Description
Three works, three soundscapes and a common theme: longing, dreams and passion. In this programme, the boundaries of reality are blurred. The selected works move beyond the world of immediate experience and give voice to the unconscious. In doing so, they also reflect the stage of life these young musicians are at, which is characterised by intense emotions, longings, a search for identity and daydreams. The emotional range of the programme extends from tender intimacy to orchestral ecstasy.
Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune opens the evening and transports the listener into a dazzling soundscape between wakefulness and dreams. Colours flash up and vanish again, melodies seem to dissolve, and the music itself enters a state of suspension. From this shimmering liminal world, the journey leads to Wagner’s Five Poems by Mathilde Wesendonck for voice and orchestra, sung by Wiebke Lehmkuhl. In five concentrated scenes, emotion is transformed into language and language into music. Already here, one can hear the chromaticism that Wagner would go on to develop into a musical revolution in Tristan und Isolde shortly afterwards.
The programme concludes with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. At its heart is a young artist who, driven by obsessive love, takes refuge in intoxicating dream worlds. With its impressive orchestral palette, the symphony combines emotional extremes and evocative soundscapes into a musical fever dream. Delicate memories, vivid hallucinations and explosive soundscapes coalesce into a maelstrom from which it is almost impossible to escape. The programme thus takes the listener from the first hints of the unconscious, through intimate emotional landscapes, to the visionary orchestral climax at the end.
The German National Youth Orchestra would like to express its particular thanks to Phoenix Reisen for making this concert at the Beethovenhalle in Bonn possible.
