Guest performance of the orchestra at Gärten der Welt in Berlin (Germany)
This evening, surrounded by the greenery of Berlin’s Gardens of the World, beneath a starry sky and with music rising above the stage like the scent of summer, will feel like a dream. The program you’ll hear is not a tale of a single place or time. It’s a collection of sounds from various worlds-cosmic, fairytale, theatrical, and romantic-woven to let you immerse in them.
We’ll hear Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, which was initially meant as a story of a demonic sabbath. Today, it acts more as a musical parable of the imagination wandering after dark. From a completely different realm comes Debussy’s Clair de lune-a delicate piano miniature transformed into an orchestral landscape by Hubert Mouton. It’s music that flows like moonlight.
Claire de lune by Debussy performed by hr-Sinfonieorchester conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi:
Among these images, a voice will resonate-Rafał Bartmiński, a tenor with a warm timbre and superb musicality, will perform four arias, all connected by the theme of night and dreams. Cavaradossi recalls a night of love (Tosca), Werther asks why to awaken what was meant to remain a dream (Werther), and Calaf sings in Turandotabout the dawn that will change everything-but it is still night. Even Stefan from The Haunted Manor, though he speaks of the silence around him, truly speaks of the state between sleep and wakefulness. These are beloved, familiar arias, but heard outdoors, without heavy curtains or theatrical lighting, they gain a new delicacy.
Nessun dorma by Puccini, performed by Luciano Pavarotti:
The instrumental music also guides us through a series of dreams. The waltz and finale from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake are ballet classics and music of movement and transience. Strauss’s Die Fledermaus overture is full of energy and humor. Thousands of wedding orchestras quote Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. Still, in the original, it is part of the music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream-again, a world more dreamt than lived. Chopin will appear in a new light-not as a soloist, but as the protagonist of a lyrical, radiant orchestral transcription.
And finally, Jupiter from Gustav Holst’s The Planets-a composition that has inspired countless dreams of outer space. When it plays, look up, for it’s hard not to feel that this music reflects the movement of celestial bodies.
Holst's Jupiter performed by NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Andrew Manze:
Przemysław Neumann, our director and the creator of this dreamlike musical script, will conduct the entire evening. We hope he’ll take us to Berlin that evening, too, because just writing these words has made us feel the magical atmosphere of this exceptional night.
And we invite you to dream together with the Szczecin Philharmonic!
