Sun, Feb. 19, 2023, 11.00 am | Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall
Sergei Prokofjew: Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 „Symphonie Classique“
Joseph Haydn: Trumpet concerto in E flat Major Hob. VIIe/1
Dimitri Schostakovitch: Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35 for Piano, Trumpet and String orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 34 in C Major, KV 338
Conductor: Alexander Sladkowski
Trumpet: Reinhold Friedrich
Piano: Martina Filjak
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
Alexander Sladkovsky is a Russian conductor, the People’s Artist of Russia, the People's Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, who graduated from Moscow and Saint Petersburg conservatories. He is a winner of the III International Prokofiev Competition.
In 2001, he conducted in a concert at the Hermitage Theater in honor of the visit of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. He assisted Mariss Jansons and Mstislav Rostropovich and from 2006 to 2010 he was a conductor of the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra. Since 2010 he is the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra in the city of Kazan (Tatarstan, Russia). The TNSO under the direction of Alexander Sladkovsky is currently the first and only regional orchestra that has been honored an annual subscription in the Moscow State Philharmonic Society.
In 2016 in cooperation with the Melodiya record label several global musical projects were realized: the recording of three symphonies of Mahler and all symphonies and concertos of Shostakovich. In 2020, the digital release of the “Tchaikovsky-2020” box set took place by Sony Classical. In August 2020, the TNSO recorded symphonic works by Rachmaninoff by Sony Classical. In 2021 concert-presentations of the box set “Sergey Rachmaninoff. Symphony Collection” were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan. In July 2021, all of Beethoven's symphonies and music of Stravinsky's ballets were recorded.
His concerts are regularly broadcasted on radio Orpheus, BBC Radio 3, Kultura TV.
In 2019, Alexander Sladkovsky was awarded the Sergei Rachmaninoff International Award for special attention to his legacy and organizing the Sergei Rachmaninoff International Festival “White Lilac” in Kazan.
In 2021 he was appointed professor of the Department of Opera and Symphony Conducting at the N. Zhiganov Kazan State Conservatory. He also became a member of the Academy of Russian Music and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Valery Khalilov Charitable Foundation.
Since his success at the ARD International Music Competition in 1986 Reinhold Friedrich has been a prolific performer on major stages around the world such as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Berlin Philharmonie. As a soloist, Reinhold Friedrich performs both on modern and historic keyed trumpet with renowned ensembles such as the Bamberger and Wiener Symphoniker, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Barock Solisten and the Cappella Andrea Barca; conducted amongst others by Sir András Schiff, Reinhard Goebel, Sir Neville Marriner, Christopher Hogwood, Semyon Bychkov, Michael Gielen, Adam Fischer and Vladimir Fedossejev.
From 1983 to 1999 Reinhold Friedrich held the position of solo trumpeter at the Radio Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt. He is permanent solo trumpeter of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Claudio Abbado, now Riccardo Chailly, and artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Brass Ensemble. Reinhold Friedrich is a professor of trumpet at Karlsruhe University of Music, honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Escuela Superior de Musica REINA SOFIA in Madrid as well as a sought-after lecturer for master classes all over the world.
In the course of his involvement with contemporary compositions, he premiered a large number of significant works including pieces by Wolfgang Rihm, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Sir Peter Maxwell Davis and Peter Eötvös. Numerous CD recordings on labels such as DG, Capriccio, MDG and Sony, of which many were honoured with renowned awards (Echo Klassik) document his multifaceted work.
The Croatian pianist Martina Filjak has made a name for herself in the international concert world with her passionate playing and brilliant technical mastery of her instrument. She delights audiences and the press with her charismatic personality and magnetic stage presence.
After her training at the Music Academy in Zagreb, Martina Filjak continued her studies at the Vienna Conservatory, the Piano Academy in Como and the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Her big breakthrough came in 2009 when she won first prize and the Beethoven Prize at the International Piano Competition in Cleveland. Since then, the artist has worked with renowned orchestras, especially in the USA, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe, and has played piano recitals in major concert halls. She has been a guest at Carnegie Hall New York, Konzerthaus Berlin, Musikverein Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Palau de la Música Catalana, Sala Verdi and Auditorio in Milan, Teatro San Carlo Naples and Salle Gaveau Paris.
In the 2021/22 season Martina Filjak will be a regular guest in the USA, including with the Kansas Symphony Orchestra (with Michael Francis), the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra Ohio (with David Danzmayr), and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. She will also perform with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Günter Neuhold, with the Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock (conductor: Marcus Bosch), Sinfonieorchester Liechtenstein (conductor: Sebastian Lang-Lessing), and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the Croatian Radio (conductor: Pascal Rophe). Chamber music concerts with horn player Felix Klieser and violinist Andrej Bielow have taken her to Freiburg, St. Gallen, Villingen-Schwenningen, Ingolstadt and to the Brahmstagen Baden-Baden. At the Staatstheater Hannover she performs Ravel's piano concerto in the ballet production "Der Liebhaber".
As a soloist, Martina Filjak has appeared in recent seasons with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the Bremen Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Recent season highlights were concerts with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogota, the Orchestra La Verdi Milano, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colon, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, the Japan Century Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Martina Filjak performed with the Bavarian Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra in Zagreb, with the Royal Camerata at the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest and within the "Cycle of Great Pianists" with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago at the Teatro Municipal Santiago de Chile. Martina Filjak has worked with conductors such as Michael Schønwandt, Heinrich Schiff, Alexander Shelley, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Hans Graf, Markus Poschner, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Paul Goodwin, Josep Caballé-Domenech, Carlos Miguel Preto, and Stefan Sanderling.
After her debut CD with sonatas by Antonio Soler and a chamber music recording with cellists Jan Vogler and Christian Poltéra, which was released by Sony Classical in 2013, her second solo CD with works by Schumann, Bach/Liszt and Skrijabin was released by Solo Musica in autumn 2016. In 2020, her current album "Light & Darkness" was released by the label Profil Edition Günter Hänssler. The album, with works by Liszt, was very well received in the specialist press. Frank Armbruster wrote in concerti: "In fact, Martina Filjak does justice to both Liszt's deeply romantic religiosity, which she realizes with poetic imaginative power, but also Liszt's boundary-breaking virtuosity, which always appears to be tamed by a stupendous sense of sound.“
Martina Filjak's large repertoire ranges from Bach to Berio and includes more than 30 piano concertos. In addition, she has dedicated herself to exploring lesser-known piano literature and various concert formats. Her particular passion for chamber music is evident in her collaborations with top-class partners such as the Szymanowski Quartet, the Amaryllis Quartet, the Ensemble Berlin, as well as Dmitry Sinkovsky, Radovan Vlatkovic, Felix Klieser and Tatjana Vassiljeva.
The artist lives in her adopted home of Berlin, loves to travel and speaks seven languages.
The Philharmonic State Orchestra is Hamburg’s largest and oldest orchestra, looking back on many years of musical history. When the “Philharmonic Orchestra” and the “Orchestra of the Hamburg Municipal Theatre” merged in 1934, two tradition-steeped orchestras combined. Philharmonic concerts have been performed in Hamburg since 1828, artists such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms being regular guests of the Philharmonic Society. The history of the opera company goes back even further: Hamburg has been home to musical theatre since 1678, even if a regular opera or theatre orchestra was only formed later. To this day, the Philharmonic State Orchestra has embodied the sound of the Hansa City, a concert and opera orchestra in one.
During its long history, the orchestra encountered great artist personalities. Apart from composers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, such as Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mahler, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, since the 20th century chief conductors such as Karl Muck, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Aldo Ceccato, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gerd Albrecht, Ingo Metzmacher and Simone Young have shaped the orchestra’s sound. Renowned conductors of the pre-war era such as Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt gave brilliant performances, as did outstanding conductors of our times: suffice it to mention Christian Thielemann, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Petrenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Valery Gergiev and Sir Roger Norrington.
Starting with the 2015/2016 season, Kent Nagano has taken on the position of Hamburg’s General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg State Opera. In his first season Kent Nagano initiated a new project, the Philharmonic Academy, focusing on experimentation and chamber music. In 2016 Nagano and the Philharmonic undertook a successful three-week concert tour in South America, a tour of Spain followed in 2019. Since 2017 Kent Nagano and the Philharmonic State Orchestra have continued the traditional Philharmonic Concerts at the new Elbphilharmonie, for which they commissioned Jörg Widmann to compose the oratorio ARCHE, which was given its world premiere during the hall’s opening festivities. The concert recording has been released at ECM.
The Philharmonic State Orchestra offers approximately 35 concerts per season and performs more than 240 performances per year at the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier, making it Hamburg’s busiest orchestra. The stylistic bandwidth covered by the 140 musicians, ranging from historically informed performance practice to contemporary works and including concert, opera and ballet repertoire, is unique throughout Germany. Chamber Music has a long tradition at the Philharmonic State Orchestra: what began in 1929 with a concert series for chamber orchestra has been continued since 1968 by a series of chamber music only.
In 2008 Simone Young and the Philharmonic State Orchestra won the Brahms Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. The orchestra has recorded the complete Ring by Wagner as well as the complete symphonies of Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner – the latter in the rarely-performed original versions – as well as works by Mahler, Hindemith and Berg, and has released DVDs of opera and ballet productions by Hosokawa, Offenbach, Reimann, Auerbach, J.S. Bach, Puccini, Poulenc and Weber.
The members of the Philharmonic State Orchestra feel equally beholden to Hamburg’s musical tradition and responsible for the city’s artistic future. Since 1978 the musicians have been participating in education programmes in Hamburg’s schools. Today, the orchestra maintains a broad education programme, including school and kindergarten visits, patronage for music projects, introductory events for children and family concerts. The orchestra’s own academy prepares young musicians for their professional careers. The Philharmonic’s musicians thereby make an equally enjoyable and valuable contribution to tomorrow’s music education in the music metropolis of Hamburg.
Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto turned out to be his last instrumental concerto – a large-scale orchestral work full of musical maturity and enchanting beauty. The Philharmonic State Orchestra’s soloist is Reinhold Friedrich, who has made a reputation for himself as a “trumpet god”. In Dmitri Shostakovich’s Double Concerto for Piano and Trumpet, the Croatian-Italian pianist Martina Filjak joins him. In the same way in which Shostakovich’s Concerto offered a humorous caricature of the classical “concerto attitude”, Sergey Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 is considered an affectionate parody of the tonal idiom of Haydn and early Tchaikovsky. The concert ends with a work from the original classical period, the First Viennese School: Mozart’s Symphony No. 34.
Concert introduction
60 minutes before the start of the event there is an introduction to the concert program
Venue: Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall, Platz der Deutschen Einheit 4, 20457 Hamburg
Prices: € 65,00 / 52,00 / 41,00 / 28,00 / 12,00
