 11 AM SCHUMANNHAUS

MON 22 SEP

8 PM

BUNDESKUNSTHALLE, FORUM

Ensemble Resonanz Helmut Oehring: GOYA III. Veía la mano, pero como alelado for 18 strings (first performance, work commissioned by Beethovenfest Bonn, Ensemble Resonanz and Alte Oper Frankfurt)

PREISTRÄGERKONZERT 1

Sophie Dartigalongue Bassoon Anna Kirichenko Piano Alexandre Ouzounoff: New work for bassoon and piano (first performance, work commissioned by Sophie Dartigalongue)

SUN 14 SEP

6 PM

BUNDESKUNSTHALLE, FORUM

Solisten musikFabrik Studio musikFabrik Peter Veale Conductor Philipp Maintz: New work for bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano and ensemble (first performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn)

TUE 23 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVENHALLE

Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra Isın ‚ Metin Conductor Tolga Yayalar: New work for orchestra (first performance, work commissioned by Deutsche Welle)

THU 2 OCT

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

SUN 14 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Christiane Iven Soprano Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay Vocals Pandit Sankha Chatterjee Tabla Burkhard Kehring Piano, Concept Param Vir: Songs from Tagore’s 'Gitanjali'. Song Cycle to words by Rabindranath Tagore, translation by William Radice (first performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn)

SUN 21 SEP

6 PM

ST. EVERGISLUS BRENIG

Singer Pur Martin Smolka: 'Alma redemptoris mater' a cappella (first performance)

Kwangchul Youn Bass Burkhard Kehring Piano, Concept Hannah Hanbiel Choi: 'Engel I' ('Angel I') and 'Engel III' ('Angel III') for piano (first performance) Myung-Sun Lee: 'Engel II' ('Angel II') and 'Engel IV' ('Angel IV') for piano (first performance)

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Burkhard Kehring on his three-part lieder cycle ‘Divan of song’

hen in the summer of 1814 Goethe returned to his Hessian homeland for the first time in 17 years, he had in his luggage a book that the publisher Georg von Cotta had given him shortly before containing translations of the work of the Persian lyric poet Hafez. The almost magnetic attraction which this little book exerted on Goethe became the inspiration for his ‘Westöstlicher Divan’. Shimmering through Goethe’s verses is the psychogram of an artist who was both fascinated and confused as he took in a new world, the world of Persia, the world of the Orient. The ‘Divan’ is a bridge between cultures – this is precisely the starting pint for the pianist Burkhard Kehring’s new, multipart lieder project. ‘The idea for this has been pursuing me for decades,’ he admits, ‘not least because of my family background, since I am the product of a German-Indian liaison. The conditions were however not always free of conflict, and were attended by problems of communication. To that extent not only Asia and Europe are represented in my family, but also different religions.’ Art as a bridge. Music as steppingstones. The song as a plank. ‘I try to

combine the divergent cultural currents and constantly re-combine them,’ explains Kehring, who with a Schumann cycle already demonstrated his predilection for major projects at the 2006 Beethovenfest Bonn. Against the background of his experiences as a lieder accompanist, and of the years when he performed melo dramas with Dietrich FischerDieskau, Kehring would now like to pursue his new ideas. ‘FischerDieskau’s cultural pessimism, especially towards the end of his life, was also concerned with the question: What sort of a future does the lied have? He saw the only chance for its survival in the renewal of the established pattern, in other words not least of the traditional lieder recital, including new compositions.’ Spurred on by these stimuli and encouraged by his own conviction that the present day should have a stronger presence in the song genre, Kehring has conceived three concerts which combine the pleasure in experimentation with the secure base of tradition. ‘I am a collector, and for a long time I’ve had an ear for Asian music. There have continually been strange points of contact. Thus Wilhelm Müller, for example, the poet who wrote the words

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which Schubert set to music in the “Winterreise” and the “Schöne Müllerin”, had a son called Max. He in turn was the founder of modern Indology. When in 1991 I first performed in the “Max Mueller Bhavan”, the Goethe Institut in Mumbai, I realized I had come full circle for the first time.’ 58

For his three lieder programmes in Bonn, Burkhard Kehring has chosen different material for each under the general title ‘Divan of song’. The first concert has an entry character, starting from Goethe and Hafez. ‘It’s not just about East and West, but also about transitions, not least transitions between generations. In the person of Robert Holl we have a mature, experienced singer, and with Christiane Karg a successful representative of the younger generation. Quite coincidentally, this age difference reflects the age difference between Goethe and Marianne von Willemer, his muse for the “Divan”.’ The first part focuses on two themes: Scheherazade and Hafez, including works by Ravel and lieder of the Romantic period; the second part focuses on settings of the ‘West-östlicher Divan’. This dialectic structure is continued in the second concert, which centres on ‘India’, in the first part with settings of Tagore by Szymanowski and Zemlinsky. ‘As Tagore was a poet of the late nineteenth and above all the twentieth century, the musical language in this recital is different. We leave the Romantic period and cross over to Modernism, right up to the present day,

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as we shall also have settings of a new translation of Tagore by William Radice. Radice is one of the most important scholars of Bengali, the language spoken in and around Kolkata. His new translations are far closer to the Tagore original than the sometimes orotund, pathos-laden earlier translations,’ says Kehring. The composer Param Vir, who was born in Delhi, was commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn to set some of these texts to music. And so we come full circle again, as Vir’s first encounter with Western music was in 1968, in the form of Beethoven’s Fifth. In 1971, as a student, he visited the Beethoven-Haus (and played the ‘Storm Sonata’ there), and now after 43 years he is returning to Beethoven’s birthplace with his own music.

still only have an inkling of what kind of son was laid in their cradle.’ In this concert, Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’, which has a highly symmetrical structure, will be interrupted in four places by short piano interludes by young South Korean (female) composers, which are being performed here for the first time. ‘The poetic idea is that this lonely wanderer, and in the figurative sense the wanderer between East and West, will have four angelic beings at his side. In Korea, incidentally, the future is feminine, as I have found out at a number of purely women’s universities.

The second part of the concert will feature Indian musicians. ‘But be careful,’ warns Kehring, ‘I’m no friend of the usual cross-over stuff. We are not going to desperately throw ourselves fragments and cobble them together, but work carefully on a stimulating dialogue.’ In this dialogue selected songs from Olivier Messiaen’s cycles ‘Chants de terre et de ciel’ and ‘Harawi’ will play a major role.

Kehring knows that with this new song project he is not only reflecting diversity, but also taking risks. How will the audience react? How can one measure the success of such an idea at all? ‘A number of factors come together here. The silence in the hall is certainly one, especially if it is an awestruck silence during the performance. But the degree to which we can enthuse the audience also counts. I notice, with me personally, there’s often an emptiness immediately after a concert, and the degree of emptiness is, for me, also a gauge.’

The third evening: the journey continues eastwards, to Korea. Kehring’s travel companion is the bass Kwangchul Youn. ‘Whenever I mention his name in Seoul, everyone pauses in reverence. Youn is a star there, while here he can still be quite modest. His parents come from the countryside, and

Burkhard Kehring’s ‘Divan of song’ presupposes curiosity on the part of the audience, and an ‘emphatic yearning for the alien in ourselves and in others’. For this reason he wants at the same time to address a younger audience with these concerts. ‘But that will only work if we are also ready

to give something personal of our selves. And that’s what I shall try to do on these evenings.’ Christoph Vratz Freelance writer and journalist, Cologne

SUN 14 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Christiane Iven Soprano Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay Vocals Pandit Sankha Chatterjee Tabla Burkhard Kehring Piano, Concept 'Divan of song – India' Param Vir: Songs from Tagore’s 'Gitanjali'. Song Cycle to words by Rabindranath Tagore, translation by William Radice (first performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn) Olivier Messiaen: selected songs along with songs by Karol Szymanowski and Alexander Zemlinsky and traditional Indian songs to words by Rabindranath Tagore and tabla improvisations

THU 2 OCT

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

SUN 7 SEP

8 PM

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

Christiane Karg Soprano Robert Holl Bass Burkhard Kehring Piano, Concept 'Divan of song – Persia' Songs by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Othmar Schoeck, Viktor Ullmann, Hugo Wolf et al. to words by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the Persian poet Hafis, from which works passages will be recited in the original Farsi.

Kwangchul Youn Bass Burkhard Kehring Piano, Concept 'Divan of song – Korea' Hannah Hanbiel Choi: 'Engel I' ('Angel I') and 'Engel III' ('Angel III') for piano (first performance) Myung-Sun Lee: 'Engel II' ('Angel II') and 'Engel IV' ('Angel IV') for piano (first performance) Franz Schubert: Song Cycle 'Die Winterreise' D 911

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FROM STUDENT TO MANAGER AND BACK

Student managers at the Young Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

ophia, Sula and Leon are 16. But the subjects of their conversation are not last weekend’s party or the next maths test, but marketing concepts, team conferences and visits to artists in Berlin. This is nothing unusual for these three, because they’re former student managers at the Young Beethovenfest, who in 2013 as a team with nine school students organized the concert featuring the world-famous organist Cameron Carpenter. ‘It was an incredible experience, and I learnt a great deal,’ says Sophia, who was responsible for the general oversight and the commercial management. For eight months, the students worked together to prepare the concert. This included a press conference of their own, marketing campaigns, microphone training sessions, film shoots, and much more besides. Whether the students were working in the director general’s office, in marketing, in artistic affairs, in the press office or in dramaturgy – each one worked on his or her own, although none were left high and dry. The staff of the Beethovenfest Bonn were always on hand to offer advice and help. ‘The idea of the project is to interest school students in classical music

through active participation and an intensive look behind the scenes,’ explains Lena Geisen, who works for the Beethovenfest in the Education Section, which means she’s the first port of call for the student managers. Last year was the fifth year of the student manager project, so there was even a mini-jubilee to celebrate. It all began in 2009 with an unusual mixture: the student-manager concert featured both the hip-hop band einshoch6 and the classical Minguet Quartett. Since then, we’ve been able to admire successful concerts every year – in 2010 with the violinist Da niel Hope and the rock band Bakkushan, in 2011 with Goran Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, in 2012 with the rapper Samy Deluxe and his band, and finally in 2013 with the organist Cameron Carpenter and the media artist Daniel Rossa. The student managers have also been awarded important prizes already: in 2011 they were the national prizewinners in the competition ‘365 Orte im Land der Ideen’ (‘365 Places in the Land of Ideas’), and as early as 2010 they won the ‘Kinder zum Olymp!’ prize awarded by the Kulturstiftung der Länder.

The venue of the student manager concert is no less high-calibre than the artists. Since 2011 it’s been the Telekom Forum in Bonn, which offers magnificent design possibilities on account of its flexible and highgrade equipment and fittings. At the concerts, inspired light shows by professional VJs created visual artworks.

Promoting the commitment of young people in the classical music scene is one of the goals of the loyal sponsors without whom this project would not be possible in the first place. For a number of years already, Deutsche Telekom, the Deutsche Bank Stiftung and the RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur have been among the steady supporters of the Young Beethovenfest.

‘To organize such a comprehensive project ourselves, including the concert itself, was a lot of work, of course, but it was fun, and that’s the main thing,’ says Sophia enthusiastically. All these experiences are now awaiting the nine student managers for 2014, who are already waiting in the starting blocks. They young people come from eight Bonn schools and are all aged from 15 to 17. This year they are organizing a concert for the ten-strong Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble. The group play techno music on classical instruments, and appear both in clubs and on classical music festival stages. With the choice of this ensemble, the Beethovenfest Bonn is venturing into new territory and devoting itself for the first time to electronic music. However in the combination of classical and club music, the pioneering spirit of the first student manager concert can still be felt. Together with the artists, the student managers are also organizing workshops for other young people, and in this way can pass on their enthusiasm to their peers.

But how do you become a student manager at all? It’s a professional procedure: ‘Every year, between October and January, you can send in a written application to us. We then invite some of the applicants to an interview,’ explains Lena Geisen. She emphasizes that no prior musical knowledge is needed, and good school grades play no role at all. ‘All school students aged between 15 and 17 who want to get involved are invited to apply.’ She is particularly keen on finding candidates who will work well together as a team. This has evidently worked very successfully in the past few years, as many of the former student managers still maintain close links with the Beethovenfest. We see them not only coming to the concerts, but as presenters of small events, as writers, or as members of host families. As Sophia, who is now one of the 50 ‘old members’, admits, ‘Every artist is a new challenge, a new chance to interest people in music, to get on top of work in a team, and at the same time to enjoy oneself. I think all of us

would repeat the experience if we could.’ Elisa Miebach Student Dramaturge 2012

SAT 13 SEP

8 PM

TELEKOM FORUM

Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble ‘Student Manager Project 2014’ Techno and Club music with classical instruments

‘MY NICEST EXPERIENCE’

Projects of the Young Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

t is pleasing to see that those taking part in this project got to know the very complex sphere of responsibilities that go with music management, something from which the concertgoer is usually excluded. The students successfully faced up to the enormous demands, while their flexible work and sense of responsibility were professional and convincing.’ The text of the jury’s verdict when awarding the ‘Kinder zum Olymp!’ prize to the student-manager project of the Beethovenfest Bonn contains two keywords which still determine the Beethovenfest’s approach to youth work and musical communication: ‘usually excluded’ and ‘professional’.

PROFESSIONAL Given the presence of numerous outstanding artists, there exists the possibility that these will want to pass on their professional knowledge to students. In this context, the hope is that the children and young people will not only hear the artists at concerts or in rehearsal, but also have the opportunity to meet the musicians, talk to them and work with them. For this reason we hold workshops every year for various target groups; this year,

the target group is young brass ensembles. The group Canadian Brass will spend an afternoon working with young musicians and giving them tips from their wealth of experience. Two other artists or groups of artists will be talking to school students before their concerts in order to prepare them for the programme and their concert experience: Musicians from the Studio musikFabrik – the new-blood ensemble of the Ensemble musikFabrik, consisting of music students – will be meeting with students from the senior classes of high schools to talk about new music and their passion for music. The winner of the TONALi competition, Elisabeth Brauss, who has already presented her programme to young people in the context of the competition, will be facing school students’ questions in Bonn too. In the context of ‘How’s it Done…?’ further artists will be visiting Bonn schools on the day after their concert to introduce their instrument and answer questions. Specially for young people in job training, the Beethovenfest Bonn has created the workshop ‘Young and Curious – Beethoven for Trainees’, which was in the final of the ‘BKM-Preis Kulturelle Bildung 2012’,

a prize for cultural education projects. Here, the Beethovenfest Bonn offers local businesses the chance to invite their trainees to a concert. The evening at the concert is accompanied by a oneday workshop, run by trainers from STOLLSTEINERart&business, giving the young participants the opportunity to confront, in a practical manner, such fundamentals as rhythm, timbre and pitch. In addition, the relevance of this to their everyday working lives will be addressed, along with such topics as co-operation, commitment and involvement. The workshop will be concluded by the visit to the concert and a brief meeting with the performers.

USUALLY EXCLUDED A unique project is being devoted this year to a target group which in the nature of things has barely any access to classical music, namely children and young people with hearing impairments of varying degrees of severity. ‘Feel the Music’ accompanies the cycle ‘The Beethoven Journey’ with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, and invites hearing-impaired children to explore the world of music through all their senses. The project takes up the theme of music and deafness, with which Beethoven was increasingly afflicted in the course of his life. In Bonn hearing-impaired children (from the MCO partner classes) from Dublin, Brescia, Prague and Cologne will be meeting for the first time, and also meeting a local Children’s and Youth Choir. At a workshop spread

over a few days, they will work on a joint concert programme with the MCO. The Student Manager Project – which has not only won a number of awards but also found imitators – continues to be very popular with Bonn’s school students on account of the chance it provides to experience concert organization close up. This year nine senior school students will be organizing a concert given by the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble at the Telekom Forum (for more details, see pages 63 to 65) In addition there are further education projects, allowing schoolchildren a look behind the scenes: for example ‘Backstage’, at which they can accompany a festival employee for a whole day, or ‘Question Time’, when school students have the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview, before or after the concert, with an artist performing at the festival. All the interviews will be published on the Beethovenfest Bonn website, some also in the local newspaper, the General-Anzeiger. It is by the way something special for the artists too to come into contact with children. At an interview for the 2012 festival, Patricia Kopatchinskaja was asked about her nicest experience: ‘When I meet children like you. It happens far too rarely that children take an interest in music and ask such questions and play an instrument themselves. That is actually my nicest experience.’ Annette Semrau Dramaturge of the Beethovenfest Bonn

Y O U N G B E E T H O V E N F E S T 2 0 1 4 • Student Managers Bonn school students from Bonn organize a concert with the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble. • Question Time School students interview artists taking part in the Beethovenfest. • Backstage A day in close contact with one of the festival’s organizing team. • How's it done …? Artists visit Bonn schools. • Rehearsal visits Schoolchildren attend rehearsals. • Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO): 'Feel the Music' Festival Project Hearing-impaired children will work out a concert programme of their own. • Workshop with Canadian Brass For the next generation of brass players • Young and curious – Beethoven for apprentices Workshop day and concert visit • Campus encounters 2014 Meetings with musicians from the Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra • Studio musikFabrik meets … Students discuss contemporary music with musicians from the musikFabrik. • Elisabeth Brauß meets … The winner of the TONALi competition faces questions from school students.

Further informa tions under: www.jungesbeethovenfest.de geisen@beethovenfest.de Tel: +49(0)228 - 20 10 323

B I L K E N T S Y M P H O N Y

Y O U T H O R C H E S T R A

ALL PEOPLE WILL BE BROTHERS (AND SISTERS!) Orchestra Campus organized by Deutsche Welle and Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

or fourteen years now Deutsche Welle and the Beethovenfest Bonn have jointly organized an ‘Orchestra Campus’, a forum for youth orchestras and an opportunity for fraternizing, exchange and mutual inspiration. In the third year of our focus on Turkey, young musicians of the Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra from Ankara are our guests. The 85 students of this highly acclaimed private Turkish university will be living with host families in Bonn for a week, make music along with young people from Bonn in the city centre, and give concerts for children. The climax will take the form of a concert with Beethoven’s Ninth. The vocal passages will be performed by soloists from Germany and Turkey, and by a local choir – a project, in other words, entirely devoted to mutual gettingto-know-you and friendly exchange.

most emphasis on the structure and timbre of his creations.

The concert itself will start with the first performance of a work by the Turkish composer Tolga Yayalar commissioned by Deutsche Welle. Yayalar, born in Istanbul and a teacher of composition at Bilkent University, began his musical career as a guitarist in rock and jazz bands, but soon came to concentrate entirely on composition. As a composer, inspired by works by Schoenberg’s pupil Anton Webern, he places

German/Turkish Soloists Beethoven-Projekt-Chor Kreuzkirche Bonn Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra Isın ‚ Metin Conductor Tolga Yayalar: New work for orchestra (first performance, work commissioned by Deutsch Welle) Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125

The musical director of the evening is Isın Metin, who was also trained as a composer and conductor at Bilkent University in Ankara. In 2003 he was appointed artistic head of the professional department of the Bilkent Orchestra, but at the same time attaches great importance to working with the up-and-coming generation of musicians. He has been working with the Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra, our guests in Bonn, since 2005. Thomas Scheider Project officer, Beethovenfest Bonn

TUE 23 SEP 8 PM BEETHOVENHALLE Deutsche Welle presents: CAMPUS CONCERT

‘HE

LOOKS

CREATIVE,

THE

IDIOSYNCRATIC,

FUTURE

EVERY

AND

RESPECT’

Prizewinner concerts at the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

usic competitions are a curse and a blessing for all would-be professional musicians. For while an award at an international competition can launch a career, it can often require a very long preparation and demand much concentration and energy. The three competitions represented at the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 show how different such contests can be. The International Music Competition of the ARD (the umbrella organization for Germany’s public-service broadcasters) has been held since 1952, and is one of the most highly acclaimed of its kind. Every year, some 200 musicians from more than 40 countries compete in changing categories: in 2013 these were violin, viola, bassoon and piano trio. In the bassoon section Sophie Dartigalongue from France won second prize – no first prize was awarded – as well as the audience prize. The young bassoonist, who convinced jury and public alike with her elegant, cantabile sound, studied at the Lyon Conservatoire from 2008 to 2011, and then at the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in Berlin. Since May 2013 she has been an established member of the Berlin Philharmonic. The biennial International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn may be

relatively young (2013 was the fifth occasion on which it was held), but the competition scene would already be unthinkable without it. It is directed exclusively at pianists, requires a considerable portion of Beethoven’s piano compositions as its competition repertoire. Stefan Cassomenos convinced the jury in the final with a rendering of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5, which won him both the second prize and the chamber music prize. Pavel Gililov, the jury president and artistic director of the competition, singled out Cassomenos’s ‘deeply felt interpretation of Beethoven’s works’ for special praised. A pianist, composer and conductor like Beethoven himself, the young Australian knew precisely what was involved when playing with an orchestra. The TONALi Grand Prix was started in 2009, and has been held annually since then in Hamburg, alternately for violin, cello and piano. Another young feature of the contest is the fact that alongside solo playing, musical communication plays a special role, and in this context more than 10,000 young listeners in twelve Hamburg schools are addressed with a view to interesting them in classical music. And so it was not just her impressive interpretation of Beetho-

ven’s Third Piano Concerto but also her convincing presentation and sparkling artistic personality that won Elisabeth Brauss from Hanover, who was 18 at the time, the prize at the final of the TONALi Grand Prix on 31 August 2013, and not just the main prize, but also the audience prize, which was established by a jury of school students. ‘It is different. It is creative, idiosyncratic, and looks to the future in every respect.’ (Christoph Eschenbach on TONALi) Annette Semrau Dramaturge of the Beethovenfest Bonn

SUN 14 SEP

11 AM

SCHUMANNHAUS

Sophie Dartigalongue Bassoon (2nd prize (1st prize not awarded) and audience prize at the ARD Music Competition 2013)

MON 15 SEP

8 PM

COLLEGIUM LEONINUM

Stefan Cassomenos Piano (2nd prize and spezial prize (chamber music) at the International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn 2013)

SUN 28 SEP

11 AM

SCHUMANNHAUS

Elisabeth Brauß Piano (1st prize and audience prize at the TONALi Grand Prix 2013)

S O P H I E D A R T I G A L O N G U E

H U G H

M A S E K E L A

S O LO FO R

C U LT

Sparks Divine with Jazz, Brass and Vocals

THU 11 SEP

8 PM

SUN 21 SEP

6 PM

VOLKSBANK-HAUS

ST. EVERGISLUS BRENIG

SIGNUMfive ‘Spirito latino – A Tribute to Astor Piazzolla’ Works by Astor Piazzolla, Izidor Leitinger, Richard Galliano, Chick Corea and others

Singer Pur ‘Solo for cult’ A cappella works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Johannes Brahms, John Cage, Arvo Pärt, Martin Smolka, Sting and others

FRI 12 SEP

8 PM

THU 25 SEP

8 PM

TELEKOM FORUM

HARMONIE ENDENICH

Mnozil Brass ‘Happy Birthday’ Applied Brass for all circumstances

Hugh Masekela Trumpet, Vocal Larry Willis Piano ‘Hugh Masekela – The 75 Years Celebration Tour 2014’

THU 18 SEP

8 PM

HARMONIE ENDENICH

Iiro Rantala Trio Wild and funny music for Piano, Bass and Drums

SAT 20 SEP

8 PM

RHEIN-SIEG-HALLE SIEGBURG

Canadian Brass ‘From American Tradition to Penny Lane’ Cult works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, George Gershwin, the Beatles and others

8 PM

STRASSENBAHNHALLE DRANSDORF

Rajaton A cappella songs by Abba, Queen and Sting along with Finnish traditionals

FRI 26 SEP

WED 1 OCT

8 PM

HARMONIE ENDENICH

Marialy Pacheco Trio feat. Joo Kraus Traditional Cuban and Latin American compositions, own compositions and jazz standards in the Latin Style

THE SPONSORS OF THE BEETHOVENFEST 2014

Main Sponsors:

Event Sponsors:

Public Sponsors:

Event Sponsor of the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis:

Foundations: 77

Automobile Partner:

Cultural Partner:

Media Partners:

Bonn Partners of the Beethovenfest Bonn:

»Dialog vermeidet Missverständnisse. Offener Austausch kann Wege aufzeigen, wie wir Konflikte lösen.« Hala Mahdy, Redakteurin in Kairo, Ägypten

www.dw.de

At selected concerts, the Beethovenfest Bonn reserves a certain number of seats for school and college students (below the age of 30). These cannot be booked in advance. At these concerts, a certain number of seats are reserved for students, tickets for which can be bought for 8 ŕłź on production of a valid student identity card. The concerts in question are indicated in the programme with this logo.

LI S T

O F

W O R K S 2 0 14

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C major op. 21

major op. 55 (‘Sinfonia eroica’)

Symphony No. 4 in B major op. 60

op. 67

Symphony No. 2 in D major op. 36

Symphony No. 6 in F major op. 68 (‘Pastorale’)

Symphony No. 8 in F major op. 93

Symphony No. 5 in C minor

Symphony No. 7 in A major op. 92

Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125

to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Tragedy ‘Egmont’ op. 84 Vittoria’ op. 91

orchestra No. 2 in B major op. 19

No. 5 in E flat major op. 73 (‘The Emperor’) (‘Quartetto serioso’)

202

207

204

23 47

op. 30/2

Quartet for two violins, 52

Sona-

Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 in A major Sonata for violin and piano

Sonata for violin and piano No. 5 in F major op. 24 (‘Spring Sonata’)

Sonata for violin and piano No. 6 in A major op. 30/1 10

Quar-

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 16 in

Sonata for violin and piano No. 3 in E flat major op. 12/3

No. 4 in A minor op. 23

Quartet for two violins, viola and

Quintet for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano in E flat major op. 16

ta for violin and piano No. 1 in D major op. 12/1 op. 12/2

206 60

Concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra in

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 13 in B major op. 130

viola and cello No. 15 in A minor op. 132

Concerto for piano and

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 11 in F minor op. 95

tet for two violins, viola and cello No. 14 in C sharp minor op. 131

207

Concerto for piano and orchestra

cello No. 14 in C sharp minor op. 131 (arranged for string orchestra) F major op. 135

Incidential music

Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 3 in C minor op. 37

Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 4 in G major op. 58 C major op. 56 (‘Triple Concerto’)

‘Wellington’s Victory or the Battle of

Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 1 in C major op. 15 204

Symphony No. 3 in E flat

Sonata for violin and piano No. 7 in C minor

Sonata for violin and piano No. 8 in G major op. 30/3

No. 9 in A major op. 47 (‘Kreutzer Sonata’)

Sonata for violin and piano

Sonata for violin and piano No. 10 in G major op. 96

Sonata for cello and piano No. 2 in G minor op. 5/2 (arranged for bassoon and piano)

‘Marcia

funebre sulla morte d’un Eroe’ (third sentence) from the sonata for piano No. 12 in A flat major op. 26

Sonata for piano No. 7 in D major op. 10/3

op. 27/1 (‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’) quasi una fantasia’)

Sonata for piano No. 14 in C sharp minor op. 27/2 (‘Sonata

Sonata for piano No. 32 in C minor op. 111 piano in C major op. 89 op. 126

Sonata for piano No. 13 in E flat major

Sonata for piano No. 21 in C major op. 53 (‘Waldstein Sonata’)

piano No. 23 in F minor op. 57 (‘Appassionata’)

Rondo for piano in C major op. 51/1 43

‘Fidelio’. Opera in two acts op. 72

piano, chorus and orchestra in C minor op. 80 (‘Choral Fantasy’)

206

Polonaise for

Six Bagatelles for piano

Seven variations on ‘God save the King’ for piano in C major WoO 78 55

Sonata for

Sonata for piano No. 27 in E minor op. 90

Eleven Bagatelles for piano op. 119

‘Rule Britannia’ for piano in D major WoO 79

Five variations on 54 61

Fantasia for

Compositions of the 18th and 19th centuries Johannes Brahms: Serenade for orchestra No. 1 in D major op. 11 No. 2 in A major op. 16

Serenade for orchestra

Frédéric Chopin: Sonata for piano No. 2 in B flat minor op. 35

203

Antonín Dvoˇrák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor op. 95 (‘From the New World’) ‘Karneval’ op. 92

203

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor

one voice and piano to words by Friedrich Rückert Friedrich Rückert (‘Rückert Lieder’)

Sonata for piano in B minor

‘Kindertotenlieder’. Song Cycle for

Five songs for voice and piano to words by

Ouverture ‘Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt’ op. 27

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major KV 385 (‘Haffner Symphony’) for violin and orchestra No. 5 in A major KV 219 (‘The Turkish’) KV 331 (‘Alla turca’) chestra

nini: 24 Caprices for solo violin op. 1 G major op. 168 D 887

40 47

Four Impromptus for piano op. 90 D 899

tra in A minor op. 129 piano)

202

Niccolò Paga-

Hungarian Melody for piano in Allegretto for piano in C minor

Robert Schumann: Concerto for cello and orches-

Fantasy Pieces for clarinet and piano op. 73 (arranged for bassoon and

‘Karelia’ Suite op. 11 op. 40

‘Faschingsschwank aus Wien’. Fantasy scenes for piano op. 26

Camille Saint-Säens: Sonata for bassoon and piano in

Song Cycle ‘Die Winterreise’ D 911

Sonata for piano No. 11 in A major

Allegro assai for two violins, viola and cello in C minor D 703 (‘Quartet Movement’)

B minor D 817

Concerto

Franz Schubert: Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 15 in G major op. 161

Fantasia for piano in C major op. 15 D 760 (‘Wanderer-Fantasy’) D 915

Modest Mussorgski: ‘A Night on the Bare Mountain’. Symphonic Poem for or-

Ole Olsen: ‘Aasgaardsreien’. Symphonic Poem for orchestra op. 10

Edvard

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Symphony No. 5 in D mi-

205

nor op. 107 (‘Reformation Symphony’)

205

Joseph Haydn: Quartet for two

violins, viola and cello in E flat major op. 64/6 Hob III:64

Concert Overture

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 13 in G major op. 106

Grieg: Concerto for piano and orchestra in A minor op. 16 Hob. XVI:32

203

Jean Sibelius:

Richard Strauss: ‘Ein Heldenleben’. Symphonic Poem for orchestra

‘Sinfonia Domestica’. Symphonic Poem for orchestra op. 53

‘Il Turco in Italia’. Sinfonia

Franz Xaver Süßmayr:

Peter Tschaikowski: Symphony No. 4 in F minor op. 36

Richard

Wagner: Five Songs for a female voice to poems by Mathilde Wesendonck WWV 91 (‘Wesendonck Lieder’)

205

Compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries Lera Auerbach: Prélude No. 20 in C minor from: 24 Préludes for violin and piano op. 46 Prélude No. 23 in F major from: 24 Préludes for violin and piano op. 46 from: 24 Préludes for violin and piano op. 46 No. 3 Sz 85

Belá Bartók: Quartet for two violins, viola and cello

Reiner Bredemeyer: ‘Bagatellen for B.’ for piano and orchestra

German Galynin: Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 2 in F minor ‘Never Ignore the Cosmic Ocean’ for orchestra and cello No. 4 30

Prélude No. 24 in D minor

Harrison Birtwistle: ‘Ritual Fragment’. A ceremony for fourteen musicians in me-

mory of Michael Vyner

tra op. 36/4

Gediminas Gelgotas:

Sofia Gubaidulina: Quartet for two violins, viola

Paul Hindemith: Chamber Music No. 5 for solo viola and large chamber orches-

‘In einer Nacht … Träume und Erlebnisse’ for piano op. 15

‘Songs of Immigrants’ for two violins, viola and cello and cello No. 1 (‘Kreutzer Sonata’)

Slavomír Hoˇrínka:

Leoš Janáˇ cek: Quartet for two violins, viola

Imants Kalninš: First movement from the Symphony No. 4 ‚

Jo Kondo: ‘Under The Umbrella’ for five players, 25 graduated cow-bells, 1

(‘Rock Symphony’)

gong (very low)

György Ligeti: Six Bagatelles for wind quintet

‘Musica ricercata’ for piano

Christian Lindberg: ‘Kundraan and the Arctic Light’ for trombone and small orchestra

43 58

Olivier Messiaen: Selected Songs from the Song Cycles ‘Chants de terre et de ciel’ and

‘Harawi’

Nikolai Miaskowski: Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 13 in A minor op. 86

Krzysztof Penderecki: ‘Sinfonietta per archi’ D minor op. 14

Sergei Prokofjew: Sonata for piano No. 2 in

Sonata for piano No. 6 in A major op. 82

violins, viola and cello No. 1 in F minor

Igor Raykhelson: Quartet for two

Frederic Rzewski: ‘Winnsboro cotton mill blues’ for

piano (No. 4 from ‘Four North American Ballads’) chamber ensemble

Dieter Schnebel: ‘Beethoven-Symphony’ for

Oliver Schneller: ‘Introjections’ for two violins, viola and cello

Schönberg: ‘Verklärte Nacht’ for two violins, two violas and two cellos mixed choir a cappella op. 13 No. 13 in B flat minor op. 138

Arnold

‘Friede auf Erden’ for

Dmitri Shostakovich: Quartet for two violins, viola and cello

206

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 14 in F sharp major

Quartet for two violins, viola and cello No. 15 in E flat minor op. 144

Gerhard Stäb-

ler: ‘Fund.Stücke – Ein VabanqueSpiel’. Performance involving the audience

Rudi Stephan:

op. 142

Music for orchestra

Igor Stravinsky: ‘Apollon Musagète’. Ballet music for string orchestra

‘Dumbarton Oaks’. Concerto in E flat for string orchestra 206 Concerto in D for string orchestra

204

18 207

Josef Suk: Meditace na staroˇ ceský chorál ‘Svatý Václave’ (Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale ‘St Wenceslas’) for two violins, viola and cello op. 35a op. 34

Karol Szymanowski: ‘Masques’ for piano

Alexandre Tansman: Suite for bassoon and piano

Quintet for two violins, two violas and cello (‘Phantasy Quintet’) piano

Ralph Vaughan Williams:

Carl Vine: ‘Toccatissimo’ for

Hugo Wolf: ‘Italienische Serenade’ for two violins, viola and cello in G major

First performances Hannah Hanbiel Choi: ‘Angel I’ und ‘Angel III’ for piano (first performance) ‘Angel II’ und ‘Angel IV’ for piano (first performance)

Myung-Sun Lee:

Philipp Maintz: New work for bass clari-

net, violin, cello, piano and ensemble (first performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn)

Helmut Oehring: GOYA III. Veía la mano, pero como alelado for 18 strings (first

performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn, Ensemble Resonanz and Alte Oper Frankfurt)

Alexandre Ouzounoff: New work for bassoon and piano (first performance,

work commissioned by Sophie Dartigalongue) cappella (first performance)

Martin Smolka: ‘Alma redemptoris mater’ a

Param Vir: Songs from Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’. Song Cycle to words

by Rabindranath Tagore, translation by William Radice (first performance, work commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn)

Tolga Yayalar: New work for orchestra (first performance, work

commissioned by Deutsche Welle)

A LP H A B ET I C LI S T E

A Andsnes, Leif Ove (Piano, Conductor)

204 206 207

B Baltic Sea Youth Philharmonic 46 Bandyopadhyay, Sangeeta (Vocals) 24 Beethoven Orchester Bonn 1 30 54 61 Beethoven-Projekt-Chor Kreuzkirche Bonn Bennewitz Quartet 31 32 34 36 Bezuidenhout, Kristian (Piano) 202 Bilkent Youth Symphony Orchestra 42 Bindseil, Sven (Costumes) 54 61 Blaise, Kirsten (Soprano) 56 Blunier, Stefan (Conductor) 1 30 Borodin Quartet 6 8 12 23 Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble 19 Braun, Lioba (Alto) 9 Brauß, Elisabeth (Piano) 51 Breinl, Joseph (Piano) 205 Bulva, Josef (Piano) 39 C Canadian Brass 48 Capuçon, Gautier (Cello) 2 Cara, Selcuk (Baritone) 42 Cassomenos, Stefan (Piano) 25 CBSO Chorus 9 Chatterjee, Pandit Sankha (Tabla) 24 Chor und Extrachor des Theater Bonn 54 City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 3

A R T I S T S 2 0 14

F Faust, Isabelle (Violin)

202

G Gardiner, Sir John Eliot (Conductor)

H Haselböck, Martin (Conductor) 56 Haug, Judith (Projections) 201 Heath Quartet 34 36 40 Hillebrand, Nikola (Soprano) 54 61 Holl, Robert (Bass) 4

J Janiczek, Alexander (Leader) Järvi, Kristjan (Conductor) 46 Järvi, Paavo (Conductor) 60 Juslin, Christian (Tenor) 54 61

D Dartigalongue, Sophie (Bassoon) 21 Dasch, Annette (Soprano) 9 Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

I Iiro Rantala Trio 29 Inugai, Shinnosuke (Piano) 1 Ivanoff, Vladimir (Director, Programme, Arrangements) 201 Iven, Christiane (Soprano) 24

E Elsner, Hannelore (Recitation) Ensemble Carion 52 Ensemble musikFabrik 22 Ensemble Resonanz 41 Ensemble Sarband 201 Erben, Valentin (Presenter) 32

O F

K Kanaris, Giorgos (Baritone) 54 61 Karayavuz, Asude (Mezzosoprano) 42 Karg, Christiane (Soprano) 4 Kavakos, Leonidas (Violin) 10 14 17 Kehring, Burkhard (Piano, Concept) 4 24 59 Kirichenko, Anna (Piano) 21 Knauer, Sebastian (Piano) 38 52 55 Knauer, Wolfgang (Compilation of texts) 52 55 Kölner Kammerorchester 18 Kraus, Joo (Trumpet) 57 Kuss Quartett 31 40

52 55

L Lindberg, Christian (Trombone, Conductor) Lisiecki, Jan (Piano) 46 London Symphony Orchestra 2

M Maazel, Lorin (Conductor) 203 Mahler Chamber Orchestra 204 206 207 Marialy Pacheco Trio 57 Masekela, Hugh (Trumpet, Vocal) 45 Meier, Waltraud (Mezzosoprano) 205 Metin, Isın ‚ (Conductor) 42 Mevlevi-Derwische 201 Mlinde, Vuyani (Bass) 9 Mnozil Brass 15 Modern String Quartet 201 Morouse, Mark (Baritone) 54 61 Münchner Philharmoniker 203

T Tarjányi, Tamás (Tenor) 54 61 Tetzlaff Quartett 47 Tomter, Lars Anders (Viola) 30 V Veale, Peter (Conductor) 22 Vestmann, Hendrik (Conductor) Volmer, Priit (Bass) 54 61 Volodos, Arcadi (Piano) 60

N Nelsons, Andris (Conductor) 3 5 7 9 Nézet-Séguin, Yannick (Conductor) 202 28 Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra O Orchester Wiener Akademie

W Wagner, Nike (Opening address) WDR Rundfunkchor 206 Willis, Larry (Piano) 45

Y Youn, Kwangchul (Bass)

Z Zehetmair, Thomas (Violin)

Zirner, August (Recitation) P Pace, Enrico (Piano) 10 14 17 Peters-Messer, Jakob (Director) Petzold, Guido (Lighting) 54 61 Q Quatuor Zaïde 31 32 34 36 40 Queyras, Jean-Guihen (Cello)

54 61

202

R Rajaton 35 Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest S Schager, Andreas (Tenor) 42 Schuch, Herbert (Piano) 43 SIGNUM five 13 Singer Pur 37 Soyarslan, Çi˘ gdem (Soprano) Spence, Toby (Tenor) 9 Studio musikFabrik 22

202 28

26 56

54 61

H O W

T O

G ET

Y O U R

T I C K ET

I N T E R N E T

Tickets available from 12 April. The advantage: Choose your own seat and print out your own ticket. I N

www.beethovenfest.de

W R I T I N G

Booking possible with immediate effect. Appli cations will be processed in the order received. Tickets, if ordered by 17 April (date of postmark), will be sent where available by 2 May at the latest (with invoice). The advantage: easy booking from home. A D V A N C E

B O O K I N G

Beethovenfest Bonn Kurt-Schumacher-StraĂ&#x;e 3 D â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 53113 Bonn

O F F I C E S

Tickets are available from all the well-known advance booking offices from 3 May. The advantage: personal service in your vicinity.

Selected advance booking office addresses can be found on page 90.

T E L E P H O N E

Tickets available from 3 May. The advantage: quick and easy service.

O N

T H E

0228 - 50 20 13 13 (Mon-Fri 8 am to 8 pm, Sat 9 am to 6 pm, Sun 10 am to 4 pm)

D A Y

Unsold tickets, if any, can be bought at the venue one hour before the start of the concert. For some concerts, the Beethovenfest Bonn guarantees students a quota of last-minute tickets. These concerts are marked in the programme overview with the logo . Please bring a valid student card.

The addresses of our concert venues can be found on page 91/92.

GEN ER A L

I N FO R M A T I O N

Our sales partner is

Getting to the concert (local public transport): Admission tickets to concerts are also valid at no additional charge for journeys on the regional public transport network Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS). You can use all VRS routes at any time within four hours of the start of the event; the return journey must be completed no more than four hours after the end of the event. Concession rates: Children from the age of 3, students and trainees below the age of 30, those undergoing compulsory military service or civilian alternative, federal volunteers, job-seekers, disabled people and those in possession of the ‘Bonn Ausweis’ are entitled to a reduction of 50 % on the ticket price. You are asked to produce evidence of such entitlement (without having to be specifically asked) at the door. Waiting List: When all seats for a concert are sold out, the Beethovenfest provides a special service: in the internet at www.beethovenfest.de you can enter your name (without obligation) on a waiting lis t for the event in question. You will then be informed by e-mail if tickets for this concert become available. Charges: The prices printed in this booklet are inclusive of handling charges and the flat charge made by the VRS for use of its routes, which together account for € 1.62 per ticket. Advance booking offices also

charge 10 % of the tick et price as a booking fee. For written and phone reservations (by post or by e-mail) Bonnticket will charge an additional processing and mailing fee of € 3.90 per order. Admission tickets will by default be sent by standard post, with no liability for loss on the part of the vendor. If you wish your tickets to be sent by registered mail, Bonnticket will charge a flat fee of € 6.90 (€ 5.90 in the internet). Via www.beethovenfest.de you can print out your tickets comfortably at home. Bonnticket makes a charge of € 1.00 per order for this service. General Information: Concert tickets cannot be returned or exchanged when orders are only partially taken up. No responsibility is assumed for changes in programmes, performers, dates or venues. No claim for return of tickets may be based on such changes. Only when an event is cancelled altogether will the purchase price be refunded upon presentation of the ticket within a two month period. Latecomers are only admitted during breaks in the concert. Audio-video recordings: No form of recording, whether audio, film, video or photograph, is permitted, not even for private use. In case of violation, the audio and video material may be confiscated. Some of the concerts will be recorded for radio and/or television broadcast. Concertgoers implicitly declare their consent to these recordings and to any pictures that might be made of them.

Hall Plans BEETHOVENHALLE B Ă&#x153;HNE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Ran

ei gS

te: 2

1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

BEETHOVEN-HAUS

price category 1 price category 2 price category 3 price category 4 price category 5 uniform price category

RHEIN-SIEG-HALLE B Ă&#x153;H NE Parkett links

Parkett Mitte

Parkett rechts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Empore Mitte

1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

89 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Empore links

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Empore rechts

1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The seating shown in the plans above is subject to change. The total amount of seats and price categories may differ. You can find seating plans of other venues of the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 in the internet at www.bonnticket.de. The addresses of all concert venues can be found on our homepage www.beethovenfest.de or on page 91/92.

Selected Advance Ticket Agencies

(advance booking from 3 May 2014)

Bonn

Bergisch Gladbach

General-Anzeiger Bottlerplatz 7 53111 Bonn +49(0)228 – 6 04 23 12

Bürgerhaus Bergischer Löwe Konrad-Adenauer-Platz 51465 Bergisch-Gladbach +49(0)2202 – 3 89 99

Konzertkasse Kaufhof Remigiusstr. 20 53111 Bonn +49(0)228 – 69 79 80 Bundeskunsthalle Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4 53113 Bonn +49(0)228 – 9 17 12 16 Opern- und Konzertkasse Windeckstr. 1 53111 Bonn +49(0)228 – 77 80 08

Bad Godesberg General-Anzeiger Koblenzer Str. 61 53177 Bonn +49(0)228 – 3 50 50

Reise- und Ticketshop Hauptstr. 293 51465 Bergisch Gladbach +49(0)2202 – 93 25 14 and Straßen 51 51429 Bergisch Gladbach (Herkenrath) +49(0)2204 – 9 76 64 63

Theaterkasse Kaufhof Hohe Str. 1 50667 Köln +49(0)221 – 2 57 88 11 Karten und Veran staltungsservice KVS Wiener Platz 2a 51065 Köln +49(0)221 – 9 62 42 41

Meckenheim Brühl brühl-info Uhlstr. 1, 50321 Brühl +49(0)2232 – 7 95 69

Ticket & KonzertShop Hauptstr. 75 53340 Meckenheim +49(0)2225 – 1 48 85

Sankt Augustin Düsseldorf

Schauspiel Bonn Theaterplatz/ Am Michaelshof 9 53177 Bonn +49(0)228 – 77 80 22

Düsseldorf Marketing & Tourismus GmbH Immermannstr. 65 B (Main station) and Marktplatz 6 (Altstadt) 40210 Düsseldorf +49(0)180 – 5 64 43 32

Bad Honnef

Euskirchen

General-Anzeiger Hauptstr. 38 53604 Bad Honnef +49(0)2224 – 90 20 80

Stadtverkehr Euskirchen Oststr. 1-5 53879 Euskirchen +49(0)2251 – 1 41 41 60

Bad NeuenahrAhrweiler

Cologne

General-Anzeiger Bossardstr. 1–3 53474 Bad NeuenahrAhrweiler +49(0)2641 – 9 12 61

Köln Musik Ticket Roncalliplatz 50667 Köln +49(0)221 – 20 40 81 60

Zeitungsgruppe Köln Service Center (DuMont-Carré) Breite Str. 72 50667 Köln +49(0)221 – 2 24 22 92

Bücherstube Sankt Augustin Markt 25 53757 Sankt Augustin +49(0)2241 – 2 86 80

Siegburg Kartenhaus Würselen In der Rhein-Sieg-Halle Bachstr. 1 53721 Siegburg +49(0)2241 – 23 91 93 19 General-Anzeiger Markt 45a 53721 Siegburg +49(0)2241 – 1 20 10 Stadtmuseum Siegburg Markt 46 53721 Siegburg +49(0)2241 – 5 57 33

List of venues of the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014

B O NN

Aula der Universität Regina-Pacis-Weg 3 53113 Bonn Entrance via Arkadenhof U/S 16, 18, 63, 66 Universität/Markt

Collegium Leoninum Noeggerathstraße 34 53111 Bonn U/S/Bus Hauptbahnhof (main station) or Stadthaus at the building and at the main station

Marktgarage Beethovenhalle Wachsbleiche 16 53111 Bonn Box Office: +49(0)228 – 7 22 23 33 Bus 551, 600, 601 Beethovenhalle U/S 62, 65, 66, 67 Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz in the Beethovengarage, Theaterstraße Beethoven-Haus Kammermusiksaal Bonngasse 24–26 53111 Bonn U/S 63, 65, 66, 67 Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz in the Marktgarage or Stiftsgarage

Halle Beuel Siegburger Straße 42 53229 Bonn-Beuel Box Office: +49(0)228 – 778407 Bus 529, 538, 603, 608, 609 Schauspielhalle Beuel Harmonie Endenich Frongasse 28–30 53121 Bonn Box Office: +49(0)228 – 61 40 42 Bus 606, 607, 631 Frongasse or Brahmsstraße Hotel Königshof Adenauerallee 9 53111 Bonn U/S 16, 63, 66 Universität/Markt

Bundeskunsthalle Forum Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4 53113 Bonn

in the hotel's underground garage

U/S 16, 63, 66 and Bus 610, 611 Heussallee/ Museumsmeile

Am Boeselagerhof 1 53111 Bonn Box Office: +49(0)228 – 77 36 68

multi-storey car-park, car and bus parking for the 'Museum Mile' (access via W.-Flex-Straße)

Bus 600, 601, 608, 609 Opernhaus

Opernhaus

U/S 62, 65, 66, 67 Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz underground garage at Opernhaus

Schumannhaus Sebastianstraße 182 53115 Bonn Bus 604, 605, 606, 607, 631 Alfred-Bucherer-Straße Straßenbahnhalle Dransdorf Gerhart-Hauptmann-Straße 53121 Bonn U/S 18 Robert-Kirchhoff-Straße Telekom Forum Landgrabenweg 151 53227 Bonn-Beuel Bus 606, 607 T-Mobile U/S 62, 65 Schießbergweg Volksbank-Haus Heinemannstraße 15 53175 Bonn Bus 610, 611, 631 Volksbank-Haus at the building

List of venues of the Beethovenfest Bonn 2014 B A D

G O D E S B E R G

St. Hildegard Mehlem Im Meisengarten 47 53179 Bonn Bus 613, 615, 852, 857 Deichmanns Aue DB Bahnhof (station) Mehlem in the streets of the residential area La Redoute Kurfürstenallee 1 53177 Bonn Bus 615, 637, 855 Brunnenallee U/S 16, 63, 67 Bad Godesberg Bahnhof (station) at the city hall and the Kurfürstenbad

R H E I N - S I E G - K R E I S

Kursaal Bad Honnef Hauptstraße 28 53604 Bad Honnef U/S 66 Bad Honnef

Stadtmuseum Siegburg Markt 46, 53721 Siegburg Box Office: +49(0)2241 – 5 57 33 DB, U/S, Bus Siegburg Bahnhof (station) in the Mühlenstraße (P11), Rhenag (P22), and Bahnhof (station) car parks (P10) St. Evergislus Haasbachstraße 2 53332 Bornheim-Brenig Steigenberger Grandhotel Petersberg 53639 Königswinter/ Petersberg Box Office: +49(0)2223 – 740 in front of the building

O T H E R S

Burg Namedy 56626 Andernach Box Office: +49(0)2632 – 4 86 25 DB Namedy Bahnhof (station)

underground garage of Seminaris Avendi Hotel (Hauptstraße 22)

in front of the castle

Rhein-Sieg-Halle Siegburg Bachstraße 1 53721 Siegburg DB, U/S, Bus Siegburg Bahnhof (station) (approx. 5-minute walk) at Rhein-Sieg-Halle garage

indicates the name of the nearest bus, tram or underground stop

W W W . B E E T H O V E N F E S T . D E T I C K E T S

+ 4 9 ( 0 ) 2 2 8 - 5 0

Advance orders will be accepted in writing as of now.

2 0

1 3

Editorial Information I NT ER NA T I O NA L E B E E T H O V E N F E S T E B O N N gGmbH

Prof. Dr. Nike Wagner Artistic Director and Manager Helmut Pojunke Business Manager Kurt-Schumacher-Straße 3 D – 53113 Bonn Telephone +49(0)228 – 20 10 30 Fax +49(0)228 – 20 10 333 info@beethovenfest.de www.beethovenfest.de Editorial Staff: Dr. Annette Semrau Dr. Tilman Schlömp Karin Stühn Silke Neubarth Heidi Rogge (lector) The team of the Beethovenfest Bonn: Articstic Management: Dr. Tilman Schlömp (Head) Daniela Ebert Thomas Friedland Thomas Scheider Dramaturgy: Dr. Annette Semrau Barbara Stach Marketing: Karin Stühn Friederike von Wittich Katharina Brünink Milena Seidel Press Office: Silke Neubarth Ticketing/Controlling: Christian Eckhardt Sabrina Lahoud

Graphic Design: parole Gesellschaft für Kommunikation mbH, München; www.parole.de Translation: Dr. Michael Scuffil Print: Druckerei Engelhardt, Neunkirchen www.druckerei-engelhardt.de Picture copyright: photocase (title, pages 8, 11, 12/13, 14) Oliver Tjaden (page 4) Stephen Lehmann (page 5) Martin Magunia (page 7) Sheila Rock (page 16) Marco Borggreve (pages 19, 28, 31, 48) wildundleise (page 21) Peter Rigaud (page 22) Julia Baier (page 23) Nomi Baumgartl (page 25) Felix Broede (page 27) Neil Pugh (page 32) Oezguer Albayrak (pages 34, 37) Deniz Saylan (page 39) Neda Navaee (page 42, 58) Pavel Ovsík (page 44) Sussie Ahlburg (page 47) Nick White (page 50) Paavo Blåfield (page 53) J. Oellermann (page 54) Gisela Schenker (page 57) Christine Schneider (page 61) Nico Stinghe & Park Bennett (page 62) Barbara Frommann (page 65) Holger Talinski: 'Feel the Music in London', November 2013 (page 67) Holger Talinski: 'Feel the Music in Brescia', Mai 2012 (page 68) Yelizatici (page 70) Dorothee Falke (page 73) Brett Rubin (page 74) Any copyright holders not mentioned here should contact us.

Assistance of the Director/Protocol: Simone Schuck

Programme information: as of 26 February 2014. We reserve the right to make changes.

Education: Lena Geisen