Harding meets Isabelle Faust
Felix Mendelssohn’s dramatic cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht, after a ballad by Goethe, depicts mountain druids who use craft and creativity to defy the Christian powers that be in order to be able to celebrate in their own traditional way. The text was written with the intention of having music set for it and Mendelssohn skilfully accentuates the drama of the text. Schoenberg’s music has long been close to star violinist Isabelle Faust’s heart. She has frequently performed the works of other composers at Berwaldhallen and now the turn has finally come to Schoenberg.
In an interview in The Guardian in April 2017, Isabelle Faust was asked about which LP recording was the first one she had ever bought. Her answer was the sextet Verklärte Nacht, by Arnold Schoenberg, performed by the LaSalle quartet, a recording that has remained her favourite ever since. She herself is perhaps mainly associated with her interpretations of Bach and other great masters, and she played Bartók’s first and second violin concertos at her latest performance at Berwaldhallen in 2012. Now the time has come for Schoenberg’s infamously difficult Violin Concerto, and it is said that it requires a six-fingered violinist to play it.
Schoenberg began work on the piece as early as 1933 in Vienna, but had to put it aside when he was forced to flee to the United States because of his Jewish heritage. He had converted to Protestantism, but that no longer afforded any protection against the increasingly brutal anti-Semitism. When the concerto was completed, he first asked his brother in law, Rudolf Kolisch, to play the violin solo. But, just like Jascha Heifetz, he declined because of the enormity of the task. Schoenberg himself said that ”I can wait for the right one”.
The right one eventually turned up in the form of an acquaintance from Vienna, Louis Krasner, who accepted, on the condition that he was given two years to study it. They had met in Vienna while their colleague, Alban Berg, worked on his violin concerto, which Krasner also premièred. Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto is one of his most artistic and sterling works, in which he takes the form to a larger format in an almost neo-classicist manner.
The young Felix Mendelssohn, like Schoenberg a composer of Jewish heritage, was introduced to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1830 by his mentor and teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter. Goethe’s text was originally meant to be set to music by Zelter himself, but after two failed attempts, Mendelssohn was given the opportunity. He wrote a first version in 1831, which underwent a radical revision before being published in 1843.
Die erste Walpurgisnacht inserts itself like a wedge between the distinctly Bach-influenced oratorios, Paulus and Elias, and distinguishes itself clearly from those by being much more romantic in its structure. Goethe’s ballad takes place in the transition from heathendom to Christianity. The Druids of the Harz mountains want to celebrate the coming of spring in their traditional manner, but are prohibited from doing so by the Christian powers that be. They come up with the idea of playing a prank on the Christians, so they dress up as devils and demons and consequently succeed in scaring them away.
The oratorio is very much a reflection of Mendelssohn’s own dilemma: raised as a protestant but, at the same time, never really accepted by his time and never fully separated from his Jewish heritage.
Text: Andreas Konvicka
Participants
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.
Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.
32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.
The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.
The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.
Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. In the 2014/2015 season, he devised and curated the celebrated Interplay Festival, featuring concerts and related inspirational talks with renowned artists and academics. As Artistic Director, he continues this type of influential programming. Harding is also Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and Music Director of Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area in China. The 2024/2025 season will be his first as Music Director at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Harding is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the Anima Mundi festival of Pisa, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel Harding tours regularly with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing at prestigious venues all over Europe and the world, and has recorded several acclaimed and award-winning albums with the orchestra. His tenure as Music and Artistic Director will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. “It is increasingly rare that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing,” he says about working with the orchestra.
In 2002, Harding was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Daniel Harding grew up in Oxford, England, and played trumpet before taking up conducting in his late teens. He is also, since 2016, a qualified airline pilot.
Chief conductor of the Jeune Choeur de Paris, he started a collaboration with the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart in 2013 (including a recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé), and also works regularly with the Chœur de Radio-France and the Choeur Accentus since 2014, for tours, radio performances, recordings, preparations and A Cappella concerts. He collaborates with many personalities, such as Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniele Gatti, Louis Langrée, Stéphane Denève, Daniel Harding, Laurence Equilbey, L. G. Alarcon… He has also conducted the WDR Rundfunkchor in 2016. In July 2016, he has prepared both the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the NDR Chor for Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette. In 2017, he has participate to the opening of the Seine Musical conducting the choir accentus and in 2018, he starts a collaboration with the Croatian Radio Choir. Korovitch works for many festivals: the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, Recontres Musicales d’Evian, the Festival de Radio-France in Montpellier or the festival Mozart in New York.
Som femåring följde Isabelle Faust med sin pappa till fiollektionerna hemma i Esslingen, Tyskland, och redan då upptäcktes hennes talang. Färdigheterna finslipade hon sedan i familjens stråkkvartett samt under lektioner med Denes Zsigmondy och Christoph Poppen. Efter att i tonåren ha vunnit Leopold Mozart-tävlingen i Augsburg och Paganini-tävlingen i Genua började hon framträda regelbundet med världens största orkestrar, såsom Berlinfilharmonikerna, Boston Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Chamber Orchestra of Europe och Freiburger Barockorchester. Detta ledde till nära samarbeten med dirigenter som Claudio Abbado, Giovanni Antonini, Frans Brüggen, sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Robin Ticciati, Andris Nelsons och Daniel Harding.
Med stor konstnärlig nyfikenhet rör sig Isabelle Faust mellan många olika epoker och i olika sorters ensembler. Hon spelar såväl stora solokonserter som historiskt korrekta tolkningar av tidig musik.
Hennes inspelningar har enhälligt hyllats av kritiker och bland annat tilldelats Diapason d’or, Grammophone Award och Choc de l’année. År 2021 spelade hon in Ludwig van Beethovens trippelkonsert med Alexander Melnikov, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pablo Heras-Casado och Freiburger Barockorchester. Året dessförinnan gjorde hon en inspelning av Arnold Schönbergs fiolkonsert med Daniel Harding och Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester.
The bass barytone Shenyang was born in Tianjin in China and studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He has played the title role in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and at the Metropolitan Opera he played Masetto in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Garibaldo in Handel’s Rodelinda and Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème. He has also performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In 2010, he premièred Xiaogang Ye’s Song of Farewell, which was written for him, with China’s National Symphony Orchestra. The same year, he won the Montblanc New Voices Award at the Stars of the White Nights Festival.
Concert length: 1 h 50 min incl. intermission
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