Ludwig van Beethoven
"The Creatures of Prometheus" - Overture from the ballet music op. 43
György Ligeti
Concerto for violin and orchestra
Witold Lutosławski
Concerto for orchestra
Karina Canellakis
Conductor
Karina Canellakis - Conductor
Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina Canellakis has become one of the most in-demand conductors of her generation. She is the Chief Conductor of Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She was Principal Guest Conductor of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) until the end of the 2022/23 season.
As Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, she recently led an extensive tour of Germany’s most prestigious concert halls with the orchestra and soloist Daniil Trifonov. Karina continues to present exciting modern pieces as well as well-known masterpieces at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, where she holds the title of Chief Conductor.
In the 23-24 season, Vienna’s Musikverein will feature her as an Artist-in-Residence, appearing several times across the season with four different orchestras.
Since winning the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2016 Karina has become a guest conductor with leading orchestras around the world, including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil, San Francisco Symphony, Vienna Symphony and Munich Philharmonic. She was the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms in London in 2019, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She was also the first woman to ever conduct the Nobel Prize Concert with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in 2018.
Already known to many in the classical music world for her virtuoso violin playing, Karina was initially encouraged to pursue conducting by Sir Simon Rattle while she was playing regularly in the Berlin Philharmonic for two years as a member of their Orchester-Akademie. She performed for many years as a soloist, guest leader, and chamber musician, spending her summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, until conducting eventually became her focus. Karina was born and raised in New York City.
After the great success of “Kat’a Kabánova” in the previous season, she brings another Janáček opera, “The Cunning Little Vixen“, to the stage of the Concertgebouw in April 2023. Her concert performances of acts of Wagner’s “Die Walküre”, “Tristan und Isolde”, and “Siegfried” have been met with tremendous critical praise, and she has conducted critically acclaimed productions of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, “Die Zauberflöte”, “Le nozze di Figaro”, David Lang’s “the loser” and Peter Maxwell Davies’ “The Hogboon”.
Augustin Hadelich
Violin
Augustin Hadelich - Violin
“The essence of Hadelich’s playing is beauty: reveling in the myriad ways of making a phrase come alive on the violin, delivering the musical message with no technical impediments whatsoever, and thereby revealing something from a plane beyond ours.” ‒ WASHINGTON POST
Augustin Hadelich is one of the great violinists of our time. Known for his phenomenal technique, insightful and persuasive interpretations, and ravishing tone, he appears extensively on the world’s foremost concert stages. Hadelich has performed with all the major American orchestras as well as the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, and many other eminent ensembles.
During the 2024 summer festivals season, Hadelich appeared at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tanglewood Music Festival with the Boston Symphony, Bravo! Vail with the New York Philharmonic, Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City.
Highlights of the 24/25 season include returns to the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Vienna Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and The Cleveland Orchestra. Hadelich will also perform with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, New Zealand Symphony, Orquesta Nacional de España as well as the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Dallas and Seattle. As artist-in-residence, he will perform with the Dresden Philharmonic throughout the season, and will tour with the RSB Radio Orchestra Berlin, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, as well as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. He will perform solo violin recitals in London, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Tallinn, and Abu Dhabi, as well as duo recitals with the pianist Francesco Piemontesi in Budapest, Dresden, Katowice, Rome, and Bologna. In the summer of 2025, he will perform extensively in Asia, including engagements with the Seoul Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and tour concerts in Taiwan with the Berliner Barocksolisten.
Hadelich received a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo in 2016 for his recording of Dutilleux’s Concerto “L’Arbre des songes” with Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. A Warner Classics Artist, his most recent album “American Road Trip”, a journey through the landscape of American music with pianist Orion Weiss, was released in August 2024. Other albums for Warner Classics include Paganini’s 24 Caprices (2018); Brahms and Ligeti Violin Concertos (2019); the GRAMMY-nominated “Bohemian Tales”, which includes the Dvořák Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša (2020); the GRAMMY- nominated recording of Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas; and “Recuerdos”, a Spain-themed album featuring works by Sarasate, Tarrega, Prokofiev and Britten (2022).
Augustin Hadelich, a dual American-German citizen born in Italy to German parents, rose to fame when he won the Gold Medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Further distinctions followed, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009), U.K.’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship (2011), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter in the U. K. (2017). In 2018, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by the influential magazine Musical America. Hadelich holds an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Joel Smirnoff, and in 2021, was appointed to the violin faculty at Yale School of Music. He plays a 1744 violin by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, known as ‘Leduc, ex Szeryng’, on loan from the Tarisio Trust.
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Positive Renitence
Apparently out-of-tune instruments, ocarina-playing percussionists and natural tone rows of horns against the “normal” orchestra. Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (1990) is a fascinating sound experiment that dares to break out of Europe’s standardised, “well-tempered” tonal system by allying itself with natural tone rows. Ligeti shows us what we have to do without in view of the twelve evenly distributed semitones of the octave.
“There must be no indifferent sounds in music.” What the Polish composer Lutosławski took for granted also suits Ligeti. The Concerto for Orchestra not only refers to Béla Bartók in its name. In 1954, it convincingly united all the neo-classical currents of the early 20th century in a work that was as original as it was kaleidoscopic. It almost goes without saying that Beethoven’s titanic “Prometheus”, which is not at all pleasing to God, joins the ranks of those personalities who strive to lead people to and beyond their limits in the best sense of the word.
Concert introduction: 3.10 p.m., South Foyer, concert introduction by Steffen Georgie