Name: Vienna Philharmonic 2 • Mariss Jansons
Start: 2012-08-04T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2012-08-05T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Großes Festspielhaus

Organization

Conductor

Mariss Jansons

Soprano

Nina Stemme

Salzburger Festspiele

Orchestra

Wiener Philharmoniker

Vienna Philharmonic 2 • Mariss Jansons

Salzburg

Austria

Großes Festspielhaus

The Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, born in Riga in 1943, received his first musical training from his father, the conductor Arvid Jansons. He studied music in Leningrad, continued his education with Hans Swarowsky and Herbert von Karajan and in 1971 was a prizewinner at the Berlin Karajan Competition. He gained valuable experience as an assistant to Yevgeny Mravinsky in the Leningrad Philharmonic. From 1979 to 2000 he was chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, in 1992/93 Mariss Jansons became principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1997/98 music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. As successor to Lorin Maazel, he took over the direction of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich in September 2003. In autumn 2004 he also became chief conductor of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam; at the end of the 2014/15 season, Jansons is giving up this post.
Mariss Jansons received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 2013. The award recognizes the conductor's life's work. The prize, which is endowed with 250,000 euros, is also known as the "Nobel Prize in Music". On October 4, 2013, Germany's Federal President Joachim Gauck ceremoniously presented Mariss Jansons with the Grand Cross of Merit with Star.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was only 24 years old when, under the strong impression of Richard Wagner's music, he composed a "great hit": The symphonic poem Don Juan op. 20 is based on a romantic version of the story by the poet Nikolaus Lenau . Here Strauss managed to find his own style and develop his unique musical language. A full orchestra of triple woodwind, harp and glockenspiel is used to great effect. The famous sound of the horns aptly characterizes the title hero. Strauss himself conducted the extremely successful premiere on November 11, 1889 in Weimar.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) wrote the Wesendonck-Lieder cycle in the years 1857 and 1858. The texts were written by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the merchant Otto Wesendonck, who was a friend of Wagner's and with whom Wagner, who was married in her first marriage, had a relationship. The five songs were written while Wagner was working on "Tristan und Isolde" and indeed their atmosphere is shaped by this milestone in operatic history. The soloist is the Swedish soprano Nina Stemme, who is one of the most sought-after singers in her field on the international musical scene. Richard Wagner's major roles form a focal point in Nina Stemme's repertoire, which has received numerous important awards; in April 2012 the Vienna State Opera appointed her a chamber singer.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) worked on his Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, for more than 25 years because for a long time he felt Beethoven's symphonic heritage to be overwhelming and blocking: "I will never compose a symphony! You don't have one understanding of how we feel when we always hear a giant marching behind us," Brahms wrote to a friend in the early 1870s. He had been working on the First Symphony since 1850 and only finished it in 1876. The work, whose final theme bears a resemblance to the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, has long been part of the popular standard symphonic repertoire.

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With four opera productions and its concert cycle, the Vienna Philharmonic once again forms the centre of the Salzburg Festival. This year, its concerts bring the musicians not only to the Grosses Festspielhaus, where they will be heard under the baton of four of the most important conductors of our times, but – with smaller forces – also to the Main Auditorium of the Mozarteum.
The work which opens the series of the Philharmonic’s concerts also builds a bridge to the Ouverture spirituelle: Valery Gergiev conducts Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, a work that is as unusual as it is haunting, setting three psalms from the Old Testament to music. The rest of the programme is also Russian: Modest Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death will be performed in a version for high voice, with the Russian tenor Sergei Semishkur. The programme closes with Sergey Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.

The concerts conducted by Mariss Jansons are dedicated to the second half of the 19th century: even in his early work Don Juan, based on a poem by Nikolaus Lenau, the 24-year-old Richard Strauss proved his full mastery of the genre of the symphonic poem. This will be juxtaposed with the First Symphony by one of the most prominent protagonists of absolute music, Johannes Brahms. In between, the audience is treated to Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder, steeped in the atmosphere of his Tristan, performed by the outstanding Swedish soprano Nina Stemme.

Riccardo Muti devotes himself to Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems Les Préludes and Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe as well as the Messe solennelle by Hector Berlioz, who was only 20 years old at the time of its writing: although he had claimed to have destroyed the work, except for one movement, a copy of the score was discovered in 1992.

The great Bernard Haitink returns to Salzburg with two musical milestones. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 also gives us the pleasure of hearing the American pianist Murray Perahia, who won the Honorary Award of the German Record Critics in 2011. The second part of the concert will feature Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9.

The concert programme of the Vienna Philharmonic on August 21 promises to be a very special event, for here, the orchestra presents itself in a chamber version: between Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert and Mozart’s Gran Partita, which covers a broad spectrum of expressivity, a Salzburg Festival commission will have its world premiere: the composer is Heinz Holliger, who also conducts the entire concert.

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