© Oliver Killig
In 1996 cellist Jan Vogler and a group of musicians founded the Moritzburg Festival, with the baroque Moritzburg Palace near Dresden as its main performance venue. Since 2006 the Moritzburg Festival Academy has been an integral part of this festival. During these years the Academy has acquired an outstanding reputation as an international, innovative and creative musical “workshop”. After a strict selection process, about 40 highly talented music students aged 16 to 26 from all around the world are invited to Moritzburg every year. Following the model of the festival itself, the young musicians invited to Moritzburg work on orchestral repertoire and diverse chamber music pieces together; the director is violinist Mira Wang. After performances at Young Euro Classic in 2008 and 2012, the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra returns for its third visit to the Berlin festival this year.
www.moritzburgfestival.com
Konzerthaus, Berlin
© Kmetitsch
Milan Turkovic, born in Zagreb to Austrian-Croatian parents in 1939, originally came to fame as a bassoonist. For 45 years he was a member of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus in Vienna. In addition, he made guest appearances as a solo bassoonist all over the world, working with conductors such as Carlo Maria Giulini, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Christoph Eschenbach and Sándor Végh. Numerous composers, from Sofia Gubaidulina to Jean Françaix and Wynton Marsalis, composed works for him. Two decades ago, Turkovic also began to conduct. In the meantime, he has led many of Austria’s major orchestras, in addition to ensembles in Rome, London, New York and Japan. During the 2014/15 season, he conducted a production of Kurt Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden at Vienna’s Volkstheater. Turkovic’s other interests are broad-ranging: he has moderated a music quiz on ORF, has written several books (Wiener Leben. Wien erleben; Was Musiker tagsüber tun) and appeared in Händl Klaus’ film Kater (2015).
© Lynn Goldsmith
The French pianist Lise de la Salle, born in 1988, made her concert debut at the age of nine in a live broadcast by Radio France. At the age of 13 she completed her studies at the Conservatoire Supérieur de la Musique in Paris and launched her career, which would soon take her to all the important music metropolises, from New York, Boston and Montréal to London, Munich and Moscow and all the way to Japan. Conductors with whom she has worked during recent years include Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Philippe Herreweghe, Michael Sanderling, Charles Dutoit and Dennis Russell Davies. Between 2013 and 2015 she performed all the piano concerti by Sergey Rachmaninov under Fabio Luisi’s baton in Zurich. Lise de la Salle’s repertoire ranges from Bach and Mozart via Schumann and Liszt to the Russians Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov. After her Young Euro Classic debut in 2004, when she was merely 16, the pianist returns to the festival for the first time in eleven years.
«Con brio» Concert Overture for Orchestra (2008)
Concerto for Piano No. 4 in G-Major Op. 58 (1807)
Symphony No. 41 «Jupiter» K. 551 (1788)
PROGRAMME
Who says that all people want to hear are great romantic symphonies? The Moritzburg Festival Orchestra makes a case for classicism, bringing two Mozart and Beethoven highlights to Young Euro Classic. And truly, there is a lot to discover among the interplay of motifs and instruments: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 is enchanting in its poetic dialogue between soloist and orchestra, while Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, the last symphony he ever wrote, reflects the full genius of the master pouring his full experience into this work. It all sounds so natural – and yet the composition is so artful! The same might be said for Jörg Widmann’s overture Con brio: this is a sophisticated homage to Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 7 and 8 for our times, and since its premiere in 2008 it has been performed around the world.