The three German Bs – Bach, Beethoven & Brahms

PIANO enlivened PHILHARMONICS

Screening of Exclusive Orchestral Concerts from

the Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker

with Live Piano Recitals by K M Music Conservatory

Goethe-Institut invites the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to its auditorium especially for the connoisseurs of Western classical music of Chennai.
        
We welcome you to enjoy this Digital Concert Hall with high-definition video live-screening and excellent sound in superior quality with ultra-high definition (4K UHD) and outstanding image dynamics (HDR) to get the best close-to-real experience.

With this presentation, we hope to make some of the exclusive orchestral concerts with works of great composers presented by exceptional conductors and performed by eminent soloists a reality, which may be practically impossible otherwise.

In our specially curated series, we bring you three wonderful concerts.

The three German Bs – Bach, Beethoven & Brahms

Adam Greig - Piano

Johann Sebastian Bach

‘He should not be called Bach (stream), but Meer (sea), because of his infinite, inexhaustible wealth of tone combinations and harmonies,’ Ludwig van Beethoven is reported to have said about Johann Sebastian Bach. The work of the great Baroque master, who came from a musical dynasty stretching over many branches of his family tree, and who left behind an immensely diverse oeuvre, continues to inspire today.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born as the youngest of eight siblings. He was taken in by his eldest brother Johann Christoph Bach, who had been organist at the Michaeliskirche in Ohrdruf. At the age of 15, he left Thuringia to become a choir student at the church of St Michaelis in Lüneburg ‘because of his uncommonly beautiful soprano voice’.

After Bach took part in the commissioning and inauguration of a new organ in Arnstadt in Thuringia in July 1703, the young musician was appointed organist of the church. From there he travelled to Lübeck to understand Buxtehude’s art. From Arnstadt after a brief interlude as organist in Mühlhausen, he entered the service of the Duke of Weimar. Bach was appointed Hofkapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, when concertos, orchestral, chamber and piano music became the focus of his creative work. In 1723, as Thomaskantor, he finally took on the highest musical office that the flourishing university and trade fair city of Leipzig had to offer and which was one of the most prestigious in all of Germany.

Ludwig van Beethoven

‘I will seize fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will,’ wrote Ludwig van Beethoven during a major life crisis. And in fact, no other music so strongly expresses the powers that threaten mankind as Beethoven’s works; at the same time, they mobilise the resilience of the individual. It is from this tension that the art of the last of the First Viennese School derives its unmistakable radicalism to this day.
Beethoven, a contemporary of the French Revolution and its consequences, went down in history not least as the creator of humanism in musical form. Beethoven, who was born in Bonn but made Vienna his home, created musical milestones with his only opera, Fidelio, and his Missa Solemnis, but the focus of his work is in the genres of the symphony, the solo concerto, the string quartet and the piano sonata. He took up the traditional forms of his predecessors Haydn and Mozart, perfected them, and with his late work, in which Bach’s polyphonic music also finds echoes, he looks ahead far into the future. Beethoven has always been part of the core repertoire of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Performances by Hans von Bülow and Wilhelm Furtwängler are legendary. Herbert von Karajan, Fürtwängler’s successor as chief conductor of the orchestra, played all of Beethoven’s symphonies several times, as did Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle with internationally acclaimed cycles at the end of their tenures.

Johannes Brahms

Few could have imagined that Johannes Brahms from Hamburg’s lower middle classes, the son of a musician who appeared primarily in dance halls, would become one of the most respected composers. From an early age, Brahms showed talent as a pianist and composer of piano works. The violinist Joseph Joachim arranged his meeting with Robert Schumann, who wrote of the great future he saw for the 20-year-old.
However, to the self-proclaimed musicians of the future around Richard Wagner, Brahms would be regarded as a man of the past. In fact, Brahms took up the Romantic rediscovery of Bach and Handel, and broadened his view by studying even earlier composers. He succeeded in creating a unique synthesis of his unmistakable late-Romantic idiom with aspects of the musical language of the Classical and Baroque periods. His Deutsches Requiem became a great success, and in later years, the composer could live with no financial worries in his adopted home of Vienna from the sales of his works and his performances as a pianist and conductor. Johannes Brahms appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker performing his own works on several occasions. The chief conductors Hans von Bülow and Wilhelm Furtwängler felt a strong commitment to the composer and contributed to the fact that the split between Brahms and Wagner followers faded. Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle also devoted themselves intensively to Brahms.

Dr. Adam J. Greig, originally from Fife in Scotland, completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Lancaster University in England, where he received a BMus (Hons) and a Masters degree in Music with Distinction, before completing a doctoral thesis on the music of French composer Germaine Tailleferre.

At KM Music Conservatory Adam has been the Academic Coordinator since 2011, responsible for oversight of the curriculum design and faculty. Since 2020 he is also Artistic Director responsible for international and industry projects and during the past decade has coordinated many projects with international collaborations. He has represented the institution in many shows. Since 2019 he has been coordinating with the AR Rahman Foundation with regards to the continuing musical projects with Nagaland, including the signing of an MoU between KMMC and Nagaland to support further cross-supportive musical activities.

As an active performer and musicologist Adam’s research involves combining modes of analytical enquiry with experience from practice, to better understand interpretation and artistic transmission. In solo piano performance he holds the Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music, London. He specialises in performing early 20th Century French repertoire and has performed as a soloist and accompanist at a number of international concerts and conferences, including the Royal Music Association Symposium Nostalgia and Innovation in Twentieth-Century French Music. He has also had the privilege of performing three piano concertos, most recently with the Australian World Orchestra during their 2018 India tour, and also with the Lancaster University Symphony Orchestra. Adam’s secondary area of performance is contemporary electro-acoustic music and he has performed both existing repertoire and premieres at the International Computer Music Conference in Belfast and the LICA-Mantis Festival in Lancaster (2008).

As a director Adam’s work includes Sempre Libera from ‘Sound Unbound’ premiered in Chennai in 2016 and later showed at NH7 Pune. The original video KMMC x ROLIwood Tribute launched on YouTube and performed live at Founders Forum, London (2016), and later for Apple in Mumbai and Google in Delhi (2018).

As a researcher, Adam has presented at many conferences and symposiums.

His published work includes contributions as a Research Assistant to Professor Mawer’s articles in the Journal of the Royal Music Association and the Journal of Twentieth-Century Music.
Adam has also appeared as a lead in the 2016 Tamil rom-com film Mapla Singam, and can frequently be seen around Chennai performing with the band Black Market Cabaret.