Konzert im Pierre Boulez Saal
On 3 February, Finnegan Downie Dear will perform with the Staatskapelle Berlin and outstanding singers in the Pierre Boulez Saal. Over the past two years, he has already thrilled audiences at concerts with the orchestra in the neighbouring unique concert hall. Béla Bartók's Divertimento for Strings and Franz Schubert's 5th Symphony will frame György Kurtág's Mi is a szó (What is the word), with which the important Hungarian composer set a text by Samuel Beckett to music for the first time. The second part of the concert features Schubert's melodious, classical symphony.
Kurtág, one of Hungary's most important composers alongside Bartók, set a text by Beckett, his very last poem What is the word, to music as early as 1990 - before his opera Fin de partie (Samuel Beckett's Endgame). In the Pierre Boulez Saal, this composition for voices and an instrumental ensemble distributed throughout the space becomes a special sound experience and the search for words and expression can be experienced musically and spatially - entirely in keeping with the special position of the audience in the hall designed by Frank Gehry. Dalia Schaechter, recently celebrated by audiences and the press as Nell in the new production Fin de partie, can be heard as a versatile singer, as well as ensemble members Adriane Queiroz, Natalia Skrycka, Carles Pachon and Friedrich Hamel and Junho Hwang from the International Opera Studio.
This fascinating work is preceded by Bartók's Divertimento for string orchestra, in the composer's words ‘amusing, entertaining music’. The work plays with the Viennese Classical idea of cheerful, dance-like music, but also allows the dark sounds associated with the year of its composition, 1939, to be heard. The evening ends with Schubert's Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, which is reminiscent of Mozart with its imaginative melodies and the way in which it is arranged.