Radio concert with Johannes Kalitzke

Born in Cologne, Johannes Kalitzke studied church music, piano (Aloys Kontarsky), conducting (Wolfgang von der Nahmer) and composition (York Höller) there. A scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation enabled him to study in Paris at the IRCAM Institute. There he was a student of Vinko Globokar, at the same time in Cologne of Hans Ulrich Humpert (electronic music). Johannes Kalitzke’s first engagement as a conductor was in 1984 at the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, where he first worked as Kapellmeister, then from 1988-90 as chief conductor.
In 1991 he became artistic director and conductor of musikFabrik NRW (today Ensemble Musikfabrik), the state ensemble of North Rhine-Westphalia, which he co-founded. Johannes Kalitzke is in demand internationally both as a conductor and as a composer and is a regular guest with ensembles (Klangforum Wien, Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Modern) and numerous symphony orchestras, including those of the NDR, BBC, SWR, MDR, HR, BR , the DSO Berlin and the RSO Vienna. There are also opera productions at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Stuttgart Opera, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Wiener Festwochen, the Munich Biennale, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the Theater an der Wien, the Theater Basel and the Salzburg Festival. Tours to Russia, Japan and America as well as numerous CD recordings complete his work as a performer of classical and contemporary music. As a composer, Kalitzke has repeatedly received commissions from the SWR Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Ultrasonic Berlin and the Wittener Tage for new chamber music, as well as from numerous radio orchestras. In addition, a silent film orchestral music for the film Die Weber (1927) was commissioned by the Augsburg Philharmonic in 2011. Kalitzke’s first music theater piece, the report on the death of the musician Jack Tiergarten, was a contribution to the Munich Biennale in 1996. His second opera, Molière or the Comedian’s Executioner, was commissioned by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, as was his third opera, Inferno after Peter Weiss , were premiered at the Theater Bremen. An opera based on Witold Gombrowicz’s novel The Possessed was premiered by the Theater an der Wien in 2010. In February 2016, his latest opera Pym – based on the novel by Edgar Allen Poe – premiered at the Theater Heidelberg. His teaching activities include ensemble seminars at the Folkwanghochschule in Essen and Hanover, management of the ensemble forum at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, management of the conducting forum for ensemble music of the German Music Council, conducting courses at the Salzburg Summer Academy, the Reina Sofia Music School in Madrid and the Zurich University of Music. In 2015 he was appointed professor at the Hochschule Mozarteum Salzburg. Kalitzke has received numerous awards, including the “Bernd Alois Zimmermann Prize” from the city of Cologne and the 2003 scholarship for the Villa Massimo, Rome. He has been a member of the since 2009
Academy of Arts in Berlin and since 2015 member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.
He is currently working on orchestral music for the Expressionist silent film, among other things as a commission for the Witten Days for NewcomersChamber Music and the Carinthian Summer.

Jonathan Powell made his London début at the Purcell Room aged 20, but devoted much the following decade to composition (his works were performed by the Arditti Quartet, the London Sinfonietta and Nicolas Hodges) and musicology (his PhD concerns the influence of Scriabin). He then undertook intensive piano study with Sulamita Aronovsky (previously, in his late teens, he had been guided by Denis Matthews) resulting a shift in emphasis towards performance. A series of CD recordings and international engagements followed. He is a passionate advocate of music from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially from Russia and eastern Europe, but is also a proponent of contemporary music, having premièred works by Dufourt, Ambrosini, and others. His repertoire also includes much standard material (Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann). In 2009 he gave the first of his many performances of Scriabin’s 10 sonatas. During 2013 he toured Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus and Albeniz’ Iberia, while 2015 featured numerous performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata and Reger’s Bach Variations. Recent activities include a tour of the complete piano works of Xenakis and, in 2017, Liszt’s Sonata, Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke and several performances of Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum. In 2018 he gave six performances of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues.

Solo recitals taken him to the Festival Radio France Montpellier, the Elbphilharmonie (sold-out), the Raritäten der Klaviermusik am Schloss vor Husum, Vredenburg Muziekcentrum in Utrecht, across the US, Musica Sacra in Maastricht, the series Fundación BBVA in Bilbao, and the Moscow Conservatoire. In recent years, he has broadcast for Radio France, Radio Netherlands, Radio Deutschland Kultur, the BBC and Czech Radio. He is a featured artist at the Jacqueline du Pré hall in Oxford, giving three annual concerts, as well as teaching and leading workshops for students. He has also appeared at the Indian Summer in Levoča Festival (Slovakia) every year since its inception in 2007, as recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra. He has recently given masterclasses in Katowice, Brno, Oxford, London, Denmark, Seattle and Darmstadt. In May 2020 he won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatenkritiken for his recording of Sorabji’s Sequentia cyclica. His extensive discography includes solo piano works and a concertante piece by Morgan Hayes (on NMC), as well as two volumes of John White’s piano sonatas for Convivium.

The years following 2005 saw a substantial decline in composition, as preparation and travel for intense concert schedules took over. A Sonata (2010) for violin and piano was followed by nine years of silence. During the summer of 2019, Powell composed an unambitious cycle of piano miniatures – Zagórów and Other Places – which he has performed in Gdańsk, Brno and Katowice. Summer of 2020 saw him compose a more substantial Partita for solo piano, dedicated to his friend the composer-pianist Christophe Sirodeau on the occasion of his 50th birthday.