Manfred Honeck returns to the podium of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra: Austrian, 61 years old, he has been Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony since 2008 and is a regular guest of major orchestras such as the Berlin and Wiener Philharmoniker and the New York Philharmonic.
The first part of the concert will see the performance of a selection of seven Lieder by Gustav Mahler taken from the cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Magic Horn of the Child), the collection of poems and popular songs edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in the early 'nineteenth century, which inspired the composer's sound imagination. The Lieder will be sung by Christoph Pohl , making his debut at Santa Cecilia.
The German baritone, active for many years at the Semperoper in Dresden, in recent seasons has been a guest at the Paris Opéra, the Covent Garden in London, the Metropolitan in New York and the Fenice in Venice (Wagner's Tannhäuser).
In the second part of the concert, the Orchestra led by Honeck will perform one of Beethoven's most beloved symphonies , the Third called "Eroica", initially dedicated to Napoleon, and performed for the first time in Vienna in 1805.