Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin I

At the concert by the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, conducted by Simone Young, this is followed by the Adagio from Gustav Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony: a “tornado of life” (Jens Malte Fischer), composed during one of the most severe crises the composer endured in the final summer of his life.

Oscillating textures characterize the soundscape of *Sappho/Bioluminescence* by Australian composer Liza Lim, before the evening concludes with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5.

Britten dedicated his opera *Peter Grimes* to the “eternal struggle of men and women whose livelihoods depend on the sea.” Even before the premiere, he compiled four of the orchestral preludes and interludes into the *Sea Interludes*—a series of exceptionally vivid miniature tone poems that capture the sound of the English North Sea coast with its dramatic sheer cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, and raging storms.

Gustav Mahler composed a storm of the soul with the famous Adagio from his 10th Symphony after learning of his wife Alma’s affair with Walter Gropius: Music that is consistently geared toward catastrophe, with a dazzlingly dissonant nine-note chord that gradually builds following a shrill, sustained A in the violins (A for Alma!). Music that speaks: British director Ken Russell used it in his 1974 Mahler film to set Mahler’s famous composing cottage ablaze. Shimmering string textures, iridescent wind sounds, and microtonal glissandi, in turn, define the atmospheric orchestral piece *Sappho/Bioluminescence* by Liza Lim. The two-part title refers to the fragmentarily preserved, mysterious, and timeless-seeming love poetry of the ancient poetess mentioned in the title, which is associated with the image of an inner, physical radiance. Finally, Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto takes us back to the era of the Napoleonic Wars, into which the composer wove his patriotic (now anti-Napoleonic) views. Referring to the nickname “The Emperor,” commonly used in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking world, musicologist Harry Goldschmidt therefore proposed the far more apt title “The Anti-Emperor.”

Program

Speech

by Michel Friedman

Benjamin Britten

“Four Sea Interludes” from the opera “Peter Grimes”

Gustav Mahler

Adagio from Symphony No. 10

Liza Lim

“Sappho/Bioluminescence”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major

Performers

Simone Young, conductor

• Francesco Piemontesi, piano
• Michel Friedman, Narrator
• German Symphony Orchestra Berlin