West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Orchestra Concerts

From the usual illustrious line-up of international top orchestras – including those from Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, Rome, Tokyo, Vienna and Zurich – which will be heard under the baton of great conductors and with renowned soloists at the 2013 Salzburg Festival, two concerts stand out for programmatic reasons: first of all, the sumptuously cast performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Its composer was born 100 years ago, and in this work, commissioned for the consecration of the rebuilt cathedral of Coventry in 1962, he realized a moving cry for practical pacifism as well as a musical manifestation of the reconciliation of people following World War II. The second core event is the evening when the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim performs not only works by the 2013 anniversary composers Wagner and Verdi, but also juxtaposes works by the Jordanian Saed Haddad and the Israeli Chaya Czernowin: tension-filled dialogues are to be expected – and that is a hallmark of the other concerts too, offering important cornerstones of musical history right up to the present times. Two of Mahler’s “Wunderhorn” Symphonies, the monumental “Tragic” Symphony and the transcendental Ninth, form points of reference for a search for Mahler’s traces that leads from the expressive Schoenberg School to Shostakovich’s ambiguities and further into our times, to Birtwistle, Takemitsu and Hosokawa. Long before Stravinsky’s rhythmic revolution, however, it was the classical triad of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven who made so many things thinkable and possible for the first time – here, they will be interpreted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Simon Rattle and Riccardo Chailly. Then there is the romantic revolutionary Hector Berlioz, performed this time by Charles Dutoit. Returning over and over to explore the past has always been and shall remain a driving force for the art of present times.

Walter Weidringer
Translated by Alexa Nieschlag

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