The Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker

Goethe-Institut invites the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to its auditorium in a digital format with high definition video live-streaming for the connoisseurs of Western classical music of Chennai. The Digital Concert Hall with excellent sound and video is the best close-to-real experience one can get.

John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir present two key choral works from the Romantic period. During this era, spiritual music was intended to edify. Johannes Brahms does that in his dramatic Schicksalslied by reinterpreting Hölderlin’s resigned text with an optimistic epilogue. Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, on the other hand, shows the way from darkness into the radiant vision of a better world with melodious choruses, duets and arias.

Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Monteverdi Choir
Lucy Crowe
Ann Hallenberg
Werner Güra

Programme

Johannes Brahms - 19 Min.
Schicksalslied op.54                                                         
Monteverdi Choir
                       
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - 74 Min.
Symphonie Nr. 2 in B flat major op. 52 Hymn of Praise
Lucy Crowe soprano
Ann Hallenberg mezzo-soprano
Werner Güra tenor
Monteverdi Chor

After a Stravinsky programme in June 2016, Sir John Eliot Gardiner returns to the Berliner Philharmoniker with works of the German Romantic period. On this occasion, the orchestra will perform for the first time with the Monteverdi Choir, which was founded by the English conductor in 1964 and has long enjoyed worldwide fame.

In the introduction to a CD recording, Gardiner wrote of Johannes Brahms’ ‘wonderful and often underrated’ choral music. This concert features his Schicksalslied, based on a poem from Hölderlin’ novel Hyperion and first performed in 1871. Brahms masterfully conveys through music the contrast that exists, according to the poet, between the serene, ‘fate-less’ world of the ancient gods and human existence characterised by uncertainty and disorientation.

In Felix Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang, first performed in Leipzig in 1840, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, three instrumental movements are followed by an extended second part with vocal solos and chorus. But unlike Beethoven, Mendelssohn leaves the sphere of the secular, which is characteristic of the symphonic genre, and sets texts from various psalms to music in duets, arias, choruses and chorales in the second part. Instrumental themes from the first part are taken up again by the singing voices in the second part. Due to the break with traditional genres, Mendelssohn did not initially call his Lobgesang, composed for the 400th anniversary of the art of printing, a symphony, but a ‘symphonic cantata’.

Almost exactly twenty years after its last performance, which took place in March 2002 under the baton of Claudio Abbado, this wonderful work can be enjoyed again in a concert by the Philharmoniker.

All are welcome as per Pandemic Protocols*

*Pandemic Protocols @ Goethe-Institut Chennai

• Final vaccination Certificate / RTPCR Test should be shown on request.
• A thermal scanning will be done at the Entry.
• Mask must be worn by all non-performers all the time.
• Sanitizer Stands will be provided at appropriate points for use.
• Entry and Exit into the performance hall will be organized one by one.
• Physical distancing has to be strictly maintained on corridor and in the hall.
• Access to other spaces in the premises is possible only on prior permission.
• Air-conditioner will be @ 27-30 degrees, and Entry Door of the performance hall may be kept open.

If any member fails to observe the guidelines even after our request, they may have to leave the venue.
We look forward to your cooperation to ensure safety for everyone.