Southwest German Philharmonic Orchestra

The concert evening includes “Polish Melodies” by Mieczysław Weinberg, the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra by Alexander Arutyunyan and the Symphony No. 5 in E minor by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Trumpeter Matilda Lloyd will be a guest, as will conductor Pawel Kapuła.

To the program:

The “Polish Melodies” by Mieczysław Weinberg, with which the Southwest German Philharmonic opens its concert, show Weinberg’s close connection to the Polish-Jewish melodies of his homeland, which he had to leave in 1939 when he fled from the Germans. He first fled to Belarus, then two years later to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, before coming to Moscow at the invitation of Dmitri Shostakovich. The two composers were closely connected throughout their lives, they inspired each other and were both under strict observation by the Soviet cultural authorities. Mazurkas and polkas in a tonal language that is familiar on the one hand and sharpened on the other can be heard in the Polish Melodies, and Weinberg’s melancholy and lifelong longing for his lost homeland cannot be ignored.

The composer Alexander Arutyunyan, born in Yerevan (Armenia) in 1920, has become known to German audiences almost exclusively for his trumpet concerto, although his oeuvre comprises a wealth of other works. Alongside Aram Khachaturian, Arutyunyan is one of the most important and most frequently performed composers of the 20th century in his native Armenia. His music is rich in color, influenced by musical neoclassicism and sometimes by the formal language of the Baroque, and also incorporates Armenian folk music. The trumpet concerto from 1950 captivates with the typical trumpet fanfares and signal calls, high virtuosity in the solo part and in the interplay with the orchestra, but also allows the soloist to shine with long, poetic lines inspired by French music. The piece is through-composed, but in itself consists of several parts and culminates in the final section in a solo cadenza in which the playing and breathing technique are exhausted.

In six symphonies, the famous ballets and solo concertos, Peter I. Tchaikovsky developed his very own, melodious and often passionately surging musical language, which mediates between Western European and Slavic musical culture. When Tchaikovsky began composing his Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1888, he was also recognized as Russia’s leading composer in Europe and was at the peak of his success. But inside his soul, things looked very different: For conductor Mariss Jansons, who had grown up with the St. Petersburg conducting tradition, this music reflects the emotional tragedy of an unhappy man whose homosexuality was almost life-threatening in Russian society at the time. The idea of destiny returns as a central theme in all four movements, each time in a different form, in the third movement disguised as a waltz, in the fourth as a sonorous confrontation with his inner struggles.

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