© Rafa Martin
The National Spanish Youth Orchestra – Joven Orquesta Nacional de España, or JONDE – has been one of the most popular guests at Young Euro Classic from the very beginning of the festival. Its high quality and infectious temperament have given the audience many unforgettable evenings. For the first time since 2014, the Spanish orchestra now returns to the Konzerthaus. A sub-department of the Spanish Ministry for Education, Culture and Sports, the JONDE was founded in 1983; ever since, it has been conducted by numerous renowned conductors and worked with outstanding soloists, including Carlo Maria Giulini, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jesús Lopez Cobos, John Williams and Juan Diego Flórez, to name but a few. The orchestra members, aged 18 to 24, are selected through annuals that take place twice a year. The repertoire of the JONDE includes not only works of the classical and romantic eras as well as classical modernism, but has always had a special focus on contemporary music.
Konzerthaus, Berlin
© ZDF Pressestelle
Editor-in-Chief of the ZDF
From “Morgenmagazin” to “WISO” and “Aktuelles Sportstudio” – as editor-in-chief of the ZDF, he is responsible for these and many other broadcasts. Since 2010 Peter Frey has been the director of the ZDF’s information department, overseeing more than one thousand employees. As a commentator in the “heute journal” and interviewer for the series “Was nun?” he also keeps working in front of the camera. Peter Frey was born in Bingen on the River Rhine, studied in Mainz and Madrid and has worked as a reporter all over the world. In 1978, while he was still a student of politics, pedagogy and Romance languages, he began working as a journalist, initially for the Südwestfunk radio and for the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau”. In 1983 Frey began reporting from Latin America, Poland, Spain and other countries for the ZDF’s “heute journal”. Afterwards he became the ZDF’s correspondent in Washington. From 1992 to 1998 he established the “ZDF Morgenmagazin” format in Berlin. As the director of the foreign policy department of the ZDF, he moderated the feature “auslandsjournal” from 1998 to 2001. He has travelled as a reporter to the Middle East, Russia, the USA and Eastern Europe. As the director of the ZDF Capital Studio, he moderated the feature “Berlin direct” and the ZDF Summer Interviews from 2001 to 2010. He presented special features on the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis and Barack Obama. Peter Frey loves music, from Beethoven to Berlin’s singer-songwriters. He is married and lives in Mainz and Berlin.
Originally from Oviedo in Asturias, the conductor Pablo González was educated at the Guildhall School of Music in London and is equally in demand on the concert podium and for opera productions. He has led performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Strauss’ Daphne and Wagner’s Rienzi at the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona; for the Glyndebourne Touring Opera, he conducted Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Donizetti’s Elisir d’Amore. He has conducted concerts with the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. In June 2017, González performed works by Schumann and Strauss with the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin. His concert repertoire spans the classical and romantic era to Mahler, Sibelius, Nielsen and Shostakovich. González recently presented a 3-CD box featuring orchestral works by his compatriot Enrique Granados.
The Spanish cellist Asier Polo has been at the top of his field in his homeland for many years. Educated first in Bilbao, then with Maria Kliegel in Cologne and Ivan Monighetti in Basel, he has performed in London and Paris, with the Israel Philharmonic, the festivals in Schleswig-Holstein and Gstaad, in Mexico and Brazil. Polo’s special reputation in Spain is based on numerous world premieres; thus, Jesús Torres, Luis de Pablo, Jesús Villa-Rojo and Antón García Abril have written cello concertos for him. The artist has also recorded numerous works by the younger generation of Spanish composers, such as Oscar Escudero, Tomás Marco, Carmelo Bernaola and Jesús Ruedo. Another CD with the two cello concertos by Joaquin Rodrigo and the concerto by Alberto Ginastera was released recently. Asier Polo is also a professor at the Music Academies in San Sebastián and Madrid. He plays a cello by Francesco Ruggeri (Cremona, 1689).
“Llueven estrellas en el mar” (2018, German Premiere)
“Don Quixote” Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character Op. 35 (1898)
Concerto for Orchestra Sz. 116 (1944/45)
7 pm: Pre-Concert Talk with Dieter Rexroth at the Werner-Otto-Saal
Free admission for ticket holders at 6:45 pm
PROGRAMME
To the Young Euro Classic audience, the National Spanish Youth Orchestra JONDE really needs no introduction. Every time it has performed at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, sparks went flying. The young musicians combine technical prowess with Iberian temperament in a beautiful way. This year’s programme is sure to benefit – for which work could be more rewarding for an orchestra than Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, a 20th-century classic in which each instrument section has its own special moment to shine? Another challenge for any orchestra is Don Quixote, the tone poem in which Richard Strauss paid resounding homage to the Spanish “Knight of the sorrowful countenance”. Finally, the JONDE never performs in Berlin without featuring a contemporary piece: the composer Alicia Díaz de la Fuente has written a new orchestral work for this occasion.
