Tonhalle Orchester Zürich

"I don't think Mendelssohn gets the attention he deserves," said Paavo Järvi at the start of the 2020-2021 season. Faced with this observation, he undertook to record a complete cycle of Mendelssohn's orchestral works with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra for his second season as Music Director. On the programme are the composer's five symphonies, including the second, known as 'Lobgesang', half-symphony, half-cantata, with the participation of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, tenor Patrick Grahl and sopranos Chen Reiss and Marie Henriette Reinhold. Finally, A Midsummer Night's Dream , based on Shakespeare's play, the overture to which Mendelssohn composed when he was just 17, concludes this very fine cycle.

In this programme, Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich celebrate one of the most important composers of our time with works from different periods and citing a wide range of references, autobiographical or typically American. John Adams has assimilated numerous musical influences, and his personal style cannot be reduced to one of them: he is neither Minimalist, nor post-Minimalist, nor neo-Romantic. Some of his works can of course be said to belong to one or other of these movements, but he does not consider himself to be the representative of any particular tendency. If he refers to musical tradition in his works, it is always in a critical way and at the same time open to the influences of pop music, rock and jazz.

Anton Bruckner called his Symphony no.8 in C minor a ‘mystery’; others have seen it as an ‘apocalyptic’ work. For Paavo Järvi, it is the composer’s ‘most unusual symphony’ and the ‘pinnacle’ of his symphonic output. In the history of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Eighth Symphony occupies a special place, since it was the first Bruckner the orchestra performed – in 1905, twelve years after the premiere in Vienna of what was then the longest symphony in the history of music, and Bruckner’s only work to call for harps: ‘A harp has no place in a symphony, but I couldn't do otherwise!’, the composer reportedly said.

When his first album with Bach arias was released by Sony Classical in early 2019, the young Dutch countertenor Maarten Engeltjes received much praise for the "enchanting character" (opera glasses) of his voice. Now the master pupil of the counter legend Michael Chance sings three famous cantatas by J.S. Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82, Ich will den Kreuzstab gern tragen, BWV 56 (both are actually really excellent pieces for baritone) - and Vergnügte Ruh, beliebtte Seelenlust, BWV 170. Once again he is accompanied with great sensitivity by the Ensemble PRJCT Amsterdam.