Vögel 2020

Maurice Maeterlinck completed his play The Blue Bird ("L’Oiseau bleu") in 1908. Several of his previous works had proved popular as operatic subjects (Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue) so it's no wonder that composers jumped at the opportunity to set his latest creation to music.French composer Albert Wolff based an opera on the story, which premiered at the New York Met but subsequently fell into oblivion. Prior to that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt adapted it as a Christmas play and staged a production in Berlin, inviting no less a person than Engelbert Humperdinck to write the incidental music for it. The music was never published, but Steffen Tast eventually located the score and salvaged it for us all to enjoy. A sweet story and newly discovered music by Humperdinck that's sweeter still? Truly a recipe for a fairy-tale ending!

Maurice Maeterlinck completed his play The Blue Bird ("L’Oiseau bleu") in 1908. Several of his previous works had proved popular as operatic subjects (Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue) so it's no wonder that composers jumped at the opportunity to set his latest creation to music.French composer Albert Wolff based an opera on the story, which premiered at the New York Met but subsequently fell into oblivion. Prior to that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt adapted it as a Christmas play and staged a production in Berlin, inviting no less a person than Engelbert Humperdinck to write the incidental music for it. The music was never published, but Steffen Tast eventually located the score and salvaged it for us all to enjoy. A sweet story and newly discovered music by Humperdinck that's sweeter still? Truly a recipe for a fairy-tale ending!

Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr. is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist. Kaukonen performed with Jefferson Airplane and still performs regularly on tour with Hot Tuna, which started as a side project with bassist Jack Casady, and as of early 2019 has continued for 50 years. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #54 on its list of 100 Greatest Guitarists.

Guitariste soliste du Jefferson Airplane, dont il trouve le nom, Jorma Kaukonen est né à Washington D.C., le 23 décembre 1940, de parents d'origine finlandaise et russe. Il grandit dans différents pays (Pakistan, Philippines), au gré des missions de son père, employé au Département d'Etat. De retour dans son pays natal, il forme son premier groupe, The Triumphs, avec Jack Casady. Passionné de blues, il s'installe à San Francisco en 1962 et joue pour Janis Joplin (The Typewriter Tapes), avant d'être engagé par Paul Kantner au sein du Jefferson Airplane.

Kun-woo Paik (born March 10, 1946 in Seoul) is a South Korean pianist. He has performed with multiple orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic.

To say that Christian Thielemann's early March 2020 Gurre-Lieder at the Semperoper Dresden didn't take place a moment too soon is something of an understatement, when under a fortnight later Europe's international-level live music making scene had been reduced to solo recitals self-filmed on mobile phones and posted onto social media.