vienna: city of dreams
Vienna: City of Dreams is a nine month exploration of the art and culture of Vienna in the years around 1900 which is one of the first major projects of the Philharmonia Orchestra and its new Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor Esa-Pekka Salonen. You can find out more about the exciting project on the Philhamonia Orchestra's website by exploring the interactive mini-site Vienna: City of Dreams and by watching this interview with Esa-Pekka.
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s performance of Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” with the Philharmonia Orchestra on 27 and 28 February in Birmingham and London has received an outstanding echo in the press:
„It’s [...] exactly the kind of work in which Salonen excels an an interpreter, when his cool organisational skills and wonderful control of orchestral colour come to the fore. This was a performance that unfalteringly plotted the music’s course from the lush Wagnerian textures of the opening to the wilder, quasi-expressionist climaxes of the final part – Salonen and the outstanding Philharmonia had it all perfectly judged.“
(Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 3 March 2009)
„The Philharmonia Orchestra’ s celebration of early 20th- century Vienna made a rousing debut [...]“ „The opening songs had a featherweight transparency, the interludes a natural fluency, so that when the big moments arrived, they resembled a culmination, an organic development [...]“ „The Philharmonia played as if the music really mattered, with beautifully moulded textures and impeccable attacks.“
(Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 2 March 2009)
“Gurrelieder touches on a thousands moods as it relates the doomed love of Waldemar and Tove and their reunion in another life [...]. Salonen delineated them all wonderfully. There was as much to relish in the moments of chamber-music intimacy as in the thrilling Ride of the Dead Vassals. And what terrific soloists!”
(Richard Morrison, The Times, 3 March 2009)
„I cannot remember a finer realisation of this last, huge exhalation of late German romanticism, and it was a magnificent opening to the Philharmonia Orchestra’s „City of Dreams: Vienna 1900-1935“ series of concerts, a major reappraisal of Schoenberg, Mahler and Berg, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.“ „Salonen’ s conducting was an achievement too, unfailingly flexible and guilding us through the score’ s ravishing romanticism in a performance of overwhelming commitment, with the huge orchestra and the combined City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Philharmonia Voices responding magnificently“
(Peter Reed, The Classical Source, 3 March 2009)
„Because overwhelming it was, and not just through sheer size and volume.“ „The Philharmonia and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen had clearly lavished endless care on the piece.“
(Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2009)
„Vienna – City of Dreams is the lowbrow title of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s year-long “festival” of concerts, which looks set to be one of the musical highlights of 2009 if Esa-Pekka Salonen’s sensational account of Schoenberg’s seminal Gurrelieder at the Festival Hall last weekend proves typical.” “It was a brilliant, bold and generous masterstroke to open the festivities with Schoenberg’s song-symphonic epic, Gurrelieder [...]” “Salonen charts Schoenberg’s journey from darkness to light, from Romanticism to modernism, with an unerring command of his vast forces.”
(Hugh Canning, The Times, 8 March 2009)
Press from concert in Paris, 4 March 2009:
“Dans La Nuit transfigurée (1899/1917) de Schönberg, le chef souffle le chaud et le froid, alternant bouffées d’émotion et réserve distante, raideur et abandon, précipitation at alanguissement: un parti pris d’ instabilité, hésitant entre ancrage dans la tradition et lecture moderniste, qui, s’il met sans doute bien en lumière la dualité de la partition, entre héritage et innovation, mais ne se fait pas sans solution de continuité et n’ôte rien aux faiblesses assez surprenantes des cordes britanniques."
(Simon Corley, ConcertoNet, 6 March 2009)
“En chef-compositeur et champion de la musique du Xxe siècle, Salonen aurait pu être tenté de mettre en lumière ce qu’il peut y avoir de prémoderne dans La Nuit transfigurée (1899, orchestration révisée en 1943) et même dans la Symphonique lyrique (1922). Avec pertinence, il semble plutôt inscrire ces oeuvres dans une esthétique fin XIXe, sans lourdeur mais non sans lyrisme.”
(AFP, 6 March 2009)
Press from concert in London, 12 March 2009
“It is, in short, the most explicit and affecting word-setting not to use actual words and in this outstanding performance from the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen Schoenberg’s very distinctive musical syntax were rendered so lucid as to sound and feel like therapy. A sizable body of strings had the clarity and malleability of the original sextet version and as Salonen laid down the final chord, aglow with arpeggiations, you didn’t need to see the word “transfigured” to know the outcome.”
(Edward Seckerson, The Independent, 13 March 2009)