© MUTESOUVENIR | Kai Bienert
The Polska Orkiestra Sinfonia Iuventus im. Jerzego Semkowa returns to the festival Young Euro Classic for the third time, after previous appearances in 2011 and 2013. The ensemble was founded in 2007 at the initiative of the Polish Ministry of Culture, which also supports it conceptually and financially. More than 70 young musicians under the age of 30 – graduates and students of Polish music academies – gather their first semi-professional experiences in orchestral playing here. Invitations have taken the orchestra not only to many European countries, but also to China. It has done ground-breaking work with the leading Polish conductors, such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Gabriel Chmura, Antoni Wit and Andrej Boreyko. Among its CD productions, works by Polish composers such as Wieniawski, Paderewski and Penderecki stand out. The performance of the opera Moses by Anton Rubinstein under Michail Jurowski in 2018 won the orchestra international acclaim. On the occasion of its ten-year anniversary, the Sinfonia Iuventus added the name of its founding conductor, Jerzy Semkov, to its own name.
Konzerthaus, Berlin
Governing Mayor of Berlin
Michael Müller, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, was born in Berlin in 1964. He finished secondary school in 1982, followed by a business apprenticeship and a specialized upper secondary school for business and administration. From 1986 to 2011, he worked as a self-employed printer.
Michael Müller joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1981. From 1991 to 2000, he was chair of his local SPD chapter, and from 1989 to 1996, he was a member of Berlin-Tempelhof borough assembly, finishing his time there as the head of the SPD party group. He was also a delegate to the district and state party conventions. From 2000 to 2004, he was chair of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg SPD. In 2004, Michael Müller became chair of the SPD in the federal state of Berlin, a post that he held until 2012 and to which he was re-elected in 2016.
Elected a Member of the Berlin House of Representatives in 1996, Michael Müller has served in this capacity ever since. From 2001 to 2011, he also chaired the SPD parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives.
In 2011, he was appointed Senator for Urban Development and the Environment and Mayor of Berlin. On 11 December 2014, Michael Müller became Governing Mayor of Berlin and has held this office ever since. From 2014 to 2016, he was also Senator for Culture; in 2016, he became Senator for Higher Education and Research.
Michael Müller was President of the German Federal Council from 1 November 2017 to 31 October 2018 and has been President of the international city network Metropolis since August 2018.
© Christof Rieken
Prof. Monika Grütters MdB
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
Prof. Monika Grütters was born in Münster and studied German literature, art history and political sciences at the universities of Münster and Bonn. She gained professional experience working at the opera, in publishing and in museums before managing art and cultural programmes in large corporations. From 1998 to 2013 she was a member of the governing board of the foundation “Brandenburger Tor”. Since 1999 she has been honorary professor for culture management at the Freie Universität Berlin.
From 1995 to 2005 she was a member of the Berlin parliament, where she was the spokesperson for science and cultural policy of the CDU parliamentary group. Since 2005 she has been a member of the German Bundestag, where she was the chair of the committee on cultural and media affairs from 2009 to 2013. Since December 2013 she has been Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
© Bettina Fürst
© Michal Grocholski
The young Polish conductor Jakub Chrenowicz, a graduate of the Ignazy Jan Paderewski Music Academy in Poznań, began his professional career at the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in 2010. Further studies took him to the conservatories in Frankfurt am Main and Warsaw; since the 2017/18 season, Chrenowicz has been Chief Conductor of the Koszalin Philharmonic. He has been invited to conduct the major radio orchestras in Poland, but also by the Symphony Orchestras in Poznań, Łódź and Cracow, by the Sinfonia Varsovia and the Sinfonietta Cracovia. Chrenowicz has also made a name for himself as a ballet conductor, leading works such as Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps, Leon Minkus’ Don Quichotte and Leo Delibes’ Coppélia. In 2011 the conductor made his debut at the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, where he conducted Stanisław Moniuszko’s national opera The Haunted Manor, among other works.
Symphony No. 6 in F Major Op. 68 "Pastoral" (1808)
Toccata for Small Orchestra (1947)
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor Op. 67 (1808)
7 pm Pre-Concert Talk with Dieter Rexroth at the Werner-Otto-Saal
Free admission with concert ticket
PROGRAMME
Our Polish neighbours perform the opening night concert of Young Euro Classic this year. Under the baton of the young conductor Jakub Chrenowicz, the Polska Orkiestra Sinfonia Iuventus im. Jerzego Semkowa, the national youth orchestra of Poland, which has already appeared twice in Berlin, offers a rousing start to the festival’s great Beethoven focus in 2019. Before the intermission, it performs the Symphony in F-major with the epithet “The Pastoral”; before the intermission, there is the wonderful Symphony in C-minor, the Fifth – a combination of contrasts which already delighted the audience when both works were given their very first performance together in Vienna in 1808. They show off the many facets of Beethoven as a great symphonic composer: from dramatic to lyrical, painting thunder, storms and murmuring brooks with a musical palette – and invariably exciting, surprising and touching.
