Posts Tagged ‘Münchner Philharmoniker’

Five More Years

Wednesday, February 21st, 2018

Munich’s City Council, or Stadtrat, in January 2018

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: February 21, 2018

MUNICH — Putting box-office steadiness ahead of artistic achievement, the city council here voted this morning to extend by five years Valery Gergiev’s contract as Chefdirigent of the civically run Munich Philharmonic, as requested by the orchestra’s managers. The move doubles the Russian’s tenure, to encompass the seasons 2020–25. No salary was disclosed, as usual, but past reports have shown €800,000 as an annual figure.

Matthias Ambrosius, spokesman for the musicians, and clarinetist, noted in writing that the “vast majority” of MPhil players had wanted to lengthen the collaboration with Gergiev. Nonetheless it is widely understood that the managers’ request stemmed from a desire to ease dislocation of the orchestra in 2020, when a massive project to reconfigure its Gasteig home begins. Gergiev will in this sense be doing the city a favor, gamely cooperating for seasons at a temporary concert hall.

Photo © Landeshauptstadt München

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MPhil Bosses Want Continuity

Wednesday, January 31st, 2018

Valery Gergiev and Munich Philharmonic Intendant Paul Müller in 2017

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: January 31, 2018

MUNICH — Contrary to a London blog report yesterday, nothing has been “locked down” with regard to a contract extension for Valery Gergiev at the Munich Philharmonic, though things are indeed moving in that direction, for practical more than artistic reasons.

What has happened is that Hans-Georg Küppers, Kulturreferent of the City of Munich, which operates the orchestra, has gone public with his resolve to recommend a full five-year renewal for the Russian maestro to the city council at its scheduled Feb. 21 meeting. Any contract-signing would naturally take place later.

Küppers, MPhil Intendant Paul Müller (pictured last year with Gergiev), and Munich Bürgermeister Dieter Reiter are all inclined on continuity because 2020, when the present contract expires, heralds the lengthy and probably tortuous closure of the MPhil’s Gasteig home for gutting — at which time the musicians must decamp for a temporary wooden hall next to a power plant up the Isar River.

Gergiev has been no more of a musical success here than anyone predicted, but the high tensions around his friendship with Vladimir Putin — at fever pitch in 2013 when he was hired — have abated, and artistic decision-making since he began his tenure 29 months ago has gone smoothly.


Regarding other jobs around town, rumors persist that Vladimir Jurowski has joined Andris Nelsons im Gespräch for Kirill Petrenko’s position as Generalmusikdirektor at Bavarian State Opera. Petrenko steps down in fall 2020 after an unprecedented single season as head both of Germany’s largest opera company and of the Berlin Philharmonic. No rumors are yet floating about a successor to, or a renewal for, Mariss Jansons, whose contract at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is up one year after Gergiev’s.

Photo © Florian Emanuel Schwarz

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Bruckner’s First, Twice

Sunday, September 24th, 2017

Christian Thielemann conducting Bruckner’s First Symphony with his Dresden Staatskapelle at the Gasteig in Munich in 2017

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 24, 2017

MUNICH — He had to abandon his Munich Philharmonic cycle, a cosmic Fifth being one of its relics, but Christian Thielemann’s Dresden cycle* of the numbered Bruckner symphonies has progressed smoothly to near completion, and with video. Oddly parts of it have been filmed here at the Gasteig — scene of the crime, so to speak — most recently on Sept. 6 when the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden turned to the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Das kecke Beserl, or The Saucy Wench. Meanwhile, a Thielemann successor at the MPhil, Valery Gergiev, has this month embarked on his own Bruckner loop, also to be filmed, but at Sankt Florian. For him, the First has come first: Sept. 21 in a Gasteig concert and tomorrow (Sept. 25) at Bruckner’s basilica. Both conductors opt for the engaging Linz Version (1866) in its 1877 form, although for Thielemann this means an as yet unpublished edition with slight differences from the 1953 Nowak.

Promoted by Bell’Arte, the Saxons’ program opened with a lush account of Bruch’s G-Minor Violin Concerto. Nikolaj Znaider powered the solo part, edgily at first but with eloquence in the Adagio and gutsy expression in the Finale, sending the maestro, among many others, into effusive apparent raptures. Znaider then went to sit with his St Petersburg boss, Gergiev, present to hear what wonders Thielemann would impart after the break in the still relatively rare 45- to 50-minute symphony, written the same year.

The work’s nickname may be a bizarre projection, but its confidence is certain. There is much rhythmic energy; no chorale, fugue or Generalpause impedes the momentum. It opens with a march theme of some irony, moves to a lyrical subject and soon rises to an imposing yet isolated fanfare in the trombones. The development is restrained, the recapitulation free-form and based on a new theme. This reappears in the “agitated, fiery” Finale, a propulsive construct that shifts triumphantly to C Major. In between come a solemn Adagio with fancy violin figurations and a partly songful Scherzo.

Thielemann (pictured the same day) conducted with his customary flair for counterpoint. He had memorized the music and shrewdly gauged its pulsations and climaxes, particularly in the challenging Finale, where a vein of spontaneity lit up the logic. Some hesitancy, though, in middle-movement details suggested he had not yet decided what to do with all the material, and perhaps for this reason his orchestra was not on top form.

If Gergiev took anything away, there was scant evidence Sept. 21. He sustained lighter textures and found charm in unexpected places, persuasively in the Scherzo. On the other hand, a relishing of tone colors came at cost to inner voices in Bruckner’s scheme, lessening its impact. Nothing was implied in that opening march, for example. Nor were the dance elements well served. But the maestro kept his eyes locked on the score and drew a magnificent performance from the MPhil — strings transparent and silky where those qualities counted, intense and glowing elsewhere; brass blasting and soaring with tireless accuracy. Indeed, from its steep, newly modified risers, the MPhil sounded as virtuosic as it had in the finest days of, well, GMD Thielemann (2004–2011). Scheduled for after intermission was Bruckner’s Third Symphony, alas in its late version.

[*DVDs on the C Major label: the 7th and 8th Symphonies filmed in the Semperoper in 2012, the 5th in 2013; the 4th and 9th at Baden-Baden in 2015, the 6th in the Semperoper that year; and the 3rd and 1st in Munich in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Thielemann also filmed the 4th and 7th Symphonies with the MPhil for C Major, in 2009 at Baden-Baden.]

Photo © Dresden Staatskapelle

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MPhil Asserts Bruckner Legacy

Thursday, July 6th, 2017

Valery Gergiev and orchestra at the Stiftsbasilika St Florian

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 6, 2017

MUNICH — Under the incongruous stewardship of Valery Gergiev, the Munich Philharmonic intends to stress its Bruckner credentials the next three Septembers with filmed visits to the Stiftsbasilika St Florian. There, where the composer worked and rests, just south of Linz, the MPhil will record for DVD his numbered symphonies, three per visit, the orchestra said Friday.

Gergiev: “In the Munich Philharmonic, dazzling technique is combined with a deep common experience on the subject of Bruckner … . I want people around the world to [hear this].” The partnership recorded the Fourth Symphony for CD in 2015 in Nowak’s 1953 edition.

Orchestra statement: “The MPhil has a special and unique relationship to the symphonic work of Anton Bruckner, going back to its founding as the Kaim-Orchester, and over the years has … developed a specific Bruckner tradition.

“Conductors such as Hermann Levi, under whom the [1885 Munich] premiere of the Seventh Symphony went down as a triumph in European music history [before the Kaim-Orchester existed]; Ferdinand Löwe, Bruckner’s pupil [and two-term MPhil chief]; and not least Sergiu Celibidache [Chefdirigent 1979–1996], whose Bruckner interpretations are legendary, made major contributions to the [status of these] symphonies … as a summit of the genre.”

Painfully this supporting rhetoric omits mention of recent MPhil Generalmusikdirektor Christian Thielemann. He led stunning Bruckner concerts here before a foolishly managed struggle resulted in his resignation, and he is now filming his own Bruckner cycle in various cities — including Munich! — with the Dresden Staatskapelle.

Filming at St Florian (pictured) begins Sept. 25 and 26, when Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 and 4 are scheduled; identical programs will be played at the orchestra’s Gasteig home days earlier. Details were unclear as to the editions. The project will open Gergiev’s third through fifth (of five contracted) seasons as MPhil Chefdirigent.

Photo © Christian Herzenberger

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Flitting Thru Prokofiev

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

Valery Gergiev in Munich in November 2016

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: November 30, 2016

MUNICH — As fluent as Valery Gergiev is in Prokofiev, he had precious little to say with a cycle of the symphonies here this month. Fluency meant wise tempos, a feel for the boldness in the scores’ structures, a facility in cuing the two orchestras on duty. It also, in effect, prodded those orchestras — the Munich Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Orchestra — into articulating with dependable precision in the strings, providing expressive, at times miraculous, wind solos, and mustering energy for the colors, contrasts, metrical effects, patent ironies and elevated humor that define this repertory. But in at least five of the symphonies the man waving the toothpick showed no personal engagement with the material at hand, conveyed no sense of exploration or chance or daring. He never pursued an idea to its extreme, stressed unduly some dynamic detail or the possibilities of some internal balance or rhetorical figure, never exploited tonal beauty (or ugliness) for its own sake, or shed any degree of unconventional light on any section of these now familiar pieces. None of that. He played signalman rather than share anything of himself. If the music spoke at all, it was courtesy of the imagination of individual players or in the power of collective discipline, Munich’s or St Petersburg’s.

Gergiev’s detachment, and a bizarre kind of genius, allows him to flit undrained from one artistic commitment to the next. In this case he moved through much of Prokofiev’s canon on a single day (Nov. 13*). Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5, 2 and 7, 4 (long version) and 6, anchored concerts at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., the afternoon programs being played by the visiting orchestra, with violin concertos of Mozart separating each pairing. The two-movement Second Symphony (1924) came off best, its barely inhibited caustic din traced plainly so that the Variations outflanked the preceding Allegro ben articolato, in sonata form, as the experimenting composer perhaps wished. The Third (1928) and Fifth (1944) were a bit much before lunch. Even so, the Third, drawn from Ognenny angel, sounded pallid with last season’s methodical and heated account under Vladimir Jurowski still in memory. (Jurowski conducted the opera here the same month, to bold effect.) The MPhil played incisively in the Fifth, but countless particulars of the popular score’s middle movements passed blandly by. After a jolly traversal of the Seventh (1952) came the five-intermission day’s one unalloyed pleasure: a slow Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), as encore, gingerly sculpted by a for once scoreless Gergiev and divinely played by the Mariinsky’s uncredited flutist. As opener to the last concert, the Fourth Symphony (1947) saw the conductor mostly hands-off, but its jerky bombast registered persuasively and superb woodwind ensemble enhanced the Andante tranquillo movement. Gergiev provided utilitarian accompaniment in the concertos: No. 1 in B-flat (1773) gaining from the fresh, stylishly poised thoughts of Vilde Frang; No. 4 in D Major (1775) conventionally but tidily contoured by Yu-Chien Tseng; and No. 3 in G (same year) subjected to Alexandra Conunova’s expressive spinning. This last soloist, although a mismatch in Mozart, held the audience in a trance with her fine dynamic control and determined focus on the musical line. Symphony No. 6 (1945) followed Conunova; we had to leave. If the day offered fewer rewards than last year’s corresponding marathon, climax of the MPhil 360° festival, it was better attended, at 70% of capacity, after a marketing push, and the animated Gasteig lobby confirmed the crowd’s immersion in the project. Medici TV equipment inside the hall no doubt captured clearer sound than the real acoustics, which remain at once bright and gallingly centerless.

[*Symphony No. 1 was played on Nov. 11.]

Photo © Florian Emanuel Schwarz

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Concert Price Check

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

Gangplanks to the Konzertsaal inside the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum in Lucerne

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 3, 2016

MUNICH — Visiting orchestras cost more for concertgoers. But why exactly? Several factors govern ticket prices on tours, often mitigating each other, and all have a bearing this month as three orchestras from this city hit the road:

Bavarian State Orchestra (BStO) with Kirill Petrenko, general music director
Munich Philharmonic (MPhil) with Valery Gergiev, chief conductor
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) with Daniel Harding, guest conductor

Here at home these orchestras cost as follows, sampling the top prices for a regular concert without subscriber discount: BStO in the National Theater, U.S. $78; MPhil in the Gasteig, $68; BRSO in the Herkulessaal, $73. Tickets in all price categories include bus and train fares to and from the venue within a 25-mile radius.

Government subsidy, at the federal, state, and in the MPhil’s case city levels, holds down prices to ensure that all Munich audiences can afford to attend. It does not necessarily vanish on tour, at least not within Europe.

For instance, at Berlin’s Musikfest this month, a six-hour drive from here, you would pay a reasonable and consistent top price of $100 for the visiting BStO, MPhil or BRSO, with subsidy applying both to the festival and, federally, to the three German orchestras.

Lack of subsidy may seem to explain exorbitant prices at Lucerne’s Sommer-Festival in Switzerland. Or is a profit motive kicking in? Actually a third factor causes them: currency exchange and the robust Swiss franc. Lucerne, just four hours by road from Munich, wants $245 and $296 for the BStO and MPhil, respectively.

That last detail raises the issue of perceived worth. Why would Lucerne charge a premium for one Munich orchestra over another when Berlin prices all three equally? For that matter, why does Berlin ask more for visiting orchestras than for its own Konzerthaus-Orchester (at a $69 top, staying with the “regular concert without subscriber discount” benchmark) or Berlin Philharmonic ($84) when subsidy applies?

The concert presenter directly, and the concertgoer ultimately, places a value on an orchestra in part as a function of geography. In the small Swiss city but not in the German capital, Gergiev’s orchestra (or Gergiev) is valued more highly than Petrenko’s (or Petrenko). In Berlin, people are willing to pay more to hear out-of-town musicians, a flip side to familiarity breeding contempt.

Price-comparing assumes events have been priced to sell out, and sell out at roughly the same pace. Which in turn assumes presenters know their job. They may. But objectively the worth of an orchestra cannot rise or fall by the tour stop.

If beauty is in the ear of the beholder, the Milanese are more attuned than most. So say Teatro alla Scala’s managers by setting a top of $162 for the BStO’s concert there — far below Lucerne prices yet still double the tag at home. Low government funding in Italy helps shape their thinking, rather than any attempt to gouge, though it will make La Scala’s big platea hard to fill.

Otherwise prices vary against a mental cushion: presenters’ realistic belief that ticket buyers will allow for some unknown but fair travel expense being passed along to them, unaware whether such expense has been covered by grants. Traveling more widely than the other orchestras this time, the BStO costs $94 in Paris, $107 in Vienna and $117 in Luxembourg.

Back in Germany on dates in between those stops, the limited revenue potential of relatively small halls may explain BStO top prices in the range of $118 to $144 for Bonn, Dortmund and Frankfurt. Either that, or someone is profiting, an alien notion when the very existence of orchestras requires subsidy.

Presenters of visiting orchestras are indeed on occasion out to make money, just as they do with non-classical artists. NBS in Tokyo has been a world-renowned price-gouger. In Munich the busy presenter MünchenMusik often prices aggressively. There are several more.

What of three Munich orchestras touring at the same time? Music contracts here commonly run “Sept. 1 to Aug. 31,” with the summer months tail-ending the term ostensibly to provide time off. In practice this structure brings chances to earn extra income at festivals instead. September becomes an odd month: the musicians need a break and audiences are sated from summer performances; the main season is supposed to start yet nobody wants to get down to it. So a window opens for touring.

Photo © KKL Luzern Management AG

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MPhil Launches Own Label

Monday, July 18th, 2016

Provisional album art for 2016 Munich Philharmonic CDs

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 18, 2016

MUNICH — Late to an unprofitable game, the Munich Philharmonic on Friday announced a new recording label of its own, “MPhil,” in partnership with Warner Classics.

Its purpose? To broaden the audience.

Content will be sourced live, mainly from concerts at the orchestra’s Gasteig home. But archive releases are promised too, as are “celebrity” conductors. Distribution: physical media, downloads, and streaming offers.

The label will issue up to six titles yearly with emphasis “on the abundant German repertory and works by composers with whom the ensemble has been closely connected since its founding 125 years ago.”

Exactly how MPhil Chefdirigent Valery Gergiev fits this artistic focus is unclear. Anyway, the first titles appear in September: a symphony each by Bruckner and Mahler with provisional album art showing Gergiev’s name twice the size of the orchestra’s.

Which begs a question, given the maestro’s affinities and the hopelessly saturated market. Who in their right mind would want a Gergiev recording of any Bruckner or Mahler symphony? The MPhil’s archivist?

To be sure, the new imprint will expose the Munich Philharmonic’s work in the way BR Klassik and Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings already do for its “competitors,” to cite only German examples.

But such ventures nowadays hemorrhage serious euros.

MPhil releases will follow, after a delay of at least a year, broadcasts of the same performances via outlets like Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Warner’s Erato label, meanwhile, has recently issued live recordings from 2013 and 2014 of Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra: the Shostakovich Cello Concertos as expansively shaped by Gautier Capuçon.

Image © Warner Classics

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Trifonov’s Rach 3 Cocktail

Wednesday, December 30th, 2015

Daniil Trifonov greets concertgoers at a Munich Philharmonic Jugendkonzert

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: December 30, 2015

MUNICH — The first-movement cadenza exploded out of its context in Daniil Trifonov’s novel reading here Dec. 14 of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. This meant, among other compromises, a slight suppression of everything that preceded it, including the 130-measure development. Trifonov understated the folksy first subject and sped without emphasis through the unsettled transition to the second, whose cantabile theme he traced affectionately. Along the way, conductor Valery Gergiev held in check the Munich Philharmonic’s volume of sound, tidily echoing for instance the soloist’s restatement of that cantabile, while Trifonov supported his experiment with astonishing skill in the fast runs and big chords as well as phrasing of graceful expression. But refining down the dynamics, and careening through swaths of material as if the sound picture mattered more than argument, reduced much of the movement’s rhetoric to impotent frenzy. The remainder of the concerto went more conventionally, still with terrific playing. Trifonov burst into the Intermezzo with due drama and, together with Gergiev, expertly pointed the rhythms of the Finale. If anything hampered him, it was a deficit of tension resulting from the slighted statements in his opening movement.

In a brief onstage interview afterwards at this Jugendkonzert in the Gasteig, the somewhat nerdy pianist deflected awkward questions from emcee Andreas Korn — “Can we see your hands? Are they big?” — with smart observations about what Rachmaninoff could achieve as a player, before running dreamily through Alla reminiscenza from Medtner’s Opus 38. For Scriabin’s glittery, glowing Poème de l’extase after the break, the MPhil mustered welcome refinement, not least in its brass. The concert opened with the Act I Prelude from Lohengrin, nicely propelled but without ideal sheen in the strings.

Photo © Christian Beuke for MPhil

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Sunday, November 22nd, 2015

Behzod Abduraimov concludes Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the Munich Philharmonic

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: November 22, 2015

MUNICH — At five o’clock last Sunday afternoon, Munich time, three Mariinsky Orchestras began to play. Two of them launched into Pikovaya dama and Die Zauberflöte at the Mariinsky complex in St Petersburg. The third, here at the Gasteig, opened the accompaniment to a witty Shchedrin vocalise. Such are the possibilities with a roster of 335 musicians, the world’s largest. At the concert, though, the Mariinsky name was bizarrely buried. “MPhil 360°,” screamed the program book cover, “das Festival der Münchner Philharmoniker,” nowhere mentioning the Russian orchestra. The missing credit no doubt mattered less to Valery Gergiev, who now helms both orchestras (or all four, depending on how you count), than the furthering of his new goals: to better relate the Munich Philharmonic to citizens of all walks of life and to programmatically “bridge … German and Russian orchestra culture.” And in this the first MPhil 360° went far, as a lobby- and hall-based three-day jamboree with interviews and attractively priced music in varied formats. Indeed Gergiev himself went far, conducting as festival climax on Sunday five hour-long, off-subscription concerts centered on the Prokofiev piano concertos. Nine hands of Herbert Schuch, Denis Matsuev, Behzod Abduraimov (pictured), Alexei Volodin and Olli Mustonen partnered him at 11, 1, 3, 5 and 7 o’clock, respectively, while scores by Haydn, Mozart, Weber, Reger, the Munich composers Hartmann and Widmann, besides the Munich-based Shchedrin, offered mostly pertinent, mostly Germanic counterforce.

Fortunately for the MPhil’s amenable Intendant, Paul Müller, the extravagant project, at least Sunday’s marathon part of it, proved a logistical and artistic success, even if attendance hovered at 50% of the Gasteig’s capacity. It may or may not have been smart to let the Russians do 60% of the work — assigning them the first two concerts in addition to the five o’clock and leaving less than two hours of music to the day’s titular heroes — but orchestral standards held up throughout as numerous manned Medici TV cameras rolled. As if conducting 300 minutes of music was not enough, Gergiev amiably stood through solo encores and was available for interview during the intermissions. Not incidentally, he dedicated all the concerts to victims of the Islamist murders in Paris.

Hearing five pianists emphasized the disparity of the concertos. The scoring of the compact D-flat-Major work (1912) favors the orchestra, which was dazzlingly unchecked in this performance so that Schuch’s fleet playing could not consistently be heard. Volodin’s sparkle and linear integrity in the left-hand Fourth Concerto (1931) could not overcome the perception, in context, of a drop in creativity in the writing; the pianist more fully advertised himself with a blistering account of the Precipitato from Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7. Mustonen presented the first three movements of the madly insistent Fifth Concerto (1932) as a unit, with its Toccata a backstop on essentially percussive ideas. But he attempted a round open sound for many figures, quite divergent from, say, Ciani or Béroff. His Larghetto and Vivo offered unforced contrast.

The concertos from 1921 and 1923 fared best. Although Abduraimov’s light touch demanded cupped hands to the ears, he breezed fluently through Concerto No. 3, finding playfulness in its angularity, nonchalance in its lyricism. His reading had a crystalline quality underpinned by decisive, shapely phrasing in the left hand, qualities that rendered uncommon detail in the Variations. To the G-Minor Second Concerto, summit of Prokofiev’s work in this form, Matsuev brought power and evident consideration of its 32-minute arc. Robust rhythms, neatly accented quiet passages, a frame to justly billet the big cadenza, flashes of droll humor in the Intermezzo — and the pianist barely glanced at Gergiev, who took his cues where he could. As encore came Rachmaninoff’s picture etude The Sea and the Gulls, equally intense and played with command of the long line.

If support from the podium in the concertos wasn’t always sensitive, repertory choices elsewhere mostly played to Gergiev’s strengths. The day got off to an alert start with a technically fine performance of Prokofiev’s First Symphony (1917) from the Mariinsky Orchestra. Next came a real Classical symphony, Haydn’s Bear (1786), but this lacked elegance and, consequently, expressiveness. Weber’s Romanticism bookended the second concert and concerto. His Freischütz Overture (1821) benefitted from the maestro’s energy shots at vital moments; the 1841 Berlioz arrangement of his Invitation to the Dance shimmered transparently.

When the MPhil showed up at three o’clock, a closer rapport was apparent between conductor and players (versus two years ago). Reger’s harmonically alluring Vier Tondichtungen nach Böcklin (1913) showcased first the strings (in an Elgarian picture with chances for the concertmaster), then the refined winds, next the whole orchestra (in the duly macabre third tone poem, Die Toteninsel), and finally Munich’s percussion section (in an exuberant bacchanal colorfully scored).

Two hours later the Mariinsky musicians were back, still on superb form, for that vocalise, the episodic and folksy Tanya-Katya (2002) with creamy-toned lyric soprano Pelageya Kurennaya; Hartmann’s Suite from Simplicius Simplicissimus, assembled in 1957 from the revised version of his 1935 opera, in a lively, at times jazzy mix of styles relished especially by the principal trombone; the concerto with Volodin; and, wrapping up a long haul for them, Naughty Limericks, the gaudy 1963 Shchedrin piece, which poorly followed the Prokofiev but was loudly applauded in the presence of the elderly composer, a friend of Gergiev’s. The MPhil’s second concert began with Jörg Widmann’s raucous concert overture Con brio (2008), again unhelpfully programmed with Prokofiev. The composer-clarinetist then played, or rather milked, Mozart’s A-Major Concerto, K622, jumping about the stage like an excited six-year-old, before Mustonen walked on to conclude this engrossing, unrepeatable venture.

Photo © Andrea Huber

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MPhil: €24,200 for Refugees

Monday, October 5th, 2015

Poster by Graphism for the Munich Philharmonic

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: October 5, 2015

MUNICH — Members of the Munich Philharmonic, positioned as the “orchestra of the city,” have privately raised money for work and supplies in the refugee crisis here. Together with colleagues at the Philharmonischer Chor München, their management teams, and new MPhil chief conductor Valery Gergiev, the musicians amassed a generous €24,200, or $27,000, which they handed over Friday to four local groups aiding Germany’s mammoth refugee effort.

Munich this summer and fall has been a key arrival point for Syrians and Muslims from other countries fleeing violence. The Starnberg wing of Munich Central Station, further burdened until yesterday by the contrasted spectacle of Oktoberfest revelers, remains cordoned off to manage the ongoing influx.

Photo © Graphism

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