MUSICAETERNA AND TEODOR CURRENTZIS IN EUROPE

Teodor Currentzis, the “revolutionary” among his generation of conductors (Die Zeit, 2016) and musicAeterna are returning to Western Europe for a four-week tour featuring three different programs. With them will be the extraordinary violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who collaborated with Currentzis and this ensemble in the spring of 2016 for a highly praised Tchaikovsky recording. According to Deutschlandfunk, “The result is high voltage from the loudspeakers.”

The tour will also pay tribute to two of the most important musical innovators of the twentieth century with performances of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, contrasting the contemplative “Memory of an Angel” with the visionary furor of a restless creative spirit.

“Salutations de Vienne à France” could serve as theme of the second program, which will present two masterpieces from the golden age of Viennese classicism. Mozart said of his Violin Concerto in D major that it flowed like “oil” from his fingers. The work, which Mozart called his “Strasbourg Concerto,” is strongly influenced by French traditions. The same is true of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, in which the composer’s initial enthusiasm for Napoleon was reflected in his use of musical motifs from the French Revolution. In the concert on 10 April in the Teatro Comunale, the audience will hear Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in G minor performed by Alexander Melnikov.

Finally, the Easter season will be celebrated with two monumental works of sacred music, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ (in the version for orchestra). The soloists will be the Spanish soprano Nuria Rial and the Irish mezzosoprano Paula Murrihy.

The concert dates can be found here.