May 2016
On this tour the Mahler Chamber Orchestra performs as “Orchestra in Residence” at the new Festival Katowice Kultura Natura. At NOSPR Concert Hall, the MCO will play two different programmes under the batons of Ilan Volkov and Thomas Søndergård. Soprano Claire Booth appears as soloist on both evenings.
The MCO’s two concert programmes shed light on different aspects of the concept “Spirituality”, the theme chosen for this year, the second edition of the festival. The first concert with conductor Ilan Volkov presents a kaleidoscope of human emotions, ranging from religious sorrow in Haydn’s Lamentatione symphony to peaceful joy in Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll. At the centre of the programme are Claude Vivier’s “song of solitude” Lonely Child and Giacinto Scelsi’s spherical Elohim.
The second concert, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, deals with the symbolism of light and the struggle between darkness and light: Benjamin Britten’s song cycle Les Illuminations for soprano and string orchestra is framed by Sibelius’s Symphony no. 7 and Schubert’s Great Symphony D 944, both in the “key of light”, C major.
In the first concert, Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov makes his debut with the MCO. The second performance is the orchestra’s second collaboration with Thomas Søndergård, coming after his successful MCO debut at Musikfest Berlin in September 2015. Soprano Claire Booth returns to work with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for the third time, after collaborations in Lucerne in 2009 and Aldeburgh in 2015.
This is the MCO’s second visit to Poland, after a tour in Poznan, Warsaw and Cracow in 2011. The Festival Katowice Kultura Natura was founded in 2015 by Alexander Liebreich, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR). Their newly built home, NOSPR Concert Hall, has already become a cultural landmark, revitalising the post-industrial landscape of Katowice.
