News
Pappano. Mahler in Rome
05 Aug 2011
Antonio Pappano & the Accademia di Santa Cecilia open their 2011-12 season with a performance of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” and a new release of Mahler 6 on EMI Classics
22, 23, 24 October 2011 - Mahler No. 8, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
10 October – New CD of Mahler Symphony No. 6 on EMI Classics
“A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
Gustav Mahler
To open their 2011-2012 season, Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Symphony of a Thousand) at the Orchestra’s home, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on Saturday 22 October. Pappano leads a stellar cast including Manuela Uhl, Christine Brewer, Meagan Miller, Christopher Maltman and Nikolai Schukoff. They are joined by a double choir formed of the chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the China National Chorus. The performance will coincide with a new recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 on EMI Classics, released on 10 October.
To mark Mahler’s 150th anniversary, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia mounted a complete Mahler symphonic cycle last year. The Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia boasts a venerable Mahler tradition. Their strong ties with the composer commenced when Mahler came to Rome to conduct the Santa Cecilia Orchestra on two separate visits to the capital in March 1907 and April 1910.
Due to its huge instrumental and choral forces, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 soon gained a faithful nickname as the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. It was to be the last of the composer’s works premiered in his lifetime and was a critical and popular success at the premiere in Munich in 1910. The work sits at the latter end of Mahler’s ‘middle’ period, fusing song and symphony into a bipartite structure. The first section based on a 9th-century Christian hymn Veni creator spiritus and the second a setting of words from Goethe’s Faust. The two seemingly disparate sections are unified by the common theme of bringing redemption through love – a concept conveyed through the use of shared musical material. For Mahler, the Eighth was a musical embodiment of the faithfulness and an expression of confidence in the human spirit.
Sometimes given the title the ‘Tragic’ – Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 was written between 1903-1904, with the first performance taking place in 1906. The composer’s turbulent personal life reflects the sombre title. The jubilant soaring melodic “Alma” theme in the first movement is dedicated to his wife whom he married in 1902. The summer of 1903 was spent at Maiernigg, the mountain retreat he loved and his daughter was also born while the symphony was being conceived. The startling hammer blows that feature in the long dramatic finale of the symphony were to be prophetic; Mahler was to have three heart attacks in later years, the last of which would be fatal. The Symphony No. 6 fits tidily into the composer’s “middle period” and sees his writing move completely away from any connection with the sound world of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner. Its significance in the canon has always been widely recognised; for fellow Austrian composer Alban Berg (writing to Webern on the subject) it was "the only sixth, despite the Pastoral [Beethoven]”.
·
Saturday 22- 6pm, Sunday 23 – 6pm, Monday 24 October – 7.30pm:
Mahler Symphony No. 8, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
Orchestra, Coro e Voci Bianche dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
China National Chorus
Antonio Pappano direttore
Manuela Uhl soprano - Magna Peccatrix
Christine Brewer soprano - Una poenitentium
Meagan Miller soprano - Mater Gloriosa
Sara Mingardo contralto - Mulier Samaritana
Maria Radner contralto - Maria Aegyptiaca
Nikolai Schukoff tenore - Doctor Marianus
Christopher Maltman baritono - Pater Ecstaticus
Georg Zeppenfeld basso - Pater Profundus
Ciro Visco maestro del Coro - (Accademia di Santa Cecilia)
Vijay Upadhyaya maestro del Coro - (China National)
·
Mahler in Rome
Mahler’s choice of repertoire for his concerts in Rome in 1907 was particularly interesting as it included Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony ‘Pathetique’, and extracts from Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust, and extracts from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Meistersingers, Tannhauser and the Siegfried Idyll. A further last-minute addition was made with the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony
Despite his luggage being lost on route to Rome, Mahler was determined to continue his concert plans and borrowed a hastily adjusted outfit from the hotel’s proprietor for the first concert, which was given in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Margherita. During the interval, the Queen called the Maestro to her box to compliment him on the performance and charmingly offered her help to find his lost luggage. The national newspaper Il Messeggero noted that “thanks to the conductor, the orchestra was transformed into an organism full of vigour and perfectly balanced”. At the end of the concert the audience jumped up completely spontaneously to applaud the “visibly moved” Maestro. Though not without its mishaps, the experience had been positive enough for the great conductor to accept a return invitation in 1910.
Shortly after the composer’s second visit, Bruno Walter, one of the most important Mahlerians, performed the composer’s 1st Symphony in Rome in 1912. With performances of the 1st Symphony, the baton was passed to Willem Mengelberg and again Bruno Walter. During the post-war years Mahler Symphonies in Santa Cecilia were conducted by Otto Klemperer, Paul Kletzki, Vittorio Gui, Hermann Scherchen and the young Leonard Bernstein.
It was no wonder that in his film “Death in Venice”, Luchino Visconti turned to the unique, full-bodied sound of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia to record Mahler’s 3rd and 5th Symphonies for the soundtrack. This film score stands out as a landmark in the history of celluloid for its by no means small contribution to the movie’s success.
Over the last decades, many great interpreters of Mahler have made their contributions to Santa Cecilia’s performances of his symphonic cycle. Among these: Rudolf Kempe, Igor Markevitch, Kirill Kondrashin, Leonard Bernstein, Georges Prêtre, Carlo Maria Giulini, Yuri Temirkanov, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano.
Subsequently, it has been the Orchestra’s Musical Directors who have offered further insights – in particular Giuseppe Sinopoli and Myung-Whun Chung with complete symphonic cycles. Daniele Gatti has made further notable contributions.
Santa Cecilia has marked the double Mahler anniversary in 2010 and 2011 with the complete symphonic cycle shared by Antonio Pappano and Valery Gergiev. Pappano has often toured the Orchestra with Mahler Symphony No.1, from Germany to Japan, even including it in their programme in 2007 for Vienna at the Musikverein where the symphony was premiered. The Vienna concert was met with overwhelming applause and an immediate re-invitation.
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
In a country first known for opera, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia is a rare example in Italy of a symphony orchestra not attached to an opera house and it is unanimously recognised as Italy’s finest symphonic orchestra.
The Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia has an impressive heritage. Since its creation in 1908, the Orchestra has collaborated with distinguished conductors and composers including Mahler, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Respighi, Berio, Stockhausen, Toscanini, Furtwangler, De Sabata, Karajan, Stokowski, Bohm, Kleiber, Celibidache, Sinopoli, Bernstein, Abbado, Muti and Barenboim. Most recently its Music Directors have been Bernstein, Sinopoli, Gatti and Myung Whun Chung. They have imbued in the orchestra the great European symphonic tradition from Beethoven to Shostakovich.
Since taking over as Music Director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in 2005, Antonio Pappano has revitalised and galvanised the Orchestra with his enthusiastic spirit, positive energy and consummate musicianship. This dynamic partnership has returned the orchestra to pole position among the top European orchestras and is proving one of the most inspired orchestral partnerships in the world. The Orchestra was voted one of the top 10 orchestras in the world by UK’s Classic FM Magazine. The Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia has been described by the Independent as “one of the world’s great choirs” and is in great demand on tour both with the Orchestra and on its own.
This is Pappano’s first orchestral appointment and it has given him the opportunity to explore the symphonic repertoire more fully and to curate varied, unusual programmes, from the standard repertoire to staged, multi-media productions. Each year, Pappano has commissioned a contemporary Italian composer to write a new symphonic work for the Orchestra.
The Orchestra’s home is at Rome’s hugely popular Auditorium Parco della Musica, a large modern complex of 3 concert halls and an outside amphitheatre, built to house the Orchestra by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano 6 years ago. The Auditorium has been a huge success for both arts in the capital and across Italy, attracting more than 2.5 million attendees a year. The Auditorium Parco della Musica is situated north of Piazza del Popolo in a new vibrant cultural district on Via Flaminia next to Zaha Hadid’s thrilling newly-opened Maxxi Centre, a national museum of contemporary creativity.
The Accademia di Santa Cecilia is touring widely across Europe to great critical acclaim. Over the last two years, the Orchestra has toured to Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Vienna, Frankfurt, Grand Canaries and Lucerne Festivals and are due to tour to Japan in the autumn.
“Pappano’s Latin temperament ensures high drama and hushed devotion in equal measure.”
Hugh Canning, Sunday Times, September 2009.
Recordings and Accolades – 6 UK awards in a year!
Antonio Pappano records exclusively for EMI Classics. His joint EMI Classics discography with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia so far comprises the Verdi Requiem, Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, the Tchaikovsky Symphonies 4-6, Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly with Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann and most recently Rossini’s Stabat Mater, released in October 2010 with Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, alongside Santa Cecilia’s celebrated Chorus. Over the past year, their recordings have won 6 major UK awards. EMI Classics’ latest recording with the Orchestra is of Rossini’s rarely performed masterpiece William Tell, recently performed at the opening weekend of the BBC Proms.
The studio recording of Santa Cecilia’s Madama Butterfly was made by EMI Classics at the Auditorium Parco della Musica with a stunning line-up including Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann. It was released in March 2009 to worldwide critical acclaim, winning several awards including the Classic FM Gramophone Award in the Opera Category and Female Artist of the Year in the Classical BRIT Awards for Angela Gheorghiu’s performance.
The studio recording of Verdi’s Requiem was made during live concerts at the Orchestra’s home, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome and released in 2009. It includes a cast of soloists Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazon and René Pape with the acclaimed Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. For their Verdi Requiem recording, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Chorus won both choral awards at the Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine Award in 2010, as well as Critics’ Choice at the 2010 Classical BRIT Awards.
www.santacecilia.it
For further information, please contact:
Nicky Thomas Media Consultancy
Tel: 00 44 7768 566530
Email: info@nickythomasmedia.com Website: www.nickythomasmedia.com
22, 23, 24 October 2011 - Mahler No. 8, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
10 October – New CD of Mahler Symphony No. 6 on EMI Classics
“A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
Gustav Mahler
To open their 2011-2012 season, Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Symphony of a Thousand) at the Orchestra’s home, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on Saturday 22 October. Pappano leads a stellar cast including Manuela Uhl, Christine Brewer, Meagan Miller, Christopher Maltman and Nikolai Schukoff. They are joined by a double choir formed of the chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the China National Chorus. The performance will coincide with a new recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 on EMI Classics, released on 10 October.
To mark Mahler’s 150th anniversary, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia mounted a complete Mahler symphonic cycle last year. The Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia boasts a venerable Mahler tradition. Their strong ties with the composer commenced when Mahler came to Rome to conduct the Santa Cecilia Orchestra on two separate visits to the capital in March 1907 and April 1910.
Due to its huge instrumental and choral forces, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 soon gained a faithful nickname as the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. It was to be the last of the composer’s works premiered in his lifetime and was a critical and popular success at the premiere in Munich in 1910. The work sits at the latter end of Mahler’s ‘middle’ period, fusing song and symphony into a bipartite structure. The first section based on a 9th-century Christian hymn Veni creator spiritus and the second a setting of words from Goethe’s Faust. The two seemingly disparate sections are unified by the common theme of bringing redemption through love – a concept conveyed through the use of shared musical material. For Mahler, the Eighth was a musical embodiment of the faithfulness and an expression of confidence in the human spirit.
Sometimes given the title the ‘Tragic’ – Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 was written between 1903-1904, with the first performance taking place in 1906. The composer’s turbulent personal life reflects the sombre title. The jubilant soaring melodic “Alma” theme in the first movement is dedicated to his wife whom he married in 1902. The summer of 1903 was spent at Maiernigg, the mountain retreat he loved and his daughter was also born while the symphony was being conceived. The startling hammer blows that feature in the long dramatic finale of the symphony were to be prophetic; Mahler was to have three heart attacks in later years, the last of which would be fatal. The Symphony No. 6 fits tidily into the composer’s “middle period” and sees his writing move completely away from any connection with the sound world of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner. Its significance in the canon has always been widely recognised; for fellow Austrian composer Alban Berg (writing to Webern on the subject) it was "the only sixth, despite the Pastoral [Beethoven]”.
·
Saturday 22- 6pm, Sunday 23 – 6pm, Monday 24 October – 7.30pm:
Mahler Symphony No. 8, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
Orchestra, Coro e Voci Bianche dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
China National Chorus
Antonio Pappano direttore
Manuela Uhl soprano - Magna Peccatrix
Christine Brewer soprano - Una poenitentium
Meagan Miller soprano - Mater Gloriosa
Sara Mingardo contralto - Mulier Samaritana
Maria Radner contralto - Maria Aegyptiaca
Nikolai Schukoff tenore - Doctor Marianus
Christopher Maltman baritono - Pater Ecstaticus
Georg Zeppenfeld basso - Pater Profundus
Ciro Visco maestro del Coro - (Accademia di Santa Cecilia)
Vijay Upadhyaya maestro del Coro - (China National)
·
Mahler in Rome
Mahler’s choice of repertoire for his concerts in Rome in 1907 was particularly interesting as it included Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony ‘Pathetique’, and extracts from Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust, and extracts from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Meistersingers, Tannhauser and the Siegfried Idyll. A further last-minute addition was made with the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony
Despite his luggage being lost on route to Rome, Mahler was determined to continue his concert plans and borrowed a hastily adjusted outfit from the hotel’s proprietor for the first concert, which was given in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Margherita. During the interval, the Queen called the Maestro to her box to compliment him on the performance and charmingly offered her help to find his lost luggage. The national newspaper Il Messeggero noted that “thanks to the conductor, the orchestra was transformed into an organism full of vigour and perfectly balanced”. At the end of the concert the audience jumped up completely spontaneously to applaud the “visibly moved” Maestro. Though not without its mishaps, the experience had been positive enough for the great conductor to accept a return invitation in 1910.
Shortly after the composer’s second visit, Bruno Walter, one of the most important Mahlerians, performed the composer’s 1st Symphony in Rome in 1912. With performances of the 1st Symphony, the baton was passed to Willem Mengelberg and again Bruno Walter. During the post-war years Mahler Symphonies in Santa Cecilia were conducted by Otto Klemperer, Paul Kletzki, Vittorio Gui, Hermann Scherchen and the young Leonard Bernstein.
It was no wonder that in his film “Death in Venice”, Luchino Visconti turned to the unique, full-bodied sound of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia to record Mahler’s 3rd and 5th Symphonies for the soundtrack. This film score stands out as a landmark in the history of celluloid for its by no means small contribution to the movie’s success.
Over the last decades, many great interpreters of Mahler have made their contributions to Santa Cecilia’s performances of his symphonic cycle. Among these: Rudolf Kempe, Igor Markevitch, Kirill Kondrashin, Leonard Bernstein, Georges Prêtre, Carlo Maria Giulini, Yuri Temirkanov, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano.
Subsequently, it has been the Orchestra’s Musical Directors who have offered further insights – in particular Giuseppe Sinopoli and Myung-Whun Chung with complete symphonic cycles. Daniele Gatti has made further notable contributions.
Santa Cecilia has marked the double Mahler anniversary in 2010 and 2011 with the complete symphonic cycle shared by Antonio Pappano and Valery Gergiev. Pappano has often toured the Orchestra with Mahler Symphony No.1, from Germany to Japan, even including it in their programme in 2007 for Vienna at the Musikverein where the symphony was premiered. The Vienna concert was met with overwhelming applause and an immediate re-invitation.
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
In a country first known for opera, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia is a rare example in Italy of a symphony orchestra not attached to an opera house and it is unanimously recognised as Italy’s finest symphonic orchestra.
The Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia has an impressive heritage. Since its creation in 1908, the Orchestra has collaborated with distinguished conductors and composers including Mahler, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Respighi, Berio, Stockhausen, Toscanini, Furtwangler, De Sabata, Karajan, Stokowski, Bohm, Kleiber, Celibidache, Sinopoli, Bernstein, Abbado, Muti and Barenboim. Most recently its Music Directors have been Bernstein, Sinopoli, Gatti and Myung Whun Chung. They have imbued in the orchestra the great European symphonic tradition from Beethoven to Shostakovich.
Since taking over as Music Director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in 2005, Antonio Pappano has revitalised and galvanised the Orchestra with his enthusiastic spirit, positive energy and consummate musicianship. This dynamic partnership has returned the orchestra to pole position among the top European orchestras and is proving one of the most inspired orchestral partnerships in the world. The Orchestra was voted one of the top 10 orchestras in the world by UK’s Classic FM Magazine. The Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia has been described by the Independent as “one of the world’s great choirs” and is in great demand on tour both with the Orchestra and on its own.
This is Pappano’s first orchestral appointment and it has given him the opportunity to explore the symphonic repertoire more fully and to curate varied, unusual programmes, from the standard repertoire to staged, multi-media productions. Each year, Pappano has commissioned a contemporary Italian composer to write a new symphonic work for the Orchestra.
The Orchestra’s home is at Rome’s hugely popular Auditorium Parco della Musica, a large modern complex of 3 concert halls and an outside amphitheatre, built to house the Orchestra by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano 6 years ago. The Auditorium has been a huge success for both arts in the capital and across Italy, attracting more than 2.5 million attendees a year. The Auditorium Parco della Musica is situated north of Piazza del Popolo in a new vibrant cultural district on Via Flaminia next to Zaha Hadid’s thrilling newly-opened Maxxi Centre, a national museum of contemporary creativity.
The Accademia di Santa Cecilia is touring widely across Europe to great critical acclaim. Over the last two years, the Orchestra has toured to Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Vienna, Frankfurt, Grand Canaries and Lucerne Festivals and are due to tour to Japan in the autumn.
“Pappano’s Latin temperament ensures high drama and hushed devotion in equal measure.”
Hugh Canning, Sunday Times, September 2009.
Recordings and Accolades – 6 UK awards in a year!
Antonio Pappano records exclusively for EMI Classics. His joint EMI Classics discography with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia so far comprises the Verdi Requiem, Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, the Tchaikovsky Symphonies 4-6, Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly with Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann and most recently Rossini’s Stabat Mater, released in October 2010 with Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, alongside Santa Cecilia’s celebrated Chorus. Over the past year, their recordings have won 6 major UK awards. EMI Classics’ latest recording with the Orchestra is of Rossini’s rarely performed masterpiece William Tell, recently performed at the opening weekend of the BBC Proms.
The studio recording of Santa Cecilia’s Madama Butterfly was made by EMI Classics at the Auditorium Parco della Musica with a stunning line-up including Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann. It was released in March 2009 to worldwide critical acclaim, winning several awards including the Classic FM Gramophone Award in the Opera Category and Female Artist of the Year in the Classical BRIT Awards for Angela Gheorghiu’s performance.
The studio recording of Verdi’s Requiem was made during live concerts at the Orchestra’s home, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome and released in 2009. It includes a cast of soloists Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazon and René Pape with the acclaimed Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. For their Verdi Requiem recording, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Chorus won both choral awards at the Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine Award in 2010, as well as Critics’ Choice at the 2010 Classical BRIT Awards.
www.santacecilia.it
For further information, please contact:
Nicky Thomas Media Consultancy
Tel: 00 44 7768 566530
Email: info@nickythomasmedia.com Website: www.nickythomasmedia.com