• PostedJanuary 23, 2020
  • AuthorFoundation Staff
Nora Fischer as Anna I and Gabriella Schmidt as Anna II with the LA Philharmonic in a semi-staged concert version of Die sieben Todsünden; Los Angeles, 2019 | Photo: Genaro Molina

Venue: Walt Disney Concert Hall
Orchestra: Los Angeles Philharmonic
Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Performance Dates: 7-9 February 2020 (Violin Concerto); 13-16 February 2020 (Die sieben Todsünden, Das Berliner Requiem
Event page (Violin Concerto)
Event page (Die sieben Todsünden, Das Berliner Requiem)

Update: The first concert is set for radio broadcast Sunday, 21 June 2020 on KUSC in the SoCal Sunday Night series, and on Tuesday, 18 August 2020 on WFMT.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic hosts in February an ambitious festival built around Weimar culture. Two concerts featuring works by Weill and Hindemith form the centerpiece of a series of programs that includes exhibits, a twenties-style cabaret, film screenings, and other events.

The first concert features violin soloist Carolin Widmann, who has already performed Weill’s Concerto this season with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York. She has said, “This unique violin concerto paints the picture of one of the most creative and free periods in German history, the Weimar Republic.” Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) will appear on the second program with Hindemith’s early opera, Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women), both of which will be presented by director Simon McBurney and his brother, music consultant Gerard McBurney, in collaboration with Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducts both concerts.

Salonen has had a very full Weill year, beginning last summer with a similar Weimar festival with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London (Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, Violin Concerto with Christian Tezlaff), punctuated by a new production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny with Ivo van Hove at Aix-en-Provence in July. He tweeted last year that Weill’s Concerto “combines the unusual forces of wind band, basses, percussion and timpani. At the heart of the work, a brilliant anxious energy between the violin and xylophone in the second movement.”

Features

Learn more about the Violin Concerto

Learn more about Das Berliner Requiem

Learn more about Die sieben Todsünden