The young German cellist Raphaela Gromes is one of the most trenchant musicians of the younger generation. Gromes is also able to inspire the younger generation with her captivating playing and her recording "Femmes" quickly climbed to the top of the German classical music charts.
On the one hand, Raphaela Gromes plays traditional repertoire such as Dvořák's Cello Concerto with dedication, finesse and technical perfection, whereby her charisma also plays an important role on stage. On the other hand, she breaks new ground and discovers unknown masterpieces by female composers who were admired in their day but have since been forgotten - unjustly, as Raphaela Gromes' recordings impressively prove. The Ukrainian National Orchestra, one of the most renowned orchestras in Eastern Europe, represents the centuries-old cultural tradition of Ukraine and also inspires with insights into the Ukrainian concert repertoire with composers who are regrettably little known in Western Europe.
The concert begins with the "Old Mountain Dances of Verkhovyna" by Yevhen Stankovych. Born in 1942, the musician is the director of the country's National Academy of Music and has an extremely broad compositional output with ballets, oratorios, twelve symphonies and many film scores. His opera "Wenn der Farn blüht", composed in the 1970s, was banned from performance by the former Soviet Union and only premiered in 2011. Finally, Jean Sibelius' Third Symphony, a work full of touching melodic themes and subtle harmonies in which Sibelius reflects the scenic beauty of Finnish nature, will be performed under the baton of the renowned conductor Volodymyr Sirenko.
The Russian "national composer" Peter Tchaikovsky came from a Ukrainian family that was originally called Chayka. The Finnish "national composer" Jean Sibelius had Swedish as his mother tongue and only learned Finnish relatively late. The English horn has little to do with England - it is thought to be a language mutation from "cor anglé" (curved horn) to "core anglais" or, as angels often play instruments similar to horns in religious images, from "angel's horn".
November 11, 2024
