Author: Andrea Kerner

For almost 40 years, the orchestra founded by Giovanni Antonini has been one of the leading international original-sound ensembles, delighting audiences, the press and renowned soloists all over the world with ever new ideas for well-known and lesser-known works of the Baroque and (early) Classical periods. The select circle of artistic partners includes exceptional artists such as violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Isabelle Faust, pianist Fazil Say, mandolin prodigy Avi Avital, soprano Anna Prohaska or cellist Sol Gabetta – to name just a few of the most important.

In March and April 2023, the ensemble will be on tour with different programmes in Europe and Korea – again accompanied by outstanding musicians: with soprano Fatma Said, it will be guest at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin, and with Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Labèque sisters it will travel from Dijon to Baden-Baden before presenting arias from the Baroque at the Tongyeong International Music Festival in South Korea with the American-South Korean countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim.

Monday, 6 March 2023, Konzerthaus Berlin
Tuesday, 7 March 2023, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
With works by Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Castello, Locatelli and Haydn

Fatma Said, soprano

Saturday, 11 March 2023, Opéra Dijon
Sunday, 12 March 2023, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Monday, 13 March 2023, Philharmonie de Paris
J. M. Kraus: Overture from the opera “Olympia”
W. A. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major KV 271 “Jenamy” (Jeunehomme)
W. A. Mozart: Concerto No. 10 in E flat major for two fortepianos and orchestra KV 365
W. A. Mozart: Concerto for 3 pianos in F major KV 242

Katia and Marielle Labèque, fortepiano / Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano

Friday, 07 April 2023, Tongyeong International Music Festival
With works by Antonio Vivaldi, Isang Yun and others

Saturday, 08 April 2023, Tongyeong International Music Festival
With overtures and arias by Georg Friedrich Handel and other baroque composers

Kangmin Justin Kim, countertenor

From Despair to Bliss, Bach’s piano work for viola and a world premiere – PHANTASM has a lot planned for the first quarter of the New Year!

On 3 February 2023, the third and final part of the award-winning series “The Well-Tempered Consort”, which the PHANTASM VIOL CONSORT launched in 2020, will be released. The programme, conceived by Laurence Dreyfus (the ensemble’s founder and artistic director) illuminates Bach’s fugues from the “Well-Tempered Clavier”, relates them to other works by the exceptional composer and brings to life the overwhelming diversity of characters, styles and emotions behind the notes. The trailer “Pièce d’orgue”, directed by Ralf Pleger, can be seen on YouTube – the entire film is currently available exclusively on Apple Music, and will soon be available on other platforms.

Two days later, the ensemble will perform at King’s College, Cambridge, with the programme From Despair to Bliss: Consort Music by Michael East and William Lawes in front of the Rubens altarpiece “The Adoration of the Magi”.

At the end of February, PHANTASM can be heard with the tenor Nicholas Mulroy in Berlin-Spandau, in the first edition of the newly founded early music festival SPAM.

PHANTASM will finally present a veritable world premiere in March in Berlin’s Pierre-Boulez-Saal: In The Art of Being Human, music of the 16th and 17th centuries, dance and visual arts are combined in an interdisciplinary performance.

Friday, 3 February 2023, outhere music
Bach: The Well-Tempered Consort – III

Sunday, 5 February 2023, King’s College Chapel
From Despair to Bliss
With works by Michael East and William Lawes
Daniel Hyde, organ

Saturday, 25 February 2023, Spandau Citadel, Italian Courts
Von Verzweiflung und Liebe
With works by William Byrd and Michael East
Nicholas Mulroy, tenor

Thursday 23 & Friday 24 & Saturday 25 March 2023, Pierre Boulez Hall
The Art of Being Human
With works by William Byrd, John Dowland, William Lawes, Henry Purcell and others.
Laurence Dreyfus, treble viol and musical direction / Alexander Polzin, visual concept / Sommer Ulrickson, choreography

The Between Worlds Ensemble, founded by Avi Avital, combines different genres, cultures and musical worlds. Its members are at home in both classical and non-classical repertoire, and its programmes combine classical compositions with traditional music heard in arrangements created especially for these performances. Together with the Georgian Rustavi Ensemble they explore musical traditions around the Black Sea.

BLACK SEA
With works by G. Kancheli, S. Tsintsadze, F. Say and traditional music
Between Worlds Ensemble / Rustavi Ensemble / Avi Avital, mandoline & leader
12 February 2023, Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin
14 February 2023, Warsaw
15 February 2023, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

To love and death – together with its spiritus rector René Jacobs, the B’ROCK ORCHESTRA conquers the (early) romantic repertoire of the 19th century in all its drama and also lets supposedly all-too-familiar repertoire shine in new splendour. Soprano Christiane Karg guarantees a particularly sensitive and clever interpretation of Mozart’s concert arias.

Wednesday, 25. & Friday, 26. January 2023, BASF-Feierabendhaus Ludwigshafen
Venga La Morte!
With works by C.M. von Weber, W. A. Mozart and F. Schubert

Handel’s Italian cantatas are among the most beautiful compositions he left to posterity. The interpretation by the Finnish Baroque Orchestra and soprano Carolyn Sampson promises pulsating life as if under the southern sun – even in January!

Carolyn Sampson, one of Britain’s leading sopranos specialising in Baroque and Classical music, has teamed up with the outstanding Scandinavian ensemble for this programme. Handel’s works, written around 1707 in Florence or Rome, alternate with pieces by two members of the Scarlatti family.

Thursday, 19 January 2023, Wigmore Hall, London
UN’ALMA INNAMORATA – Handel’s Italian Arias
With works by G. F. Handel, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti

The Oberon Trio and tenor Ian Bostridge are a well-rehearsed team. Especially when it comes to the joint programmes with arrangements of English, Scottish and Welsh folk songs for voice and chamber music by Beethoven and Haydn: “Listening is simply a pleasure,” was the verdict of the Passauer Neue Presse on the programme in summer 2022. In January 2023, they will be guests at the Philharmonie Essen.

Sunday, 15 January 2023, Philharmonie Essen
Folk song arrangements by Ludwig van Beethoven & Joseph Haydn

Another turbulent and eventful year lies behind us – while on the one hand we are pleased and relieved to note that, despite the pandemic, music can once again take place under the usual conditions, on the other hand the war in Ukraine and its consequences have presented us with new questions and challenges. So we can hardly speak of a “return to normality”, but rather a “different normality”, which is characterised by the fact that it does not seem so “normal”. As a society and as individuals, in both professional and private contexts, we have to adapt to big and small, slow and fast, fundamental and less significant changes – and are always faced with the choice of seeing them as a challenge or an opportunity.

We are grateful to be able to look back on a year that has brought us challenges, but also many exciting opportunities: our team has grown and been able to develop new skills, and more ensembles have joined us; artists who are breaking new ground with new ideas and showing that change can also mean enrichment – including the Babylon Orchestra, the franz ensemble, Elina Albach’s Continuum and the Phantasm Viol Consort.

Before we start our Christmas holidays, we would like to give you a short preview of the upcoming concerts we are looking forward to:

⭐︎ Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Vox Luminis
⭐︎ Il Giardino Armonico and Isabelle Faust
⭐︎ Oberon Trio and Ian Bostridge
⭐︎ and further concerts in January and February.

But most of all, we would like to wish you all happy and relaxing holidays & a Happy New Year 2023!

Andreas Richter, Andrea Kerner, Julia Larigo, Michael Sauter, Daniela Gast, Capucine Valois & Benjamin Kaiser

“Wo die Sprache aufhört, fängt die Musik an”

The first edition of TRIOGIPFEL will pay tribute to one of the most important artists of German Romanticism: E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose death anniversary in June 2022 is the 200th. Although world-famous today primarily as the author of a body of work as profound as it is imaginative, Hoffmann devoted much of his artistic and publishing output to music: he worked as a Kapellmeister and music director in Bamberg, Leipzig and Dresden, published music reviews (including several important Beethoven reviews), essays and musical narratives, and began composing at a young age. His rich oeuvre includes stage plays and vocal music as well as a whole series of chamber music compositions, including the Piano Trio in E major.

In addition to Hoffmann’s “Grand Trio” in E major, the programme includes Beethoven’s “Ghost Trio”, Brahms Piano Trio op. 8, Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 2 and specially commissioned piano trios by Britta Byström and Frank Zabel. The Oberon Trio has invited two internationally renowned trios, the Morgenstern Trio from Amsterdam and the Amatis Trio from Salzburg, as musical partners for this successful summit storming. The musical repertoire is complemented by a carefully curated selection of texts by E.T.A. Hoffmann, presented by actress Stella Maria Adorf.

The TRIOGIPFEL E.T.A. 200 will be climbed as a long concert night at KühlhausBerlin, an exciting new venue for classical music in the immediate vicinity of Gleisdreieck Park. A place of encounter and creativity, open to partnerships, impulses, ideas – open to Berlin and its artists.

19 November 2022, KühlhausBerlin
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio D major op. 70/1 “Geistertrio”
Britta Byström: Doppelgänger Music (world premiere commissioned by the Oberon Trio)
Johannes Brahms: Piano Trio B major op. 8
Robert Schumann: Piano Trio No. 2 F major op. 80
Frank Zabel: 3. Trio (Der Sandmann) (world premiere commissioned by the Oberon Trio)
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Piano Trio in E major “Grand Trio” (played by all trios)
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Excerpts from “Der Sandmann”, “Die Elixiere des Teufels” and other texts