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Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program C
No. 2023 Subscription (Program C)

Program

Wagner / Tannhäuser, opera―Overture

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) founded Musikdrama (music drama) as represented by his Tristan und Isolde and four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). In this operatic genre for which he wrote both libretto and music, the drama and the music are indissolubly united on an unprecedented level, especially by the scrupulous use of the numerous leitmotifs (recurrent melodic or/and harmonic elements representing certain characters, feelings, things or so).
Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (Tannhäuser and the Singers’ Contest at Wartburg), a grand romantic opera in three acts based on medieval legend, was a major step for Wagner to establish Musikdrama. Composed from 1843 to 1845, the opera was premiered in 1845 in Dresden before going through large and small revisions. The title-role Tannhäuser, a knight and minnesinger (minstrel), abandons himself to pleasure with Venus, a goddess of love and desire, in her domicile Venusberg. He, tired from his amorous days, goes back to the Wartburg castle and meets his platonic love Princess Elisabeth again. Banished from the castle as he, carelessly in a trance, praises Venus at the minnesingers’ contest, he makes pilgrimage to Rome. He begs the pope’s pardon in vain. Tannhäuser expires by the remains of Elisabeth who sacrificed her life for the salvation of his soul. The Overture in A–B–A’ form suggests this redemptive conclusion: the solemn section A is built around the chorale-style theme of the Pilgrims’ Chorus introduced by clarinets, horns and bassoons, whilst the joyful section B culminates with Tannhäuser’s Ode to Venus on strings.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Weinberg / Trumpet Concerto B-flat Major Op. 94

World War II caused an unprecedented number of expatriates such as Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996). Born into a Jewish family in Poland, he was trained as a pianist at the Warsaw Conservatory before the Nazi occupation of Poland forced him to emigrate to the USSR in 1939. He, after studying composition in Minsk, moved to Moscow in 1943 at the invitation of Shostakovich, thirteen years his senior, who highly esteemed the younger musician. Not as his pupil but close friend, Weinberg since received abundant advice from Shostakovich. Their friendship even saved Weinberg’s life: in 1953 when he was unjustly imprisoned as a part of Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign, Shostakovich was brave enough to address a letter for clemency to the regime, thanks to that—and Stalin’s sudden death—Weinberg was released.
Weinberg wrote the Trumpet Concerto (1966–1967) in his late forties for the Ukrainian virtuoso Timofei Dokshitser (1921–2005), the solo trumpeter of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. The biting wit found in the first movement entitled Etudes brings Shostakovich’s to mind. The dim middle movement Episodes is haunted by a rhythmic motif evoking Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and Mendelssohn’s famous Wedding March. Without pause, the finale Fanfares opens with the soloist’s cadenza-like passages quoting clearly Mendelssohn’s Wedding March: this enigmatic movement then collages in fragments, Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Golden Cockerel, Bizet’s opera Carmen (Chorus of the Street Children) and Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Shostakovich / Symphony No. 5 D Minor Op. 47

Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) remained, unlike Rakhmaninov who fled to the West, behind the Iron Curtain. On his native soil, especially during Stalin’s era from 1924 to 1953, the regime utilized every art form as a vehicle for their propaganda. Many of artists who didn’t meet the official Soviet style called “Socialist realism” were destined for purge, labor camp, torture or execution.
During these years of terror, Shostakovich found himself in two extremely critical situations following the infamous censorships by the Communist Party in 1936 and 1948. Both of them threatened not only his artistic life but also his own existence. The Symphony No.5, his answer to the 1936 denunciation, was written the next year in a few months as proper Soviet music. Shostakovich succeeded to rehabilitate himself with the work’s highly successful premiere in Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg) in 1937 commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
No. 5 takes a conventional four-movement form leading D minor to D major triumphantly following the spirit of “per aspera ad astra (through hardships to the stars)” of Beethoven the musical revolutionist. The opening sonata movement gives the eerie introductory theme with dotted rhythm and then the grievous first theme, before the second theme reminds us of the Havanera aria from Bizet’s Carmen. The next movement is a darkish scherzo in A–B–A’ form, whilst the slow third movement which excludes the brass instruments is said to allude to death and condolence. Turning the spotlight on the brass, the contrastive finale comes to an optimistic fanfare denouement in D major to please the Soviet authorities. However, Shostakovich begins this movement with the four-note ascending theme (A–D–E–F) on the brass quoting in secret his then-unpublished song Rebirth. The lyrics, to summarize, tell that the real value of a barbarously-oppressed art work will revive with time. Hidden messages of this sort that Shostakovich often entrusted to his works in a so-called “Aesopian” manner have helped succeeding generations to rehabilitate him in the truest sense.

[Kumiko Nishi]

[Today's encore]
Japanese traditional (arr. by Reinhold Friedrich)/ Sakura Sakura (cherry blossom)
Trumpet: Reinhold Friedrich

Artists

Andrés Orozco-Estrada ConductorAndrés Orozco-Estrada

Born in Columbia in 1977, Andrés Orozco-Estrada learned violin and conducting, then in 1997, he moved to Vienna where he studied under Uroš Lajovic, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky, at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. He still has his base in Vienna from where he has undertaken his international career. In 2019, he conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker on its Japan tour, leaving a strong impression to the Japanese audience with the program including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. He has also worked with the orchestra at the BBC Proms and the Luzern Festival.
He has served positions such as Principal Conductor of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Music Director of the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Music Director of the Houston Symphony and the Principal Conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker. Currently he is Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, and will assume the position of General Music Director of the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln and the Oper Köln from the 2025 season, according to an announcement. He has guest-conducted world prestigious orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra while also actively working on recordings, and the Richard Strauss series with the hr-Sinfonieorchester among many are noteworthy.
This is his first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Shostakovich Symphony 5th is the work he also conducted in his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, therefore he will surely create music full of vitality by drawing clear sounds from the orchestra.

[Yoichi Iio, music journalist]

Reinhold Friedrich TrumpetReinhold Friedrich

Born in Weingarten, Germany in 1958, Reinhold Friedrich started to learn trumpet at the age of seven. Tutors he studied with include Edward Tarr and Pierre Thibault. In 1982, he made his professional debut performing Luciano Berio’s Sequenza X at the Berliner Festwochen. From 1983 to 1999, he served as Principal Trumpet with the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt (now the hr-Sinfonieorchester), and in 2003, when the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was formed, he was appointed Principal Trumpet by conductor Claudio Abbado.
He has also been actively performing as soloist since he won 2nd prize (no 1st prize winner) at the Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD in 1986, working with many orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker. He has profound knowledge of period instruments, at the same time, he strives to introduce contemporary works, and has released many CDs. Presently he is a professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, teaching many young artists.
Because he is a master who creates a tremendous impact with his rich and brilliant tone, expectations are high for his first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Weinberg’s concerto is a colorful work incorporating parodic phrases, therefore we are thrilled to imagine how he will perform it for us.

[Katsuhiko Shibata, music critic]

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Subscription Concerts 2024-2025
Program C

No. 2023 Subscription (Program C)

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