© Axel Nickolaus
Since its founding in 1987 by Leonard Bernstein, the International Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival has enjoyed an outstanding reputation. It is the centrepiece of the pedagogical activities of the Festival, forming the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra anew every year. Tours take the orchestra to the European music metropolises and to the USA on a regular basis. Every summer, the Festival Orchestra is reconvened as an international youth orchestra. Young musicians who have passed the auditions held all over the world work on great orchestral literature with famous conductors. The works are prepared in sectional rehearsals and then rehearsed intensively during the full orchestral sessions. In addition to Principal Conductor Christoph Eschenbach, conductors like Kent Nagano, Iván Fischer, Christopher Hogwood, Manfred Honeck, Krzysztof Urbanski and many others work with the Festival Orchestra regularly.
Konzerthaus, Berlin
© Christof Rieken
Prof. Monika Grütters was born in Münster and studied German literature, art history and political sciences at the universities in Münster and Bonn. She gained professional experience by working for opera houses, in publishing and in the museum field before working for arts and culture programmes in major corporations. From 1998 to 2013 she was a board member for the foundation “Brandenburger Tor”. Since 1999 she has been an honorary professor of culture management at the Free University in Berlin. Monika Grütters has been Chairwoman of Berlin’s CDU since 2016. From 1995 to 2005 she was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives, where she was the CDU Faction’s spokeswoman for science and culture. Since 205 she has been a member of the German Parliament. From 2009 to 2013 Monika Grütters chaired the Committee on Culture and Media. In December 2013 she was appointed Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
© SenKultEuropa
Dr. Klaus Lederer was born in Mecklenburg in 1974 and spent his childhood and early adolescence in Frankfurt an der Oder. After the end of the GDR, he was active in leftist youth organizations and joined the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in 1992. He spent the 1990s studying law at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s law school, where he earned a doctorate, and working for the PDS as a local politician. In December 2005 Klaus Lederer was elected chair of the Berlin Left Party, a position he held until December 2016. From 2003 to January 2017, Dr. Lederer was a member of the Left Party parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, Berlin’s state legislature, and was its spokesperson on legal policy. Dr. Klaus Lederer has been Mayor and Senator for Culture and Europe in Berlin since December 2016.
General Director of Deutschlandradio
© Deutschlandradio – Bettina Fürst-Fastré
© Eric Brissaud
Christoph Eschenbach has been closely associated with the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival for almost two decades. Time and again, the pianist and conductor has rehearsed and performed fascinating programmes with the Festival Orchestra, whose chief conductor he has been since 2004 – their tours have regularly included Young Euro Classic. From 2010 to 2017 Eschenbach has also been the director of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. The 76-year-old continues to appear on all the world’s major concert stages. During the 2016/17 season, he conducts the Bamberger Philharmoniker, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Other appearances include London, Paris and Madrid as well as North America and Asia. Last but not least, Eschenbach continues to perform as a piano soloist and in song recitals with the baritone Matthias Goerne.
© Natacha Colmez Photography
The French cellist Bruno Philippe, born in Perpignan in 1993, studied with Jérôme Pernoo at the Conservatoire in Paris. Further studies took him to master courses with renowned cellists such as David Geringas, Steven Isserlis and Pieter Wispelwey. Since 2014 Philippe has been a student of Frans Helmerson’s at the Kronberg Academy in the Taunus in Germany. During that same year, he won a Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the ARD Competition in Munich and a Special Prize at the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann in Berlin. Philippe has appeared at innumerable festivals all over Europe; among his chamber music partners are Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Tabea Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit. In 2015 his first CD was released, featuring the Cello Sonatas by Johannes Brahms.
© Hua Lin
The Chinese-American pianist moved to the USA in 1999 to study at the Manhattan School of Music and subsequently at the Curtis Institute of Music with Gary Graffman and at New York’s Juilliard School with Yoheved Kaplinsky, Joseph Kalichstein and Robert McDonald. In 2016 she added a Master of Business Administration from the Columbia Business School. During the 2016/17 season Di Wu gave her first concerts in Minsk and Moscow, performed three concerts in Mexico and undertook an extensive tour of Asia, giving 20 concerts in the great music metropolises. Di Wu began her professional career at the age of 14, when she appeared with the Beijing Philharmonic. In 2009 she gave her US debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has performed in Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Boston, Seattle and Cincinnati, among others, with American orchestra, working with conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Ludovic Morlot, Yu Long and Christoph Eschenbach. She has given recitals at New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, as well as in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as well as the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Ravinia Festival and the Portland Piano Festival.
© Thomas Bloch
Thomas Bloch lives in Paris and is sought-after around the world as a specialist for rare instruments such as the Ondes Martenot, the glass harmonica, the Cristal Baschet and the waterphone. He is also a composer and producer. He works in the classical music field, but also in rock and pop music as well as in opera, improvisation, film music and ballet music. He has given more than 3000 concerts in 40 countries and has been involved in about 150 CD productions. Among other partners, he has worked with Radiohead, John Cage, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, Robert Wilson, Milos Forman, Daft Punk, Valery Gergiev, Pierre Boulez, Michel Plasson, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Paul Sacher, Isabelle Huppert, Manu Dibango, Fred Frith, Phil Minton, Nana Mouskouri, and Vanessa Paradis. Thomas Bloch has recorded CDs for such renowned labels as EMI, Deutsche Grammophon and Sony and produces his own CDs for Naxos. Thomas Bloch studied musicology at the Strasbourg University and teaches Ondes Martenot at the Strasbourg Conservatory. At the Musée de la Musique de Paris, he is responsible for the presentation of the Ondes Martenot. In January 2017 Thomas Bloch was involved in the opening concert of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.
Concerto for Cello No. 1 in C-Major Hob. VIIb.1 (1765)
“Turangalîla Symphony” for Piano and Large Orchestra (1948)
7 pm: Pre-Concert Talk with Dieter Rexroth at the Werner-Otto-Saal
Free admission for ticket holders at 6:45 pm
PROGRAMME
Hardly an orchestra has such a long-standing and close connection with the festival Young Euro Classic as the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra: every year, the international ensemble visits Berlin after its intense rehearsal period in Rendsburg. In 2017 these brilliant musicians even open the festival on August 18. The SHFO looks back on 30 successful years, having been founded by the legendary Leonard Bernstein in 1987. An imposing number of prominent conductors has worked with the orchestra since then; this time, its chief conductor Christoph Eschenbach returns with the orchestra. Together they present a work that almost threatens to exceed the dimensions of the Konzerthaus: the enormous Turangalîla Symphony by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. A charming contrast will be provided by Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1, performed by the French newcomer Bruno Philippe.