Concert Favourites

Katie Derham introduces this year's traditional spectacular concert from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the gardens of Schonbrunn Palace. There's a distinctly French flavour to the evening with music from Bizet, Berlioz, Poulenc and Ravel, and a special appearance from the world-renowned French piano duo the Labeque sisters. The concert is conducted for the first time by Semyon Bychkov who, though Russian-born, is an honorary Frenchman on account of his being married to Marielle Labeque.

While the piano is a western invention, it has come to occupy a special position in Chinese musical life. The earliest Chinese piano pieces date from the first half of the twentieth century; many remain popular in the concert hall today. This latest release in Naxos' Chinese Classics focuses on piano works from the Republican period (1911-1949), featuring Jie Chen, Bronze Medal Winner of the 2005 Santander Piano Competition. The music draws on well-known ancient melodies or folk-tunes, as reflected in the titles.

The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (in Swedish: Norrköpings Symfonieorchester) is one of the leaders among Sweden's crop of regional orchestras. It has spawned the careers of several conductors who went on to international renown. Located in the old industrial city of Norrköping in southwestern Sweden, the orchestra was founded in 1912 and offered well-advertised concerts from the start. As of 2018, with 86 musicians, the orchestra plays a major role in the city's musical life with its 50 indoor concerts a year at the Louis de Geer Concert Hall in Norrköping, plus a schedule of summer concerts outdoors (including one performance on a barge). They collaborate regularly with musicians in the jazz, folk, and rock fields, and their tours take them not only to nearby Linköping and to Stockholm, but to Austria, Eastern Europe, Japan, and China. The Norrköping Symphony's roster of former music directors includes Herbert Blomstedt (1954-1962, later conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra), Finland's Okko Kamu (1972-1979, later conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and other groups), and future Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst (1986-1991). Michael Francis' tenure concluded in 2016, and in the late 2010s the orchestra invited top international figures as guest conductors. Christian Lindberg, a frequent conductor during this period, has led the orchestra in the latest installments of an ongoing cycle of the symphonies of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson; the cycle began in 1992 and has appeared on the BIS label. The orchestra's large catalog of other recordings, mostly on BIS, has focused on Swedish music but has also encompassed works by Beethoven, Max Reger, and (on the CPO label in 2017) the Austrian composer Siegmund von Hausegger. Another innovative Norrköping Symphony Orchestra project during this period was Chelsea Hotel, featuring orchestral arrangements of compositions by the folk and folk-rock songwriters who stayed in New York's Chelsea Hotel in the '60s including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen.

Goran Filipec is renowned for his exceptional interpretations of the works of Franz Liszt.

This is a sort of selfportrait of the Great Organ of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, delivering all its aspects, enhanced by the choice of a repertoire emblematic of the baroque era: the major classic French organ works (Couperin, Marchand, Grigny, Corrette) composed to glorify the very specific aesthetics of instruments like that of Louis XIV’s Chapel; but also to reveal its other sound riches, transcriptions of chefs d’œuvres, from Le Sommeil d’Atys by Lully, to the contredanses of Rameau’s Boréades. To add a new dimension to the organ’s sound universe and to enhance its orchestral qualities, modern editing and “re-recording” processes were gently used to serve the superposition of musical voices, as if invisible hands filled in for the organist in certain works, which are true Proust’s “madeleines” for Gaétan Jarry. He goes all out to play the instrument of Versailles “for the Glory of God and the King”!

John Bryden is an international Concert Pianist who has played in venues from California to Kathmandu. He is also an accomplished organist.