Conductor

Anton Bruckner was the pious composer who could truly move mountains with his visionary and otherworldly works. Many of his symphonies and masses are unique works of art that were actually designed for a church space - because that was where he was at home: "If you want to build high towers, you have to spend a long time on the foundations. [...] Actually, I only managed to create what my friends now call "great" because from my youth I had awe of everything that was genuine and holy." Especially in his youth and in his years as cathedral organist in the Linz monastery of St. Florian, that same holy foundation formed the entire opus of Johann Sebastian Bach. For a long time he emulated him and tried to do him artistic justice. And he was probably able to do it, because Bruckner's organ playing was characterized by its technical finesse. He succeeded like no other in filling the Linz sanctuary with powerful waves of sound. As a composer, he was a great admirer of Bach's music and his organ works, with Bruckner's chorales in particular clearly showing the influence of the great master and conveying a moving fear of God that seems to be present in many of his compositions. In his Symphony No. 4 in particular, which is nicknamed the "Romantic", Bruckner follows Baruch de Spinoza's approach that God is omnipresent in nature. But what does "romantic" actually mean for Bruckner? The symphony is permeated by a deep longing for spiritual fulfillment and an admiration for nature. It takes you into a world of sound full of majestic beauty and sublime grandeur, which culminates in a powerful, almost galactic final chord, spanning the spectrum from the dreamy and naturalistic to the all-encompassingly transcendental. And although ETA Hoffmann's essay "Old and New Church Music" was referring to the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the following quote could also have stood for Bruckner's "Fourth": "Love, the harmony of everything spiritual in nature, as promised to Christians, expresses itself in the chord, which therefore only came to life in Christianity, and so the chord, the harmony, becomes the image and expression of the spiritual community, of the union with the eternal, the ideal that reigns over us and yet includes us." 

A2 Bach and Bruckner – Echo for eternity

Gotha City Hall

In the 1930s, large parts of Europe were dominated by totalitarian rulers: Mussolini in Italy, Horthy in Hungary, Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany and "annexed" Austria - all of them suppressed any form of opposition and dissenting opinion. These strongly nationalistic regimes also found their equivalent on the other side of the political spectrum, namely in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. His vast empire was characterized by a relentless terror that knew no borders. Countless people - including many critical intellectuals and artists - fell victim to his regime. They acted in the shadow of his power - including the two composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg. In their music they combine not only masterful craftsmanship and artistic genius, but also the echo of their time, the suffering and the hope of an entire oppressed generation. As a Pole of Jewish descent, Weinberg's fate was almost hopeless - he had to flee from the Nazis, married into an influential Moscow family, but was repeatedly caught in the wheels of Stalin's terror. His works reflect the grief and resilience of his people, who were ravaged by the horror of the Holocaust. Weinberg's music interweaves the painful memories of loss and suffering with an unshakable human dignity that captivates and shakes the listener at the same time. Weinberg was artistically supported by his mentor Dmitri Shostakovich, which led to a lifelong friendship, a bond that - given a similar fate - could possibly be described as a soul mate. Shostakovich, whose biography was shaped by the terrible atrocities of the Stalin era, found a way to proclaim unspoken truths in his musical language. His symphonies are like cries of the soul, yearning for freedom and seeking justice in a world of repression. He dared to push the boundaries of what was permissible in his works, yet always found a way to convey his message of humanity and hope. The dialogue between Weinberg and Shostakovich reveals not only the horror of their lives, but also the infinitely profound power of art, which provides a spark of light even in the darkest hours of human destiny. 

A1 Weinberg and Shostakovich – In the shadow of power

Gotha Cultural Centre

The most performed opera in the German-speaking world, a complex masterpiece in its unusual blend of fairy tale and myth, Viennese popular theater and intellectual Masonic mystery – "The Magic Flute" continues to puzzle us to this day: Did Mozart and his librettist Emanuel Schikaneder switch the sides between the Queen of the Night and Sarastro in the middle of the work? Shouldn't we be cautious of the seemingly perfect world of the priests and their ideology that divides the world into good and evil?

Nevertheless, it is precisely the music that elevates the contradictions of the plot to a universal and real level. It doesn't denounce its characters but gives their conflicts an existential dimension. Thus, "The Magic Flute" is far more than just a musical fairy tale.

Prince Tamino is saved at the last moment from a gigantic snake by the three ladies of the Queen of the Night. They give him a portrait of the Queen's daughter, Pamina, whom he immediately falls in love with. Together with the eccentric and jovial bird catcher Papageno, he sets out on a journey to find his love, who – as he learns – is held captive by the Sun Priest Sarastro. To win the hearts of their beloved women, Tamino and Papageno must undergo difficult trials.

Experience "The Magic Flute" under the musical direction of Markus Huber, in an opulent and visually stunning production by Michael Vaccaro, featuring renowned soloists from the international opera scene!

EPSG:4326

Die Zauberflöte

Schloss Friedenstein

For several generations, the Czech cult film “Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella” from 1973 is as much a part of Christmas as candlelight and the scent of fresh pine needles. This year, too, a special wish will come true for the holidays, because the fairy tale can be experienced again in brilliant cinema format. Also included: the music of Karel Svoboda, played live by the Thuringia Philharmonic Gotha-Eisenach and synchronized scene by scene with the romantic and funny adventures on the big screen

THREE HAZELNUTS FOR CINDERELLA Family Concert

Cinderella, Cenerentola or Cendrillon - the story of a poor girl who is oppressed by her evil stepmother and eke out a meager existence in dirt and ashes. Despite her difficult circumstances, she remains friendly, modest and gentle. With the help of a good fairy, she takes part in a royal ball where she wins the heart of the prince. However, she has to flee before midnight and leave her glass slipper behind. With this "token of love", the prince sets off to find his true love. Whether in the Grimm's "Cinderella" version, Perrault's " Cendrillon " or the English-speaking "Cinderella" - the moving and imaginative motifs of the fairy tale were discovered as ballet material 200 years ago and have been choreographed many times since then. The most successful and famous musical setting of this story was the premiere of "Cinderella" by Sergei Prokofiev at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater in 1945, choreographed by Rostislav Sakharov. Prokofiev's humorous and at the same time quirky, rhythmically pointed musical language perfectly captures the fairy-tale nature of the literary original and offers the choreographer unlimited possibilities for performance and interpretation. It is probably Prokofiev's most lively ballet, although the "romantic love of Cinderella and the Prince" may have been the focus of the composition for him. Look forward to a romantic ballet - enjoyment for all ages! The performances are held in cooperation with the ballet of the Eisenach State Theater. 

CINDERELLA Ballet Family Performance

To be successful in art, you need sponsors. Even today's most famous composers would probably not have been driven to peak performance if a convoyeur in the background had not opened the doors to fame. "There is always a secret alliance of kindred spirits. Close the circle more tightly, you who belong together, so that the truth of art may shine ever more clearly [...]." This sentence by Robert Schumann in the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik" in 1853 marked the beginning of the rapid career of the then virtually unknown Johannes Brahms. But this was by no means a guarantee of a breakthrough - Brahms' first piano concerto had been a complete failure at the age of 25. The audience expected above all effective circus acts and pianistic bravura. Instead, Brahms offered a concert in the strict spirit of the symphonic music. Brahms remained absolutely true to himself in his Piano Concerto No. 2, but this time the audience was euphoric and delighted, because he succeeded in merging symphonic form with the virtuoso character of a concert. For the first time in music history, the solo voice and orchestra were no longer competing in the traditional concerto sense, but complemented each other to form a symphonic whole. The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick even spoke of a "symphony with obbligato piano", thereby expressing the innovative value of the composition. Brahms probably did not forget his mentor's words until the end of his life, because he himself formed an alliance with a kindred spirit, namely Antonín Dvořák. After the latter had applied for the "Austrian State Prize for Music" scholarship, Brahms ensured that Dvořák was awarded the contract. Brahms introduced the young composer to his own music publisher "Simrock", which published some of his compositions. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and a lively artistic exchange. Dvořák's compositional style was massively influenced by Brahms' musical language, but he cannot be labelled as an epigone of Brahms. He was certainly able to preserve his own musical language, which was largely based on Bohemian folklore. This culminated in his "Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88", which is still very popular today, especially for its relaxed and cheerful optimism. 

A4 Brahms and Dvořák – alliance of kindred spirits

4.SiKo Brahms and Dvořák – alliance of kindred spirits

Longing is an insatiable desire. It lies dormant in the soul and, especially in music, is a theme of immeasurable depth and complexity. Human existence is permeated by it and is conditioned by the desire to be satisfied. Many composers harbor an inner longing, the wish to express emotions and thereby gain recognition. Their musical settings become, so to speak, a mirror of deepest desires, a bridge between the unsayable and the expressible. But what is it that drives composers like Richard Wagner to transform this longing into sounds? Perhaps it is human nature itself that longs for the transcendent, for something that lies beyond tangible reality. Perhaps it is the search for beauty, for truth, for the feeling of connection with the universe. The “Wesendonck Lieder”, for example, are five otherworldly settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s muse. The songs inspired his opera “Tristan and Isolde”, in which the mutual longing of two lovers who cannot be united in life ends in madness and (love) death. The longing that the composer Hans Rott put into music in his Symphony No. 1 in E major was of a completely different kind: it was his deepest wish to be recognised as a composer by his contemporaries. In doing so, he had to endure bitter personal setbacks, because as Anton Bruckner’s favourite student, he was regularly judged negatively by his antipode Johannes Brahms. When Rott travelled to Mulhouse in Alsace to take up a position as choirmaster, Rott’s serious mental illness broke out – he suffered from “hallucinatory insanity and paranoia”. On the train journey, he threatened a fellow passenger who wanted to light a cigar with a revolver. Rott was convinced that Brahms had filled the train with dynamite in order to send him to his final death. Rott spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum, where he composed a lot but destroyed his works. He died at the age of 25 - his greatest wish was not to come true... 

6.SiKo Wagner and Rott – Longing

State Theatre Eisenach

Che bella panorama! The Italian landscape and culture have had a fascinating effect on composers from all over the world for centuries. The majestic mountains, the picturesque coastlines, the lush vineyards and idyllic villages reflect an aura of beauty and romantic flair. This scenic diversity and aesthetics have inspired composers such as Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky to capture their emotions and thoughts in musical masterpieces. Italy became a place of longing for many composers, who combined their music with the romantic landscape and spirited lifestyle of Italy. What is less well known, however, is that Richard Strauss also travelled to Italy in his early phase as a composer and wrote a symphonic poem "From Italy" op. 16, his first work of programme music: "I never really believed in inspiration from natural beauty, but I was taught otherwise in the Roman ruins, where ideas just flew." Under the influence of Gioacchino Rossini, whose operas "Tancredi", "La gazza ladra" and "L'italiana in Algeri" were very popular in Vienna, Schubert composed an "Overture in the Italian Style" for orchestra (D 591) in November 1817, which was premiered in the "Zum Römischen Kaiser" inn. For the first time, Schubert experienced widespread attention and recognition from the feared Viennese music critics with this new, border-crossing style of composition, which was new for Austria. In modern music, however, it is really difficult for composers and, above all, for those who cross genre boundaries - there is often scepticism towards all those who do not only uphold the noble grandeur of music, but have earned their merits through film music, for example. The Italian Nino Rota is an example of this: he became famous through his more than 150 film scores, for example for "La dolce vita", "Death on the Nile", "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "8 ½" by Federico Fellini, "The Leopard" by Luchino Visconti and "The Godfather" by Francis Ford Coppola. Rota himself, however, saw himself as a classical composer who also wrote film music. The "Divertimento concertante" is one of the most demanding works in the double bass concert literature and demands virtuoso technical skills from the soloist. Rota skilfully and humorously stages the double bass and alternates between unexpected surprise tones, a burlesque march and a whirling “bouncer” – a musical adventure for all the senses! 

7.SiKo Schubert, Rota and Strauss – Bella Italia!

Franz Liszt – as a sound magician, he opens the gates to a transcendental world in which the soul can wander through landscapes. In Liszt's creations, the search for the absolute, a striving for divine harmony that exceeds human experience, becomes apparent. His music is a reflection of life itself, with all its ups and downs, its dreams and tragedies. Through the keyboard of his compositions, Liszt expresses the entire spectrum of human emotions: from ecstatic joy to dark melancholy. The fascination and mystery of Franz Liszt manifests itself in his compositional as well as personal extravagance and excess. The aesthetic romanticism and the expressive revolt of his piano and orchestral works are fed by his (life) experiences as a citizen of the world, fantasist and visionary. As a 13-year-old he impressed with the one-act opera "Don Sanche ou Le château d'amour", in which he took up the then popular fashion of French compositions by Meyerbeer or those of Italian ones by Rossini. As a piano virtuoso he broke the boundaries of pianistic conventions and set new standards, especially with his piano and orchestral transcriptions. These paraphrases take up a large space in Liszt's oeuvre, as he not only transcribes them one-to-one, but transforms them into romantic sound paintings. His favourite composers were Richard Wagner, Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven. In the festival play "The Ruins of Athens" op. 113, Beethoven celebrates the resurrection of Hellenistic culture in a Greece occupied by the Ottomans - Liszt used this to create a fantasy based on motifs from Beethoven's original for piano and orchestra. The year 1847 marked a decisive turning point in Franz Liszt's life. Up until then he had travelled to every musically important corner of Europe as a piano virtuoso, but now he began a second career as a composer and created a new musical genre with the "symphonic poem". His twelfth, "The Ideals" - based on a poem by Schiller - can be seen as a kind of meditation on the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. Liszt saw himself as a mediator between the earthly and the divine, between the visible and the invisible. May one feel the longing for the infinite in Liszt's tones and recognise the power in music that connects us all.  

A9 Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven – Landscapes of the Soul

8.SiKo Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven – Landscapes of the Soul

Spohr, Weber, Schubert and Haydn – four titans of classical-romantic music history! They were undoubtedly pioneers on their respective musical paths, intuitively picking up on the trends of their time and laying the foundations for future generations of composers. One thing is certain, however: the one would probably not have existed without the other, or would probably not have achieved the virtuoso brilliance for which they are still praised today. There was a clear mutual influence and this contributed to the development of the musical landscape of their time. One example of this interaction is the connection between Franz Schubert and Carl Maria von Weber. Although they took different musical paths, as contemporaries they shared a common era of transition from Viennese Classicism to Romanticism. Schubert, inspired by Weber's operas, integrated some of his ideas into his songs and music-dramatic works, thus coming closer to the romantic ideal of musical expression. Weber, in turn, was impressed by Schubert's melodic inventiveness and his ability to convey emotional depth in his music. This mutual admiration and influence contributed to the bilateral development of their musical styles. Joseph Haydn and Louis Spohr were also no strangers to each other's musical world. Although they lived in different eras, they shared a common appreciation for form and structure in music. Haydn's work in developing the symphony form laid a foundation for the instrumentation and orchestration that would later be further developed by Spohr in his own works. Spohr's innovative use of the orchestra and his virtuosity as a violinist were certainly influenced by Haydn's pioneering work. The relationship between Spohr and Weber, in turn, was an appreciative, if not friendly one. Both knew each other from their time together in Gotha: In 1812, Karoline Amalie of Hesse-Kassel hosted the German Music Festival in the Margarethenkirche in Gotha, where Carl Maria von Weber took part as pianist and Louis Spohr as conductor of the Gotha court orchestra. The four works played in this symphony concert reveal the excellent legacies of past musical eras in harmonious harmony - for a fleeting moment, space and time merge into a single, infinite moment of classical-romantic aesthetics. 

Markus Huber

Conductor

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 14, 2024

THREE HAZELNUTS FOR CINDERELLA Family Concert · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Jan 22, 2025

CINDERELLA Ballet Family Performance · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Jan 30, 2025

A4 Brahms and Dvořák – alliance of kindred spirits · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Jan 31, 2025

4.SiKo Brahms and Dvořák – alliance of kindred spirits · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Mar 14, 2025

6.SiKo Wagner and Rott – Longing · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Past events

Oct 31, 2024

A2 Bach and Bruckner – Echo for eternity · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Oct 3, 2024

A1 Weinberg and Shostakovich – In the shadow of power · Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 2 by Brahms

Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

Conductor in Symphony No. 8 by Dvořák

Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach

About

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