Returning opera to its origins, where human drama is the focus, where passion, strokes of fate and deep feelings are the focus, where music and words can respect each other as equal arts: these were the aims of an opera reform to which Gluck was committed. "Alceste" is a particularly impressive example, because with it Gluck succeeds in making the overture a part of the opera itself by preparing the audience for everything that is to come. From the particularly tragic key of D minor, from the countless sighing motifs, the constant downward movement and the painful dissonances, even the most hardened audience knows that something tragic is about to happen. Thankfully, the opera ends with a happy ending.

Cambreling – Gluck, Mozart, Liszt and Wagner

Laeiszhalle Hamburg

Galina Ustvolskaya was a woman whose work was characterized by ascetic contemplation and uncompromising outbursts. From 1937 to 1947 she studied at the conservatory in her hometown of Leningrad, where Dmitri Shostakovich was not only one of her most important teachers, but also one of her great admirers. Shostakovich is quoted as saying that he was just a talent, she was a phenomenon. Until the end, the composer lived a secluded life and avoided any publicity. "I write when I am in a state of grace. Then the work rests for a while, and when its time comes, I release it. If its time does not come, I destroy it." After 1990, the composer did not release a single further work for performance until her death in 2006.

Cambreling – Verdi Requiem

The "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) is Claude Debussy's most popular and also his first important symphonic work. What's more, with its free form, which was completely innovative at the time, and its fascinating synthesis of nature experience and fantasy, it has become the key work of an entire era - "there is good reason to say that modern music awakens in Après-midi d'un faune," according to Pierre Boulez. It is based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé published in 1876: With an enigmatic, overwhelming feeling of fleeting eroticism, a faun (half man, half goat) awakens in the idyllic Arcadia and, half-asleep, remembers flirting with and chasing two lovely nymphs. Both managed to escape him, however, before he went back to sleep. Debussy described it in a somewhat more prosaic way to a conductor who had asked for more detailed explanations: "It's about a shepherd who plays the flute while sitting with his bottom in the grass."

"Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", "La Mer" and Dvořák's 8.

After the young Polish pianist Szymon Nehring enjoyed a tremendous success last season with Mozart's "Jenamy" Concerto in E-flat major, he is now sitting at the grand piano in the Great Hall again with the first piano concerto in D minor, op. 15 by Johannes Brahms, who was about the same age at the time at just under 30.

"You see, this is a symphony theme," Anton Bruckner is said to have added to his overflowing quotation list after hearing the beginning of Brahms' concert colossus. But it was not only in Vienna that the strange hybrid work was met with scepticism. At the first performance in Leipzig at the Gewandhaus, the opus failed - "brilliantly and decisively" (Brahms). In 1860, a Hamburg critic spoke of a "symphony with obbligato piano." There were two shocks that the young Brahms was probably trying to process in his work: Schumann's suicide attempt in February 1854 and Beethoven's Ninth, which he had heard for the first time in his life. At the planned premiere of his concert in the Hamburg Musikverein, Brahms was denied the only playable grand piano. So he traveled with his work to Hanover for the premiere under the direction of his friend Joseph Joachim in January 1859.

Szymon Nehring with Brahms' Piano Concerto – Works by Debussy

In his Carnaval, a work for piano solo, Robert Schumann depicts various characters such as Pierrot and Harlequin as well as his fellow composers, such as Schubert, Chopin and Paganini. Maurice Ravel transcribed the rich colour palette of this imaginative piano work for the orchestra. The German composer Hans Zender also drew on Schumann’s work for inspiration. His famous Fantasie opus 17 served as a starting point for Zender’s Schumann-Fantasie, in which he combines the 19th and 20th centuries into one majestic orchestral work. In his Mysteries of the Macabre, György Ligeti pays an absurdist homage to his own career, replete with dark humour and exuberant cynicism, with a starring role for soprano Katrien Baerts. A unique experience and a treat for your eyes and ears!

Carnival and mystery

Queen Elisabeth Hall

Have you always wanted to know more about the structure of a symphonic work? There’s only one way to learn, by experiencing it up close. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra introduces you to the stunning music of Zenders Schumann Fantasy. (in Dutch)

Spotlight: Schumann Fantasy

»My music is something like a signal into the unknown. What's more, I imagine and believe that my signal meets other signals and that the resulting physical changes create a new harmony.« The two »Signals« by the Japanese autodidact Tōru Takemitsu (both commissioned in 1987) are characterized by the alternation of question and answer, similar to the model of early Venetian church music. And so the wind ensemble is spatially separated from one another for the musical dialogue. »Nature and Duke Ellington were my teachers,« he is said to have once said; and we also hear the latter - alongside Takemitsu's other teacher, Messiaen - in the »Signals from Heaven«.

Cambreling – Takemitsu, Mozart, Dvořák, Shchedrin

Instrumentation details. The tourist was Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the key was B minor, the sketched work was the overture "The Hebrides", which was not completed until three and a half years later. On the trip, Mendelssohn Bartholdy had visited the island of Staffa with its legendary Fingal's Cave, but also experienced "the most horrible seasickness". The first version of the overture was written in Rome at the end of 1830, and Hector Berlioz, who was staying there, admiringly described it as a "delicate, fine musical fabric" that was "decorated with such rich colors". In 1832, Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote from London during the premiere: "I have now made the Hebrides significantly different and better." A third, slightly shortened version was printed.

Elina Vähälä plays Britten Violin Concerto

"This was my first work played by an orchestra and my first contact with a large audience. I was 22 years old at the time," reports Olivier Messiaen. "Les offrandes oubliées" (The Forgotten Offerings) was composed in 1930 and premiered on February 19, 1931 in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées by the Orchestre des concerts Straram under the direction of its boss and namesake, Walther Straram. The "symphonic meditation" (as the subtitle says) is based on linguistically comprehensible but abstract ideas. The texts were written by Messiaen himself. The themes of the three verses (cross - sin - Eucharist) can be understood as situations of contemplation, descent and rapture and form the three sections of the work.

Sylvain Cambreling, Szymon Nehring, Jane Archibald – Messiaen, Bellini, Chopin

"From the canyons to the stars... This means rising from the depths of the canyons up to the stars - and even higher up to the resurrected of paradise - to praise God and the abundance of his creations: the beauties of the earth (its rocks, its birdsong), the beauties of the visible sky, the beauties of the spiritual sky," writes Olivier Messiaen in the prologue to the score of "Des Canyons aux étoiles...".

Sylvain Cambreling

Events

Upcoming events

May 6, 2025

Cambreling – Takemitsu, Mozart, Dvořák, Shchedrin · Symphoniker Hamburg

May 8, 2025

Elina Vähälä plays Britten Violin Concerto · Symphoniker Hamburg

Jun 22, 2025

Sylvain Cambreling, Szymon Nehring, Jane Archibald – Messiaen, Bellini, Chopin · Symphoniker Hamburg

Jun 29, 2025

Cambreling – Messiaen »Des canyons aux étoiles…« · Symphoniker Hamburg

Past events

Mar 30, 2025

Cambreling – Gluck, Mozart, Liszt and Wagner · Symphoniker Hamburg

Feb 9, 2025

Cambreling – Verdi Requiem · Symphoniker Hamburg

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in La mer by Debussy

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Carnaval by Schumann

Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Carmen Suite by Shchedrin

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Symphony No. 8 in G Major by Dvořák

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Debussy

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Les offrandes oubliées by Messiaen

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor by Chopin

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in L'Ascension by Messiaen

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor by Brahms

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Schumann-Phantasie by Zender

Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Le Grand Macabre by Ligeti

Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Signals from Heaven by Takemitsu

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Divertimento No. 5 C major by Mozart

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Wind Serenade in D minor by Dvořák

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Overture, Cavatina and Cabaletta by Bellini

Symphoniker Hamburg

Conductor in Des canyons aux étoiles by Messiaen

Symphoniker Hamburg

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