Organization

Conductor

Mariss Jansons

Singer

Baritone

Thomas Hampson

Orchestra

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Mariss Jansons & Thomas Hampson

Munich

Germany

Herkulessaal

Mariss Jansons & Thomas Hampson: Concert Various

Public

Concert

Approved

In 2013, Mariss Jansons was awarded the Siemens Music Prize, and American baritone Thomas Hampson delivered the eulogy. The two musicians had already worked together with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra many times before. Now Maestro Jansons will be reunited with this charismatic singer, who has a special passion for art song in all its many facets. This time Hampson will present Kurt Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs, written in the 1940s during the composer’s American exile. Brimming with patriotism, Whitman’s poems are reflections on the American Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln and other nameless victims. They offered Weill a welcome vehicle for protesting against the warmongers of Fascism, and he set them to music in a striking synthesis of European art song and Broadway show tune. A sharp contrast will be provided by the martial fustian at the end of The Pines of Rome, the second piece in Ottorino Respighi’s Roman trilogy. It is a naturalistic fresco poised between Impressionist pastels and gleaming orchestral colours. The concert will open with Beethoven’s rarely heard Second Symphony, its radiant D major only seeming to cast a spell of optimism.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Ensemble