Mozart Everywhere

Concert followed by a musical surprise with Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov

«Every time we’ve tackled a work with Les Siècles, we’ve had the feeling of being restorers, rediscovering colour under layers and layers of varnish,» music director François-Xavier Roth explains to the online media Wanderer. A particularly bright palette of colours awaits the audience on 18.09., as the conductor followed his usual flair in concocting a multifaceted programme: György Ligeti will meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the concert will conclude with an exciting musical surprise. All this using period instruments and featuring the violinist Isabelle Faust in the Hungarian composer’s Violin Concerto and the pianist Alexander Melnikov in Mozart’s Piano Concerto N° 23. Before the concert, the conductor will join us for an Artist talk in French at 18:45 at the Grand Auditorium.

An encounter between giants and generations: that’s the promise of this all-symphonic evening at the Philharmonie. And we’re not just talking about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert headlining the programme… The Austrian maestro Leopold Hager directed our very own Luxembourg Philharmonic for 15 years, back when it was still called the Orchestre Symphonique de Radio-Télé-Luxembourg. 43 years later and at the venerable age of 87, he returns for a moving reunion in the Grand Duchy. The musicians in the orchestra and faces in the audience may be new, but the emotion will be the same when he conducts two favourites of the classical repertoire.

En français

Ce programme autour des sonates à quatre mains de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, qui constituent les premiers chefs-d’œuvre du genre, rassemble des pièces de jeunesse composées pour le duo que Wolfgang formait avec sa sœur Nannerl, et des œuvres de la maturité, monuments à l’écriture proprement symphonique, très influencées par la musique italienne. S’il est certain que la Sonate en ré majeur a été conçue pour le clavecin, dans le cadre intime de l’exécution familiale, comme on le voit sur le tableau de Della Croce (1780), la grande Sonate en fa majeur a été probablement pensée pour le pianoforte. Toutefois, loin de trahir l’esprit de ces compositions grandioses, l’usage du clavecin en souligne la construction à la manière d’un finale d’opera buffa italien.

The members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Academy, frequent participants in the performances of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, also give chamber music concerts at regular intervals. 01.12. brings an opportunity to get to know the new academicians, who started with the 2023/24 season, in a programme which will culminate with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. This was written for the clarinettist Anton Stadler, a close friend of Mozart’s. On 01.12., Arthur Stockel, principal clarinet of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, will play the demanding solo part.

Greet 2024 in style with a concert of classical favourites. Items on the programme include Mozart’s invigorating overture to the opera Le nozze di Figaro, exuberant Central European dances by Brahms and Dvořák, romantic numbers by Elgar and Fritz Kreisler, and Johann Strauss’s irresistibly playful Tritsch-Tratsch Polka. Plus: star violinist Renaud Capuçon conducts the Luxembourg Philharmonic whilst also appears as soloist! Expect flair and fun on this memorable evening.

Outside, Carnival may have been unleashed, but at the Philharmonie, the devotional atmosphere of Passiontide, which begins the following week, gets a preview. On 08.02., William Christie, one of the high priests of his profession and Artist in residence this season, conducts Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s majestic Vesperae solennes de confessore. After-wards, Christie leads the Luxembourg Philharmonic in the rarely-heard oratorio version of Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, anticipating Holy Week, the high point of Passiontide.

Mozart’s Quintet in G minor is one of his tragic masterpieces, with a slow movement so beautiful that it moved the composer Tchaikovsky to tears. Brahms’s String Quintet N° 2 is contrastingly exuberant – albeit with gentle episodes – and culminates in a spirited and folklike finale. After the concert, audience members will have a chance to meet the musicians – members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic over a drink.

Organised by the Frënn vun de Lëtzebuerger Philharmoniker

The concert will be recorded on radio 100,7 and broadcast on April 28, 2024.